QUOTE : Once he had reached the top, he looked down on the town at his feet. Such repose, such tranquility, what a lesson in calmness! Seeing it, he was ashamed of his troubled existence. He renounced the love that brought him misery for the love of the town. It took hold of him again, suffusing his entire being as it had done during the first days of the Flemish Movement. How beautiful Bruges still was, seen from above, with its belfries, its pinnacles, its stepped gables like stairs to climb up to the land of dreams, to return to the great days of yesteryear. Among the roofs were canals fanned by the trees, quiet streets with a few women making their way in cloaks, swinging like silent bells. Lethargic peace! The sweetness of renunciation! A queen in exile, the widow of History whose only desire, basically, was to carve her own tomb.