This, the most notable edifice in the town, is a fine Gothic tower one hundred and fifty feet high, with a remarkable construction of tower and turrets, supported by corbels of the fifteenth century, containing a fine chime of bells made by the Van den Gheyns. The bells are visible from below, hanging sometimes well outside the turret of the bell chamber, and, ranging tier upon tier, from those seemingly the size of a gallon measure, to those immense ones weighing from fifteen hundred to two thousand pounds. This great tower witnessed the attack and occupation of the Spaniards, the foundation by the Roman Catholics of the great University in 1652 to counter-act the Protestantism of the Netherlands, which had but a brief career, and the capture of the town by Louis the Fourteenth. Here was published in 1610 an English translation of the Old Testament for Roman Catholics, as well as the English Roman Catholic version of the scriptures, and the New Testament translated at Rheims in 1582, and known as the "Douai Bible." This was also the birthplace of Jean Bellgambe, the painter (1540) surnamed "Maître des Couleurs," whose nine great oaken panels form the wonderful altarpiece in the church of Notre Dame.
Douai was, before the great war, a peaceful industrial center of some importance, of some thirty thousand inhabitants. It has been said that the Fleming worked habitually fifty-two weeks in the year. An exception, however, must be made for fête days, when no self-respecting Fleming will work. On these days the holiday makers are exceedingly boisterous, and the streets are filled with the peasants clad in all their holiday finery. But it is on the day of the Kermesse that your Fleming can be seen to the best advantage. There are merry-go-rounds, shooting galleries, swings, maybe a traveling circus or two, and a theatrical troupe which shows in a much bespangled and mirrored tent, decorated with tinsel and flaming at night with naphtha torches. Bands of music parade the streets, each carrying a sort of banneret hung with medals and trophies awarded by the town authorities at the various "_séances_."
But the greatest noise comes from the barrel organs of huge size and played by steam, or sometimes by a patient horse clad in gay apparel who trudges a sort of treadmill which furnishes the motive power. In even these small towns of Ancient Flanders such as Douai, the old allegorical representations, formerly the main feature of the event, are now quite rare, and therefore this event of the parade of the wicker effigies of the fabulous giant Gayant and his family was certainly worth the journey from Tournai. The day was made memorable also to the writer and his companion because of the following adventure.