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+Project Gutenberg's The Legend of Ulenspiegel, by Charles de Coster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Legend of Ulenspiegel
+       And Lamme Goedzak, and their Adventures Heroical, Joyous
+       and Glorious in the Land of Flanders and Elsewhere (Volume
+       1 of 2)
+
+Author: Charles de Coster
+
+Translator: F. M. Atkinson
+            John Hero Lepper
+
+Release Date: June 16, 2012 [EBook #38247]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LEGEND OF ULENSPIEGEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
+Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously
+made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                       THE LEGEND OF ULENSPIEGEL
+
+                And Lamme Goedzak, and their Adventures
+                     Heroical, Joyous and Glorious
+                 in the Land of Flanders and Elsewhere
+
+                                   By
+                           CHARLES DE COSTER
+
+                             Translated by
+                             F. M. Atkinson
+
+
+
+                                 Vol. I
+
+
+
+                                  1922
+
+                       London: William Heinemann
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   To
+                          Beatrice de Holthoir
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                Page
+
+            Book I                 1
+            Book II              251
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+              THE LEGEND OF ULENSPIEGEL AND LAMME GOEDZAK
+
+                 AND THEIR ADVENTURES HEROICAL, JOYOUS,
+                      AND GLORIOUS IN THE LAND OF
+                        FLANDERS AND ELSEWHERE.
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+I
+
+When May was unfolding the whitethorn blossom Ulenspiegel, son of
+Claes, was born at Damme in Flanders.
+
+A gossip midwife, by name Katheline, wrapt him in warm swaddling
+clothes, and, looking at his head, pointed out a caul on it.
+
+"A caul! he is born under a lucky star!" exclaimed she, rejoicing.
+
+But in a moment, lamenting and displaying a little black spot on the
+babe's shoulder:
+
+"Alas," she wept, "'tis the black print of the devil's finger."
+
+"Master Satan has been getting up very early, then," rejoined Claes,
+"if he has had time already to put his mark on my son."
+
+"It was not yet his bedtime," said Katheline, "for there is Chantecleer
+only now waking up the hens."
+
+And she went away, putting the child in the arms of Claes.
+
+Then the dawn burst through the night clouds, the swallows skimmed the
+meadows with shrill cries, and the sun showed his dazzling countenance,
+bright and red upon the horizon. Claes threw the window wide and
+spake to Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Son with the caul," said he, "lucky son, here is our lord Sun coming
+to salute the soil of Flanders. Look always on him when thou canst,
+and whenever thou art in a maze, knowing not what to do so as to do
+right, ask counsel of him: he is bright and warm; be thou honest as
+he is bright, and kind even as he is warm."
+
+"Husband Claes," said Soetkin, "you are preaching to deaf ears; come,
+drink, my son."
+
+And the mother offered the newly born nature's goodly flagons.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+While Ulenspiegel drank of them, and called for no cup, all the birds
+in the countryside awoke.
+
+Claes, who was binding faggots, looked upon his wife as she gave the
+breast to Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Wife," said he, "have you laid up store of this good milk?"
+
+"The jars are full," said she, "but that is not enough for my content."
+
+"You speak piteously of so great a joy."
+
+"'Tis in my mind," said she, "that in the wallet you see hanging by
+the wall there is not one poor patard."
+
+Claes took the wallet in his hand; but in vain did he shake it,
+no morning song of coin answered him from within. Thereat he was
+chapfallen, but wishing nevertheless to hearten his good wife.
+
+"Why do you vex yourself?" said he. "Have we not in the hutch the cake
+Katheline gave us yesterday? Do not I behold a noble piece of beef
+that for three days at least will make good milk for the babe? That
+sack of beans squatting so snugly in the corner, does it prophesy
+famine? Yon firkin of butter, is it a ghost? Be they but phantoms,
+those bright platoons and companies of apples ranged warrior-like in
+ranks of eleven in the loft? Doth not that full-girthed cask of Bruges
+cuyte, that in its belly keeps the wherewithal for our refreshing,
+doth it not proclaim good drinking?"
+
+"Needs must," said Soetkin, "when the babe is borne to baptism,
+that we give two patards to the priest and a florin for the feasting."
+
+Therewith entered Katheline, holding a great sheaf of plants in her
+hand, saying:
+
+"I bring the lucky babe angelica, that keepeth man from lewdness;
+fennel that putteth Satan to flight...."
+
+"Have you not," said Claes, "gotten the herb that conjureth florins?"
+
+"Nay," quoth she.
+
+"Then," said he, "I will even go see if there be none in the canal."
+
+Forth he went carrying line and net, being well assured of meeting
+nobody, for it still lacked an hour of the oosterzon, which is,
+in Flanders, the morning sun of six of the clock.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Claes came to the canal of Bruges, not far from the sea. There,
+baiting his line, he cast it in the water, and let down his net. A
+little lad, well attired, lay upon the other bank, sleeping like a
+log upon a clump of mussels.
+
+The noise Claes made awoke him, and he would have fled away, fearing
+it might be some sergeant of the commune coming to turn him off his
+couch and hale him to the Steen for unlicensed vagrancy.
+
+But his fears ceased when he knew Claes and when he heard him call:
+
+"Would you like to earn six liards? Drive the fish this way."
+
+The lad on the word went down into the water, with his little belly
+already showing round and puffed up, and, arming himself with a tuft
+of long reeds, drove the fish toward Claes.
+
+His fishing over, Claes drew in his net and line, and walking across
+the lock, came to the lad.
+
+"You are he," said Claes, "whom they call Lamme by baptism and Goedzak
+for your gentle nature, and you live in the street of the Heron,
+behind Notre Dame. How comes it, young and well clothed as you are,
+that you must needs sleep on a public bed?"
+
+"Alas, master coalman," replied the lad, "at home I have a sister a
+year younger than I, who beats me with heavy blows for the smallest
+wrangle. But I dare not take my revenge on her back, for I should
+do her a hurt. Last night, at supper, I was an-hungered and cleaned
+with my fingers a dish of beef and beans in which she meant to have
+a share. There was not enough of it for me, master. When she saw
+me licking my lips for the goodness of the sauce, she became as one
+out of her wits, and beat me so fast and furiously that I fled all
+bruised from out of the house."
+
+Claes asked him what his father and mother did during all this cuffing.
+
+Lamme Goedzak replied:
+
+"My father beat me on one shoulder and my mother on the other saying,
+'Avenge thyself, coward!' But I, not willing to strike a girl,
+fled away."
+
+Suddenly Lamme grew pale and trembled all over.
+
+And Claes saw a tall woman approaching, and by her side a little girl
+lean and of a fierce aspect.
+
+"Ah!" said Lamme, taking hold of Claes by his breeches, "here be my
+mother and my sister coming to find me. Protect me, master coalman."
+
+"Here," said Claes, "first take these seven liards for wages and let
+us go stoutly to meet them."
+
+When the two women saw Lamme, they ran to him and both were fain
+to beat him, the mother because she had been anxious and the sister
+because it was her habit.
+
+Lamme hid behind Claes and cried:
+
+"I have earned seven liards, I have earned seven liards, do not
+beat me!"
+
+But already the mother was hugging him, while the little girl tried
+with might and main to open Lamme's hands to have his money. But
+Lamme cried:
+
+"It's mine. You shall not have it."
+
+And he clenched his fists tight.
+
+Claes shook the girl smartly by the ears and said to her:
+
+"If you happen ever again to raise a brawl with your brother, who is
+as good and gentle as a lamb, I shall put you in a black coal-hole
+and there it will not be I that pull your ears, but the red devil out
+of hell, who will rend you in pieces with his long claws and his big
+forked teeth."
+
+At this threat the little girl, not daring now to look at Claes or
+to go near Lamme, took shelter behind her mother's skirts. But as
+she went into the town she cried out everywhere:
+
+"The coalman beat me: he has the devil in his cellar."
+
+However, she never struck Lamme again; but being tall, she made him
+work instead of her. And the kindly simpleton did it with a good will.
+
+On his way back Claes had sold his catch to a farmer who usually
+bought it from him. And reaching home he said to Soetkin:
+
+"Here is what I found in the belly of four pike, nine carp, and a
+basketful of eels." And he threw two florins and a patard on the table.
+
+"Why do you not go a-fishing every day, husband?" asked Soetkin.
+
+Claes replied:
+
+"Not to be fish myself in the nets of the constables."
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+At Damme they called Ulenspiegel's father Claes the Kooldraeger or
+coalman: Claes had a black fell, eyes shining bright, a skin the same
+colour as his wares, except on Sundays and feast days, when there was
+great plenty of soap in the cottage. He was short, square, and strong,
+and of a gay countenance.
+
+When the day was ended and the evening shadows were falling, if he
+went to some tavern on the Bruges road, to wash out his coal-blackened
+gullet with cuyte, all the women taking the cool air on their doorsteps
+would call out a friendly greeting:
+
+"Good even and clear beer, coalman!"
+
+"Good even and a wakeful husband," Claes would reply.
+
+The lasses coming back from the fields in troops used to plant
+themselves all in front of him so as to prevent him from going on,
+and would say:
+
+"What will you give for your right of way: scarlet ribbon, gilt buckle,
+velvet shoon, or florin in the pouch?"
+
+But Claes would take one round the waist and kiss her cheeks or her
+neck, according to which fresh skin was nearest his mouth, then he
+would say:
+
+"Ask your lovers, darlings, ask your lovers for the rest."
+
+Then they would go off in bursts of laughter.
+
+The boys knew Claes by his big voice and the clatter of his
+shoes. Running to him they would say:
+
+"Good evening, coalman."
+
+"God give you the like, my cherublings," Claes would answer, "but
+don't come too close, or I shall turn you into blackamoors."
+
+The little fellows, being bold, would come close all the same; and
+then he would seize one by the tunic, and rubbing his soft little
+muzzle with his smutty hands, would send him back like that, laughing
+in spite of it, to the great delight of all the others.
+
+Soetkin, Claes's wife, was a good helpmeet, early as the dawn and
+diligent as the ant.
+
+She and Claes tilled their field together, yoking themselves like
+oxen to the plough. Hard and toilsome was the dragging, but harder
+still the harrowing when that rustic engine must tear the stiff
+earth with its wooden teeth. Yet always they worked light-hearted,
+singing some ballad song.
+
+And in vain was the earth stony hard; in vain did the sun dart his
+hottest beams upon them: dragging the harrow, bending at the knees,
+it was as naught that they must strain their loins cruelly; when
+they would pause, and Soetkin turn toward Claes her gentle face,
+and Claes kiss that mirror of a tender heart, then, ah, then, they
+would forget their utter weariness.
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Last night it had been cried at the doorway of the Townhall that Madam,
+the wife of the Emperor Charles, being great with child, all men must
+pray for her speedy delivery.
+
+Katheline came to Claes's house all trembling.
+
+"What aileth thee, gossip?" asked the goodman.
+
+"Alas me!" she replied, and spoke brokenly. "Last night, spectres
+cutting down men as reapers mow the grass. Girl children buried
+quick! The hangman danced on the corpse----Stone sweating blood nine
+months, broken this night."
+
+"Have pity upon us," groaned Soetkin, "Lord God, have pity: 'tis a
+black foreboding for the land of Flanders."
+
+"Sawest thou that with thine eyes or in a dream?" asked Claes.
+
+"With mine own eyes," said Katheline.
+
+All pale and weeping Katheline spake again:
+
+"Two boy babes are born, one in Spain, the Infante Philip, the other
+in the country of Flanders, the son of Claes who will in after days be
+surnamed Ulenspiegel. Philip will become a butcher, being engendered
+by Charles the Fifth, the murderer of our country. Ulenspiegel will
+be greatly learned in jests and pranks of youth, but he will be kind
+of heart, having had to father Claes, the stout worker that knew
+how to earn his bread in courage, honour, and simplicity. Charles
+the Emperor and Philip the King will ride roughshod through life,
+working ill by battles, exactions, and other crimes. Claes toiling
+all week long, living by righteousness and law, and laughing instead
+of weeping in his heavy labours, will be the ensample of all the good
+workers of Flanders. Ulenspiegel ever young, and never to die, will run
+throughout the world without ever tying himself to any place. And he
+will be churl, noble, painter, sculptor, all together and at once. And
+through the world will journey in this wise, praising all things good
+and lovely, and flouting without stint all manner of folly. Claes
+is thy courage, noble Flanders folk, Soetkin thy valiant mother,
+Ulenspiegel is thy spirit; a darling sweet girl, Ulenspiegel's mate
+and like him immortal, will be thy heart, and a fat paunch, Lamme
+Goedzak, will be thy stomach. And up aloft shall be the devourers
+of the folk; below, the victims; aloft the thieving hornets, below,
+the toiling bees, and in the skies shall bleed the wounds of Christ."
+
+This much having said, Katheline the good spaewife fell on sleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+They bore Ulenspiegel to baptism: on a sudden fell a spouting shower
+that soaked him through. Thus was he baptized for the first time.
+
+When he came within the church, word was given to godfather and
+godmother, father and mother, by the schoolmaster beadle, that they
+were to range themselves about the baptismal font, the which they did.
+
+But there was in the roof above the font a hole made by a mason
+wherefrom to hang a lamp from a star of gilded wood. The mason,
+spying from on high the godfather and godmother stiffly standing
+around the font covered with its lid, poured through the hole in the
+roof a treacherous bucket of water, which falling between them upon
+the lid of the font made a mighty splashing. But Ulenspiegel had the
+biggest share. And thus was he baptized for the second time.
+
+The dean arrived: they complained to him; but he told them to make
+haste, and that it was an accident. Ulenspiegel was twisting about
+and kicking because of the water that had fallen on him. The dean
+gave him salt and water, and named him Thylbert, which signifies
+"rich in movements." Thus he was baptized for the third time.
+
+Leaving Notre Dame, they went opposite the church in the rue Longue
+to the Rosary of Bottles whose credo was a jar. There they drank
+seventeen quarts of dobbel-cuyt, and more. For this is the true
+Flanders way of drying drenched folk, to light a fire of beer in the
+belly. Ulenspiegel was thus baptized for the fourth time.
+
+Going home and zigzagging along the road, their heads weighing more
+than their bodies, they came to a foot plank thrown across a little
+pool; Katheline, the godmother, was carrying the child, she missed her
+footing and fell in the mud with Ulenspiegel, who was thus baptized
+for the fifth time.
