Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/327

Rh house of the German lodgings-keeper, the baes of that Gretchen. These fat, dumpy children of an apparently northern complexion sprang from the furtive crossing of a Dutch harbor-pilot and a boarder in a Spanish posada. The feverish, mercenary atmosphere of the harbor emancipated this progeny of sailors and girls at an early age. They would avenge themselves upon their three dozen fathers by fleecing the poor devils of sailors as best they might.

The suspicious nature of their business complicated their indeterminate origin. Their lives flowed with the tide of the river. By dint of filling their eyes with lubricating visions, the water communcated its power, its untoward magnetism, to their eyes. Muscular, but graceful, sly, but daring, adroit as Florentine bravi, they were like nixies with alluring voices, greedy fangs and sharp talons. They spoke, as if intuitively, a dozen languages and as many dialects, each one with the local accent, heightening it with a popular raciness, with a slangy timbre with which they, spiced their own patois and by which they could be distinguished from their comrades of other great ports.

Sprung from all races, their disparities harmonized and amalgamated in such a way as to create an autochthonous physiognomy, to brand them with a trademark without analogue, with an indelible and vigorous seal of the land.

Laurent highly valued their feline elegance, their affected indolence. This species of the Antwerpian people quintessentialized the vices and even the perfections of the great city.

Finally, Paridael contracted their mannerisms, their twisting walk, their habit of stretching, their stuffed