Presently our destination, of which the Flemish name is Kortrijk, came in sight, and we started--with the Professor leading the way, as usual--for the Grande Place. Here we found a market going on, with numerous booths and stalls arranged in crooked little streets, and crowds of thick-set peasant women with big baskets examining the wares displayed gingerly as if afraid that too great a display of interest would cause the merchants to enhance their prices. Amid this bustle and confusion we worked our way slowly to the centre of the Place where stood the small ivy-covered Belfry, which dates from early in the fourteenth century, and is one of the prettiest in Flanders. When the city was sacked in 1382, after one of its many sieges, the Belfry was one of the few edifices to escape injury. Repaired or restored in 1423, in 1519, and again in 1717, this little monument of the Middle Ages has come down to us in an admirable state of preservation. Originally connected with a small public market, _les petites halles_, it gradually came to be surrounded with private houses until only its spire was visible, but in 1899 these were torn down and the Belfry left isolated as it is now. The clock originally placed on this tower is said by the historian Froissart to have been "_l'un des plus biaux que on seuist trouver decha ne dela la mer_"--one of the most beautiful here or abroad--but was removed by Philip the Bold, the first of the Burgundian Dukes to rule over Flanders, to Dijon, the capital of Burgundy. This was in 1382, but in 1395 the people of Courtrai had replaced it by another equally ingenious. We tried to enter the old tower, but found one entrance guarded by the alarming sign, "_Haute tension--danger de la mort_," indicating that the electric light company used the lower part of the edifice as a transforming station. There was another small doorway, but it did not appear to have been opened for a long time, and we could find no one who knew who had the key.