Tales of a Traveller

with Dutch merchants; and there was hardly any getting along for goods, wares, and merchandises, and peasants in big breeches, and women in half a score of petticoats.
    My grandfather rode jollily along in his easy, slashing way, for he was a saucy, sunshiny fellow—staring about him at the motley crowd, and the old houses with gable ends to the street and storks’ nests on the chimneys; winking at the ya vrouws who showed their faces at the windows, and joking the women right and left in the street; all of whom laughed and took it in amazing good part; for though he did not know a word of their language, yet he always had a knack of making himself understood among the women.
    Well, gentlemen, it being the time of the annual fair, all the town was crowded; every inn and tavern full, and my grandfather applied in vain from one to the other for admittance. At length he rode up to an old rackety inn that looked ready to fall to pieces, and which all the rats would have run away from, if they could have found room in any other house to put their heads. It was just such a queer building as you see in Dutch pictures, with a tall roof that reached up into the clouds; and as many garrets, one over the other, as the seven heavens of Mahomet. Nothing had saved it from tumbling down but a stork’s nest on the chimney, which always brings good luck to a house in the Low Countries; and at the very time of my grandfather’s arrival, there were two of these long-legged birds of grace, standing like ghosts on the chimney top. Faith, but they’ve kept the house on its legs to this very day; for you may see it any time you pass through Bruges, as it stands there yet; only it is turned into a brewery—a brewery of strong Flemish beer; at least it was so when I came that way after the battle of Waterloo.
    My grandfather eyed the house curiously as he approached. It might Not altogether have struck his fancy, had he not seen in large letters over the door,
HEER VERKOOPT MAN GOEDEN DRANK.
    My grandfather had learnt enough of the language to know that the sign promised good liquor. “This is the house for me,” said he, stopping short before the door.
    The sudden appearance of a dashing dragoon was an event in an old inn, frequented only by the peaceful sons of traffic. A rich burgher of Antwerp, a stately ample man, in a broad Flemish hat, and who was the great man and great patron of the establishment, sat smoking a clean long pipe on one side of the door; a fat little distiller of Geneva from Schiedam, sat smoking on the other, and the bottle-nosed host stood in the door, and the comely hostess, in crimped cap, beside him; and the hostess’ daughter, a plump Flanders lass, with long gold pendants in her ears, was at a side window.
    “Humph!” said the rich burgher of Antwerp, with a sulky glance at the stranger.
    “Der duyvel!” said the fat little distiller of Schiedam.
    The landlord saw with the quick glance of a publican that the new guest was not at all, at all, to the taste of the old ones; and to tell the truth, he did not himself like my grandfather’s saucy eye.
    He shook his head—“Not a garret in the house but was full.”
    “Not a garret!” echoed the landlady.
    “Not a garret!” echoed the daughter.
    The burgher of Antwerp and the little distiller of Schiedam continued to smoke their pipes sullenly, eyed the enemy askance from under their broad hats, but said nothing.
    My grandfather was not a man to be browbeaten. He threw the reins on his horse’s neck, cocked his hat on one side, stuck one arm akimbo, slapped his broad thigh with the other hand—
    “Faith and troth!” said he, “but I’ll sleep in this house this very night!”
    My grandfather had on a tight pair of buckskins—the slap went to the landlady’s heart.
    He followed up the vow by jumping off his horse, and making his way past the staring Mynheers into the public room. May be you’ve been in the barroom of an old Flemish inn—faith, but a handsome chamber it was as you’d wish to see; with a brick floor, a great fire-place, with the whole Bible history in glazed tiles; and then the mantel-piece, pitching itself head foremost out of the wall, with a whole regiment of cracked teapots and earthen jugs paraded on it; not to mention half a dozen great Delft platters hung about the room by way of pictures; and the little bar in one corner, and the bouncing bar-maid inside of it with a red calico cap and yellow ear-drops.
    My