Gudule, that his mother had burned many
a candle before its altars for a dead brother who had been drowned off
the dunes.
But the child's mind, unled, but not misled, had pondered on these
things, and her heart had grown to love them; and perhaps no student of
Spanish architecture, no antiquary of Moyen-age relics, loved St. Gudule
and the Broodhuis as little ignorant Bebee did.
There had been a time when great dark, fierce men had builded these
things, and made the place beautiful. So much she knew; and the little
wistful, untaught brain tried to project itself into those unknown times,
and failed, and yet found pleasure in the effort. And Bebee would say to
herself as she walked the streets, "Perhaps some one will come some day
who will tell me all those things."
Meanwhile, there were the flowers, and she was quite content.
Besides, she knew all the people: the old cobbler, who sat next her, and
chattered all day long like a magpie; the tinker, who had come up many a
summer night to drink a-glass with Antoine; the Cheap John, who cheated
everybody else, but who had always given her a toy or a trinket at every
Fete Dieu all the summers she had known; the little old woman, sour as a
crab, who sold rosaries and pictures of saints, and little waxen Christs
upon a tray; the big dogs who pulled the carts in, and lay panting all
day under the rush-bottomed chairs on which the egg-wives and the fruit
sellers sat, and knitted, and chaffered; nay, even the gorgeous huissier
and the frowning gendarme, who marshalled the folks into order as they
went up for municipal registries, or for town misdemeanors,--she knew
them all; had known them all ever since she had first trotted in like
a little dog at Antoine's heels.
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