The old tinker put
his tools together, and whispered to her,--
"Bebee, as it is your feast day, come and stroll in St. Hubert's gallery,
and I will buy you a little gilt heart, or a sugar-apple stick, or a
ribbon, and we can see the puppet show afterwards, eh?"
But the children were waiting at home: she would not spend the evening in
the city; she only thought she would just kneel a moment in the cathedral
and say a little prayer or two for a minute--the saints were so good in
giving her so many friends.
There is something very touching in the Flemish peasant's relation with
his Deity. It is all very vague to him: a jumble of veneration and
familiarity, of sanctity and profanity, without any thought of being
familiar, or any idea of being profane.
There is a homely poetry, an innocent affectionateness in it,
characteristic of the people. He talks to his good angel Michael, and to
his friend that dear little Jesus, much as he would talk to the shoemaker
over the way, or the cooper's child in the doorway.
It is a very unreasonable, foolish, clumsy sort of religion, this
theology in wooden shoes; it is half grotesque, half pathetic; the
grandmothers pass it on to the grandchildren as they pass the bowl of
potatoes round the stove in the long winter nights; it is as silly as
possible, but it comforts them as they carry fagots over the frozen
canals or wear their eyes blind over the squares of lace; and it has in
it the supreme pathos of any perfect confidence, of any utterly childlike
and undoubting trust.
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