This stately church, the exquisite Grand' Place of the Hôtel de Ville, the "Roman" bridge of the canal of Handzaeme, the slender silhouette of the Residencia (the house of the Spanish Governors), and five or six other old-time dwellings, with crow-stepped or flexured gables, like the hostelry of _Den Papegaei_ (The Parrot), which bore the date of its foundations in huge figures upon its bulging front, hardly sufficed to draw the cosmopolitan tourist tide towards Dixmude. Travellers neglected it; historians ignored it. The capital of an essentially agricultural district, at the confluence of two industries, and astride, so to speak, upon the infinity of beetroot-fields and the infinity of meadows to which the Yser serves as the line of demarcation, Dixmude showed a certain animation only on market-days; then it appeared as the metropolis of the vast flat district, streaked with canals and more aquatic than terrestrial, where innumerable flocks and herds pastured under the care of classic shepherds in loose grey coats. The salt marsh-mutton of Dixmude and its butter, which was exported even to England, were famous. A peaceful population, somewhat slow and stolid, ruddy of complexion, husky and deliberate of speech, led lives made up of hard work, religious observance, and sturdy drinking bouts in the scattered farms about the town. The Flemish plains do not breed dreamers. When, like those of Dixmude, such plains are amphibious, half land, half water, they do not, as a rule, stimulate the fighting instinct; their inhabitants are absorbed in domestic cares, battling unceasingly for a livelihood with two rival elements.