Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/165

Rh show himself gracious, liberal, and even profuse, making generous presents to the tuneful brotherhoods and multiplying occasions of festivities and athletic tourneys.

He instituted regattas with sailing-vessels round the island, in which seated with Guidon in a yacht adorned with his colours, he almost surpassed the best sailors of the country. He renewed at his own expense the musical instruments of the St. Cecilia guild, was constantly present at the rehearsals, the excursions, and the festivities of this group of young fellows, and it even happened more than once on the fine summer nights, when the twilight and the dawn seem almost to embrace, after a long evening made up of athletic interludes and brisk bouts of buffoonery, that he would lead all the band in a tramp across the island, and not restore the riotous roysterers to their conjugal or paternal firesides till the following evening, after a picturesque caravaning enlivened with leaping, belly-fillings, guzzlings, and exploits of gallantry among the stubble and the hay.

Kehlmark spent his money without reckoning. One might have supposed that he sought by excessive liberality and indiscriminate charity to purchase his right to a