+
+But he was pulled out of the pond and washed with warm water in the
+house of Claes, and that was his sixth baptism.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+On that same day, His Sacred Majesty Charles resolved to hold high
+festival to celebrate the birth of his son befittingly. Like Claes
+he determined to go a-fishing, not in a canal, but in the pouches
+and pockets of his people. Thence is it that sovereign houses draw
+crusadoes, silver daelders, gold lions, and all those miraculous fishes
+that change, at the fisher's will, into velvet robes, priceless jewels,
+exquisite wines, and dainty meats. For the rivers best stocked with
+fish are not those that hold most water.
+
+Having brought together his councillors, His Sacred Majesty resolved
+that the fishing should be done in the following manner.
+
+His lordship the Infante should be borne to baptism toward nine or ten
+of the clock; the inhabitants of Valladolid, to testify their joy,
+should hold revelry and feast all night long, at their own charges,
+and should scatter their silver upon the great square for the poor.
+
+In five carfaxes there should be a great fountain spouting until
+daybreak with strong wine paid for by the city. In five other carfaxes
+there should be displayed, upon wooden stages, sausages, saveloys,
+botargoes, chitterlings, ox tongues, and all kinds of meats, also at
+the city's charges.
+
+The folk of Valladolid should erect at their own expense, along
+the route of the procession, a great number of triumphal arches
+representing Peace, Felicity, Abundance, Propitious Fortune, and
+emblems of all and sundry gifts from the skies with which they were
+loaded under the reign of His Sacred Majesty.
+
+Finally, besides these pacific arches, there should be set up certain
+others on which should be displayed in bright colours less benignant
+emblems, as lions, eagles, lances, halberds, pikes with wavy bladed
+heads, hackbuts, cannons, falconets, mortars with their huge jowls,
+and other engines showing in image the might and power in war of His
+Sacred Majesty.
+
+As for the lighting of the church, it should be graciously permitted
+to the Guild of Candlemakers to make free gratis and for nothing more
+than twenty thousand wax tapers, the unburned ends of which should
+revert to the chapter.
+
+As for any other expenses, the Emperor would gladly bear them, thus
+showing his kindly determination not to burden his people overmuch.
+
+As the commune was about to carry out these orders, lamentable
+tidings came from Rome. Orange, Alencon and Frundsberg, captains
+of the Emperor, had entered into the holy city and there sacked and
+spoiled churches, chapels, and houses, sparing no living soul, priests,
+nuns, women, children. The Holy Father had been made prisoner. For
+a whole week pillage had never ceased, and Reiters and Landsknechts
+were wandering through Rome, stuffed with food, drunken with wine,
+brandishing their weapons, hunting for cardinals, declaring they
+would cut enough out of their hides to save them from ever becoming
+popes. Others, having already carried out this threat, strutted proudly
+through the city, wearing on their breast rosaries of twenty-eight
+or more beads, big as walnuts, and all bloody. Certain streets were
+red streams in which lay heaped the rifled bodies of the dead.
+
+Some said that the Emperor, needing money, had determined to fish for
+it in the blood of the Church, and that having taken cognizance of the
+treaty imposed by his commanders upon the captive pontiff, he forced
+him to cede all the strongholds in his states, to pay four hundred
+thousand ducats and to be prisoner until all was duly carried out.
+
+None the less, great was His Majesty's grief; he countermanded all
+the joyous preparations, all feasts and rejoicings, and ordered the
+lords and ladies of his palace to don mourning.
+
+And the Infante was baptized in white robes, the hue of royal mourning.
+
+And lords and ladies interpreted this as a sinister omen.
+
+For all this, my lady the nurse presented the Infante to the lords
+and ladies of the palace, that these might, as is the custom, offer
+good wishes and gifts.
+
+Madame de la Coena hanged upon his neck a black stone potent against
+poison, the size and shape of a hazelnut, with a gold shell; Madame
+de Chauffade fastened upon him, by a silken cord, hanging down upon
+his stomach, a filbert, the which bringeth good digestion of all
+nourishment; Messire van der Steen of Flanders gave a Ghent sausage
+five ells long and half an ell in thickness, wishing that at its mere
+fragrance His Highness might be thirsty for clauwaert in the manner of
+the people of Ghent, saying that whoso loveth the beer of a town will
+never hate the brewers; Messire Squire Jacque-Christophe of Castile
+prayed my Lord the Infante to wear green jasper on his tiny feet,
+to make him run well. Jan de Paepe the fool, who was there present,
+exclaimed:
+
+"Messire, give him rather the trumpet of Joshua, at the sound whereof
+all towns ran full trot before him, hastening to plant themselves
+elsewhere with all their inhabitants, men and women and babes. For
+monseigneur must not learn to run, but to make others run."
+
+The tearful widow of Floris van Borsele, who was lord of Veere in
+Zealand, gave Monseigneur Philip a stone, which, said she, made men
+loving and women inconsolable.
+
+But the Infante whimpered like a young calf.
+
+At the same time Claes was putting in his son's hands a rattle made of
+osier, with little bells, and said, dancing Ulenspiegel on his hand:
+"Bells, bells, tinkling bells may you have ever on your cap, manikin;
+for 'tis to the fools belongeth the realm of good days."
+
+And Ulenspiegel laughed.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Claes having caught a big salmon, that salmon was eaten one Sunday
+by himself and by Soetkin, Katheline, and little Ulenspiegel, but
+Katheline ate no more than a bird.
+
+"Gossip," said Claes to her, "is Flanders air so solid to-day that it
+is enough for you to breathe it to be fed as with a dish of meat? When
+shall we live in this wise? Rain would be good soup, it would hail
+beans, and the snows, transformed to celestial fricassees, would
+restore and refresh poor travelling folk."
+
+Katheline, nodding her head, uttered not a word.
+
+"Lo now," said Claes, "our dolorous gossip. What is it grieves
+her then?"
+
+But Katheline, in a voice that seemed but a low breathing:
+
+"The wicked one," said she, "night is falling black--I hear him
+announcing his coming--screaming like a sea hawk--shuddering, I beseech
+the Virgin--in vain. For him, neither walls nor hedges nor doors
+nor windows. Entereth anywhere like a spirit----Ladder creaking----He
+beside me in the garret where I sleep. Seizes me in his cold arms, hard
+like marble. Face frozen cold, kisses like damp snow----The cottage
+tossed upon the earth, moving like a bark on the stormy sea...."
+
+"You must go," said Claes, "every morning to mass, that our Lord Jesu
+may give you strength to drive away this phantom come from hell."
+
+"He is so handsome!" said she.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Being weaned, Ulenspiegel grew like a young poplar.
+
+Claes now did not kiss him often, but loved him with a surly air so
+as not to spoil him.
+
+When Ulenspiegel would come home, complaining of being beaten in
+some fray, Claes would beat him because he had not beaten the others,
+and thus educated Ulenspiegel became valiant as a young lion.
+
+If Claes was from home, Ulenspiegel would ask Soetkin for a liard,
+to go play. Soetkin, angry, would say, "What need have you to go
+play? It would fit you better to stay at home to tie faggots."
+
+Seeing that she would give him nothing, Ulenspiegel would cry like an
+eagle, but Soetkin would make a great clatter of pots and pans, which
+she was washing in a wooden tub, to pretend she did not hear him. Then
+would Ulenspiegel weep, and the gentle mother, dropping her feigned
+harshness, would come to him, petting him, and say, "Will a denier
+be enough for you?" Now take notice that a denier is worth six liards.
+
+So she loved him overmuch, and when Claes was not there, Ulenspiegel
+was king in the house.
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+One morning Soetkin beheld Claes with head down wandering about the
+kitchen like a man lost in his own thought.
+
+"What grieves thee, husband?" said she. "Thou art pale, wroth,
+and distraught."
+
+Claes answered in a low tone, like a growling dog:
+
+"They are going to renew the Emperor's cruel edicts. Death will hover
+once more over the soil of Flanders. Informers are to have the half of
+the victims' goods, if the goods exceed not a hundred florins carolus."
+
+"We are poor folk," said she.
+
+"Poor," said he, "but not poor enough. There are some of that vile
+crew, ravens and vultures living on corpses, who would denounce us
+to divide a basket of charcoal with His Majesty as well as a bag of
+carolus. What had poor Tanneken, the widow of Sis the tailor, who
+perished at Heyst, buried alive? A Latin Bible, three gold florins,
+and some pewter pans that her neighbour coveted. Johannah Martens was
+burned for a witch, being first flung into water, for her body had
+floated and they took it as a judgment of heaven. She had some poor
+bits of furniture, seven gold carolus in a purse, and the informer
+wanted half. Alas! I could tell thee the like until to-morrow, but
+come, goodwife, life is no longer worth the living in Flanders by
+reason of these edicts. Soon every night will the chariot of death
+pass through the town, and we shall hear the skeleton shaking in it
+with a dry clatter of bones."
+
+"You must not frighten me, husband. The Emperor is the father of
+Flanders and Brabant, and like a father is endued with long-suffering
+gentleness, patience, and compassion."
+
+"He would lose too much by that," said Claes, "for he inherits the
+goods that are confiscate."
+
+Of a sudden sounded the trumpet and gnashed the cymbals of the town
+herald. Claes and Soetkin, carrying Ulenspiegel in their arms turn
+about, ran to the sound with the crowd.
+
+They came to the Townhall, before which were the heralds upon
+horseback, blowing their trumpets and clashing their cymbals, the
+provost holding the wand of justice and the procurator of the commune
+on horseback, holding in both hands an edict of the Emperor and making
+ready to read it to the assembled throng.
+
+Claes heard that it was thenceforward straightly forbidden, to all
+men in general and in particular, to print, read, have, or maintain
+the writings, books, or doctrine of Martin Luther, Johannes Wycliff,
+Johannes Huss, Marcilius de Padua, AEcolampadius, Ulricus Zwinglius,
+Philippus Melancthon, Franciscus Lambertus, Joannes Pomeranus, Otto
+Brunselsius, Justus Jonas, Johannes Puperis et Gorcianus, the New
+Testaments printed by Adrien de Berghes, Christopher de Remonda,
+and Joannes Zel, full of Lutheran and other heresies, banned and
+condemned by the Theological Faculty of the University of Louvain.
+
+"In like manner neither to paint or pourtray, nor cause to be painted
+or pourtrayed either opprobrious figures of God and the Blessed
+Virgin or of their saints; nor to break, rend, or efface the images
+or pourtraitures made in honour, memory, or remembrance of God and
+of the Virgin Mary or of saints approved by the Church.
+
+"Furthermore," said the proclamation, "no man, of whatever station,
+shall put himself forward to discuss or dispute upon Holy Writ,
+even upon matters that are held in doubt, if he is not a theologian
+renowned and approved by a great university."
+
+His Sacred Majesty enacted among other penalties that suspected persons
+should ever after be incapable of holding honourable estate. As for
+persons fallen a second time into their error, or persons who were
+stubborn therein, they should be condemned to burn by a slow fire
+or quick, in an envelope of straw, or fastened to a stake, at the
+discretion of the judge. Other men should be executed by the sword
+if they were noble or reputable burgesses, churls by the gallows, and
+women by burying alive. Their heads, for a warning, should be planted
+on spikes. And there would be confiscation to the Emperor of the
+goods and chattels of all that lay within the limits of confiscation.
+
+His Sacred Majesty granted to informers the half of all possessed
+by the condemned, provided their goods did not amount in all to one
+hundred pounds in Flanders money. As for the Emperor's portion, he
+reserved to himself the right to employ it in works of piety and alms,
+as he did at the sack of Rome.
+
+And Claes went sadly away, with Soetkin and Ulenspiegel.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+The year had been a good one, and Claes bought a donkey and nine
+measures of peas for seven florins and one morning he mounted on
+the beast, and Ulenspiegel clung to the crupper behind him. They
+were going in this fashion to salute their uncle and elder brother,
+Josse Claes, who lived not far from Meyborg in Germany.
+
+Josse, who had been simple and kind in his youth, having suffered
+various wrongs, became crotchety and malicious, his blood turned to
+bile in his veins, he became misanthropic and lived solitary and alone.
+
+His delight then was to make two so-called faithful friends fight
+each other, and he would give three patards to the one that gave the
+other the hardest drubbing.
+
+He loved also to bring together in a well-heated room a great many
+old gossips, the oldest and crabbedest that could be found, and he
+would give them toasted bread to eat and hypocras to drink.
+
+Those who were more than sixty years old he gave wool to knit in a
+corner, recommending them to let their nails always grow long. And
+it was a marvel to hear all the gurgling, the tongue clacking, the
+ill-natured tattle, the thin coughings and spittings of these old
+hags, who, with their knitting needles under their armpits, sat all
+together nibbling at their neighbours' good name.
+
+Now when he saw them all animated and lively, Josse would throw a
+hank of hair into the fire, and as it flared up the air would all at
+once be poisoned.
+
+The gossips then, all talking together, would accuse each other of
+making the stench; all denying it, they would very soon have each
+other by the hair, and Josse would go on throwing more hair on the
+fire, and chopped up horsehair on the floor. When he could see no
+longer, by reason of the fury of the melee, the thick smoke and the
+flying dust, he would fetch two of his men disguised as constables,
+who would drive the old women out of the hall, beating them soundly
+with long switches, like a troop of angry geese.
+
+And Josse would examine the battlefield, finding strips of clothes,
+fragments of shoes, pieces of chemises, and old teeth.
+
+And filled with melancholy he would say to himself:
+
+"My day is wasted, never a one of them has left her tongue behind in
+the melee."
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Claes, being in the bailiwick of Meyborg, was going through a little
+wood: the donkey as he travelled was browsing on the thistles;
+Ulenspiegel was throwing his bonnet after the butterflies and picking
+it up without leaving the beast's back. Claes was eating a hunch of
+bread, meaning to wash it down at the next tavern. Far off he heard
+a bell clinking and the noise of a great crowd of men all speaking
+together.
+
+"'Tis some pilgrimage," said he, "and the pilgrims will doubtless
+be numerous. Hold on well, my son, to the donkey, so that they may
+not knock you over. Come and let us see. Now, then, ass, stick to
+my heels."
+
+And the ass began to run.
+
+Leaving the fringe of the wood, he descended towards a wide plateau
+bordered by a stream at the foot of its western slope. On the eastern
+slope was a little chapel with a gable surmounted by the image of Our
+Lady and at her feet two little figures each representing a bull. Upon
+the chapel steps, grinning with glee, were a hermit shaking his bell,
+fifty flunkeys holding lighted candles, players, blowers, bangers of
+drums, clarions, fifes, shawms, and bagpipes, and a knot of jolly
+companions holding with both hands iron boxes full of old metal,
+but all silent at the moment.
