Aix-la-Chapelle made
laws, which Charlemagne himself encouraged, referring to the treatment
of pilgrims by the hospices which were so generally established
throughout Charlemagne's realm in Carlovingian times.

To the ordinary fine for murder there was added sixty _soldi_ more if
the person killed were a pilgrim to or from a hospice. Any who denied
food and shelter to a pilgrim was fined three _soldi_. These were the
regulations put into effect through Charlemagne's dominions at the
suggestion of Pepin II.

[Illustration]

XXVIII

LIEGE

The natural highway from Antwerp and Brussels to the Rhine lies through
Liege and Aix-la-Chapelle, or Aachen, as the Germans call the latter.

Wordsworth, in his wonderful travel poem, wrote of the Meuse, which
flows by Liege on its way to the Royal Ardennes, in a way which should
induce many sated travellers to follow in his footsteps, and know
something of the fascinating charm of this most fertile and perhaps the
most picturesque of all the rivers of Europe.

"What lovelier home could gentle fancy choose?
In this the stream, whose cities, heights and plains,
War's favourite playground, are with crimson stains
Familiar, as the morn with pearly dews.

* * * * *

"How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,
With its gray locks clustering in pensive shade,
That, shap'd like old monastic turrets, rise,
From the smooth meadow ground serene and still."

As one journeys on to Liege, Roman influences have left many and visible
remains.

Crossing the plain of Neervinden, one enters the province of the
Liegeois, where the French were defeated by the Austrians in 1793, thus
releasing Belgium from the Gallic yoke.

At Landen one recalls that it is the town of the inception of the family
of Charlemagne which gave to France her second race of kings.

Liege has been called the Birmingham of Continental Europe. It might
better be called one of the foremost industrial centres of the world,
for such it is to-day.

It is beautifully placed in an amphitheatre-like valley, and its tall
chimneys, its smoke, and its grind of wheels bespeak an activity and
unrest of which the former ages knew not.

Formerly the Liegeois were a turbulent and truculent folk, if one is to
believe history.

If, however, one does not care to go back to history, he might turn to
the pages of "Quentin Durward" and read of the spirit of romance which
on