Still more remarkable, excursion motor-boats were running on the canals, and at the improvised landing-stages were large signs naming Bruges “The Venice of the North.” I admit that my feelings were hurt--not by the motor-boats, but by the signs. Bruges is no more the Venice of the North, than Venice is the Bruges of the South.
We allowed the soft melancholy of Bruges to descend upon us and penetrate us, as the motorboats ceased to run and the kinematographs grew more brilliant in the deepening night. We had to dine, and all the restaurants of the town were open to us. Impossible to keep away from the Grande Place and the belfry, still incessantly chattering about the time of day. Impossible not to look with an excusable sentimentality at the Hôtel du Panier d’Or, which in youth was the prince of hotels, with the fattest landlord in the world, and thousands of mosquitos ready among its bed-hangings to assist the belfry-chimes in destroying sleep. The Panier d’Or was the only proper hotel for the earnest art-loving tourist who could carry all his luggage and was firmly resolved not to spend more than seven francs a day at the outside. At the Panier d’Or one was sure to encounter other travelers who took both art and life seriously.
No, we would not dine at the Panier d’Or, because we would not disturb our memories. We glanced like ghosts of a past epoch at its exterior, and we slipped into the café restaurant next door, and were served by a postulant boy waiter who had everything to learn about food and human nature, but who was a nice boy. And after dinner, almost saturated with the exquisite melancholy of the Grande Place, we were too enchanted to move. We drank coffee and other things, and lingered until all the white cloths were removed from the tables; and the long, high room became a café simply. A few middle-aged male habitués wandered in separately,--four in all,--and each sat apart and smoked and drank beer. The mournfulness was sweet and overwhelming. It was like chloroform. The reflection that each of these sad, aging men had a home and an _intimité_ somewhere in the spacious, transformed, shabby interiors of Bruges, that each was a living soul with aspirations and regrets, this reflection was excruciating in its blend of forlornness and comedy.