drawbridges, and the high walls frowning above the homes of the
townsmen clustering round them. The aspect of the place is completely
changed since those early days. A grove of chestnut-trees covers
the site of the Church of St. Donatian; not a stone remains of
Bras-de-Fer's rude palace; and instead of the prison and the
hostage-house, there are the Hôtel de Ville, now more than five
hundred years old, from whose windows the Counts of Flanders swore
obedience to the statutes and privileges of the town, the Palais
de Justice, and the dark crypt beneath the chapel which shelters
the mysterious Relic of the Holy Blood.

[Illustration: BRUGES. Rue de l'Âne Aveugle (showing end of Town
Hall and Bridge connecting it with Palais de Justice).]

In summer it is a warm, quiet, pleasant spot. Under the shade of
the trees, near the statue of Van Eyck, women selling flowers sit
beside rows of geraniums, roses, lilies, pansies, which give a
touch of bright colour to the scene. Artists from all parts of
Europe set up their easels and paint. Young girls are gravely busy
with their water-colours. Black-robed nuns and bare-footed Carmelites
pass silently along. Perhaps some traveller from America opens his
guide-book to study the map of a city which had risen to greatness
long before Columbus crossed the seas. A few English people hurry
across, and pass under the archway of the Rue de l'Âne Aveugle
on the way to their tennis-ground beyond the Porte de Gand. The
sunshine glitters on the gilded façade of the Palais de Justice,
and lights up the statues in their niches on the front of the Hôtel
de Ville. There is no traffic, no noise. Everything is still and
peaceful. The chimes, ever and anon ringing out from the huge Belfry,
which rises high above the housetops to the west, alone break the