in the town, is a fine Gothic tower one
hundred and fifty feet high, with a remarkable construction of tower and
turrets, supported by corbels of the fifteenth century, containing a
fine chime of bells made by the Van den Gheyns. The bells are visible
from below, hanging sometimes well outside the turret of the bell
chamber, and, ranging tier upon tier, from those seemingly the size of a
gallon measure, to those immense ones weighing from fifteen hundred to
two thousand pounds. This great tower witnessed the attack and
occupation of the Spaniards, the foundation by the Roman Catholics of
the great University in 1652 to counter-act the Protestantism of the
Netherlands, which had but a brief career, and the capture of the town
by Louis the Fourteenth. Here was published in 1610 an English
translation of the Old Testament for Roman Catholics, as well as the
English Roman Catholic version of the scriptures, and the New Testament
translated at Rheims in 1582, and known as the "Douai Bible." This was
also the birthplace of Jean Bellgambe, the painter (1540) surnamed
"Maitre des Couleurs," whose nine great oaken panels form the wonderful
altarpiece in the church of Notre Dame.

[Illustration: The Town Hall: Douai]

Douai was, before the great war, a peaceful industrial center of some
importance, of some thirty thousand inhabitants. It has been said that
the Fleming worked habitually fifty-two weeks in the year. An exception,
however, must be made for fete days, when no self-respecting Fleming
will work. On these days the holiday makers are exceedingly
boisterous, and the streets are filled with the peasants clad in all
their holiday finery. But it is on the day of the Kermesse that your
Fleming can be seen to the best advantage. There are merry-go-rounds,
shooting galleries, swings, maybe a traveling circus or two, and a
theatrical troupe which shows in a much bespangled and mirrored tent,
decorated with tinsel and flaming at night with naphtha torches. Bands
of music parade the streets, each carrying a sort of banneret hung with
medals and trophies awarded by the town authorities at the various
"_seances_."

But the greatest noise comes from the barrel organs of huge size and
played by steam, or sometimes by a patient horse clad in gay apparel who
trudges a sort of treadmill which furnishes the motive power. In even
these small towns of Ancient Flanders such as Douai, the old allegorical
representations, formerly the main