There was a palpable vibration among the people--a heaving to and fro of the human tide--as the glitter of the coming pageant appeared in the arched depths of the church; but the heaving was steadily repressed by the steel points of the levelled partisans, while here and there a half-stifled shriek from a woman, or a gruff Flemish oath from a man, announced that the pressure was greater than their patience could endure. But now the procession was seen slowly descending the steps of the portico, and exclamations of pleasure and astonishment burst from time to time in front of the masses; and these, as usual, served but to excite the curiosity and irritate the temper of the less fortunate who were too far off in the rear, or were hopelessly crushed against the adjacent houses.
First came the twenty-eight corporations of the city, clad in gowns of fine cloth, with their banners and insignia; the nine nobles, with their swords and coronets borne by pages; the nine masters of the streets, with their swords and keys; the two burgomasters, and a giant eight feet high (on heels of cork), bearing the banner of Antwerp, heraldically charged with two human hands.
Maître Baudoin informed Gray, in a hasty whisper, that, in ancient times, a giant named Antwerpen had lived there amid the swamps, and was wont to cast into the Scheldt all who displeased him, having previously cut off their hands; and this was the legend of the city's coat armorial.
"And see, messire," added the little Frenchman, "by St. Louis here comes one of his teeth!"
As he spoke, an _echevin_ passed, bearing on a silver platter this palladium of Antwerp--a gigantic _human_ tooth, said to be "a handbreadth long and sixteen ounces in weight."
The shouts of wonder and laughter excited by the giant, with his shaggy black hair and beard, his red, pimpled nose and mighty scimitar, were hushed when, preceded by choristers and boys swinging silver censers of incense, the dean of the cathedral, with his twenty-four canons and the confraternity of the Holy Circumcision, in all the splendour of their full canonicals, were seen descending into the street and passing on amid the flare of a thousand uplifted torches, a mass of muslin, lace, and embroidery.