And he thought how he would fold his grandsire in furs and purples, and
portray him as the old man is portrayed in the Family in the chapel of
St. Jacques; and of how he would hang the throat of Patrasche with a
collar of gold, and place him on his right hand, and say to the people,
"This was once my only friend"; and of how he would build himself a
great white marble palace, and make to himself luxuriant gardens of
pleasure, on the slope looking outward to where the cathedral spire rose,
and not dwell in it himself, but summon to it, as to a home, all men
young and poor and friendless, but of the will to do mighty things; and
of how he would say to them always, if they sought to bless his name,
"Nay, do not thank me,--thank Rubens. Without him, what should I have
been?" And these dreams, beautiful, impossible, innocent, free of all
selfishness, full of heroical worship, were so closely about him as he
went that he was happy,--happy even on this sad anniversary of Alois's
saint's day, when he and Patrasche went home by themselves to the little
dark hut and the meal of black bread, whilst in the mill-house all the
children of the village sang and laughed, and ate the big round cakes of
Dijon and the almond gingerbread of Brabant, and danced in the great
barn to the light of the stars and the music of flute and fiddle.

"Never mind, Patrasche," he said, with his arms round the dog's neck as
they both sat in the door of the hut, where the sounds of the mirth at
the mill came down to them on the night-air,--"never mind. It shall all
be changed by and by."

He believed in the future: Patrasche, of more experience and of more
philosophy, thought that the loss of the mill-supper in the present was
ill compensated by dreams of milk and honey in some vague hereafter. And
Patrasche growled whenever he passed by Baas Cogez.