The announcements were heard, it was thought by Charles, to the very centre of the city.  A low-browed animal with rasped hair was shouting, “Messieurs and ladies, come and see—­come and see the theatre of the galleys!  The only one in the world!  This is the place to view the real instruments of torture used on the prisoners—–­chains four yards long and balls of thirty-five pounds.  All authentic, gentlemen and ladies.  You will see the poisoners of Marseilles, Grosjon who killed his father, Madame Cottin who ate her baby.  Come in, come in, gentlemen and ladies!  Fifteen centimes!  ’Tis given away!  You enter and go out when you like.  Come in!  It is educational:  you see vice and crime depicted on the faces of the criminals!”

[Illustration:  THE JESTER AT THE FEAST.]

In another place a malicious Flemish Figaro explained the analogy betwen een spinnekop and eene meisie, the perspiration streaming over his face; and my ancient minnesinger’s blood stirred within me at the report of the pleasantries which were improvised by this Rabelais of the people, and I remembered that I too was a Flemming.

The bands belonging to the different booths tried to play each other down, forming a stupefying charivari, with tributary processions that quite overflowed the city.  The house of “confections” yielded me no broadcloth of a cut or dimension suitable to my figure.  But my two friends chose me a hat, a light pale-tot (my second purchase in that sort on this eventful journey), a scented cambric handkerchief, a rosebud, and a snowy waistcoat, in which, as in a whited sepulchre, I concealed the decay of my toilet.  These changes were judged to be sufficient for my accoutrement.  They might have done very well, but on my way back I paused at a lace-shop window to inspect some present for Francine.  A band, with many banners and figures in masquerade, swept past, followed by a shouting crowd.  My friends lost me in a moment, and I lost my way.  I turned into a street which I was sure led to the hotel, gave it up for another, lost that in a blind alley, and finally brought up in a steep, narrow canon, where I was forced to ask a direction.  The passer-by who obliged me was a man bearing a bag of charcoal.  He answered with a ready intelligence that did honor to his heart and his sense of Progressive Geography.  But he left on my white waistcoat, alas! a charcoal sketch, full of chiaroscuro and coloris, representing his index-finger surrounded with a sort of cloud-effect.  My waistcoat had to be given over in favor of the elder garment buttoned up in the all-concealing overcoat.

[Illustration:  ST. GUDOLE, BRUSSELS.]

The ceremonies of the day, I soon found, were to consist in an early and informal breakfast at the house of Frau Kranich; then the civil wedding at the mayor’s office, followed by the usual church-service, from which the Protestant godmother of Francine begged to be excused; the day to wind up with a general dinner at a place of resort outside the city at four o’clock, the usual dining-hour in old Brabant.