and on the half and quarter hours a few bars from
the "Pre aux Clercs." Every seven and a half minutes sounded a few
jangling sweet notes, and thus the air over the old town of Malines and
the small hamlets surrounding it both day and night was musical with the
bells of the carillon.

On fete days a certain famous bell ringer was engaged by the authorities
to play the bells from the _clavecin_. This is a sort of keyboard with
pedals played by hand and foot, fashioned like a rude piano. The work is
very hard, one would think, but I have heard some remarkable results
from it. In former times the office of "carilloneur" was a most
important position, and, as in the case of the Van den Gheyn family of
Louvain, it was hereditary. The music played by these men, those
"morceaux fugues," once the pride and pleasure of the Netherlands, is
now the wonder and despair of the modern bell ringer, however skillful
he may be.

[Illustration: The Beguinage: Dixmude]

Cerberus informed me that sometimes months pass without a visit from a
stranger to his tower room, and that he had to wind up the mechanism
of the immense clock twice each day, and that of the carillon separately
three times each twenty-four hours, and that it was required of him that
he should sound two strokes upon the "do" bell after each quarter, to
show that he was "on the job," so to speak.

I told him I thought his task a hard and lonely one, and I offered him
another of the black cigars, which he accepted with civility, but I kept
my hand ostentatiously in my blouse pocket, where lay the ammonia gun,
and he saw plainly that I did so. I am inclined now to think that my
fears, as far as he was concerned, were groundless, but nevertheless
they were very real that day in the old tower of Saint Rombauld.

He began his task of winding up the mechanism, while I mounted the steep
steps leading upwards to the top gallery. Here on the open gallery I
gazed north, east, south, and west over the placid, flat, green-embossed
meadows threaded with silver, ribbon-like waterways, upon which floated
red-sailed barges. Below, as in the bottom of a bowl, lay Malines, its
small red-roofed houses stretching away in all directions to the remains
of the ancient walls, topped here and there with a red-sailed windmill,
in the midst of verdant fresh fields wooded here and there with clumps
of willows, where the armies of the counts of Flanders, and the Van
Arteveldes, fought in the olde