Ten days before I had been in Louvain, when it was occupied by
Belgian troops and King Albert and his staff. The city dates from the
eleventh century, and the population was forty-two thousand. The
citizens were brewers, lace-makers, and manufacturers of ornaments
for churches. The university once was the most celebrated in
European cities and was the headquarters of the Jesuits.

In the Louvain College many priests now in America have been
educated, and ten days before, over the great yellow walls of the
college, I had seen hanging two American flags. I had found the city
clean, sleepy, and pretty, with narrow, twisting streets and smart
shops and cafés. Set in flower gardens were the houses, with red
roofs, green shutters, and white walls.

Over those that faced south had been trained pear-trees, their
branches, heavy with fruit, spread out against the walls like branches
of candelabra. The town hall was an example of Gothic architecture,
in detail and design more celebrated even than the town hall of
Bruges or Brussels. It was five hundred years old, and lately had
been repaired with taste and at great cost.

Opposite was the Church of St. Pierre, dating from the fifteenth
century, a very noble building, with many chapels filled with carvings
of the time of the Renaissance in wood, stone, and iron. In the
university were one hundred and fifty thousand volumes.

Near it was the bronze statue of Father Damien, priest of the leper
colony in the South Pacific, of whom Robert Louis Stevenson wrote.