Escal Vigor. Georges Eekhoud

definite religion, remained superstitious and fanatical, like the natives of most countries subject to phantasmal mists and fallacious meteors. Their love of the marvellous descended to them from remote theogonies, the gloomy and fatalistic cults of Thor and Odin; but eager appetites were mingled with their fantastic imaginations, intensifying their affections as well as their aversions.

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      II.

      Henry, whose nature was passionate and philosophy audacious, told himself, not without reason, that through his affinities, he would feel himself at home amid these beautifully barbarous surroundings, where natural instincts reigned.

      He even inaugurated his accession as "Dykgrave," with an innovation, against which the minister Balthus Bomberg was infallibly bound to fulminate from the full height of his pastoral desk. To flatter the native sentiment, Henry had invited to his table not only a few squires and landed proprietors, and a few artists from among his town friends, but he had also summoned around him a crowd of simple farmers, small ship-owners, masters of sailing-vessels and barges of the lowest class, the lighthouse-keeper, the lock-keeper, the heads of the dikemen's gang, and even simple labourers. These natives he had further invited to ​bring to his house-warming their wives and daughters.

      All the guests, both men and women, had dressed themselves at his particular request, either in the national costume, or in their personal uniform. The men arrayed themselves in velvet vests of a reddish-brown colour, or of a blinding red, worn over embroidered flannels on which were represented the instruments of their profession, anchors, ploughing implements, bulls' heads, navigators' instruments, sunflowers, sea-gulls, the almost oriental medley of colours standing out with peculiar effect on the sea-blue ground, like armorial bearings on a shield. On their broad, red belts shone old silver buckles of a workmanship at once barbarous and touching; others exhibited the sculptured oaken handles of their broad clasp-knives; the sea folk paraded in great tarred boots; delicate metal rings adorned the lobe of their ears, which were as red as shellfish: the farm labourers wore trousers of the same velvet as their vests, and these trousers, tight above, enlarged from the calf to the instep after the style known as "bell-bottoms." Their small hat recalled that of the lawyers' clerks of the time of Louis XI. The ​women displayed head-dresses of lace topped by conical hats with broad strings; their bodices being more variegated, and ornamented with interlacings even more capricious than the men's waistcoats; they wore bulging petticoats of the same velvet and the same reddish-brown shade as the vests and the breeches; thin gold chains were three times wound around their throats and in their ears were ear-drops of an ancient, quasi-byzantine pattern, whilst on their fingers they sported rings with bezels as thick as those of a bishop.

      These folk were, for the most part, robust specimens of the dark-complexioned type of that ardent and full-blooded race of swarthy, sinewy Celts, with rebellious, woolly locks. Bronzed peasants and sailors, a little embarrassed at the beginning of the repast, they had soon recovered their assurance. With clumsy gestures, but by no means artificial, and often even, after a manner newly discovered by themselves, deftly they plied knife and fork. As the meal progressed, tongues loosened, and bursts of laughter sometimes interspersed with an oath, seasoned their guttural speech, which, although highly coloured revealed smooth ​unexpected notes of caressing tenderness.

      Logical in his disregard of etiquette and in violation of all rules of precedence, the host had had the happy thought, in each case, to seat a farmer's wife, the mistress of a boat, or a fish-wife, by the side of one of his peers of the oligarchy; and similarly, beside some proud lady from a neighbouring château was wedged in a young dairyman of swaggering manner, or a boatman boasting knotty biceps.

      Kehlmark's friends remarked that almost all the guests were in the flower of their youth, or in the first flush of their maturity. One might have called the gathering a selection of prepossessing women and of malleable, impressionable youths.

      Among the guests was to be found one of the principal agriculturists of the country, Michel Govaertz, of the farm "Les Pèlerins". He was a widower and the father of two children, Guidon and Claudie.

