n days.

I could see the square below where, in the Grand' Place, those doughty
Knights of the Golden Fleece had gathered before the pilgrimage to the
Holy Land. Now a few dwarfed, black figures of peasants crawled like
insects across the wide emptiness of it. Here among the startled
jackdaws I lounged smoking and ruminating upon the bells, oily Cerberus,
and his lonely task, and inhaling the misty air from the winding canals
in the fertile green fields below--appraising the values of the pale
diaphanous sky of misty blue, harmonizing so exquisitely with the tender
greens of the landscape which had charmed Cuyp and Memling, until the
blue was suffused with molten gold, and over all the landscape spread a
tender and lovely radiance, which in turn became changed to ruddy flames
in the west, and then the radiance began to fade.

Then I bethought me that it was time I sought out the terrible Cerberus,
the guardian of the tower, and induce him peaceably to permit me to go
forth unharmed. I confess that I was coward enough to give him two
francs as a fee instead of the single one which was his due, and then I
stumbled down the long winding stairway, grasping the slippery hand rope
timorously until I gained the street level, glad to be among fellow
beings once more, but not sorry I had spent the afternoon among the
bells of the Carillon of Saint Rombauld--those bells which now lie
broken among the ashes of the tower in the Grand' Place of the ruined
town of Malines.

Some Carillons of Flanders

Some Carillons of Flanders

It is worth noting that nearly all of the noble Flemish towers with
their wealth of bells are almost within sight (and I had nearly written,
sound) of each other. From the summit of the tower in Antwerp one could
see dimly the cathedrals of Malines and Brussels, perhaps even those of
Bruges and Ghent in clear weather. Haweis ("Music and Morals") says that
"one hundred and twenty-six towers can be seen from the Antwerp
Cathedral on a fair morning," and he was a most careful observer. "So
these mighty spires, gray and changeless in the high air, seem to hold
converse together over the heads of puny mortals, and their language is
rolled from tower to tower by the music of the bells."

"Non sunt loquellae neque sermones, audiantur voces eorum," (there is
neither speech nor language, but their voices are heard among men).

This is an inscription copied by Haweis in the tower at Antwerp, from a