"Au bord d'un rivelet rapide,
Se lamentait une blanche jeune fille."
Laurent resolved to hunt up his faithful friend immediately.
A new shock awaited him at the water-gate. He passed through the Place du Bourg, where the quay broadens and juts a point out into the roadstead. From the very end of this promontory the view was magnificent.
Upstream and downstream the Scheldt spread out with a majestic quietude the superb surge of its tide. One could see it describe a curve to the northwest, recede, wind back again, proceed on its way, turn once again, as if it wanted to retrace its steps and again salute the sovereign metropolis, the pearl of all the cities through which it flowed, as if it were forsaking her with regret.
On the horizon sails receded toward the sea, funnels of steamers unfurled against the milky, pearly grey of the sky, long woolly pennants, like exiles who wave farewell with their handkerchiefs as long as they are able to see the beloved shores. Sea gulls scattered in flight above the tawny, green surface of the water, rising and falling in the gentle and subtle curves that will forever be the despair of marine painters.
The sun was slowly setting; it, too, could not decide to leave these shores. Its fiery glow, pierced with wide bands of gold, crested the waves with luminous little drops of blood. As far as the eye could see along the wharfs and the tree-planted quays and beyond the grassy.dikes of Polder, there was a fluttering and scintillating of living jewels.
Fishing boats began to regain the canals and basins
