O nations! closely should you treasure your great men; for by them alone
will the future know of you. Flanders in her generations has been wise.
In his life she glorified this greatest of her sons, and in his death
she magnifies his name. But her wisdom is very rare.

Now, the trouble of Patrasche was this. Into these great, sad piles of
stones, that reared their melancholy majesty above the crowded roofs,
the child Nello would many and many a time enter, and disappear through
their dark, arched portals, while Patrasche, left without upon the
pavement, would wearily and vainly ponder on what could be the charm
which thus allured from him his inseparable and beloved companion. Once
or twice he did essay to see for himself, clattering up the steps with
his milk-cart behind him; but thereon he had been always sent back again
summarily by a tall custodian in black clothes and silver chains of
office; and fearful of bringing his little master into trouble, he
desisted, and remained couched patiently before the churches until such
time as the boy reappeared. It was not the fact of his going into them
which disturbed Patrasche; he knew that people went to church; all
the village went to the small, tumble-down, gray pile opposite the
red windmill. What troubled him was that little Nello always looked
strangely when he came out, always very flushed or very pale; and
whenever he returned home after such visitations would sit silent and
dreaming, not caring to play, but gazing out at the evening skies beyond
the line of the canal, very subdued and almost sad.

What was it? wondered Patrasche. He thought it could not be good or
natural for the little lad to be so grave, and in his dumb fashion he
tried all he could to keep Nello by him in the sunny fields or in the
busy market-place. But to the churches Nello would go; most often of all
would he go to the great cathedral; and Patrasche, left without on the