Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/151

 burdened with an obligation to adhere to the teaching of Thomas of Aquin—the least critical, perhaps, of an age of rampant dogmatism—who is the present favourite at the Papal court. However, Rome keeps a jealous eye on Louvain philosophy since the outbreak of heterodoxy under the famous Ubaghs some thirty years ago. It is still under suspicion of Cartesianism in a mild form: M. Bossu is an ardent Cartesian, and Mgr. Mercier is not untainted, but the circumstance is only a matter of concern to Jesuits and other philosophical rivals.

I had much personal intercourse with Mgr. Mercier, and experienced much kindness from him. Like most of the Walloons, he is more refined and sensitive than the average Fleming. For Belgium is made up of two radically distinct and hostile races: the Southern half is occupied by a French speaking people (with a curious native Walloon language) whose characteristics are entirely French, and the Northern race, the Flemings, is decidedly Teutonic, very hospitable, painfully open and candid, but usually coarse, material, and unsympathetic. The two races are nearly as hostile as the French and Germans whom they respectively resemble (though, I think, neither French nor Germans admit the affinity—the Germans have a supreme contempt for the Flemings). Louvain—Leuven as it is rightly called—is in Flemish territory, and Mgr. Mercier, justly suspecting that I was not at my ease with my Teutonic brethren, offered to