+
+Five thousand pilgrims and more went along seven by seven in close
+ranks, casques on their heads, cudgels of green wood in their hands. If
+there came fresh arrivals helmeted and armed in like fashion, they
+ranged themselves tumultuously behind the others. Then passing seven
+by seven before the chapel they had their cudgels blessed, received
+each man a candle from the hands of the flunkeys, and in exchange
+paid a demi-florin to the hermit.
+
+And so long was the procession that the candles of the first were
+burnt down to the end of the wick while those of the latest were all
+but choking with too much tallow.
+
+Claes, Ulenspiegel, and the donkey, astonished, saw thus passing
+before them an immense variety of bellies, broad, long, high, pointed,
+proud, firm, or falling ignobly upon their natural props. And all
+the pilgrims had casques on their heads.
+
+Some of these casques had come from Troy, and were like Phrygian caps,
+or surmounted by aigrettes of red horsehair; some of the pilgrims,
+though they were fat-faced and paunchy, wore helms with outspread
+wings, but had no notion of flying; then came those who had on
+their heads salades that snails would have disdained for their lack
+of greenery.
+
+But the greater part had casques so old and rusty that they seemed to
+date from the days of Gambrinus, the King of Flanders and of beer,
+the which monarch lived nine hundred years before Our Lord and wore
+a quart pot for a hat, so that he need never have to refrain from
+drinking for lack of a cup.
+
+All at once rang, droned, thundered, thumped, squealed, brayed,
+clattered bells, bagpipes, shawms, drums, and ironmongery.
+
+At the sound of this din, the signal for the pilgrims, they turned
+about, placing themselves face to face by bands of seven, and by way
+of provocation every man thrust his flaming candle into the face of
+his opposite. Therefrom arose great sternutation. And it began to
+rain green wood. And they fought with foot, with head, with heel,
+with everything. Some hurled upon their adversaries like rams, casque
+foremost, smashing it down on to their shoulders, and ran blinded
+to fall on a seven-fold rank of furious pilgrims, the which received
+them ungently.
+
+Others, whimperers and cowards, bemoaned themselves because of the
+blows, but while they were mumbling their dolorous paternosters, there
+whirled upon them, swift as a thunderbolt, two sevens of struggling
+pilgrims, flinging the poor blubberers to earth and trampling them
+without compassion.
+
+And the hermit laughed.
+
+Other sevens, keeping in clusters like grapes, rolled from the top
+of the plateau into the very stream where they still exchanged shrewd
+strokes without quenching their fury.
+
+And the hermit laughed.
+
+Those that remained upon the plateau were blacking each other's eyes,
+breaking each other's teeth, tearing out each other's hair, rending
+each other's doublet and breeches.
+
+And the hermit would laugh and call out:
+
+"Courage, friends, he that smiteth sore but loves the more. To the
+hardest hitters the love of their fair ones! Our Lady of Rindisbels,
+'tis here may be seen the true males!"
+
+And the pilgrims fell to it with joyous heart.
+
+Claes, meanwhile, had drawn near the hermit, while Ulenspiegel,
+laughing and shouting, applauded the blows.
+
+"Father," said Claes, "what crime, then, have these poor fellows
+committed to be forced so cruelly to strike one another?"
+
+But the hermit, not giving ear to him, shouted:
+
+"Lazybones! ye lose courage. If the fists are weary are the feet? God's
+life! some of you have legs to run like hares! What makes fire
+leap from the flint? 'Tis the iron that beateth it. What blows up
+virility in old folk if not a goodly dish of blows well seasoned with
+male fury?"
+
+At these words, the pilgrims continued to belabour one another with
+casque, with hands, with feet. 'Twas a wild melee where not Argus
+with his hundred eyes had seen aught but the flying dust or the peak
+of some casque.
+
+Sudden the hermit clanked his bell. Fifes, drums, trumpets, bagpipes,
+shawms, and old iron ceased their din. And this was the signal
+for peace.
+
+The pilgrims picked up their wounded. Among them were seen many tongues
+swollen with anger, protruding from the mouths of the combatants. But
+they returned of themselves to their accustomed palates. Most difficult
+of all it was to take off the casques of those who had thrust them
+down as far as their necks, and now were shaking their heads, but
+without making them fall, no more than green plums.
+
+None the less the hermit said to them:
+
+"Recite each one an Ave and go back to your good wives. Nine months
+hence there will be as many children more in the bailiwick as there
+were valiant champions in the battle to-day."
+
+And the hermit sang the Ave and all sang it with him. And the bell
+tinkled above.
+
+Then the hermit blessed them in the name of Our Lady of Rindisbels
+and said:
+
+"Go in peace!"
+
+They departed shouting, jostling, and singing all the way to
+Meyborg. All the goodwives, old and young, were waiting for them on
+the threshold of their houses which they entered like men at arms in
+a town taken by storm.
+
+The bells of Meyborg were pealing their loudest: the little lads
+whistled, shouted, played the rommel-pot.
+
+Quart stoups, tankards, goblets, glasses, flagons, and pint-pots
+rang and jingled marvellously. And the good wine rolled in waves down
+thirsty throats.
+
+During this ringing, and while the wind brought to the ears of Claes
+from the town, in gusts, songs of men and women and children, he
+spake once again to the hermit, asking him what heavenly boon these
+good folk looked to win by these rough devotions.
+
+The hermit answered, laughing:
+
+"Thou seest upon this chapel two carven images, representing two
+bulls. They are placed there in memory of the miracle whereby Saint
+Martin transformed two bullocks into bulls, by making them fight with
+their horns. Then he rubbed their muzzles with a candle and green
+wood for an hour and longer.
+
+"Wotting of the miracle, and fortified with a brief from His Holiness,
+for which I paid roundly, I came hither and established myself.
+
+"Thenceforward all the ancient coughers and big-bellies in Meyborg and
+the country roundabout, persuaded by my arguments, were certain that
+having once beaten one another soundly with the candle, the which is
+unction, and with the cudgel, that is power, they would win favour of
+Our Lady. The women send their ancient husbands hither. The children
+born by virtue of this pilgrimage are violent, bold, fierce, nimble,
+and make perfect soldiers."
+
+Suddenly the hermit said to Claes:
+
+"Dost thou know me?"
+
+"Yea," said Claes, "thou art Josse my brother."
+
+"I am," replied the hermit; "but what is this little man that makes
+faces at me?"
+
+"It is thy nephew," said Claes.
+
+"What difference dost thou make between me and the Emperor Charles?"
+
+"It is great," replied Claes.
+
+"It is but small," rejoined Josse, "for we do both alike, we two:
+he makes men to slay one another, I to beat one another for our gain
+and pleasure."
+
+Then he brought them to his hermitage, where they held feast and
+revel for eleven days without pause or truce.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Claes, when he parted from his brother, mounted his donkey once more,
+taking Ulenspiegel on the crupper behind him. He passed by the great
+square of Meyborg, and there beheld, assembled in groups, a great
+number of pilgrims, who seeing them became enraged and flourishing
+their cudgels they all suddenly cried out, "Scamp!" because of
+Ulenspiegel, who, opening his breeches, plucked up his shirt and
+showed them his nether visage.
+
+Claes, seeing that it was his son they were threatening, said to him:
+
+"What did you do for them to be so angry against you?"
+
+"Dear father," replied Ulenspiegel, "I am sitting on the donkey,
+saying no word to any man, and nevertheless they say I am a scamp."
+
+Then Claes set him in front.
+
+In this position Ulenspiegel thrust out his tongue at the pilgrims,
+who, roaring, shook their fists at him, and lifting up their cudgels,
+would fain have beaten Claes and the donkey.
+
+But Claes smote the beast with his heels to flee from their wrath,
+and while they pursued, losing their breath, he said to his son:
+
+"Thou wert then born on a luckless day, for thou art sitting in front
+of me, doing no harm to any, and yet they would fain destroy thee."
+
+Ulenspiegel laughed.
+
+Passing by Liege, Claes learned that the poor Rivageois were starving
+and that they had been placed under the jurisdiction of the Official, a
+tribunal composed of ecclesiastical judges. They made a riot demanding
+bread and lay judges. Some were beheaded or hanged, and the rest
+banished out of the country, such at that time was the clemency of
+Monseigneur de la Marck, the gentle archbishop.
+
+Claes saw by the way the banished folk, fleeing from the pleasant
+vale of Liege, and on the trees near to the town the bodies of men
+hanged for being hungry. And he wept over them.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+When he came home, riding upon his donkey, and provided with a bag
+full of patards his brother Josse had given him and a goodly tankard of
+pewter, there were in the cottage Sunday good cheer and daily feasts,
+for every day they had meat and beans to eat.
+
+Claes filled often the great pewter tankard with dobbel-cuyt and
+emptied it as often.
+
+Ulenspiegel ate for three and paddled in the dishes like a sparrow
+in a heap of corn.
+
+"Look," said Claes, "he's eating the saltcellar, too!"
+
+Ulenspiegel answered:
+
+"When the saltcellar, as in our house, is made of a hollow piece of
+bread, it must be eaten now and then, lest the worms might come in
+it as it gets old."
+
+"Why," said Soetkin, "do you wipe your greasy hands on your breeches?"
+
+"So that I may never have my thighs wet," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+At this moment Claes drank a deep draught from his tankard. Ulenspiegel
+said to him:
+
+"Why have you so big a cup, I have only a poor little mug?"
+
+Claes answered:
+
+"Because I am your father and the baes of this house."
+
+Ulenspiegel retorted:
+
+"You have been drinking for forty years, I for nine only; your time
+to drink is passed, mine is come; it is therefore for me to have the
+tankard and for you to take the mug."
+
+"Son," said Claes, "he that would pour a hogshead into a keg would
+throw his beer into the gutter."
+
+"You will then be wise to pour your keg into my hogshead, for I am
+bigger than your tankard," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+And Claes, delighted, gave him his tankard to drain. In this wise
+Ulenspiegel learned how to talk for his drink.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+Soetkin carried beneath her girdle the signs of renewed maternity;
+Katheline, too, was with child, but for fear dared not stir out of
+her house.
+
+When Soetkin went to see her:
+
+"Ah!" said she, lamenting, "what shall I do with the poor fruit of my
+womb? Must I strangle it? I would rather die. But if the constables
+take me, for having a child without being married, they will make me
+pay twenty florins, like a girl of loose life, and I shall be whipped
+on the marketplace."
+
+Soetkin then said some soothing word to console her, and having left
+her, went home pondering. Then one day she said to Claes:
+
+"If instead of one child I had two, would you beat me, husband?"
+
+"I don't know that," replied Claes.
+
+"But," said she, "if this second were not born of me, and like
+Katheline's were the offspring of an unknown, of the devil, mayhap?"
+
+"Devils," replied Claes, "engender fire, death, and foul smoke,
+but not children. I will hold as mine the child of Katheline."
+
+"You would do this?" she said.
+
+"I have said," replied Claes.
+
+Soetkin went to tell Katheline.
+
+Hearing it, the latter cried out, overjoyed.
+
+"He has spoken, good man, spoken for the sake of my poor body. He
+will be blessed by God, and blessed of the devil, if it is a devil,"
+she said, shuddering, "that hath made thee, poor babe that movest in
+my bosom."
+
+Soetkin and Katheline brought into the world one a lad, the
+other a girl. Both were borne to baptism, as son and daughter of
+Claes. Soetkin's son was named Hans, and did not live, Katheline's
+daughter was named Nele and throve well.
+
+She drank the wine of life from four flagons, two of Katheline and
+two of Soetkin. And the two women quarrelled softly which should give
+the babe to drink. But against her desire Katheline must needs allow
+her milk to dry up, so that none might ask whence it came without
+her having been a mother.
+
+When little Nele, her daughter, was weaned, she took her home and
+only let the child go to Soetkin's when she had called her her mother.
+
+The neighbours said it was well done of Katheline, who was well to
+do, to feed the child of the Claes, who for the most part lived in
+poverty their toilsome life.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Ulenspiegel found himself alone one morning at home, and for want
+of something better to do, he began to cut up one of his father's
+shoes to make a little ship. Already he had planted the mainmast in
+the sole and bored the toe for the bowsprit, when at the half door
+he saw passing the bust of a horseman and the head of a horse.
+
+"Is any one within?" asked the horseman.
+
+"There are," replied Ulenspiegel, "a man and a half and a horse's
+head."
+
+"How so?" asked the horseman.
+
+"Because I see here a whole man, which is me; the half of a man,
+which is your bust; and a horse's head, which is that of your steed."
+
+"Where are your father and your mother?" asked the man.
+
+"My father has gone to make bad worse," replied Ulenspiegel, "and my
+mother is engaged in bringing us shame or loss."
+
+"Explain," said the horseman.
+
+Ulenspiegel answered:
+
+"My father at this moment is deepening the holes in his field so
+as to bring from bad to worse the huntsmen who trample down his
+corn. My mother has gone to borrow money: if she repays too little
+'twill shame us, if too much 'twill be our loss."
+
+The man asked then which way he should go.
+
+"Where the geese are," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+The man went away and came back just when Ulenspiegel was making an
+oared galley out of Claes's other shoe.
+
+"You have misled me," said he: "where the geese are is nothing but
+mud and marsh in which they are paddling."
+
+Ulenspiegel answered to this:
+
+"I did not tell you to go where the geese paddle, but where they go."
+
+"Show me, at any rate," said the man, "a road that goes to Heyst."
+
+"In Flanders, it is the travellers that go and not the roads,"
+said Ulenspiegel.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+One day Soetkin said to Claes:
+
+"Husband, my heart is sad: it is now three days since Thyl left the
+house; dost thou not know where he is?"
+
+Claes replied ruefully:
+
+"He is where homeless dogs are, on some highway with a crew of other
+vagabonds of his own kidney. God was cruel to give us such a son. When
+he was born, I beheld in him the joy of our age, a tool more in the
+house; I looked to make a craftsman of him, and wicked fate makes
+him a thief and a drone."
