The Alkahest | Page 7

and immaculate air
of this facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing, gave the house a tone
of severe propriety and estimable decency which would have driven a
romanticist out of the neighborhood, had he happened to take lodgings
over the way.
When a visitor had pulled the braided iron wire bell-cord which hung

from the top of the pilaster of the doorway, and the servant-woman,
coming from within, had admitted him through the side of the double-
door in which was a small grated loop-hole, that half of the door
escaped from her hand and swung back by its own weight with a
solemn, ponderous sound that echoed along the roof of a wide paved
archway and through the depths of the house, as though the door had
been of iron. This archway, painted to resemble marble, always clean
and daily sprinkled with fresh sand, led into a large court-yard paved
with smooth square stones of a greenish color. On the left were the
linen- rooms, kitchens, and servants' hall; to the right, the wood-house,
coal-house, and offices, whose doors, walls, and windows were
decorated with designs kept exquisitely clean. The daylight, threading
its way between four red walls chequered with white lines, caught rosy
tints and reflections which gave a mysterious grace and fantastic
appearance to faces, and even to trifling details.
A second house, exactly like the building on the street, and called in
Flanders the "back-quarter," stood at the farther end of the court- yard,
and was used exclusively as the family dwelling. The first room on the
ground-floor was a parlor, lighted by two windows on the court- yard,
and two more looking out upon a garden which was of the same size as
the house. Two glass doors, placed exactly opposite to each other, led
at one end of the room to the garden, at the other to the court-yard, and
were in line with the archway and the street door; so that a visitor
entering the latter could see through to the greenery which draped the
lower end of the garden. The front building, which was reserved for
receptions and the lodging-rooms of guests, held many objects of art
and accumulated wealth, but none of them equalled in the eyes of a
Claes, nor indeed in the judgment of a connoisseur, the treasures
contained in the parlor, where for over two centuries the family life had
glided on.
The Claes who died for the liberties of Ghent, and who might in these
days be thought a mere ordinary craftsman if the historian omitted to
say that he possessed over forty thousand silver marks, obtained by the
manufacture of sail-cloth for the all-powerful Venetian navy,-- this
Claes had a friend in the famous sculptor in wood, Van Huysum of

Bruges. The artist had dipped many a time into the purse of the rich
craftsman. Some time before the rebellion of the men of Ghent, Van
Huysum, grown rich himself, had secretly carved for his friend a wall-
decoration in ebony, representing the chief scenes in the life of Van
Artevelde,--that brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of
Flanders. This wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty
panels, contained about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was
held to be Van Huysum's masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard
the burghers whom Charles V. determined to hang when he re-entered
his native town, proposed, it is said, to Van Claes to let him escape if
he would give him Van Huysum's great work; but the weaver had
already despatched it to Douai.
The parlor, whose walls were entirely panelled with this carving, which
Van Huysum, out of regard for the martyr's memory, came to Douai to
frame in wood painted in lapis-lazuli with threads of gold, is therefore
the most complete work of this master, whose least carvings now sell
for nearly their weight in gold. Hanging over the fire-place, Van Claes
the martyr, painted by Titian in his robes as president of the Court of
Parchons, still seemed the head of the family, who venerated him as
their greatest man. The chimney-piece, originally in stone with a very
high mantle-shelf, had been made over in marble during the last
century; on it now stood an old clock and two candlesticks with five
twisted branches, in bad taste, but of solid silver. The four windows
were draped by wide curtains of red damask with a flowered black
design, lined with white silk; the furniture, covered with the same
material, had been renovated in the time of Louis XIV. The floor,
evidently modern, was laid in large squares of white wood bordered
with strips of oak. The ceiling, formed of many oval panels, in each of
which Van Huysum had carved a grotesque mask,