it seemed as if they hoped to extol her and anoint themselves with her in an indelible fashion. So they talked loudly, rolling out the fat and sticky syllables of their dialect with a certain ostentation; they insisted upon making the diphthongs reverberate in the atmosphere of their origin.
And they found still another means of accentuating the tender and unconscious irony of their demonstrations.
When they came under the shed, before walking down the gangplank of the boat, steaming up for departure, those at the head of the line halted and faced about, turning toward the tower of Antwerp, and putting the brasses to their lips, their flag hoisted high, they began, not without false notes, the supreme national song, the "Où pent on être mieux" of the Liégeois Grétry, the simple and gentle melody of which brought together, in the accents of the noblest language, Flamands and Walloons, sons of the same Belgium, differing in temperament, but not enemies, in spite of what politicians say. And so the colliers of the Borinage were stretching out their hands to the Flamands.
In just such a way two orphans might embrace and become reconciled at their mother's deathbed!
The pathetic implications of this final aubade to the fatherland brought a rush of thoughts to Laurent's mind. He heard in that tender hymn, scanned and modulated in so beautifully barbarous a fashion by these loving exiles, the hoarse cry of all the repressed emotions and disillusions of his life. The scene before him rendered the world of the downtrodden and misunderstood dearer than ever to him.
How far he was already from that carefree day of
