It
seemed to me as though now, alone in a foreign land, at night time, in
this human swarm, where no one knew me and I knew no one, where no one
would look for me if anything were to happen to me, I was for the first
time thrown entirely on my own resources, and I recognised in the
heavens, with a feeling of reassurance, old friends among the stars.
With a guide, whom in my ignorance I thought necessary, I saw the sights
of the town, and afterwards, for the first time, saw a French play. So
little experience of the world had I, that, during the interval, I left
my overcoat, which I had not given up to the attendant, lying on the
seat in the pit, and my neighbour had to explain to me that such great
confidence in my fellow-men was out of place.
Everything was new to me, everything fascinated me. I, who only knew
"indulgence" from my history lessons at school, saw with keen interest
the priest in a Brussels church dispense "_indulgence pleniere_,"
or, in Flemish, _vollen aflaet_. I was interested in the curious
names of the ecclesiastical orders posted up in the churches, marvelled,
for instance, at a brotherhood that was called "St. Andrew Avellin,
patron saint against apoplexy, epilepsy and sudden death."
In the carriage from Brussels I had for travelling companion a pretty
young Belgian girl named Marie Choteau, who was travelling with her
father, but talked all the time to her foreign fellow-traveller, and in
the course of conversation showed me a Belgian history and a Belgian
geography, from which it appeared that Belgium was the centre of the
globe, the world's most densely built over, most religious, and at the
same time most enlightened country, the one which, in proportion to its
size, had the most and largest industries.
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