Publisher's Synopsis
THE CAPUCHIN OF BRUGES "Three monks sat by a bogwood fire- Bare were their crowns, and their garments grey, Close sat they by that bogwood fire. Watching the wicket till break of day." Ballad Poetry. Saving the color of their garments, which, instead of grey, were of a dark brown, and the omission of any allusion to their long flowing beards, the above lines convey as accurate an idea as any words could of the parties that occupied the spacious guest-chamber of the Capuchin convent of Bruges on the last night of October, 1708. Seated round the capacious hearth, on which, without aid of grate, cheerfully blazed a pile of dark gnarled logs dug up from the fens, which, in the days of Caesar, were shaded by the dense forests of Flanders, three lay-brothers of the order kept watch for any wayfarer that might require hospitality or information on the evening in question. Their convent stood-and a portion of it still stands-at the southern extremity of the town, close beside the present railway station. But Bruges was not, a century and a half ago, what it is today. War, and the recent decline of its ancient commerce, rendered it, at the period of which we write, anything but a safe or attractive locality for either tourist or commercial traveller to visit. There was no "Hotel de Flandre," or "Fleur de Blé," or even "Singe d'Or, '" for the weary itinerant to seek refreshment or lodging. Neither were there gens-d'armes in the streets, nor affable shopkeepers in their gas-lit magasins, as at present, to whom the benighted stranger might apply for information regarding the locality in which his friends resided. The convents and monasteries, however, with which Belgium was then, as now, studded, were ever open to the traveller, be his rank or condition what it might, and pre-eminent for their hospitality were the Capuchin fathers. The night was a wild one; and the dying blasts of October seemed bent on a vigorous struggle ere they expired. "What an awful storm!" exclaimed Brother Anselm, rising to secure the huge oak window shutters that seemed, as if in terror, every moment ready to start from their strong iron fastenings.
