This walk will have led you through the principal part of early Ghent. Hence you may return either by the Cathedral, or by the chief line of business streets which runs direct from the Pont du Laitage to the modern Palais de Justice and the Place d’Armes. _C._ THE CATHEDRAL [The local =patron saint= of Ghent is =St. Bavon=, a somewhat dubious personage, belonging to the first age of Christianity in Flanders, of whom little is known. Legend describes him as a “Duke of Brabant” in the 7th century (of course an anachronism). He seems to have been a nobleman of Hesbaie who spent his life as a soldier “and in worldly pleasures”; but when he was 50, his wife died, and, overwhelmed with grief, he gave up all his possessions to be distributed among the poor, and entered a cell or monastery in Ghent, of which St. Amand (see later) was the founder. Of this he became abbot. At last, finding the monastic life not sufficiently austere, the new saint took refuge in a hollow tree in a forest, and there spent the remainder of his days. His emblem is a falcon. The =monastery of St. Bavon= long existed at Ghent; some of its ruins still remain, and will be described hereafter. To this local saint, accordingly, it might seem fitting that the Cathedral of Ghent should be dedicated. But in reality the building was at first a parish church under the invocation of =St. John the Baptist=, and only received the relics and name of St. Bavon after 1540, when Charles V. destroyed the monastery, as will be described hereafter.