VIII
DAELMANS-DEYNZE
At the end of one of the riverside streets in the Marché-aux-Chevaux, where great cold mansions, the homes of patrician families, are unwilling neighbors to the offices and stores of wholesale merchants, the scene of the continual passage to and fro of a prosperous crowd,—there runs a tawny wall, crumbling to dust beneath the weight of two centuries, but massive enough to do service for many years to come.
Midway along the wall a great carriage entrance leads to a vast courtyard enclosed upon three sides by buildings that date back to the time of Archduke Albert and Isabella, but which, during the intervening centuries, have undergone the rebuilding and restoration made necessary by their modern destiny.
One of the heavy black doors bears a large brass plate, conscientiously polished, upon which one may read in tall letters: J. B. Daelmans-Deynze & Cie. The engraver had wanted to add, "Colonial produce." But why? It had long been established in Antwerp, as surely as two and two are four, that Daelmans-Deynze, the only Daelmans-Deynze, had been in colonial produce, father and son, since the Austrian domination, perhaps even as far back as the glories of the Hansa.
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