bit, and the
charwoman--she is Lisa Dredel, and lives in the street of the Pot
d'Etain--always said. 'Dear heart, they all belong to Rubes' land: we
never see their like nowadays.' But _you_ must come out of Rubes' land;
at least, I think so, do you not?"

He caught her meaning; he knew that Rubes was the homely abbreviation of
Rubens that all the Netherlanders used, and he guessed the idea that was
reality to this little lonely fanciful mind.

"Perhaps I do," he answered her with a smile, for it was not worth his
while to disabuse her thoughts of any imagination that glorified him to
her. "Do you not want to see Rubes' world, little one? To see the gold
and the grandeur, and the glitter of it all?--never to toil or get
tired?--always to move in a pageant?--always to live like the hawks in
the paintings you talk of, with silver bells hung round you, and a hood
all sewn with pearls?"

"No," said Bebee, simply. "I should like to see it, just to see it, as
one looks through a grating into the king's grape-houses here. But I
should not like to live in it. I love my hut, and the starling, and the
chickens, and what would the garden do without me? and the children, and
the old Annemie? I could not anyhow, anywhere, be any happier than I am.
There is only one thing I wish."

"And what is that?"

"To know something; not to be so ignorant. Just look--I can read a
Little, it is true: my Hours, and the letters, and when Krebs brings
in a newspaper I can read a little of it, not much. I know French well,
because Antoine was French himself, and never did talk Flemish to me;
and they being Netherlanders, cannot, of course, read the newspapers at
all, and so think it very wonderful indeed in me. But what I want is to
know things, to know all about what _was_ before ever I was living. St.
Gudule now--they say it was built hundreds of years before; and Rubes
again--they say he was a painter king in Antwerpen before the oldest,
oldest woman like Annemie ever began to count time. I am sure books
tell you all those things, because I see the students coming and going
with them; and when I saw once the millions of books in the Rue du Musee,
I asked the keeper what use they were for, and he said, 'To make men
wise, my dear.' But Gringoire Bac, the cobbler, who was with me,--it was
a fete day,--Bac, _he_ said, 'Do not you believe that, Bebee; they
only muddle folks' brains; for one book tells them one thing, and another
book another, an