At Bruges the first spot for the admirer of Memling to visit is, of course, the hospital of St. Jean, and at the hospital the first thing to see is the world-famous shrine of St. Ursula. Little it is, yet beyond price in value. It was constructed as a casket to contain the relics of the Saint and was completed in 1489. In design it is a miniature Gothic chapel two feet ten inches high and three feet long, with three little panels on each side which contain Memling's famous pictures setting forth the life and martyrdom of the Saint and the eleven thousand other virgins who shared her fate. The story of the famous pilgrimage to Rome and its melancholy ending at Cologne has been told so often that it need not be repeated here. Ask one of the sisters to tell it to you in her charming broken French--for they are Flemish, these sweet-faced sisters, and, as a rule, understand neither French nor English. [Illustration: SHRINE OF ST. URSULA, HOSPITAL OF ST. JEAN, BRUGES.] This fact is said to have served them in good stead on the terrible day when the bandit-soldiery of the French Republic clamoured at the doors of the hospital in 1494. "The shrine! the shrine!" they cried, "give us the shrine!" ("_La châsse, la châsse, donnez nous la châsse!_") The nuns, who had never heard it called by that name, but knew it only by its Flemish name of _Ryve_, replied that they did not possess such a thing as a _châsse_, and their voices and expressions so clearly showed their truthfulness and innocence of any deceit that the rabble of soldiers went away and the shrine was saved. Early in the nineteenth century the Mother Superior refused a most tempting offer to purchase the shrine, replying, "We are poor, but the greatest riches in the world would not tempt us to part with it."