the horizon small leaden-colored clouds began to collect, scudding rapidly along, as though searching impatiently for a direction and a shape. Then the waters began to ripple, and became streaked with rapid luminous reflections, with long stripes of green, violet, white, ochre, black. Finally this irritation of nature ended in a violent downpour, which confused sky, water, and earth in one gray mass, broken only by a lighter tone caused by the far-off banks, and by some sailing ships, which came into view here and there like upright shadows on the waters of the river.

"Now we are really in Holland," said the captain of the ship, approaching a group of passengers who were contemplating the spectacle. "Such sudden changes of scene," he continued, "are never seen anywhere else."

Then, in answer to a question from one of us, he ran on:

"Holland has a meteorology quite her own. The winter is long, the summer short, the spring is only the end of the winter, but nevertheless, you see, every now and then, even during the summer, we have a touch of winter. We always say that in Holland the four seasons may be seen in one day. Our sky is the most changeable in the world. This is the reason why we are always talking of the weather, for the atmosphere is the most variable spectacle we have. If we wish to see something that will entertain us, we must look upward. But it is a dull climate. The sea sends us rain on three sides: the winds break loose over the country even on the finest days; the ground exhales vapors that darken the horizon; for several months the air has no transparency. You should see the winter. There are days when you would say it would never be fine again: the darkness seems to come from above like the light; the north-east wind brings us the icy air from the North Pole, and lashes the sea with such fury and roaring that it seems as though it would destroy the coasts." Here he turned to me and said, smiling, "You are better off in Italy." Then he grew serious and added, "However, every country has its good and bad side."

The boat left the Volkerak, passed in front of the fortress of Willemstadt, built in 1583 by the Prince of Orange, and entered Hollandsdiep, a wide branch of the Meuse which separates South Holland from North Brabant. All that we saw from the ship was a wide expanse of water, two dark stripes to the right and left, and a gray sky. A French lady, breaking the general silence, exclaimed with a yawn,

"How beautiful is Holland!"

All of us laughed excepting the Dutch passengers.

"Ah, captain," began a little old Belgian, one of those pillars of the coffee-house who are always thrusting their politics in the faces of their fellows, "there is a good and a bad side to every country, and we Belgians and Dutchmen ought to have been persuaded of this truth, and then we should have been indulgent toward each other and have lived in harmony. When one thinks that we are now a nation of nine millions of inhabitants,—we with our industries and you with your commerce, with two such capitals as Amsterdam and Brussels, and two commercial towns like Antwerp and Rotterdam, we should count for something in this world, eh, captain?"

The captain did not answer. Another Dutchman said:

"Yes, with a religious war twelve months in the year."

The little old Belgian, somewhat put out, now addressed his remarks to me in a low tone: "It is a fact, sir. It was stupid, especially on our part. You will see Holland. Amsterdam is certainly not Brussels; it is as flat and wearisome a country as can well be; but as to prosperity it is far beyond us. Assure yourself that they spend a florin, which is two and a half francs, where we spend a franc. You will see it in your hotel bills. They are twice as rich as we are. It was all the fault of William the First, who wished to make a Dutch Belgium and has pushed us to extremes. You know how it happened"—and so on.

In Hollandsdiep we began to see big barges, small-fishing-boats, and some large ships that had come from Hellevoetsluis, an important maritime port on the right bank of the Haringvliet, a branch of the Meuse, near its mouth, where nearly every vessel from India stops. The rain ceased. The sky, gradually, unwillingly, became serene, and on a sudden the waters and the banks were clothed once more in fresh glowing colors: it was summer again.

In a little while the vessel reached the village of Moerdyk, where one of the largest bridges in the world is to be seen.

It is an iron structure a mile and a half long, over which passes the railway to Dordrecht and Rotterdam. From a distance it looks like fourteen enormous edifices put in line across the river: each one of the fourteen high arches supporting the tracks is in truth a huge edifice. In passing over it, as I did a few months later on my return to Holland, I saw nothing but sky and water, so wide is the river at this point, and I felt almost afraid the bridge might suddenly come to an end, and plunge the train into the water.