The Alkahest | Page 6

more restricted, until,
at the close of the last century, it mustered only some seven or eight
families of the parliamentary nobility, whose manners and flowing
robes of office and magisterial gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized
well with the habits of their life.
The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that was

well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty of the
Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made them the
objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,-- the House
of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in that mansion,
which afforded to the lovers of burgher antiquities a type of the modest
houses which the wealthy craftsmen of the Middle Ages constructed for
their homes.
The chief ornament of the facade was an oaken door, in two sections,
studded with nails driven in the pattern of a quineunx, in the centre of
which the Claes pride had carved a pair of shuttles. The recess of the
doorway, which was built of freestone, was topped by a pointed arch
bearing a little shrine surmounted by a cross, in which was a statuette
of Sainte-Genevieve plying her distaff. Though time had left its mark
upon the delicate workmanship of portal and shrine, the extreme care
taken of it by the servants of the house allowed the passers-by to note
all its details.
The casing of the door, formed by fluted pilasters, was dark gray in
color, and so highly polished that it shone as if varnished. On either
side of the doorway, on the ground-floor, were two windows, which
resembled all the other windows of the house. The casing of white
stone ended below the sill in a richly carved shell, and rose above the
window in an arch, supported at its apex by the head-piece of a cross,
which divided the glass sashes in four unequal parts; for the transversal
bar, placed at the height of that in a Latin cross, made the lower sashes
of the window nearly double the height of the upper, the latter rounding
at the sides into the arch. The coping of the arch was ornamented with
three rows of brick, placed one above the other, the bricks alternately
projecting or retreating to the depth of an inch, giving the effect of a
Greek moulding. The glass panes, which were small and
diamond-shaped, were set in very slender leading, painted red. The
walls of the house, of brick jointed with white mortar, were braced at
regular distances, and at the angles of the house, by stone courses.
The first floor was pierced by five windows, the second by three, while
the attic had only one large circular opening in five divisions,

surrounded by a freestone moulding and placed in the centre of the
triangular pediment defined by the gable-roof, like the rose-window of
a cathedral. At the peak was a vane in the shape of a weaver's shuttle
threaded with flax. Both sides of the large triangular pediment which
formed the wall of the gable were dentelled squarely into something
like steps, as low down as the string-course of the upper floor, where
the rain from the roof fell to right and left of the house through the jaws
of a fantastic gargoyle. A freestone foundation projected like a step at
the base of the house; and on either side of the entrance, between the
two windows, was a trap-door, clamped by heavy iron bands, through
which the cellars were entered,--a last vestige of ancient usages.
From the time the house was built, this facade had been carefully
cleaned twice a year. If a little mortar fell from between the bricks, the
crack was instantly filled up. The sashes, the sills, the copings, were
dusted oftener than the most precious sculptures in the Louvre. The
front of the house bore no signs of decay; notwithstanding the
deepened color which age had given to the bricks, it was as well
preserved as a choice old picture, or some rare book cherished by an
amateur, which would be ever new were it not for the blistering of our
climate and the effect of gases, whose pernicious breath threatens our
own health.
The cloudy skies and humid atmosphere of Flanders, and the shadows
produced by the narrowness of the street, sometimes diminished the
brilliancy which the old house derived from its cleanliness; moreover,
the very care bestowed upon it made it rather sad and chilling to the eye.
A poet might have wished some leafage about the shrine, a little moss
in the crevices of the freestone, a break in the even courses of the brick;
he would have longed for a swallow to build her nest in the red coping
that roofed the arches of the windows. The precise