      After the lord of Escal-Vigor, the farmer of Les Pèlerins was the most important man of Zoudbertinge village, on the territory of which was situated the country-seat of the Keklmarks.

      During the minority and in the absence ​of the young Count, Govaertz had replaced him at the head of the Wateringue, or committee for the maintenance and preservation of the alluvial lands, called "polders," of which committee the Dykgrave was the leading member. And it was not without some certain mortification to his self-esteem, that, on the return of Kehlmark, the farmer of Les Pèlerins had seen himself reduced to the rank of a simple member of the assemblies in question. But the young Count's affability had soon made Govaertz forget this slight decrease of his authority. Then, he sat before in the Wateringue only as representative of the Dykgrave, while as juryman he had the right of initiative and of voting in the chapter. Moreover, had he not been recently elected burgomaster of the parish?

      A stout peasant, a man of forty and of goodly presence, not ill-natured, but very conceited, and without character, he had felt extremely flattered at being invited to the château to occupy with his daughter the head of the table. Supported by his cronies, above all egged on and put up to it by his daughter, the not less ambitious but more intelligent Claudie, he incarnated ​the privileges and civil liberties of the community, setting rebelliously pastor Bomberg at defiance. For a moment, he feared lest the Count of Kehlmark should use his influence to get himself appointed magistrate of the village. But Henry detested politics, with the jealousies they engender, the acts of baseness, the intrigues, the compromises they impose upon public men. On this side therefore, Govaertz had nothing to fear. He accordingly, resolved to make a friend and ally of the great lord, in order to reduce the minister to impotence. This policy, as soon as the arrival of the owner of EscalVigor was known, had been recommended to him by Claudie.

      For the greater honouring of the Burgomaster, the Count had seated Claudie Govaertz on his right.

      Claudie, the strong mind of the family, was a tall, full-bodied girl, with the temperament of an amazon, voluminous breasts, muscular arms, robust but elastic figure, hips like a young cow's; and a commanding voice, a type of the virago and the valkyrie. An abundant chignon of golden-brown hair helmeted her wilful head, and spread its locks over a low forehead, reaching ​well-nigh down as far as her bold, impudent eyes, that were brown and liquid as molten bronze, the coarse challenge in them being emphasised by a wide straight nose, a greedy mouth, and carnivorous teeth. A thing compact of flesh and instincts was she, craving for power, a fierce ambition alone being able to keep her appetites in check, and preserving her up to the present chaste and inviolate, in spite of her nature's passionate warmth. Not a shadow of feeling or of delicacy. A will of iron and no scruple in reaching her ends. Since the death of her mother, that is to say, since her seventeenth year—she was now twenty-two—she had ruled the farm, the household, and up to a certain point, the parish. It was with her that the pastor had to reckon. Her brother Guidon, a youth of eighteen years, and even her father the burgomaster, trembled when she raised her voice. Being one of the best matches of the island, she had not been a little sought after, but had refused even the wealthiest suitors, for did she not dream of a marriage which should raise her above all the other women of the country? This was the reason even of her virtue. A splendid and ​vibrating piece of flesh, attracted herself as much as she allured, she discouraged the serious attentions of males on matrimony bent, although, God wot, willingly would she have abandoned herself to them, swooned away in their arms and returned readily enough embrace for embrace; or, who can tell, perhaps, provoked caresses, and had needs been, have taken them by force.

      The better to deaden and stifle her desires, Claudie spent her strength during the week in drudgery, in fatiguing labours, and at the periodical fairs gave herself up to furious dancing, teased men to horseplay, exciting amongst her gallants riots and quarrels; and then, deceiving the victor's hopes, overpowering him if necessary, affecting a roughness greater even than his, going indeed so far as to strike him and to treat him as he had treated his rivals, she would slip off untouched. Or, if it happened that she did slyly return a caress or tolerated some anodyne familiarity, she kept cool enough to recollect herself at the critical moment, recalled to modesty by her dream of a glorious establishment.