Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/273

Rh under way for lands where tiles and bricks were unknown.

A young girl, with the air of a simpleton, her face bloated and beaming, was carrying off a tarin in a cage.

At the head of the line marched the village band, with banner flying.

The band and the flag were also emigrating. The musicians could boldly carry off their instruments and their flag, for there was no one left in Willeghem to employ the band.

Laurent spied a white-haired ecclesiastic, the village priest, marching next to the flag-bearer. Despite his advanced age, the pastor had insisted in accompanying his parishioners to the dock just as he had accompanied them each year upon the pilgrimage to Montaigu, for the many past years during which the famine had lasted! Why, oh, mistress of the Campine and of Hageland, were you deaf to their cry of distress? Instead of ascending, as in legendary times, the turbid streams of the land, in barks without crew or pilot, to disembark on shores chosen by their divine fancy and have miraculous sanctuaries builded there, the madonnas were now deserting their time-honored resting places and had travelled back over the same rivers that formerly had brought them, unknown saints, to the heart of Flanders. Nevertheless, the simple folk of the Flemish plains had built you a basilica on one of the only mountains in their land, as much so that the resplendent starry cupola of your temple of compassion might be seen from the far distance so as to bring you nearer to your Heaven. Fickle Virgin, did you give the example of emigration to all the homesick folk from the moors of the Scheldt?…