game of architects in their second childhood, what was their consternation when they saw the ashlar crumble away to dust in their profane fingers!
Ah! it was high time for the Tilbaks to expatriate themselves. It was as good to go as to remain for the havoc and depredation. Those who might ever return ran the risk of not knowing their land.
The wreckers had already torn down the first houses in the savory quartier des Bateliers. Navvys were already beginning to fill in the old canal Saint-Pierre.
Laurent dived further and further into the city, wandering with filial devotion through the threatened streets, according to the agonized walls a little of the sympathy and clemency that he felt for the expelled.
And, beneath their hollowed gables, the sorrowful facades possessed the emotions of human faces, of faces solemn with approaching death, and the cross-barred windows, the dusty panes of glass, cried like blind eyes, and here and there, in the far-off and discordant music of some hovel, wailed the last "Où peut on être mieux?" of the Willeghem band.
