There were no fortifications or ramparts left. But a few of the magnificent old brick gateways still remained, admitting you to the most wonderful old streets with tall pointed houses--clean little slums, where women sat on their door-steps making the most beautiful lace in the world--odd nooks and corners and narrow ways where it was easy to lose one's self, small as the town really was; innumerable little toy bridges over toy canals one could have leaped at a bound, overlooked by quaint, irregular little dwellings, of colors that had once been as those of the rainbow, but which time had mellowed into divine harmonies, as it does all it touches--from grand old masters to oak palings round English parks; from Venice to Mechelen and its lace; from a disappointed first love to a great sorrow. Occasionally a certain distinguished old man of soldier-like aspect would pass them on horseback, and gaze at their two tall British figures with a look of curious and benign interest, as if he mentally wished them well, and well away from this drear limbo of penitence and exile and expiation. They learnt that he was French, and a famous general, and that his name was Changarnier; and they understood that public virtue has to be atoned for. And he somehow got into the habit of bowing to them with a good smile, and they would smile and bow back again. Beyond this they never exchanged a word, but this little outward show and ceremony of kindly look and sympathetic gesture always gave them a pleasant moment and helped to pass the morning. All the people they met were to Lady Caroline like people in a dream: silent priests; velvet-footed nuns, who were much to her taste; quiet peasant women, in black cloaks and hoods, driving bullock-carts or carts drawn by dogs, six or eight of these inextricably harnessed together and panting for dear life; blue-bloused men in French caps, but bigger and blonder than Frenchmen, and less given to epigrammatic repartee, with mild, blue, beery eyes, _à fleur de tête_, and a look of health and stolid amiability; sturdy green-coated little soldiers with cock-feathered brigand hats of shiny black, the brim turned up over the right eye and ear that they might the more conveniently take a good aim at the foe before he skedaddled at the mere sight of them; fat, comfortable burgesses and their wives, so like their ancestors who drink beer out of long glasses and smoke long clay pipes on the walls of the Louvre and the National Gallery that they seemed like old friends; and quaint old heavy children who didn't make much noise! And whenever they spoke French to you, these good people, they said "savez-vous?" every other second; and whenever they spoke Flemish to each other it sounded so much like your own tongue as it is spoken in the north of England that you wondered why on earth you couldn't understand a single word.