good deal of trowser: he doesn't care about
length, so as you give it him in width; and
this garment he prefers built of the unmixed
fustian order. He is very strong in the
matter of shoes; lace-up well-polished calfskin
being your only wear, in the Saint's
estimation. I wondered and admired at the
dazzling perfection of St. Josse's chaussure,
on the first day of our acquaintance. I have
since discovered that he is not above wearing
sabots when the weather is bad, or there is
out-door work to be done. He is a thrifty
Saint.

I wish St. Josse would make up his mind
about his beard. At present he fluctuates
between a close shave, and what one might
really be excused for speaking of as going the
whole hog; for, if ever a human countenance
grew bristles, that of St. Josse may be said
to do so. There never was such a beard as
his, when he lets it grow to its full extent.
The moustaches fall over his gigantic mouth
like heavy curtains over a palace window;
and the basement story, or chin-beard, seems
to begin somewhere below the chest; descending
to the loins. It is so unwieldly as to put
you in mind of the Cape sheep, who require
go-carts to carry their overgrown tails behind
them. Yet I like St. Josse best in his full suit
of beard; for it conceals his deficiency of chin.
When this ornament has reached its full
development, you have only to dress the
Saint in his best (for St. Josse can throw off
his doleful blouse on occasion, and has a
well-stocked press of broadcloths); squat
him down at a table before a quart cylinder
of beer; unbutton his waistcoat, so as to let
his coarse snowy shirt bag out a little; put a
slouched feathered sombrero on his head;
and straightway you have the very type of a
goodly Rubens burgher. Change the
sombrero for a tarpaulin sou'-wester; hang a
rusty Andrea Ferrara at the good Saint's
side, and you find yourself doubting that
Master Hendrik Hudson could ever have left
Netherlandios in search of Munhaltoe's
territory: or, at any rate, believing that the
enchantments of the Catskill Mountains must
have preserved the great Dutch navigator
alive and intact for the edification of the
nineteenth century.

And now let us approach the delicate
ground of St. Josse-ten Noode's morals.
Well, they are unexceptionable, were it not
for—ahem!—in fact, an exception. To come
to the point at once—St. Josse drinks! He
even drinks a great deal more than can
possibly be good for him. He is a model
husband and father; a just steward; an upright
judge; a merchant owing no man anything.
But, alack! he is a debauched saint. He
begins early in the morning at his quart
cylinders of beer. These last him but a very
short time; and the spirits-and-water sets in
hours before his early dinner. His afternoon
is one unmitigated soak. He takes his liquor
hot with sugar. He quarrels over it. He
fights his adversary with his fists. He
proposes healths, and starts choruses. He gets
locked up. He will not go home till morning.
He is drunk and disorderly.

The house opposite my window is ostensibly
known as the Estaminet of Le Grand Cerf.
St. Josse is not wholly free from the besetting
weakness of his genteel brother. He would
like you to think that he understands the
French language. He will not mind the
expense of a journeyman painter's wages for
half a day to assist the delusion. But
immediately under the Grand Cerf legend, St.
Josse has taken very good care to have
inscribed, in the mother tongue, "In den
grooten hert." Otherwise, how could his
thirsty liegemen know that he keeps a
bier-huys at the sign of the Big Stag? But,
thanks to the felicitous afterthought, they do
know it. So do I, to my frequent
inconvenience.

I should state that I have acquired the
injurious habit of writing late into the night.
I sometimes sit up, hard at work, till three,
four, and even five in the morning. Well, I
can assure the reader honestly that I have
never yet seen the gaslights of the Big Stag
put out, or noticed the slightest diminution of
uproar in its eternal choruses. On the
contrary, it has been towards the end of my
longest vigils that I have observed the
liveliest tendencies on the part of my opposite
neighbours to begin spending the evening.
My landlord—a most respectable citizen; in
some way, I believe, connected with the
secular service of the cathedral—is a
frequenter of the Big Stag. I have never had
the honour of hearing him come in for the
night except once. It was, I should say, at
about a quarter before five A.M. I had just
closed my secretary, and was yawning over
a useless bedroom candle, when I heard
somebody tampering with the street-door.
Having received the Times on the preceding
day, and supped tolerably full of the
burglarious horrors with which, in the absence
of parliamentary intelligence, it has been
found necessary to keep the minds of my
compatriots in a proper state of excitement,
I felt alarmed, and thought of the five-and-
twenty francs in my secretary. I rushed
down stairs, armed with the poker. I found
the door wide open, and my landlord prostrate
on the steps, smiling at his latch-key, which
had fallen from his hand, and which he had
evidently given up trying to reach. He was
babbling—probably of green fields—in his
native tongue. I hauled him in-doors, pulled
off his boots, dropped him into an arm-chair,
in the nearest parlour (rented, as I have
since learnt, by a deacon of the Belgic church),
and shut him in. He was perfectly well the
next morning. He came up to my rooms at
about a quarter past eight o'clock, a miracle
of clean linen and the closest shaving, and
asked for his rent in the best French
imaginable. He tendered no thanks whatever