+
+"Be not so hard, husband," said Soetkin, "our son being but nine years
+old is in the heyday of childish thoughtlessness and folly. Is it not
+so that like the trees, he must shed the young buds before the coming
+of the full leaves, which for the human tree are honour and virtue? He
+is full of tricks, I am not blind to them, but they will turn later to
+his advantage, if instead of employing them to ill ends, he applies
+them to some useful trade. He is prone to flout his neighbours;
+but later this will help him to hold his own in merry company. He
+laughs ever and always; but faces sour before they are ripe are an
+ill omen for the countenance to come. If he runs, 'tis that he must
+grow; if he does not work, it is for that he is not yet of an age to
+feel that work is duty, and if now and then he spends day and night
+away from home for half a week together, 'tis that he knows nothing
+of what grief he gives us, for he has a good heart, and he loves us."
+
+Claes wagged his head and made no answer, and while he slept, Soetkin
+wept alone. And in the morning, thinking that her son was sick in
+a corner of some highway, she went out on the doorstep to see if
+he was not coming back; but she saw nothing, and she sate near the
+window, looking thence into the street. And many a time her heart
+danced in her bosom at the sound of the light foot of some lad; but
+when he passed, she saw it was not Ulenspiegel, and then she wept,
+poor dolorous mother.
+
+In the meanwhile, Ulenspiegel with his vagabond companions was at
+Bruges, at the Saturday fair.
+
+There might be seen cobblers and shoemakers in booths apart, tailors
+selling clothes, miesevangers from Antwerp, who catch tits with an
+owl at night; poultry sellers, dog stealers, vendors of catskins for
+gloves, waistcoats, and doublets, buyers of every kind and condition,
+burgesses and their womenfolk, menservants and maidservants, pantlers,
+butlers, and all together, sellers and buyers, crying up and crying
+down, vaunting and disparaging the wares.
+
+In one corner of the fair there was a fine canvas tent erected on
+four poles. At the door of the tent, a churl from the flat country of
+Alost, with two monks who were there to get something for themselves,
+was showing the curious devout, for a patard, a piece of the shoulder
+blade of Saint Mary of Egypt. Hoarsely he bawled out the saint's
+merits, and omitted not from his song how, having no silver, she paid
+a young ferryman in kind, so as not to sin against the Holy Ghost by
+refusing the labourer his hire.
+
+And the two monks nodded their heads to show that what the churl said
+was true. By them was a woman fat and ruddy, lascivious as Astarte,
+violently inflating a wretched bagpipe, while a pretty young girl sang
+beside her like a nightingale; but no one listened to her. Above the
+entrance to the tent was hung on two poles, held by cords in the two
+handles, a bucket full of holy water that had been blessed in Rome,
+according to the fat woman, while the two monks waggled head to bear
+witness to her tale. Ulenspiegel, beholding the bucket, became pensive.
+
+To one of the poles supporting the tent was fastened a donkey that was
+fed more upon hay than on oats: head down it was gazing at the earth,
+with no hope of seeing thistles spring up from it.
+
+"Comrades," said Ulenspiegel, pointing with his finger at the fat
+woman, the two monks, and the ass, "since the masters sing so sweetly,
+we must make the donkey dance as well."
+
+So saying, he went off to the next booth, bought six liards' worth of
+pepper, pulled up the donkey's tail and clapped the pepper underneath.
+
+The donkey, feeling the pepper at work, looked round under his tail
+to see whence proceeded this unwonted heat. Thinking he had a red-hot
+devil there, he would fain run away to escape him, began to bray and
+rear, and shook the tent pole with all his might. At the first shock,
+the tub between the two poles spilled all its holy water on the tent
+and on those who were within it. And presently collapsing, the tent
+covered with a moist mantle those who were hearkening to the history of
+Mary of Egypt. And from under the canvas Ulenspiegel and his companions
+heard a great noise of moaning and lamenting, for the devout who were
+there were wild with anger and exchanged furious thwacks and thumps
+with one another. The canvas rose and fell at the struggles of the
+combatants. Every time Ulenspiegel saw a roundness shape itself under
+the cloth, he stuck a needle into it. Then there were louder shrieks
+beneath the canvas and a more liberal distribution of thwackings.
+
+And he was transported, but more still seeing the donkey fleeing and
+dragging behind him tent, tub, and poles, while the baes of the tent,
+his wife and his daughter, hung desperately on to the baggage. The
+donkey, which could run no longer, lifted his head into the air and
+ceased not to sing, except in order to look beneath his tail to see
+if the fire there burning would not soon be extinguished.
+
+All this while the devout were going on with their battle; the monks,
+without giving them a thought, were picking up the money that had
+fallen from the collecting dishes, and Ulenspiegel was helping them,
+most devoutly, not without profiting.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+Whilst the vagabond son of the coalman was growing up gay and
+frolicsome, in lean melancholy vegetated the dolorous scion of the
+sublime Emperor. Lords and ladies saw the pitiful little weakling
+dragging through the rooms and corridors of Valladolid his frail body
+and his tottering limbs that could scarce sustain the weight of his
+big head, covered with fair stiff hair.
+
+Ever seeking out the darkest corridors, there he would sit for hours
+thrusting out his legs in front of him. If a servant trod on him by
+accident, he had the man flogged, and took pleasure in hearing him
+cry out under the lashes, but he never laughed.
+
+The next day, going elsewhere to set the same trap, he would sit
+again in some corridor with his legs thrust out. The ladies, lords,
+and pages who might pass there going fast or slow would trip over
+him, fall down and hurt themselves. He took pleasure in this, also,
+but he never laughed.
+
+When one of them, having run into him, failed to fall, he would cry
+out as if he had been struck, and he was delighted to see their fear,
+but he never laughed.
+
+His Sacred Majesty was informed of his behaviour and gave orders to
+take no notice of the boy, saying that if he did not wish to have his
+legs trodden on, he ought not to put them in the way of people's feet.
+
+This angered Philip, but he said nothing, and no one saw him after,
+except when on bright summer days he went to warm his shivering body
+in the sunshine in the courtyard.
+
+One day, coming back from the wars, Charles saw him steeped in
+melancholy in this fashion.
+
+"Son," said he, "how different art thou from me! At thy age, I loved
+to climb among trees to hunt the squirrels; I had myself lowered
+by a rope down some steep cliff to take eaglets from the nest. At
+this play I might have left my bones behind me; they but became the
+harder for it. In the chase the wild things fled to their dens when
+they saw me coming with my good arquebus."
+
+"Ah," sighed the boy, "I have a pain in the belly, monseigneur
+my father."
+
+"The wine of Paxaretos," said Charles, "is a sovereign cure."
+
+"I do not like wine; my head aches, monseigneur my father."
+
+"Son," said Charles, "thou must run and leap and romp as do other
+boys of thine own years."
+
+"My legs are stiff, monseigneur my father."
+
+"How," said Charles, "how can they be otherwise if thou usest them
+no more than if they were legs of wood? I will have thee fastened on
+some nimble steed."
+
+The boy wept.
+
+"Do not so," said he, "I have a pain in my loins, monseigneur my
+father."
+
+"But," said Charles, "you have a pain everywhere then?"
+
+"I would not be ill at all if I were left in peace," replied the child.
+
+"Dost thou think," rejoined the Emperor, impatiently, "to pass thy
+royal life in brooding as do clerks? For them, if it must be, in
+order that they may soil their parchments with ink, from the silence,
+solitude, and retirement; for thee, son of the sword, there needs
+hot blood, the eye of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the strength
+of Hercules. Why dost thou make the holy sign? God's blood! 'tis not
+for the lion's cub to ape paternoster-mongering females."
+
+"Hark, the Angelus, monseigneur my father," replied the child.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+This year May and June were verily the months of flowers. Never did
+any see in Flanders hawthorn so fragrant, never in the gardens so many
+roses, such heaps of jasmine and honeysuckle. When the wind that blew
+up out of England drove the incense of this flowery land towards the
+east, every man, and specially in Antwerp, nose in air with delight,
+would say:
+
+"Do you smell the sweet wind that comes from Flanders?"
+
+In like wise the busy bees sucked the flowers' honey, made wax, laid
+their eggs in hives too small to harbour their swarms. What music
+of labour under the blue sky that covered the rich earth with its
+dazzling tent!
+
+Men made hives out of rushes, of straw, of osiers, of plaited
+hay. Basketmakers, tubmakers, coopers were wearing out their tools
+over the work. As for the wood carvers, for a long time they had been
+unequal to the task.
+
+The swarms were of full thirty thousand bees and two thousand seven
+hundred drones. The honeycombs were so delicious that because of their
+rare quality, the dean of Damme sent eleven to the Emperor Charles,
+by way of thanks for having through his edicts restored the Holy
+Inquisition to all its full vigour. It was Philip that ate them,
+but they did him no good.
+
+Tramps, beggars, vagabonds, and all that ragtag and bobtail of idle
+rogues that parade their laziness about the roads, preferring to be
+hanged rather than to work, enticed by the taste of the honey, came
+to get their share of it. And they prowled about by night, in crowds.
+
+Claes had made hives to attract the swarming bees to them; some were
+full and others empty, awaiting the bees. Claes used to watch all
+night to guard this sugared wealth. When he was tired, he used to
+bid Ulenspiegel take his place. And the boy did so with a good will.
+
+Now one night Ulenspiegel, to avoid the cold air, had taken shelter
+in a hive, and, all huddled up, was looking through the openings,
+of which there were two, in the top of the hive.
+
+As he was on the point of falling asleep, he heard the little trees
+and bushes of the hedge crackling and heard the voices of two men
+whom he took to be robbers. He looked out through one of the openings
+in the hive, and saw that they both had long hair and a long beard,
+though the beard was the mark and sign of noble rank.
+
+They went from hive to hive, and came to his own, and picking it up,
+they said:
+
+"Let us take this one: it is the heaviest."
+
+Then they carried it off, using their sticks to do it. Ulenspiegel
+took no pleasure in being thus carted in a hive. The night was clear
+and bright, and the thieves walked along without uttering a word. Every
+fifty paces they stopped, clean out of breath, to go on their way again
+presently. The one in front grumbled furiously at having so heavy a
+weight to bear, and the one behind whimpered melancholy-wise. For in
+this world there are two kinds of idle cowards, those who grow angry
+with work, and those that whine when there is work to be done.
+
+Ulenspiegel, having nothing else to do, pulled the hair of the robber
+who went in front, and the beard of the one behind, so that growing
+tired of this game, the angry one said to the snivelling one:
+
+"Stop pulling my hair, or I will give you such a wallop on the head
+with my fist that it will sink down into your chest and you will look
+through your ribs like a thief through the bars of his prison."
+
+"I wouldn't dare, my friend," said the sniveller, "but it is you that
+are pulling me by the beard."
+
+The angry one answered:
+
+"I don't go hunting vermin in beggar fellows' fur."
+
+"Sir," replied the sniveller, "do not make the hive jump about so much;
+my poor arms are nearly breaking in two."
+
+"I'll have them off altogether," answered the angry fellow.
+
+Then, putting off his leathern gear he set the hive down on the
+ground, and leaped upon his comrade. And they fought with each other,
+the one cursing and swearing, the other crying for mercy.
+
+Ulenspiegel, hearing the blows pattering down, came out of the hive,
+dragged it with him as far as the nearest wood so as to find it there
+again, and went back to Claes's house.
+
+And thus it is that in quarrellings sly folk find their advantage.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+When he was fifteen, Ulenspiegel erected a little tent at Damme
+upon four stakes, and he cried out that everyone might see within,
+represented in a handsome frame of hay, his present and future self.
+
+When there came a man of law, haughty and puffed up with his own
+importance, Ulenspiegel would thrust his head out of the frame,
+and mimicking the face of an old ape, he would say:
+
+"An old mug may decay, but never flourish; am I not your very mirror,
+good sir of the doctoral phiz?"
+
+If he had a stout soldier for client, Ulenspiegel would hide and show
+in the middle of the frame, instead of his face, a dishful of meat
+and bread, and say:
+
+"Battle will make hash of you; what will you give me for my prophecy,
+O soldier beloved of the big-mouthed sakers?"
+
+When an old man, wearing ingloriously his hoary head, would bring
+Ulenspiegel his wife, a young woman, the boy, hiding himself as he
+had done for the soldier, and showing in the frame a little tree,
+on whose branches were hung knife handles, caskets, combs, inkhorns,
+all made of horn, would call out:
+
+"Whence come all these fine nicknacks, Messire? Is it not from the
+hornbeam that groweth within the garden of old husbands? Who shall
+say now that cuckolds are folk useless in a commonweal?"
+
+And Ulenspiegel would display his young face in the frame alongside
+the tree.
+
+The old man, hearing him, would cough with masculine anger, but
+his dear wife would soothe him with her hand, and smiling, come up
+to Ulenspiegel.
+
+"And my mirror," she would say, "wilt thou show it to me?"
+
+"Come closer," Ulenspiegel would answer.
+
+She would obey, and he then, kissing her wherever he could:
+
+"Thy mirror," he would say, "is stark youth with proud codpiece."
+
+And the darling would go away also, but not without giving him florins
+one or two.
+
+To the fat, blear-eyed monk who would ask to see his present and
+future self, Ulenspiegel would answer:
+
+"Thou art a ham cupboard, and so thou shalt be a still room for
+cervoise ale; for salt calleth upon drinking, is not this true,
+great belly? Give me a patard for not having lied."
+
+"My son," the monk would reply, "we never carry money."
+
+"'Tis then the money carries thee," would Ulenspiegel answer, "for
+I know thou dost put it between two soles under thy feet. Give me
+thy sandal."
+
+But the monk:
+
+"My son, 'tis the property of the Convent; I will none the less take
+from it, if I must, two patards for thy trouble."
+
+The monk gave them. Ulenspiegel received them graciously.
+
+Thus showed he their mirror to the folk of Damme, of Bruges, of
+Blankenberghe, nay, even as far away as Ostend.
+
+And instead of saying to them in his Flemish speech: "Ik ben u
+lieden Spiegel," "I am your mirror," he said to them, shortening it,
+"Ik ben ulen spiegel," even as it is still said to-day in East and
+West Flanders.
+
+And from thence there came to him his surname of Ulenspiegel.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+As he grew up, he conceived a liking for wandering about through
+fairs and markets. If he saw there any one playing on the hautbois,
+the rebeck, or the bagpipes, he would, for a patard, have them teach
+him the way to make music on these instruments.
