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He admitted that he had a passion for music, that he had learnt the harmonium from a blind man in Commines, and that he had had an accordion specially made for him in Belgium at a cost of 260 francs which had taken him years to save.

I could proffer sympathy but not, alas! advice, and I hadn't the heart to tell him that Commines was in the thick of the fighting, and had probably been blown to pieces long ago.

He came from Commines, which is north of Lille on the Belgian frontier, and he had worked all his life in a braces factory, for ten hours a day, six days a week, earning thirty to forty francs, which he considered good wages.

Louis endowed the church at Cl�ry, and the edifice was built in the fine flamboyant style of the period, just previous to his death, which De Commines gives as "le samedy p�nulti�me jour d'Aoust, l'an mil quatre cens quatre-vingtz et trois, � huit heures du soir."

Commines, his historian, has said that habitually it consisted of a chancellor, a juge de l'h�tel,217 a private secretary, and a treasurer, each having under him various employees.