Throughout the town, up to the time of the bombardment, were many quaint market-places, all grass grown, wherein on market days were tall-wheeled, peasant carts, and lines of huge, hollow-backed, thick-legged, hairy horses, which were being offered for sale. And there were innumerable fountains and tall iron pumps of knights in armor; forgotten heroes of bygone ages, all of great artistic merit and value; and over all was the dominating tower of St. Rombauld, vast, gray, and mysterious, limned against the pearly, luminous sky, the more impressive perhaps because of its unfinished state. And so, however interesting the other architectural attractions of Malines might be, and they were many, it was always to the great cathedral that one turned, for the townspeople were so proud of the great gray tower, venerated throughout the whole region, that they were insistent that we should explore it to the last detail. "The bells," they would exclaim, "the great bells of Saint Rombauld! You have not yet seen them?" St. Rombauld simply compelled one's attention, and ended by laying so firm a hold upon the imagination that at no moment of the day or night was one wholly unconscious of its unique presence. By day and night its chimes floated through the air "like the music of fairy bells," weird and soft, noting the passing hours in this ancient Flemish town. For four hundred years it had watched over the varying fortunes of this region, gaining that precious quality which appealed to Ruskin, who said, "Its glory is in its age and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity." From below the eye was carried upward by range upon range of exquisite Gothic detail to the four great open-work, gilded, clock discs, through which one could dimly see the beautiful, open-pointed lancets behind which on great beams hung the carillon bells, row upon row. No words of mine can give any idea of the rich grayish brown of this old tower against the pale luminous sky, or the pathetic charm of its wild bell music, shattering down through the silent watches of the night, over the sleeping town, as I have heard it, standing by some silent, dark, palace-bordered canal, watching the tall tower melting into the immensity of the dusk, or by day in varying light and shade, in storm and sunshine, with wind-driven clouds chasing each other across the sky.