+
+He became above all skilled in playing on the rommel-pot, an instrument
+made of a pot, a bladder, and a stout straw. This is how he arranged
+them: he damped the bladder and strained it over the pot, fastened
+with a string the middle of the bladder round the knot on the straw,
+which was touching the bottom of the pot, on the rim of which he
+then fixed the bladder stretched to bursting point. In the morning,
+the bladder, being dried, gave the sound of a tambourine when it was
+struck, and if the straw of the instrument was rubbed it hummed better
+than a viol. And Ulenspiegel, with his pot booming and sounding like
+a mastiff's barking, went singing carols at house doors in company
+with youngsters, one of whom carried the shining star made out of
+paper on Twelfth Night.
+
+If any master painter came to Damme to pourtray, on their knees
+on canvas, the companions of some Guild, Ulenspiegel, desiring to
+see how he wrought, would ask to be allowed to grind his colours,
+and for all salary would accept only a slice of bread, three liards,
+and a pint of ale.
+
+Applying himself to the grinding, he would study his master's
+manner. When the master was away, he would try to paint like him, but
+put vermilion everywhere. He tried to paint Claes, Soetkin, Katheline,
+and Nele, as well as quart pots and sauce-pans. Claes prophesied
+to him, seeing his works, that if he would be bold and persevering,
+he might one day earn florins by the score, painting inscriptions on
+the speel-wagen, which are pleasure carts in Flanders and in Zealand.
+
+He learned, too, from a master mason how to carve wood and stone,
+when the man came to make, in the choir of Notre Dame, a stall so
+constructed that when it was necessary the aged dean could sit down
+on it while still seeming to remain standing.
+
+It was Ulenspiegel who carved the first handle for the knife
+used by the Zealand folk. This handle he made in the shape of a
+cage. Within there was a loose death's head; above it a dog in a
+lying posture. These emblems taken together signify "Blade faithful
+to the death."
+
+And in this wise Ulenspiegel began to fulfil the prediction of
+Katheline, showing himself painter, sculptor, clown, noble, all at
+once and together, for from father to son the Claes bore for arms
+three quart pots argent on a field of bruinbier.
+
+But Ulenspiegel was constant to no trade, and Claes told him if this
+game went on, he would turn him away from the cottage.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+The Emperor being returned from war, asked why his son Philip had
+not come to greet him.
+
+The Infante's archbishop-governor replied that he had not desired to
+do so, for, so he said, he cared for nothing but books and solitude.
+
+The Emperor enquired where he was at that moment.
+
+The governor answered that they must seek him in every place where
+it was dark. They did so.
+
+Having gone through a goodly number of chambers, they came at last
+to a kind of closet, unpaven, and lit by a skylight. There they
+saw stuck in the earth a post to which was fastened by the waist a
+pretty little tiny monkey, that had been sent to His Highness from
+the Indies to delight him with its youthful antics. At the foot of
+this stake faggots still red were smoking, and in the closet there
+was a foul stench of burnt hair.
+
+The little beast had suffered so much dying in this fire that its
+little body seemed to be not an animal that ever had life, but a
+fragment of some wrinkled twisted root, and in its mouth, open as
+though to cry out on death, bloody foam was visible, and the water
+of its tears made its face wet.
+
+"Who did this?" asked the Emperor.
+
+The governor did not dare to reply, and both men remained silent,
+sad, and wrathful.
+
+Suddenly in this silence there was heard a low little sound of a
+cough that came from a corner in the shadow behind them. His Majesty,
+turning about, received the Infante Philip, all clad in black and
+sucking a lemon.
+
+"Don Philip," said he, "come and salute me."
+
+The Infante, without budging, looked at him with his timid eyes in
+which there was no affection.
+
+"Is it thou," asked the Emperor, "that hast burned this little beast
+in this fire?"
+
+The Infante hung his head.
+
+But the Emperor:
+
+"If thou wert cruel enough to do it, be brave enough to confess it."
+
+The Infante made no answer.
+
+His Majesty plucked the lemon out of his hands and flung it on the
+ground, and he was about to beat his son melting away with fright,
+when the archbishop, stopping him, whispered in his ear:
+
+"His Highness will be a great burner of heretics one day."
+
+The Emperor smiled, and the two men went away, leaving the Infante
+alone with his monkey.
+
+But there were others that were no monkeys and died in the flames.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+November had come, the month of hail in which coughing folk give
+themselves up wholehearted to the music of phlegm. In this month also
+the small boys descend in bands on the turnip fields, pilfering what
+they can from them, to the great rage of the peasants, who vainly
+run after them with sticks and forks.
+
+Now one evening, as Ulenspiegel was coming back from a marauding
+foray, he heard close by, in a corner of the hedge, a sound of
+groaning. Stooping down, he saw a dog lying upon some stones.
+
+"Hey," said he, "miserable beastie, what dost thou there so late?"
+
+Caressing the dog, he felt his back wet, thought that someone had
+tried to drown him, and took him up in his arms to warm him.
+
+Coming home he said:
+
+"I bring a wounded patient, what shall I do to him?"
+
+"Heal him," said Claes in reply.
+
+Ulenspiegel set the dog down upon the table. Claes, Soetkin, and
+himself then saw by the light of the lamp a little red Luxembourg
+spaniel hurt on the back. Soetkin sponged the wounds, covered them
+with ointment, and bound them up with linen. Ulenspiegel took the
+little beast into his bed, though Soetkin wanted to have him in her
+own, fearing, as she said, lest Ulenspiegel, who tumbled about in
+bed like a devil in a holy water pot, should hurt the dog as he slept.
+
+But Ulenspiegel had his own way, and tended him so well that after
+six days the patient ran about like his fellows full of doggish tricks.
+
+And the school-meester christened him Titus Bibulus Schnouffius: Titus
+in memory of a certain good Emperor of Rome, who took pains to gather
+in lost dogs; Bibulus because the dog loved bruinbier with the love
+of a true tosspot, and Schnouffius because sniff-sniffing everywhere
+he was always thrusting his nose into rat-holes and mole holes.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+At the end of the Rue Notre Dame there were two willows planted face
+to face on the edge of a deep pond.
+
+Ulenspiegel stretched a rope between the two willows and danced upon
+it one Sunday after vespers, so well that all the crowd of vagabonds
+applauded him with both hand and voice. Then he came down from his
+rope and held out to all the bystanders a bowl that was speedily filled
+with money, but he emptied it in Soetkin's apron and kept only eleven
+liards for himself.
+
+The next Sunday he would fain dance again on his rope, but certain
+good-for-nought lads, being jealous of his nimbleness, had made a nick
+in the rope, so that after a few bounds the rope broke in sunder and
+Ulenspiegel tumbled into the water.
+
+Whilst he swam to reach the bank the little fellows that cut the rope
+shouted to him:
+
+"How is your limber health, Ulenspiegel? Are you going to the bottom
+of the pond to teach the carps to dance, dancer beyond price?"
+
+Ulenspiegel coming out from the water and shaking himself cried out
+to them, for they were making off from him for fear of his fists:
+
+"Be not afraid; come back next Sunday, I will show you tricks on the
+rope and you will have a share in the proceeds."
+
+On Sunday, the lads had not sliced the cord, but were keeping watch
+round about it, for fear any one might touch it, for there was a
+great crowd of people.
+
+Ulenspiegel said to them:
+
+"Each of you give me one of your shoes, and I wager that however big
+or little they may be I will dance with every one of them."
+
+"What do you pay if you lose?" they asked.
+
+"Forty quarts of bruinbier," replied Ulenspiegel, "and ye shall pay
+me three patards if I win the wager."
+
+"Aye," said they.
+
+And they each gave him a shoe. Ulenspiegel put them all in the apron
+he was wearing, and thus laden he danced upon the rope, though not
+without trouble.
+
+The cord slicers called out from below:
+
+"Thou saidst thou wouldst dance with every one of our shoes; put them
+on then and hold thy wager!"
+
+Ulenspiegel, all the while dancing, made reply:
+
+"I never said I would put on your shoes, but that I would dance with
+them. Now I am dancing and everything in my apron is dancing with
+me. Do ye not see it with your frog's eyes all staring out of your
+heads? Pay me my three patards."
+
+But they hooted at him, shouting that he must give them their shoes
+back.
+
+Ulenspiegel threw them at them one after the other into a
+heap. Therefrom arose a furious affray, for none of them could
+clearly distinguish his own shoe in the heap, or lay hold of it
+without a fight.
+
+Ulenspiegel then came down from the tree and watered the combatants,
+but not with fair water.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+The Infante, being fifteen years of age, went wandering, as his way
+was, through corridors, staircases, and chambers about the castle. But
+most of all he was seen prowling about the ladies' apartments, in
+order to brawl with the pages who like himself were like cats in
+ambush in the corridors. Others planting themselves in the court,
+would be singing some tender ditty with their noses turned aloft.
+
+The Infante, hearing them, would show himself at a window, and so
+terrify the poor pages that beheld this pallid muzzle instead of the
+soft eyes of their fair ones.
+
+Among the court ladies there was a charming Flemish woman from Dudzeele
+hard by Damme, plump, a handsome ripe fruit and marvellously lovely,
+for she had green eyes and red crimped hair, shining like gold. Of
+a gay humour and ardent temperament, she never hid from any one her
+inclination for the lucky lord to whom she accorded the divine right of
+way of love over her goodly pleasaunce. There was one at this moment,
+handsome and high spirited, whom she loved. Every day at a certain
+hour she went to meet him, and this Philip discovered.
+
+Taking his seat upon a bench set close up against a window, he watched
+for her and when she was passing in front of him, her eye alight,
+her lips parted, amiable, fresh from the bath, and rustling about her
+all her array of yellow brocade, she caught sight of the Infante who
+said to her, without getting up from his seat:
+
+"Madame, could you not stay a moment?"
+
+Impatient as a filly held back in her career, at the moment when she is
+hurrying to the splendid stallion neighing in the meadow, she answered:
+
+"Highness, everyone here must obey your princely will."
+
+"Sit down beside me," said he.
+
+Then looking at her luxuriously, stonily, and warily, he said:
+
+"Repeat the Pater to me in Flemish; they have taught it to me, but
+I have forgotten it."
+
+The poor lady then must begin to say a Pater and he must needs bid
+her say it slower.
+
+And in this way he forced the poor thing to say as many as ten Paters,
+she that thought the hour had come to go through other orisons.
+
+Then covering her with praises and flatteries, he spoke of her lovely
+hair, her bright colour, her shining eyes, but did not venture to
+say a word to her either of her plump shoulders or her smooth round
+breast or any other thing.
+
+When she thought she could get away and was already looking out into
+the court where her lord was waiting for her, he asked her if she
+knew truly what are the womanly virtues.
+
+As she made no answer for fear of saying the wrong thing, he spoke
+for her and preaching at her, he said:
+
+"The womanly virtues, these be chastity, watchfulness over honour,
+and sober living."
+
+He counselled her also to array herself decently and to hide closely
+all that pertained to her.
+
+She made sign of assent with her head saying:
+
+That for His Hyperborean Highness she would much sooner cover herself
+with ten bearskins than with an ell of muslin.
+
+Having put him in ill humour with this retort, she fled away rejoicing.
+
+However, the fire of youth was lit up in the Infante's bosom, but it
+was not that hot burning flame that incites strong souls to high deeds,
+but a dark, sinister flame come out of hell where Satan had without
+doubt kindled it. And it shone in his gray eyes like the wintry moon
+upon a charnel-house, and it burned him cruelly.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+The beautiful and sweet lady on a day left Valladolid to go to her
+Chateau of Dudzeele in Flanders.
+
+Passing through Damme attended by her fat seneschal, she saw
+sitting against the wall of a cottage a boy of fifteen blowing into
+a bagpipe. In front of him was a red dog that, not liking this music,
+howled in a melancholy fashion. The sun shone bright. Standing beside
+the lad there was a pretty girl laughing loudly at each fresh pitiful
+burst of howling from the dog.
+
+The beautiful dame and the fat seneschal, as they passed by the
+cottage, looked at Ulenspiegel blowing, Nele laughing, and Titus
+Bibulus Schnouffius howling.
+
+"Bad boy," said the dame, addressing Ulenspiegel, "could you not
+cease from making that poor red beast howl in that way?"
+
+But Ulenspiegel, with his eyes on her, blew up his bagpipe more stoutly
+still. And Bibulus Schnouffius howled still more melancholily, and
+Nele laughed the more.
+
+The seneschal, growing angry, said to the dame, pointing to
+Ulenspiegel:
+
+"If I were to give this beggar's spawn a dressing with my scabbard,
+he would stop making this impudent hubbub."
+
+Ulenspiegel looked at the seneschal, called him Jan Papzak, because
+of his belly, and continued to blow his bagpipe. The seneschal went up
+to him with a threatening fist, but Bibulus Schnouffius threw himself
+on the man and bit him in the leg, and the seneschal tumbled down in
+affright crying out:
+
+"Help!"
+
+The dame said to Ulenspiegel, smiling:
+
+"Could you not tell me, bagpiper, if the road that runs from Damme
+to Dudzeele has not been changed?"
+
+Ulenspiegel, without stopping his playing, nodded his head and looked
+still at the dame.
+
+"Why do you look so steadily at me?" she asked.
+
+But he, still playing, stretched his eyes wide as though rapt in an
+ecstasy of admiration.
+
+She said to him:
+
+"Are you not ashamed, young as you are, to stare at ladies so?"
+
+Ulenspiegel reddened slightly, went on blowing, and stared harder.
+
+"I asked you," she went on, "if the road that runs from Damme to
+Dudzeele has not altered?"
+
+"It is not green now since you deprived it of the joy of carrying you,"
+replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Wilt thou guide me?" said the dame.
+
+But Ulenspiegel remained seated, still never taking his eyes from
+her. And she, seeing him so roguish, and knowing that it was a mere
+trick of youth, forgave him easily. He got up, and turned to go into
+his home.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked.
+
+"To put on my best clothes," he replied.
+
+"Go then," said the dame.
+
+She sat down then on the bench beside the doorstep; the seneschal did
+the same. She would have talked to Nele, but Nele did not answer her,
+for she was jealous.
+
+Ulenspiegel came back carefully washed and clad in fustian. He looked
+well in his Sunday garb, the little man.
+
+"Art thou verily going with this beautiful lady?" Nele asked him.
+
+"I shall be back soon," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"If I were to go instead of you?" said Nele.
+
+"Nay," he said, "the roads are full of mire."
+
+"Why," said the dame, angry and jealous together, "why, little girl,
+do you want to keep him from coming with me?"
+
+Nele made her no answer, but big tears welled up from her eyes and
+she gazed on the dame in sadness and in anger.
