"I should like to see it, just to see it, as
one looks through a grating into the king's grape-houses here. But I
should not like to live in it. I love my hut, and the starling, and the
chickens, and what would the garden do without me? and the children, and
the old Annemie? I could not anyhow, anywhere, be any happier than I am.
There is only one thing I wish."
"And what is that?"
"To know something; not to be so ignorant. Just look--I can read a
Little, it is true: my Hours, and the letters, and when Krebs brings
in a newspaper I can read a little of it, not much. I know French well,
because Antoine was French himself, and never did talk Flemish to me;
and they being Netherlanders, cannot, of course, read the newspapers at
all, and so think it very wonderful indeed in me. But what I want is to
know things, to know all about what _was_ before ever I was living. St.
Gudule now--they say it was built hundreds of years before; and Rubes
again--they say he was a painter king in Antwerpen before the oldest,
oldest woman like Annemie ever began to count time. I am sure books
tell you all those things, because I see the students coming and going
with them; and when I saw once the millions of books in the Rue du Musee,
I asked the keeper what use they were for, and he said, 'To make men
wise, my dear.
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