In summer it is a warm, quiet, pleasant spot. Under the shade of the trees, near the statue of Van Eyck, women selling flowers sit beside rows of geraniums, roses, lilies, pansies, which give a touch of bright colour to the scene. Artists from all parts of Europe set up their easels and paint. Young girls are gravely busy with their water-colours. Black-robed nuns and bare-footed Carmelites pass silently along. Perhaps some traveller from America opens his guide-book to study the map of a city which had risen to greatness long before Columbus crossed the seas. A few English people hurry across, and pass under the archway of the Rue de l'Ane Aveugle on the way to their tennis-ground beyond the Porte de Gand. The sunshine glitters on the gilded facade of the Palais de Justice, and lights up the statues in their niches on the front of the Hotel de Ville. There is no traffic, no noise. Everything is still and peaceful. The chimes, ever and anon ringing out from the huge Belfry, which rises high above the housetops to the west, alone break the silence. This is Bruges sleeping peacefully in old age, lulled to rest by the sound of its own carillon. But it is easy, standing there, to recall the past, and to fancy the scenes which took place from time to time throughout the long period of foreign danger and internal strife. We can imagine the Bourg, now so peaceful, full of armed men, rushing to the Church of St. Donatian on the morning when Charles the Good was slain; how, in later times, the turbulent burghers, fiery partisans of rival factions, Clauwerts shouting for the Flemish Lion, and Leliarts marshalled under the Lily of France, raged and threatened; how the stones were splashed with blood on the day of the Bruges Matins, when so many Frenchmen perished; or what shouts were raised when the Flemish host came back victorious from the Battle of the Golden Spurs. Though every part of Bruges--not only the Bourg, but the great Market-Place, and the whole maze of streets and lanes and canals of which it consists--has a story of its own, some of these stories stand out by themselves; and amongst these one of the most dramatic is the story of the death of Charles the Good.