Paterhol

The district was the "residential area, primarily, of hunched craftsmen, who practice sitting trades; of stingy and polite shopkeepers who flaunt on Sundays; of filthy lowlife that screams and lives in deprivation and whose countless offspring are cancerous; – where, between the gray, crooked, and Scottish variations of portals, windows, and sidewalks, the pharisaical shine of a few too-white bourgeois houses; – here, behind the spider webs of the windows, day and night, a sneaky vice lives in dark inns, where one hears, passing by, drunk men boasting, women screaming and laughing, and, when silence suddenly falls, the spiteful gas light hissing, and where the clumsy boots of lustful visitors or bored night watchmen thunder against the door."

Literair Gent