+
+They started on their way, four all told, the dame sitting like a queen
+on her white hackney caparisoned with black velvet; the seneschal
+whose belly shook to his walking; Ulenspiegel holding the dame's
+hackney by the bridle, and Bibulus Schnouffius walking alongside him,
+tail in air proudly.
+
+They rode and strode thus for some time, but Ulenspiegel was not at his
+ease; dumb as a fish he breathed in the fine odour of benjamin wafted
+from the dame, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at all her
+fine tags and rare jewels and furbelows, and also at her soft mien,
+her bright eyes, her bared bosom, and her hair that the sun made to
+shine like a golden cap.
+
+"Why," said she, "why do you say so little, my little man?"
+
+He made no reply.
+
+"Your tongue is not so deep down in your shoes that you could not
+manage a message for me?"
+
+"Right," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"You must," said the dame, "leave me here and go to Koolkercke, on
+the other way of the wind, and tell a gentleman clad particoloured
+in black and red, that he must not look for me to-day, but to come
+on Sunday at ten at night, into my castle by the postern."
+
+"I will not go," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Why not?" asked the dame.
+
+"I will not go, no!" said Ulenspiegel again.
+
+The dame said to him:
+
+"What is it then, little ruffled cock, that inspires thee with this
+fierce mind?"
+
+"I will not go!" said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"But if I gave thee a florin?"
+
+"No!" said he.
+
+"A ducat?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"A carolus?"
+
+"No," said Ulenspiegel again. "And yet," he added, sighing, "I should
+like it in my mother's purse better than a mussel-shell."
+
+The dame smiled, then cried out suddenly:
+
+"I have lost my fine rare purse, made of silken cloth and broidered
+with rich pearls! At Damme it was still hanging at my girdle."
+
+Ulenspiegel budged not, but the seneschal came forward to the dame.
+
+"Madame," he said, "send not this young thief to look for it, for
+you would never see it again."
+
+"And who will go then?" asked the dame.
+
+"Myself," he answered, "despite my great age."
+
+And he went off.
+
+Noon struck, the heat was great, the solitude profound; Ulenspiegel
+said no word, but he doffed his new doublet that the dame might sit
+down in the shade beneath a lime, without fearing the cool of the
+grass. He remained standing close by her, sighing.
+
+She looked at him and felt pity rising up in her for this timid
+little fellow, and asked him if he was not weary with standing so on
+his tender young legs. He answered not a word, and as he let himself
+drop down beside her, she tried to catch him, and pulled him on to
+her bared bosom, where he remained with such good will that she would
+have thought herself guilty of the sin of cruelty if she had bidden
+him seek another pillow.
+
+However, the seneschal came back and said he had not found the purse.
+
+"I found it myself," replied the dame, "when I dismounted from my
+horse, for it had unfastened its broochpin and got caught up on the
+stirrup. Now," she said to Ulenspiegel, "take us the direct way to
+Dudzeele and tell me how thou art called."
+
+"My patron," he answered, "is Master Saint Thylbert, a name which
+signifies light of foot to run after good matters; my name is Claes
+and my to-name Ulenspiegel. If you would look at yourself in my mirror,
+you will see that there is not upon all this land of Flanders a flower
+of beauty so dazzling as your fragrant loveliness."
+
+The dame blushed with pleasure and was in no wise wroth with
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+And Soetkin and Nele wept during this long absence.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+When Ulenspiegel came back from Dudzeele, he saw Nele at the entrance
+to the town, leaning up against a barrier. She was eating a bunch of
+grapes, crunching them one by one, and was doubtless refreshed and
+rejoiced by the fruit, but allowed none of her pleasure to be seen. She
+appeared, on the contrary, to be angry, and plucked the grapes from off
+the bunch with a choleric air. She was so dolorous and showed a face so
+marred, so sad and so sweet, that Ulenspiegel was overcome with loving
+pity, and going up behind her, gave her a kiss on the nape of her neck.
+
+But she returned it with a great box on the ear.
+
+"I can't fathom that!" exclaimed Ulenspiegel.
+
+She wept with heavy sobs.
+
+"Nele," said he, "are you going to set up fountains at the entrance
+to the villages?"
+
+"Begone!" she said.
+
+"But I cannot be gone, if you weep like this, my dear."
+
+"I am not your dear," said Nele, "and I do not weep!"
+
+"No, you do not weep, but none the less water comes from your eyes."
+
+"Will you go away?" said she.
+
+"No," said he.
+
+She was holding her apron the while with her little trembling hands,
+and she was pulling the stuff jerkily and tears fell on it, wetting it.
+
+"Nele," asked Ulenspiegel, "will it be fine presently?" And he looked
+on her, smiling lovingly.
+
+"Why do you ask me that?" said she.
+
+"Because, when it is fine, it does not weep," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Go," said she, "go to your beautiful lady in the brocade dress;
+you made her laugh well enough," said she.
+
+Then sang Ulenspiegel:
+
+
+       "When my darling's tears I see
+        My heart is torn atwain,
+        'Tis honey when she laughs for me,
+        When she weeps, a pearl.
+        Always I love my dearest girl,
+        And I'll buy good wine for us,
+        Good wine of Louvain,
+        I'll buy good wine for us to drink,
+        When Nele smiles again."
+
+
+"Low man!" said she, "you are still flouting me."
+
+"Nele," said Ulenspiegel, "a man I am, but not low, for our noble
+family, an aldermanish family, bears three silver quarts on a ground
+of bruinbier. Nele, is it so that in Flanders when a man sows kisses
+he reaps boxes on the ear?"
+
+"I do not wish to speak to you," said she.
+
+"Then why do you open your mouth to tell me so?"
+
+"I am angry," said she.
+
+Ulenspiegel very lightly gave her a blow with his fist in the back,
+and said:
+
+"Kiss a mean thing, she'll punch you; punch a mean thing and she'll
+anoint you. Anoint me then, darling, since I have punched you."
+
+Nele turned about. He opened his arms, she cast herself in them still
+weeping, and said:
+
+"You won't go there again, Thyl, will you?"
+
+But he made her no answer, for he was too busy clasping her poor
+trembling fingers and wiping away with his lips the hot tears falling
+from Nele's eyes like the big drops of a thunder shower.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+In these days, the noble town of Ghent refused to pay her quota of the
+subsidy her son Charles the Emperor had asked of her. She could not,
+being void of money through the very doings of Charles. This was a
+great crime; he determined to go in his own person to chastise her.
+
+For more than any other is a son's cudgel grievous to the back of
+a mother.
+
+Francois of the long nose, his foe, offered him free passage through
+the land of France. Charles accepted, and instead of being held a
+prisoner he was feasted and cherished imperially. 'Tis a sovereign
+concord between princes to help one another against the peoples.
+
+Charles stayed long at Valenciennes without making any show of
+anger. Ghent, his mother, lived free from fear, in the certain belief
+that the Emperor, her son, would pardon her for having acted as was
+her lawful right.
+
+Charles arrived beneath the city walls with four thousand horse. D'Alba
+was with him, so was the Prince of Orange. The common folk and the men
+of petty trades had wanted to prevent this filial entry, and to call
+out the eighty thousand men of the town and the flat country; the men
+of substance, the so-called hoogh-poorters, opposed this, fearing the
+predominance of the lower orders. Ghent could in this way have made
+mincemeat of her son and his four thousand horse. But she loved him
+too well, and even the petty traders had resumed their trust in him.
+
+Charles also loved his mother, but for the money he held in his
+coffers from her, and the further moneys he meant to have from her.
+
+Having made himself master of the town, he set up military posts
+everywhere, and had Ghent patrolled by rounds night and day. Then he
+pronounced, with all pomp and ceremony, his sentence upon the town.
+
+The most eminent citizens must come before his throne, with ropes
+about their necks, and make full public confession of their misdeeds:
+Ghent was declared guilty of the most expensive crimes, which are:
+disloyalty, treaty-breaking, disobedience, sedition, rebellion,
+and treason. The Emperor declared all and sundry privileges, rights,
+franchises, customs, and usages void and abolished; stipulating and
+engaging the future, as though he were God, that thenceforward his
+successors on their entering into their seigniory would swear to
+observe nothing save only the Caroline Concession of slavery granted
+by him to the town.
+
+He had the Abbey of Saint Bavon pulled down in order to rear on its
+site a fortress from which he could pierce his mother's bosom with
+cannon shot.
+
+Like a good son eager to come into his inheritance, he confiscated all
+that belonged to Ghent, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war.
+
+Finding her over well defended, he knocked down the Red Tower, the
+Toad's Hole Tower, the Braampoort, the Steenpoort, the Waalpoort, the
+Ketelpoort, and many others wrought and carven like jewels in stone.
+
+When strangers thereafter came to Ghent, they said to one another:
+
+"What is this flat, desolate town whose wonders and praises were sung
+so loudly?"
+
+And the folk of Ghent would make answer:
+
+"The Emperor Charles hath taken her precious girdle from the good
+town."
+
+And so saying they were shamed and wroth. And from the ruins of the
+gates the Emperor had the bricks for his fortress.
+
+He would have Ghent poor, for thus neither by toil nor industry nor
+gold could she oppose his haughty plans; therefore he condemned her
+to pay the refused quota of the subsidy, four hundred thousand gold
+carolus, and besides this, one hundred and fifty thousand carolus down
+and six thousand every year in perpetuity. She had lent him money:
+he was to pay one hundred and fifty pounds interest yearly. He took
+possession by force of the deeds recording his debt and paying it in
+this way, he actually enriched himself.
+
+Many a time had Ghent given him love and succour, but he now smote
+her bosom with a dagger, seeking blood from it because he found not
+enough milk there.
+
+Then he looked upon Roelandt, the great bell, and hanged from the
+clapper the fellow who had sounded the alarm to call the city to
+defend her right. He had no mercy for Roelandt, his mother's tongue,
+the tongue with which she spoke to Flanders: Roelandt, the proud bell,
+which saith of himself:
+
+
+        Als men my slaet dan is't brandt.
+        Als men my luyt dan is't storm in Vlaenderlandt.
+
+        When they ring me there is fire.
+        When they toll me there is storm in Flanders.
+
+
+Finding that his mother spoke too loud and free, he took away the
+bell. And the folk of the flat country say that Ghent died because
+her son had torn out her tongue with his iron pincers.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+One of these days, which were bright fresh days of the springtime,
+when all the earth is full of love, Soetkin was talking by the open
+window, Claes humming some refrain, while Ulenspiegel had put a
+judge's cap on the head of Titus Bibulus Schnouffius. The dog was
+working with his paws as though endeavouring to utter a judgment,
+but it was merely to get rid of his headgear.
+
+Suddenly Ulenspiegel shut the window, ran into the middle of the
+room, jumped on chairs and tables, his hands stretched up to the
+ceiling. Soetkin and Claes saw that all this energy was to catch a
+pretty little bird that was crying out with fear, its wings fluttering,
+cowering against a beam in a corner of the ceiling.
+
+Ulenspiegel was on the point of seizing it, when Claes said quickly:
+
+"What are you jumping for like that?"
+
+"To catch it," answered Ulenspiegel, "and put it in a cage, and give
+it seed and make it sing for me."
+
+Meanwhile the bird, crying shrilly with terror, was flying about the
+room and dashing its head against the windowpanes.
+
+Ulenspiegel did not cease jumping after it: Claes laid his hand
+weightily on the lad's shoulder:
+
+"Catch it," he said, "put it in a cage, make it sing for you, do,
+but I, too, will put you in a cage, shut in with stout iron bars,
+and I will make you sing as well. You like to run, you will not
+be able to run; you will be in the shade when you are cold, in the
+sun when you are hot. Then one Sunday we shall go out, forgetting
+to give you any food, and we shall only come back on the Thursday,
+and returning we shall find Thyl dead of hunger and stark and stiff."
+
+Soetkin wept, Ulenspiegel sprang forward.
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked Claes.
+
+"I am opening the window for the bird," he answered.
+
+And indeed, the bird, which was a goldfinch, went out of the window,
+uttered a cry of joy, shot up like an arrow in the air, then setting
+itself in an apple tree close by, it sleeked its wings with its beak,
+shook out its plumage, and becoming angry, hurled a thousand insults
+at Ulenspiegel in its bird speech.
+
+Then Claes said to him:
+
+"Son, never take liberty from man nor beast for liberty is the greatest
+boon in this world. Leave everyman to go in the sun when he is cold,
+in the shade when he is hot. And may God judge His Sacred Majesty who,
+having fettered freedom of belief in the land of Flanders, has now
+put Ghent, the noble town, in a cage of slavery."
+
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+Philip had married Marie of Portugal, whose possessions he added
+to the Spanish crown; he had by her a son, Don Carlos, the cruel
+madman. But he did not love his wife!
+
+The Queen was ill after the birth. She kept her bed and had with her
+her ladies in waiting, among whom was the Duchess of Alba.
+
+Philip often left her alone to go and see the burning of heretics,
+and all the lords and ladies of the court the same. Likewise also
+the Duchess of Alba, the Queen's noble nurse.
+
+At this time the Official seized a Flemish sculptor, a Roman Catholic,
+because when a monk had refused to pay the price agreed for a wooden
+statue of Our Lady, he had struck the face of the statue with his
+chisel, saying he would rather destroy his work than sell it for a
+mean price.
+
+He was denounced by the monk as an iconoclast, tortured mercilessly,
+and condemned to be burned alive.
+
+In the torture they had burned the soles of his feet, and as he walked
+from prison to the stake, wearing the san-benito, he kept crying out,
+"Cut off my feet, cut off my feet!"
+
+And Philip heard these cries from afar off, and he was pleased,
+but he did not laugh.
+
+Queen Marie's ladies left her to go to the burning, and after them
+went the Duchess of Alba, who, hearing the Flemish sculptor's cries,
+wished to see the spectacle, and left the Queen alone.
+
+Philip, his noble servitors, princes, counts, esquires, and ladies
+being present, the sculptor was fastened by a long chain to a stake
+planted in the middle of a burning circle made of trusses of straw
+and of faggots that would roast him to death slowly, if he wished to
+avoid the quick fire by hugging the stake.
+
+And all looked curiously on him as he sought, naked or all but naked as
+he was, to stiffen his will and courage against the heat of the fire.
+
+At the same time Queen Marie was athirst on her bed of childbirth. She
+saw half a melon on a dish. Dragging herself out of bed, she seized
+this melon and left nothing of it.
