heirs owed it to their memory to relentlessly pursue the agent of their massacre, although at the bottom of their hearts the heirs doubtlessly were blessing the interesting homicide.
The unlucky girl disappeared at the same time as her lover, and no one knew where they were hiding. Laurent never saw them again. But, after that fatal adventure, each time he heard the hoarse cry of a crossing-keeper's horn or saw the black tank of a gasometer overhanging a surly suburban district, there rose before his eyes the two young people leaning against the crossing-gate; he, swarthy as a faun, clad in a reddish-brown smock, his brass horn hung over his shoulder by a red woolen band; she, blonde, rose, ready to swoon, and, with her white cap and apron, as appetizing as the cloth at a banquet.
To shake off his sorrow, Laurent instantly changed his lodgings, and travelled about exploring the Antwerpian country made dear to him by the peasant emigrants. Willeghem became, even for him, the object of a pilgrimage.
Without leaving his country, without ceasing to bathe in its sunshine and breath its atmosphere, Laurent experienced the deadly devotion, the voluptuous martyrdom of an exile. He saw and perceived the smallest objects of the land with a sensuous intensity known only by those who return after a long absence, or who are leaving forever; those who are resuscitated or who are dying. It is only on native shores that the three kingdoms of nature are adorned with this freshness, this youth, this eternal resurrection.
His fervent piety extended from the overworked beings and the eccentric quarters of the city to the sloppy or arid country, to the hallucinating sky, to the
