'Precisely!' exclaimed Goring, with impatience.
'Luncheon, monsieur?' suggested the garrulous waiter, and, to be partly rid of him and left to himself, Goring ordered it.
Many hotels overlooked the Place Verte; was she in one of them? Perhaps her eyes were at that same moment looking on what he saw there; and the tall edifices with smokeless chimneys, the result of the general use of stoves in houses, some old enough and quaint enough to have been seen by Charles V.; the little carts drawn by dogs; the little yellow police-vans proceeding to and from the Palais de Justice, escorted by soldier-looking gendarmes in blue tunics, with white braid and aiglettes, bear-skin caps, and carbines; women without caps, or with queer poke bonnets and long dark cloaks; the funeral of a 'Liberal' going past—the hearse without cross, candles, or priests, and preceded by a great brass band playing polkas and mazurkas; the Calvarys and Madonnas at the street corners, or in the porte-cochère of houses, all with lamps before them; municipal guards with plumed hats; artizans in blouses and sabots; shabby ill set up soldiers of all sorts and sizes, in baggy trousers, queer forage caps, and enormous red worsted shoulder knots—soldiers between whose appearance and that of 'our fellows,' Goring drew comparisons not very favourable to the former; priests in shovel hats and long floating cloaks or soutanes, one perhaps preceded by a cross-bearer and acolyte with a bell, bearing the Blessed Sacrament to the dying.
High overhead the sweet carillons or musical bells, so common to all the churches in Belgium, were playing merrily in the cathedral spire, from whence, ever and anon announcing the hours and half hours, came the sonorous booms of that vast bell at the baptism of which Charles V. stood as 'godfather,' and which requires the united strength of sixteen men to pull it.
For the first time during a past period Bevil Goring had an appetite, and was well disposed to do justice to the cuisine of the Hôtel du Parc—and, truth to tell, the Belgian cookery is second to none in the world; and after having pâté de foie gras, and dainty cutlets of veal, richly egg and bread crumbed to perfection, with pastry from Meurice's in the Marché aux Œufs, without which no meal seems perfect in Antwerp, and a glass or two of Chablis, he thought he might as well ask a question or two of the garrulous waiter, who was hovering about, with a white towel over his left shoulder, his thick short hair oiled, and his moustache waxed and pointed à la empereur.
'What is your name?'
'Jacquot, monsieur,' he replied, adopting the first position in dancing, smiling suavely, and pressing his hands together, or working them, as Dickens says, 'with invisible soap in imperceptible water.'
'In what part of Antwerp is the Rue d'Ecosse—is it near the Place Verte?'
'Rue d'Ecosse, monsieur—there is no such street in Antwerp.'
'Think again, Jacquot, please. I want the Hôtel Lion Rouge, Rue d'Ecosse.'