e--French, English, American.

Then he suddenly took it into his head to go to Antwerp; I don't
know who influenced him in this direction, but I arranged to meet
him there at the end of April--and we spent a delightful week
together, staying at the "Grand Laboureur" in the Place de Meer. The
town was still surrounded by the old walls and the moat, and of a
picturesqueness that seemed as if it would never pall.

Twice or three times that week British tourists and travelers
Landed at the quai by the Place Verte from _The Baron Osy_--and this
landing was Barty's delight.

The sight of fair, fresh English girls, with huge crinolines, and
their hair done up in chenille nets, made him long for England
again, and the sound of their voices went nigh to weakening his
resolve. But he stood firm to the last, and saw me off by _The
Baron_. I felt a strange "serrement de coeur" as I left him standing
there, so firm, as if he had been put "au piquet" by M. Dumollard!
and so thin and tall and slender--and his boyish face so grave. Good
heavens! How much alone he seemed, who was so little built to live
alone!

It is really not too much to say that I would have given up to him
everything I possessed in the world--every blessed thing! Except
Leah--and Leah was not mine to give!

Now and again Barty's face would take on a look so ineffably,
pathetically, angelically simple and childlike that it moved one to
the very depths, and made one feel like father and mother to him in
one! It was the true revelation of his innermost soul, which in many
ways remained that of a child even in his middle age and till he
died. All his life he never quite put away childish things!

I really believe that in bygone ages he would have moved the world
with that look, and been another Peter the Hermit!

He became a pupil at the academy under De Keyser and Van Lerius, and
worked harder than ever.

He took a room nearly all window on a second floor in the Marche aux
oeufs, just under the shadow of the gigantic spire which rings a
fragment of melody every seven minutes and a half--and the whole
tune at midnight, fortissimo.

He laid in a stock of cigars at less than a centime apiece, and
dried them in the sun; they left as he smoked them a firm white ash
two inches long; and he grew so fond of them that he cared to smoke
nothing else.

He rose before the dawn, and went for a swim more than a mile
away--got to the academy at six--worked till eight--b