I
THE HARBOR
Carrying his head high and throwing out his chest with the air of a conqueror, Laurent began to walk through his native city. One thing he had to consider immediately, and that was the choice of a lodging. The merchants' quarter, in the heart of the city, summoned him more strongly than any of the others.
He took lodgings on the second floor of one of those picturesque houses, with wooden facade and Spanish gables, in the Marché-au-Lait, a narrow and much frequented street encumbered from morning until night with all sorts of vehicles, the trucks and drays of large manufacturing corporations, the hampers and carts of the market gardeners.
Laurent's windows looked out over the hovels across the street, upon the gardens of the cathedral. The immense Gothic pile rose above the grove of tall trees. A few crows flew about the coping of the cathedral. It was at Notre Dame that Laurent had been baptised, and precisely the same dear carillon, the melodious soul of the tower, that used to lull him to sleep during his early childhood, when he used to play marbles or hopscotch in front of the cathedral door with the boys of the neighborhood, began to peal out the notes of an old Flemish ballad that Siska used to sing:
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