the streets rise against the dark background of the Hôtel de Ville and the Chapel of the Holy Blood. The relic is taken out of the châsse, and a priest, standing on the steps of the altar high above the crowd, holds it up to be worshipped. Everyone bows low, and then, in dead silence, the mysterious object is carried into the chapel, and with this the chief religious ceremony of the year at Bruges is brought to a close.
There are sights in Bruges that night, within a stone's-throw of the Chapel of the Holy Blood, which are worth seeing, they contrast so strangely with all this fervour of religion.
The curtain has fallen upon the drama of the day. The flags are furled and put aside. The vestments are in the sacristy. Shrines, canopies, censers, all the objects carried in the procession, have disappeared into the churches. The church doors are locked, and the images are left to stand all night without so much as one solitary worshipper kneeling before them. The Bourg is empty and dark, steeped in black shadows at the door of the chapel where the relic has been laid to rest. It is all quiet there, but a stroll through the Rue de l'Âne Aveugle and across the canal by the bridge which leads to the purlieus of the fish-markets brings one upon another scene. Every second house, if not every house, is a café, 'herberg,' or 'estaminet,' with a bar and sanded floor and some rough chairs and tables; and on the night of the Procession of the Holy Blood they are crowded to the doors. Peasants from the country are there in great force. For some days before and after the sacred festival the villagers are in the habit of coming into Bruges—whole families of them, father and mother, sons and daughters, all in their best finery. They walk through the streets, following the route by which the Holy Blood is carried, telling their beads and saying their prayers, crossing themselves, and kneeling at any image of Christ, or Madonna, or saint, which they may notice at the street corners. It is curious to watch their sunburnt faces and uncouth ways as they slouch along, their hands busy with their beads, and their lips never ceasing for a moment to mutter prayer after prayer. They follow in the wake of the Procession of the Holy Blood, or wait to fall upon their knees when it passes and receive the blessing of the Bishop, who walks with fingers raised, scattering benedictions from side to side. In the evening, before starting for home, they go to the cafés.
As evening passes into night the sounds of music and dancing are heard. At the doors people sit drinking round tables placed on the pavement or in the rank, poisonous gutter. The hot air is heavy with the smell of decayed fish. Inside the cafés men and women, old and young, are dancing in the fetid atmosphere to jingling pianos or accordions. The heat, the close, sour fumes of musty clothing, tobacco, beer, gin, fried fish, and unwashed humanity, are overpowering. There are disgusting sights in all directions. Fat women, with red, perspiring faces and dirty fingers, still clutching their rosaries; tawdry girls, field-workers, with flushed faces, dancing with country lads, most of whom are more than half tipsy; ribald jokes and laughter and leering eyes; reeling, drunken men; maudlin affection in one corner, and jealous disputing in another; crying babies; beer and gin spilt on the tables; and all sorts of indecency and hideous details which Swift might have gloated over or Hogarth painted.
This is how the day of the Holy Blood procession is finished by many of the countryfolk. The brutal cabaret comes after the prayers and adoration of the morning! It is a world of contrasts. But soon the lights are out, the shutters are put up, the last customer goes staggering homewards, and the Belfry speaks again, as it spoke when the sweet singer lay dreaming at the Fleur-de-Blé:
'In the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet's rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
Then, with deep sonorous clangour,
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck the clock eleven,
And, from out the silent heaven,
Silence on the town descended.
Silence, silence everywhere,
On the earth and in the air,
Save that footsteps here and there
Of some burgher home returning,
By the street lamps faintly burning,
For a moment woke the echoes
Of the ancient town of Bruges.'
BRUGES
Quai des Marbriers.
Footnotes
[3] Canon van Haecke, Le Précieux Sang à Bruges (fourth edition), pp. 95, 96.
[4] Gilliat-Smith, The Story of Bruges, p. 103.
CHAPTER IV
THE BRUGES MATINS—BATTLE OF THE GOLDEN SPURS
The visitor to Bruges is reminded, wherever he goes, of the stirring events which fill the chronicles of the town for several centuries. Opposite the Belfry, in the middle of the Market-Place, is the monument to Peter De Coninck and John Breidel, on which garlands of flowers are laid every summer, in memory of what they did when the burghers rose against the French in May, 1302; and amongst the modern frescoes which cover the walls of the Grande Salle des Échevins in the Hôtel de Ville, with its roof of fourteenth-century woodwork, is one which represents the return from the Battle of the Golden Spurs, that famous fight in which the hardy peasantry of Flanders overthrew the knights of France whom Philip the Fair had sent to avenge the blood of the Frenchmen who had died on the terrible morning of the 'Bruges Matins.'
The fourteenth century had opened. The town had now reached the limits which have contained it ever since—an irregular oval with a circumference of between four and five miles, surrounded by double ditches, and a strong wall pierced by nine fortified gateways; and as the town had grown, the privileges and liberties of the townsmen had grown likewise. Sturdy, independent, and resolved to keep the management of their own affairs in their own hands, the burghers of Bruges, like those of the other Flemish towns, had succeeded in establishing a system of self-government so complete that it roused the opposition of Guy de Dampierre, Count of Flanders, whose efforts to diminish the power of these communities at length brought about a crisis which gave Philip the Fair of France an excuse for interfering. The Count, having to contend both against his own subjects and against the ambitions
