ideals did not interfere with his material welfare. Fortune favored him. He pleased old Daelmans-Deynze, one of the old aristocrats of Antwerp, who loaned him capital with which to extend his business. Leaving his fishmongery, young Bergmans, after a profitable apprenticeship to his patron, launched himself into the world of big business, especially into the grain-market He became rich, but his fortune did not impair his popularity. He remained the idol of the people even though he was highly thought of by the bigwigs and met the proudest and most aristocratic people on an equal footing. He became the head of the democratic and nationalistic movement.
Without yet holding any office, he represented a much more actual power than that of the deputes or the ediles elected by a limited body of voters vaguely corrupted by foreign influences. He was, in brief, one of those men for whom his followers, even though they comprised the majority of the truly representative public of Antwerp, would have thrown themselves into the fire—a tribune of the people, a ruwaert. He was so upright, so lucid in his spirit, he possessed so much common-sense and so much kindliness of nature, that the most delicate people forgave his trivial faults, his braggadocio, his gasconades, his tendency to employ flashy, vulgar and trivial methods of speech.
This violent and often brutal tribune became, in society, a perfect conversationalist. He spoke French with a pronounced accent, drawling his words, and introducing a profusion of images and an unexpected color. He expressed his admiration for women in terms that were often a trifle frank, of which the bourgeois, weary of conventions and banalities, tasted the