+
+Then by reason of the cold flesh of the melon, she fell into sweating
+and trembling, lay on the floor, and could not move hand or foot.
+
+"Ah," she said, "I might grow warm if someone could carry me to
+my bed."
+
+She heard then the poor sculptor crying:
+
+"Cut off my feet!"
+
+"Ah!" said Queen Marie, "is that a dog howling for my death?"
+
+
+
+At this moment the sculptor, seeing about him none but the faces
+of enemies and Spaniards, thought upon Flanders, the land of men,
+folded his arms, and dragging his long chain behind him he went
+straight to the straw and burning faggots and standing upright upon
+them with arms still folded:
+
+"Lo," said he, "how the Flemish can die before Spanish butchers. Cut
+off their feet, not mine, but theirs, that they may run no more after
+murder! Long live Flanders! Flanders for ever and evermore!"
+
+And the ladies applauded, crying for mercy as they saw his proud face.
+
+And he died.
+
+
+
+Queen Marie shivered from head to foot, she wept, her teeth chattered
+with the cold of approaching death, and she said, stiffening her arms
+and legs:
+
+"Put me in my bed, that I may be warmed."
+
+And she died.
+
+
+
+Thus, even according to the prediction of Katheline, the good witch,
+did Philip everywhere sow death, blood, and tears.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+But Ulenspiegel and Nele loved with surpassing love.
+
+It was then in the end of April, with all the trees in flower; all
+the plants, bursting with sap, were awaiting May, which cometh on
+the earth with a peacock for companion, blossoming like a nosegay,
+and maketh the nightingales to sing among the trees.
+
+Often Ulenspiegel and Nele would wander down the roads alone
+together. Nele hung upon Ulenspiegel's arm, and held to it with both
+hands. Ulenspiegel, taking pleasure in this play, often passed his
+arm about Nele's waist, to hold her the better, he would tell her. And
+she was happy, though she did not speak a word.
+
+The wind rolled softly along the roads the perfumed breath of the
+meadows; far away the sea murmured to the sun, idle and at ease;
+Ulenspiegel was like a young devil, full of spunk and fire, and Nele
+like a little saint from Paradise, all shamefast at her delight.
+
+She leaned her head on Ulenspiegel's shoulder, he took her hands,
+and as they went, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her darling
+mouth. But she did not speak.
+
+After some hours, they were hot and thirsty, then they drank milk at
+a peasant's cottage, but they were not refreshed.
+
+And they sat down on the green turf beside a ditch. Nele was pale
+and white, and pensive; Ulenspiegel looked at her, alarmed.
+
+"You are sad?" she said.
+
+"Ay," said he.
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"I know not," he said, "but these apple trees and cherries all in
+blossom, this warm soft air, as it were, charged with thunder fire,
+these daisies opening and blushing upon the fields, the hawthorn there
+beside us in the hedgerows, all white.... Who shall tell me why I feel
+troubled and always ready to die or to sleep? And my heart beats so
+hard when I hear the birds awaking in the trees and see the swallows
+come back, then I long to go beyond the sun and the moon. And now I
+am cold, and now hot. Ah! Nele! I would fain no more be in this low
+world, or give a thousand lives to the one who would love me...."
+
+But she did not speak, and smiling happily, looked at Ulenspiegel.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+On the day of the Feast of the Dead, Ulenspiegel came away from Notre
+Dame with some vagabonds of his own age. Lamme Goedzak was lost among
+them, like a sheep in the midst of wolves.
+
+Lamme freely paid for drink for everyone, for his mother gave him
+three patards every Sunday and feast day.
+
+He went then with his comrades In den rooden schildt, to the Red
+Shield, whose landlord Jan Van Liebeke served them with the dobbele
+knollaert of Courtrai.
+
+The drink heated their wits, and talking of prayers Ulenspiegel
+declared plumply that masses for the dead are good only for the
+priests.
+
+But there was a Judas in the band: he denounced Ulenspiegel as
+a heretic. In spite of Soetkin's tears and Claes's entreaties,
+Ulenspiegel was taken and cast into prison. There he remained in
+a cellar behind bars for a month and three days without seeing any
+one. The gaoler ate three quarters of his pittance. In the meanwhile,
+inquiries were made into his good and bad reputation. It was found
+merely that he was a sharp jester, flouting his neighbours continually,
+but never having missaid Monseigneur God, or Madame Virgin or messieurs
+the saints. And so the sentence was a light one, for he might have
+been branded in the face with a red-hot iron, and whipped till the
+blood came.
+
+In consideration of his youth, the judges condemned him merely to
+walk in his shirt behind the priests, bareheaded and barefooted,
+and a candle in his hand, in the first procession that should go out
+from the church.
+
+That was on Ascension Day.
+
+When the procession was returning, he must stand still under the
+porch of Notre Dame and there cry aloud:
+
+"Thanks to my Lord Jesu! Thanks to messieurs the priests! Their
+prayers are sweet to souls in purgatory, yea, refreshing; for every
+Ave is a bucket of water falling on their back, every Pater a cistern."
+
+And the people hearkened most devoutly, not without laughing.
+
+At the Feast of Pentecost, he must again follow the procession; he was
+in his shirt, barefoot and bareheaded, candle in hand. Coming back,
+standing beneath the porch, and holding his candle very reverently, not
+without pulling a waggish face or two, he called in a loud clear voice:
+
+"If the prayers of Christian men are a great ease and solace to souls
+in purgatory, those of the dean of Notre Dame, that holy man perfect
+in the practice of all the virtues, assuage so well the torments
+of the fire that it is transformed to ices all at once. But the
+devil-tormentors have not so much as one crumb."
+
+And the people once more hearkened devoutly, not without laughter,
+and the dean, well pleased, smiled ecclesiastically.
+
+Then Ulenspiegel was banished from the land of Flanders for three
+years, under condition of making pilgrimage to Rome and returning
+thence with absolution from the Pope.
+
+Claes must pay three florins for this sentence; but he gave still
+another to his son and furnished him with the habiliments of a pilgrim.
+
+Ulenspiegel was brokenhearted on the day of departing, when he embraced
+Claes and Soetkin, who was all in tears, the unhappy mother. They
+convoyed him a long long way on his road, in company of several
+townsfolk, both men and women.
+
+Claes, when they came back to their cottage, said to his wife:
+
+"Goodwife, it is exceeding harsh, for a few mad words, to condemn so
+young a lad to so heavy a penalty in this fashion."
+
+"Thou art weeping, my husband," said Soetkin. "Thou dost love him
+more than thou showest, for thou art breaking into man's sobs, which
+be lion's tears."
+
+But he made no answer.
+
+Nele had gone to hide in the barn that none might see that she also
+wept for Ulenspiegel. A long way off she followed Soetkin and Claes
+and the townsfolk; when she saw her friend disappearing alone, she
+ran to him and leaping on his neck:
+
+"You will be finding many beautiful dames over there," said she.
+
+"Beautiful," replied Ulenspiegel, "I cannot tell; but fresh as you,
+no, for the sun has roasted them all."
+
+Long they went their way together: Ulenspiegel was pensive and now
+and then would say:
+
+"I'll make them pay their masses for the dead."
+
+"What masses, and who will pay?" asked Nele.
+
+Ulenspiegel replied:
+
+"All the deans, curates, clerks, beadles, and other bigwigs high
+or low that feed us on windy trash. If I were a stout workman, they
+would have robbed me of the fruit of three years' toil by making me
+go pilgrimaging. But it is poor Claes who pays. They shall repay me
+my three years an hundredfold, and I will chant them as well the mass
+for their dead money."
+
+"Alas, Thyl, be prudent: they will burn you alive," replied Nele.
+
+"I am pure asbestos," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+And they parted, she all in tears, he brokenhearted, and in anger.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+Passing through Bruges on the Wednesday market, there he saw a woman
+led along by the executioner and his knaves, and a great crowd of
+other women around her crying and howling a thousand vile insults.
+
+Ulenspiegel, seeing the upper part of her dress equipped with pieces
+of red cloth, and seeing the stone of justice with its iron chains,
+at her neck, perceived that this was a woman who had sold for gain the
+fresh young bodies of her daughters. They told him her name was Barbe,
+she was the wife of Jason Darue, and would be brought in this costume
+from place to place until she came back to the great marketplace, where
+she would be set up on a scaffold already erected for her. Ulenspiegel
+followed her with the crowd of shouting people. Once back in the
+great marketplace she was set on the scaffold, bound to a stake,
+and the executioner laid before her a bundle of grass and a clod,
+signifying the pit of the grave.
+
+They told Ulenspiegel, too, that she had been whipped already in
+prison.
+
+As he was going away, he met Henri le Marischal, a swashbuckling rogue
+who had been hanged in the castle-ward of West Ypres and still showed
+the track of the cord around his neck. "He had been delivered," he
+said, "while already hoisted into the air, by saying one only good
+prayer to Notre Dame of Hal, in such wise that, by a true miracle,
+the bailiffs and the judges having gone, the cords, already loosened,
+broke, he fell to earth, and was in this manner saved and sound."
+
+But later Ulenspiegel learned that this rascal delivered from the
+rope was a counterfeit Henri Marischal, and that he was left to run
+about retailing his lie because he was bearer of a parchment signed
+by the dean of Notre Dame de Hal, who by reason of the tale of this
+Henri le Marischal saw flocking to his church and lavishly feeing
+him all those who smelled the gallows from near by or far off. And
+for a long time Our Lady of Hal was surnamed Our Lady of the Hanged.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+At this time the inquisitors and theologians for the second time made
+representation to the Emperor Charles:
+
+That the Church was going to ruin; that its authority was contemned;
+that if he had won so many glorious victories, he owed it to the
+prayers of Catholicism, which upheld the imperial power on its
+high throne.
+
+A Spanish Archbishop asked him to have six thousand heads cut off
+or the same number of bodies burned, in order to root the malignant
+Lutheran heresy out of the Low Countries. His Sacred Majesty deemed
+this insufficient.
+
+And so, everywhere the terrified Ulenspiegel went he saw nothing
+but heads on stakes, girls thrust into sacks and cast alive into the
+river; men stretched naked on the wheel and beaten with great blows
+of iron bars, women laid in shallow graves, with earth over them,
+and the executioner dancing on their breast to break it in. But the
+confessors of all, men and women, that had first repented, were richer
+by twelve sols a time.
+
+He saw at Louvain the executioners burn thirty Lutherans at once,
+and light the pile with gunpowder. At Limburg he saw a family, men
+and women, daughters and sons-in-law, walk to the scaffold singing
+psalms. The man, who was old, cried out while he was a-burning.
+
+And Ulenspiegel, full of fear and grief, journeyed on over the
+poor earth.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+In the fields, he shook himself like a bird or like a dog loosed from
+the lead, and his heart took comfort before the trees, the meadows,
+the clear sun.
+
+Having walked for three days, he came to the neighbourhood of Brussels,
+in the powerful commune of Uccle. Passing before the hostelry of the
+Trumpet, he was enticed by a celestial fragrance of fricassees. He
+asked a little tramp who, nose in air, was regaling himself with the
+odour of the sauces, in whose honour this festival incense arose to
+heaven. The other replied that the Brothers of the Good Red Nose were
+to assemble after vespers to celebrate the deliverance of the commune
+by the women and girls in olden time.
+
+Ulenspiegel, spying from far off a pole surmounted by a popinjay,
+and all around goodwives armed with bows, asked if women were becoming
+archers nowadays.
+
+The tramp, sniffing up the odour of the sauces, replied that in the
+days of the Good Duke those same bows, in the hands of the women of
+Uccle, had laid low more than a hundred brigands.
+
+Ulenspiegel, desiring to know more of this, the tramp told him that
+he would not say another word so hungry and so thirsty was he, unless
+he gave him a patard for food and drink. Ulenspiegel gave it him out
+of pity.
+
+As soon as the tramp had his patard, he went into the Trumpet Inn,
+like a fox into a henroost, and came out in triumph with half a
+sausage and a great hunch of bread.
+
+All at once Ulenspiegel heard a soft noise of tambourines and viols,
+and beheld a great troop of women dancing, and among them a comely
+matron with a gold chain about her neck.
+
+The tramp, who laughed for joy at having had something to eat,
+told Ulenspiegel that this handsome young woman was the Queen of the
+Archery, was called Mietje, the wife of Messire Renonckel, the sheriff
+of the commune. Then he asked Ulenspiegel for six liards for drink:
+Ulenspiegel gave them to him. Thus having eaten and drunken, the
+tramp sat down in the sun and picked his teeth and trimmed his nails.
+
+When the women archers caught sight of Ulenspiegel in his pilgrim's
+array, they set to work dancing about him in a ring, saying:
+
+"Good morrow, handsome pilgrim; do you come from far away, youngling
+pilgrim?"
+
+Ulenspiegel replied:
+
+"I come from Flanders, a fine country rich in loving girls."
+
+And he thought sadly of Nele.
+
+"What was your crime?" they asked him, desisting from their dancing.
+
+"I would not dare to confess it," said he, "so great a one it was. But
+I have other things that are not small."
+
+They smiled at that and asked why he must travel in this wise with
+staff and scrip and oyster shell.
+
+"Because," said he, lying a little, "I said that masses for the dead
+are of advantage to the priests."
+
+"They bring them in good coin," replied they, "but they are of
+advantage to souls in purgatory."
+
+"I wasn't there," rejoined Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Will you eat with us, pilgrim?" said the prettiest of the archers.
+
+"I will gladly eat with you," said he, "and eat you, and all the
+others turn about, for you are titbits for a king, more delicious
+than ortolans or thrushes or woodcocks."
+
+"God give you food," said they, "this is game beyond price."
+
+"Like all of you, dear ones," he answered.
+
+"Aye, verily," said they, "but we are not for sale."
+
+"And for the giving?" he asked.
+
+"Ay," said they, "of blows to the overbold. And if you need it,
+we will thrash you like a sheaf of corn."
+
+"I abstain therefrom," said he.
+
+"Come eat," said they.
+
+He followed them into the court of the inn, happy to see these
+fresh faces about him. Suddenly he beheld entering the court with
+high ceremony, with banner and trumpet and flute and tambourine, the
+Brothers of the Good Red Nose, wearing in fatness the jolly name of
+their fellowship. As they looked curiously upon him, the women told
+them it was a pilgrim they had picked up by the way and that finding
+him a true Red Nose, and matching their husbands and betrotheds,
+they had been minded to make him share their feast.
