Oudenaarde
From the small stucco station, embowered in luxuriant trees, we crossed a wide grass grown square, faring towards the turrets of the town, which appeared above the small red and black tiled roofs of some mean looking peasant houses, and an estaminet, of stucco evidently brand new, and bearing a gilt lion over its door. Here a wide and rather well paved street led towards the town, bordered upon either hand by well kept and clean but blank looking houses, with the very narrowest sidewalks imaginable, all of which somehow reminded us of some of the smaller streets of Philadelphia. The windows of these houses flush with the street were closely hung with lace, and invariably in each one was either a vase or a pot of some sort filled with bright flowers. Occasionally there was a small poor looking shop window in which were dusty glass jars of candy, pipes, packages of tobacco, coils of rope and hardware, and in one, evidently that of an apothecary, a large carved and varnished black head of a grinning negro, this being the sign for such merchandise as tobacco and drugs.
Here and there doorways were embellished with shiny brass knockers of good form, and outside one shop was a tempting array of cool green earthenware bowls of such beautiful shape that I passed them by with great longing.
Soon this street made a turning, where there was a good bronze statue to some dignitary or other, and I caught a glimpse of that wondrous tower of the famous Hôtel de Ville, the mate to that at Louvain, and soon I was beneath its Gothic walls, bearing row upon row of niches, empty now, but once containing effigies of the powerful lords and ladies of Flanders. These rows rise tier upon tier to that exquisitely slender lace-like tower crowned with a large gilded statue of the town's patron, pennant in hand, and shining in the sunlight.
From the Inn of the "Golden Apple of Oudenaarde" just opposite, I appraised its beauties over a good meal of young broiled chicken and lettuce salad, and a bowl of "café au lait" that was all satisfying.
Afterwards, the custode, an old soldier, showed us the "Salle des Pas Perdus," containing a fine chimney piece alone worth the journey from Antwerp, and the Council Chamber, still hung with some good ancient stamped leather, and several large badly faded and cracked Spanish paintings of long forgotten dignitaries both male and female.
