Namur as we saw it was a busy and prosperous town. The Sambre is a water route to the Borinage, and the Meuse a financial asset to any city. Its streets were wide, with many parks. One feature made it specially attractive—on the lamp-posts hung circular baskets just beneath the light, filled with flowers and hanging vines.
Not far from Namur is the old hermitage of St. Hubert, clinging to a rocky cliff. There, in the Middle Ages, it was customary to illustrate Bible stories by the use of marionettes, small wooden figures which moved about the stage at the will of the monks. They were capable of acting out before the eyes of the marveling country folk the story of the Passion, of the cock that crowed thrice, and the penitence of Peter, stirring sluggish imaginations to renewed devotion. “At the right, against the wall, you see a table. There, you should remember, rested the scaffolding in the midst of which was played the Passion. From the opening below, the man of God pulled the strings of the machine.... The man of God was the hermit, at once the author of the actors and of the piece, and impressario of the troop which he had made with his own hands.”
Such was the Walloon country, as we saw it in our journeyings. It was our last trip in Belgium, for my husband received word that he had been named Ambassador to Japan. So we packed up our things and sadly said good-by to all the friends who had been so kind to us. Little did we think that there was soon to be war, and that many of them we should never see again.
OLD HOUSES ON THE SAMBRE, NAMUR.
But Belgium has been through many wars before this, many sieges and sackings and burnings, so we can feel sure that the spell of its enchantment will survive the gray wave of soldiers which has swept across the land during these last sad months.