Louis was lodging in the great Benedictine Abbey where lay the bones of the founder of his house, Baldwin, Bras de Fer. Thither he summoned his companions in misfortune—the Dean of St. Donatian’s, the Lord of Gruthuise—founder of the Gruthuise Palace—John of Heusden, his physician, who was also Provost of Notre Dame, and Robert, his natural son, and in their presence he dictated his last will and testament. ‘Be it known to all,’ said the dying Count, ‘that I, mindful of the great honours, wealth and possessions, which Jesus Christ of His pure grace hath bestowed on me, unworthy, in this world, the which I have not used in His service and honour but for mine own vain glory, commend my poor sinful soul, as humbly as I may, to Him, to the Blessed Virgin, fount of mercy, and to all the saints in Paradise, whom I humbly beg to obtain for me forgiveness of my many and great sins.’ Then, with his own hands, he wrote to the Duke of Burgundy, conjuring him to repair the wrong which he had done to Flanders. He was sore grieved, he said, at the destruction of his people, who had been punished at his request.
On the night of the 30th of January 1384 a mighty hurricane swept over the land of Flanders. It was as though the four winds were blowing together, and yet neither tree nor steeple was touched by it, but the skeletons of Louis’s victims swayed to and fro on their gibbets and trembled in their chains. The spirits of darkness, said the people, were whirling his soul to hell.[33] ‘Ce dont plusieurs gens disoient ce que bon leur semblait,’ comments shrewd Juvenal des Ursins, which is as much as to say the wish was father to the thought.
A splendid specimen of civic architecture, perhaps the most perfect building of its kind in Northern Europe, still bears witness to poor Louis’s generosity to his beloved city Bruges. The present Hôtel de Ville
was his gift. He laid the foundation stone during the heyday of his magnificence, on January 14, 1376. In May 1379 the building must have been nearly completed, for about this time we find one Gilles de Man, a name still common in Bruges, busy gilding and colouring the statuary and niches of the façade, and the municipal accounts inform us that he received seven livres and fourteen escalins for his labour. Early in the following year the work was suspended on account of the trouble with Ghent, in all probability it was not resumed during Louis’s lifetime, and it was perhaps only completed in 1420.
Who the original architect may have been is a matter of conjecture. Monsieur Verschelde, the founder of the Archæological Society of Bruges, and for many years city architect, suggests Jean de Valenciennes, the artist whom we know designed and in great measure himself executed the sculpture which adorns the edifice. If this conjecture be warranted, Jean was, indeed, a creator of no ordinary talent, but of his story no vestige has come down to us, save only this: a man of the same name, perhaps his father, perhaps Jean himself, was vinder of the Bruges guild of painters in 1364.
It will be interesting to note that the façade of the Hôtel de Ville is the earliest structure in which appears an architectural arrangement which seems to have originated at Bruges, and which is perhaps the most distinguishing feature of its civic architecture. We allude to the long panels or arcades in which windows placed one over the other are frequently enclosed in such a manner as to give them the appearance of a series of long single windows ascending from the basement to the topmost storey.