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EBOOK CHRIST IN FLANDERS ***
Produced by Dagny, and John Bickers
CHRIST IN FLANDERS
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated by Ellen Marriage
DEDICATION
To Marcelline Desbordes-Valmore, a daughter of Flanders, of whom
these modern days may well be proud, I dedicate this quaint legend
of old Flanders.
DE BALZAC.
CHRIST IN FLANDERS
At a dimly remote period in the history of Brabant, communication
between the Island of Cadzand and the Flemish coast was kept up by a
boat which carried passengers from one shore to the other. Middelburg,
the chief town in the island, destined to become so famous in the
annals of Protestantism, at that time only numbered some two or three
hundred hearths; and the prosperous town of Ostend was an obscure
haven, a straggling village where pirates dwelt in security among the
fishermen and the few poor merchants who lived in the place.
But though the town of Ostend consisted altogether of some score of
houses and three hundred cottages, huts or hovels built of the
driftwood of wrecked vessels, it nevertheless rejoiced in the
possession of a governor, a garrison, a forked gibbet, a convent, and
a burgomaster, in short, in all the institutions of an advanced
civilization.
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