The great mural decorations of the "Halles" were nearly completed by MM. Delbeke and Pauwels, when they both died within a few months of each other, in 1891. In these decorations the artists traced the history of Ypres from 1187 to 1383, the date of the great siege, showing taste and elegance in the compositions, notably in that called the "Wedding feast of Mahaut, daughter of Robert of Bethune, with Mathias of Lorraine (1314)." One of the panels by M. Pauwels showed most vividly the progress of the "Pest," under the title of the "Mort d'Ypres" (_de Dood van Yperen_, Flemish). It represented the "Fossoyeur" calling upon the citizens upon the tolling of the great bell of St. Martin's, to bring out their dead for burial. M. Delbeke's talent was engaged upon scenes illustrating the civil life of the town, the gatherings in celebration of the philanthropic and intellectual events in its remarkable history, a task in which he was successful in spite of the carping of envious contemporaries. A committee of artists was appointed to examine his work, and although this body decided in his favor, it may be that the criticism to which he was subjected hastened his death. At any rate the panels remained unfinished, no other painter having the courage to carry out the projected work. [Illustration: Arcade of the Cloth Hall: Ypres] The original sketches for these great compositions were preserved in the museum of the town, but the detailed drawings, some in color, were, up to the outbreak of the war in 1914, in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Brussels, together with the cartoons of another artist, Charles de Groux (1870), to whom the decoration of the Halles had been awarded by the State in competition. A most sumptuous Gothic apartment was that styled the "Salle Echevinale," restored with great skill in recent years by a concurrence of Flemish artists, members of the Academy. Upon either side of a magnificent stone mantel, bearing statues in niches of kings, counts and countesses, bishops and high dignitaries, were large well executed frescoes by MM. Swerts and Guffens, showing figures of the evangelists St. Mark and St. John, surrounded by myriads of counts and countesses of Flanders, from the time of Louis de Nevers and Margaret of Artois to Charles the Bold, and Margaret of York, whose tombs are in the Cathedral at Bruges. The attribution of these frescoes to Melchior Broederlam does not, it would seem, accord with the style or the date of their production, M. Alph. van den Peereboom thinks, and he gives credit for the work to two painters who worked in Ypres in 1468--MM. Pennant and Floris Untenhoven.