Yes I am! One of my birthday presents was the wonderful Art et organisation militaires dans la principauté de Liège et dans le comté de Looz au Moyen Age (I love writing it out in full) and I’m reading it! It is a very good book indeed, but to get to the bottom of it and actually understand half of what’s being said (understand, rather than grasp the essentials and the context) I purchased a cheap French-Dutch dictionary at De Slegte today. It was a slightly older one (2001) hence it was only €3,50, but seeing as Art et cetera was written in 1968 and deals with the Middle Ages, I don’t think I’m missing out any essential words. Also it’s somewhat geared to dealing with Belgian French, which is just as well because the writer is a Walloon and you never know what kind of strange mutilations of the language he might apply! (Though it has to be said that he’s a very good writer and applies a broad vocabulary, meaning my dictionary has already proved itself useful on more than a few occasions.)
We also had, yesterday, two lectures, the first dealing with the third century emperors of Rome (some forty to fifty in a sort free-for-all brawl causing the total breakdown of state cohesion and even a shortlived split of the empire into four parts). It was very good.
The second lecture, however, dealt with the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, a subject that had already been treated in half a lecture by professor Rietbergen; the material was therefore not only very familiar, Rietbergen’s presentation was also hard to top. It indeed turned out to be rather dull and far less clear than Rietbergen had been.
Out of boredom, I tried my hand at art! When De Kleijn mentioned the Ibis as creature related to the worship of Isis, and Suzanne next to me was unaware of what an Ibis was, I drew one to make it clear. And then I drew a Dodo because that is easily one of the most enjoyable birds to draw, ever.
The Dodo is wondering, in case you’re curious, how a small sect could become so numerous. He obviously has more than a passing interest in the expansion of a tiny group! The question was not satisfactorily answered by De Kleijn, by the by. The Dodo should have attended Rietbergen’s lecture to find out.
The two birds below are meant to be Ibises. The second is sleeping because the lecture was dull. The first looks a bit like Gonzo, due to its sort of over-enthusiastic beak.
Nifty little drawings