The Fish Market: Dixmude
"And when my friend the notaire comes to play chess with me, you should see him eye my antiques, ah, so covetously; I see him, but I never let on. Such a collection of antiques as we all are, M'sieur." Then he became serious, and lifting his cane he pointed to a gravestone at one side, "My old servant lies there, M'sieur; we are all old here now, but still we do not die. Alas! we never die. There is plenty of room here for us, but we die hard. See, myotis, heliotrope, hare bells, and mignonette, a bed of perfume, and there lies my old servant. A restless old soul she was, and she took such a long time to die. She was eighty-five when she finally made up her mind."
I had a cup of wine with the old man in his small salle à manger. His house was indeed a mine of wealth for the antiquary and collector, more like a shop than a house. I lingered with him for nearly an hour, telling him of the great world lying beyond Dixmude, of London and Paris, and of New York and some of its wonders, of which I fancied he was rather sceptical. And then I came away, after shaking hands with him at his doorstep in the dim alley-way, with the bar of golden sunlight shining at the entrance to the Grand' Place and the noise of the rooks cawing on the roof.
"Au revoir, M'sieur le Peintre, et bon voyage, and remember, 'Ask, and it shall be given, seek and you shall find,'" and with these cryptic words, he stood with uplifted hands, a smile irradiating his fine ascetic face glowing like that of a saint. Behind the faded black of his old soutane I could see his treasures of blue china and ancient cabinets, and a chance light illumined a mirror behind his head, and aureoled him like unto one of the saints behind the great "Jube," and thus I left him.
And now Dixmude is in formless heaps of ashes and burnt timbers. Hardly one stone now remains upon another. There is no longer a Grand' Place—and the very course of the river Yser is changed.