+
+The men approved their tale, and one said:
+
+"Pilgrim on pilgrimage, wouldst thou pilgrimage through sauces and
+fricassees?"
+
+"I shall have seven-leagued boots for that," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+As he was on the point of entering the hall of the feasting with
+them, he descried on the road to Paris twelve blind men trudging
+along. When they passed before him, complaining of hunger and of
+thirst, Ulenspiegel said to himself that they would sup that night
+like kings, at the charge of the dean of Uccle, in memory of the
+masses for the dead. He went to them and said:
+
+"Here be nine florins, come and eat. Do ye smell the good fragrance
+of the fricassees?"
+
+"Alas!" said they, "for the last half of a league, and no hope."
+
+"You shall eat," said Ulenspiegel, "now you have nine florins." But
+he did not give them.
+
+"A blessing on thee," said they.
+
+And guided by Ulenspiegel, they sat down around a small table, while
+the Brothers of the Good Red Nose sate at a great one with their
+goodwives and sweethearts.
+
+Speaking with full assurance of nine florins:
+
+"Host," said the blind men, proudly, "give us to eat and drink of
+your best."
+
+The host, who had heard a mention of the nine florins, believed them
+to be in their pouches, and asked what they wished to have.
+
+Then all of them, speaking at once, cried out:
+
+"Peas with bacon, a hotchpotch of beef, veal, mutton, and fowl."--"Are
+sausages meant for dogs?"--"Who ever smelled the passing of black
+puddings and white, without seizing them by the collar? I used to see
+them, alas! when my poor eyes were candles to me."--"Where are the
+koekebakken au beurre of Anderlecht? They sing in the pan, succulent
+and crisp, mother of quart draughts."--"Who will bring under my
+nose ham and eggs or eggs and ham, those tender brothers and close
+friends in the mouth?"--"Where are ye, divine choesels, swimming,
+proud viands that you are, in the midst of kidneys, of cockscombs,
+of riz de veau, of oxtails, sheep's trotters, and abundant onions,
+pepper, cloves, nutmeg, all in the stew and three quarts of white wine
+for sauce?"--"Who will bring you to me, divine andouilles, so good
+that ye say no word when ye are swallowed? Ye came ever straight from
+Luy-leckerland, the rich country of the happy do-naughts, the lickers
+up of never-ending sauces. But where are ye, withered leaves of bygone
+autumns!"--"I want a leg of mutton with beans."--"I want pigs' plumes,
+their ears."--"For me a rosary of ortolans, with woodcocks for the
+Paters on it and a fat capon for the Credo."
+
+The host answered sedately:
+
+"You shall have an omelette of sixty eggs, and for guiding posts
+for you spoons, fifty black puddings, planted smoking hot on this
+mountain of nourishment, and dobbel peterman to wash all down with:
+that will be the river."
+
+The water came into the mouths of the poor blind men and they said:
+
+"Serve us the mountain, the guideposts, and the river."
+
+And the Brothers of the Good Red Nose and their goodwives already at
+table with Ulenspiegel said that this day was for the blind the day
+of invisible junketing, and that the poor men thus lost the half of
+their pleasure.
+
+When the omelette arrived, all decked with parsley and nasturtium,
+and borne by the host and four cooks, the blind men would fain have
+thrown themselves upon it and already were haggling in it, but the
+host served them separately, not without difficulty, to each his
+share in his own dish.
+
+The archer women were touched to see them eating and heaving sighs
+of content, for they were mightily hungered and swallowed down the
+black puddings like oysters. The dobbel peterman flowed down into
+their bellies like cascades falling from mountain tops.
+
+When they had cleaned their dishes, they asked again for koekebakken,
+for ortolans and fresh fricassees. The host only served them a great
+dish of bones of beef and veal and mutton swimming in a good sauce. He
+did not give each his portion.
+
+When they had dipped their bread and their hands up to the elbows in
+the sauce, and only brought up bones of every kind, even some ox jaw
+bones, everyone thought his neighbour had all the meat, and they beat
+each other's faces furiously with the bones.
+
+The Brothers of the Good Red Nose, having laughed their fill,
+charitably conveyed part of their own feast into the poor fellows'
+dish, and he who groped in the plate for a bone for a weapon would set
+his hand on a thrush, a chicken, a lark or two, while the goodwives,
+pulling their heads back, would pour Brussels wine down their throats
+in a flood, and when they groped about blindly to feel whence these
+streams of ambrosia were coming to them, they caught nothing but a
+petticoat, and would fain have held it, but it would whisk away from
+them suddenly.
+
+And so they laughed, drank, ate, and sang. Some scenting out the
+pretty goodwives, ran all about the hall beside themselves, bewitched
+by love, but teasing girls would mislead them, and hiding behind a
+Good Red Nose would say "kiss me." And they would, but instead of a
+woman, they kissed the bearded face of a man, and not without rebuffs.
+
+The Good Red Noses sang, the blind men, too. And the jolly goodwives
+smiled kindly seeing their glee.
+
+When these rich and sappy hours were over, the baes said to them:
+
+"You have eaten well and drunk well, I want seven florins."
+
+Each one swore he had no purse, and accused his neighbour. Hence arose
+yet another fray in which they sought to strike one another with foot
+and fist and head, but they could not, and struck out wildly, for the
+Good Red Noses, seeing the play, kept man away from man. And blows
+hailed upon the empty air, save one that by ill chance fell upon the
+face of the baes, who, in a rage, searched them all and found on them
+nothing but an old scapular, seven liards, three breeches buttons,
+and their paternosters.
+
+He wanted to fling them into the swinehouse and leave them there on
+bread and water until someone should pay what they owed for them.
+
+"Do you," said Ulenspiegel, "want me to go surety for them?"
+
+"Ay," replied the baes, "if someone will be surety for you."
+
+The Good Red Noses were about to do it, but Ulenspiegel stopped them,
+saying:
+
+"The dean will be surety, I am going to find him."
+
+Thinking of the masses for the dead, he went to the deanery and told
+him how that the baes of the Trumpet, being possessed of the devil,
+spoke of nothing but pigs and blind men, the pigs devouring the blind
+and the blind eating the pigs under divers unholy guises of roasts and
+fricassees. During these fits, said he, the baes broke everything in
+the house, and he begged the dean to come and deliver the poor man
+from this wicked fiend.
+
+The dean promised, but said he could not go immediately, for at that
+moment he was casting up the accounts of the chapter, and endeavouring
+to derive some profit out of them.
+
+Seeing him impatient, Ulenspiegel said he would come back with the
+wife of the baes and that the dean could speak to her himself.
+
+"Come both of you," said the dean.
+
+Ulenspiegel came back to the baes, and said to him:
+
+"I have just seen the dean, he will stand surety for the blind
+men. While you keep guard over them, let the hostess come with me to
+the dean, he will repeat to her what I have just told you."
+
+"Go, goodwife," said the baes.
+
+She went off with Ulenspiegel to the dean, who was still figuring to
+find his profit. When she came in with Ulenspiegel, he impatiently
+waved her away, saying:
+
+"Be easy, I shall come to your husband's help in a day or two."
+
+And Ulenspiegel, returning to the Trumpet, said to himself, "He will
+pay seven florins, and that will be my first mass for the dead."
+
+And he went on his way, and the blind men likewise.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+Finding himself, on the morrow, upon a highway in the midst of a great
+crowd of folk, Ulenspiegel went with them, and soon knew that it was
+the day of the pilgrimage of Alsemberg.
+
+He saw poor old women marching backwards, barefooted, for a florin
+and for the expiation of the sins of certain great ladies. On the
+edge of the highway, to the sound of rebecks, viols, and bagpipes,
+more than one pilgrim was holding a frying feast and junketing of
+bruinbier. And the smoke of delicious stews mounted towards heaven
+like a suave incense of food.
+
+But there were other pilgrims, low fellows, needy and starveling,
+who, paid by the Church, were walking backwards for six sols.
+
+A little man, completely bald, with staring eyes and a savage look,
+was skipping along backwards behind them reciting paternosters.
+
+Ulenspiegel, wishing to know why he was mimicking the crayfishes in
+this fashion, planting himself before him and smiling, jumped in step
+with him. The rebecks, fifes, viols, and bagpipes, and the groans of
+the pilgrims made the music for the dance.
+
+"Jan van den Duivel," said Ulenspiegel, "is it that you may more
+certainly fall that you run in this wise?"
+
+The man made no answer and went on mumbling his paternosters.
+
+"Perhaps," said Ulenspiegel, "you want to know how many trees there
+are along the road. But are you not counting the leaves also?"
+
+The man, who was reciting a Credo, signed to Ulenspiegel to hold
+his tongue.
+
+"Perhaps," said the latter, still skipping before him and imitating
+him, "it is the result of some sudden madness that you should thus
+be going the contrary way to everybody else. But he who would have
+a wise answer from a madman is not wise himself. Is not this true,
+master of the peeled poll?"
+
+As the man still made no answer, Ulenspiegel went on skipping, but
+making so much noise with his boot-soles that the road reechoed like
+a wooden box.
+
+"Maybe," said Ulenspiegel, "you might be dumb, good sir?"
+
+"Ave Maria," said the other, "gratia plena et benedictus fructus
+ventris tui Jesu."
+
+"Maybe you are deaf as well?" said Ulenspiegel. "We shall see that:
+they say deaf men hear neither praises nor insults. Let us see if the
+drums of your ears are skin or brass: thinkest thou, lantern without
+candle, simulacrum of a foot-goer, that thou dost resemble a man? That
+will be when men are made of rags. Where has such jaundiced visnomy
+been ever seen, that peeled head, save on the gallows field? Wast
+thou not hanged of yore?"
+
+And Ulenspiegel went on dancing, and the man, who was entering on
+the ways of wrath, was running backwards angrily still mumbling his
+paternosters.
+
+"Maybe," said Ulenspiegel, "thou comprehendest but high Flemish,
+I will speak to thee in the low: if thou art no glutton, thou art a
+drunkard, if no drunkard, but a water bibber, thou art foully choked
+elsewhere; if not constipated, thou art jerry-go-nimble; if not a
+lecher, a capon; if there be temperance, it was not that that filled
+the tun of thy belly, and if in the thousand million men that people
+the earth there were but one only cuckold, it would be thou."
+
+At this word Ulenspiegel sat down upon his seat, legs in air, for
+the man had fetched him such a blow with his fist under the nose that
+he saw more than a hundred candles. Then cunningly falling upon him,
+despite the weight of his belly, he struck him everywhere, and blows
+rained like hail upon the thin frame of Ulenspiegel, whose cudgel
+fell to the ground.
+
+"Learn by this lesson," said the man, "not to pester honest folk going
+on pilgrimage. For you may know that I go thus to Alsemberg according
+to custom to implore Madam Holy Mary to cause to miscarry a child
+my wife conceived when I was on my travels. To win so great a boon,
+a man must needs walk and dance backward from the twentieth step from
+his home to the foot of the church steps, without speaking. Alas! now
+I must begin all over again."
+
+Ulenspiegel having picked up his cudgel said:
+
+"I shall help you, rascal, you who would have Our Lady serve to kill
+babes in their mothers' womb."
+
+And he fell to beating the wretched cuckold so cruelly that he left
+him for dead on the road.
+
+All this while there rose to heaven the groans of pilgrims, the sounds
+of fifes, viols, rebecks, and bagpipes, and, like a pure incense,
+the savour of frying.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+Claes, Soetkin, and Nele were gossiping together about the ingle,
+and talked of the pilgrim on his pilgrimage.
+
+"Daughter," said Soetkin, "why cannot you, by the might of the spell
+of youth, keep him always with us?"
+
+"Alas!" said Nele, "I cannot."
+
+"'Tis because," said Claes, "he hath a counter charm that drives him
+to run without ever resting save for the work of his teeth."
+
+"The cruel, ugly fellow!" sighed Nele.
+
+"Cruel," said Soetkin, "I admit, but ugly, no. If my son Ulenspiegel
+has not a Greek or a Roman countenance, he is all the better for that;
+for they are of Flanders his agile feet, of the Frank of Bruges his
+keen brown eye, and his nose and his mouth made by two past masters
+in the science of humour and sculpture."
+
+"Who, then," asked Claes, "made him his lazy arms and his legs too
+prone to run to pleasure?"
+
+"His heart that is over young," replied Soetkin.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+In these days Katheline by her simples cured an ox, three sheep, and
+a pig belonging to Speelman but could not cure a cow that belonged
+to Jan Beloen. The latter accused her of sorcery. He averred that she
+had cast a spell on the beast, inasmuch as, while giving his simples,
+she caressed and talked to it, doubtless in a diabolical speech,
+for an honest Christian should not talk to a beast.
+
+The said Jan Beloen added that he was a neighbour of Speelman's, whose
+ox, sheep, and pig she had healed, and if she had killed his cow, it
+was doubtless at the instigation of Speelman, jealous to see that his,
+Beloen's, land was better tilled than his own. Upon the testimony of
+Peter Meulemeester, a man of good life and conduct, and also of Jan
+Beloen, certifying that Katheline was reputed a witch in Damme, and
+had doubtless killed the cow, Katheline was arrested and condemned to
+be tormented until she should have confessed her crimes and misdeeds.
+
+She was questioned by a sheriff who was always in a rage, for he
+drank brandy all day long. He had Katheline put upon the first bench
+of torment in his presence and before the Vierschare.
+
+The executioner stripped her naked, then shaved her hair and all her
+body, looking everywhere to see if she concealed a charm.
+
+Finding nothing, he fastened her with cords to the bench. Then
+she spake:
+
+"I am all shamed to be naked thus before these men, Madam Mary,
+grant that I may die!"
+
+Then the executioner put wet cloths upon her breast, her belly, and
+her legs, and raising the bench, he poured hot water into her stomach
+in such quantities that she was all swelled up. Then he lowered the
+bench again.
+
+The sheriff asked Katheline if she would confess her crime. She made
+sign that she would not. The executioner poured more hot water into
+her, but she vomited all of it out again.
+
+Then at the chirurgeon's bidding she was untied. She did not speak,
+but struck on her breast to say the hot water had burned her. When
+the sheriff perceived that she had recovered from this first torment
+he said to her:
+
+"Confess thou art a witch, and that thou didst cast a spell upon
+the cow."
+
+"I will not confess," said she. "I love all dumb beasts, as much as my
+poor heart may, and I would harm myself rather than them, who cannot
+defend themselves. I used the needful simples to cure the cow."
+
+But the sheriff:
+
+"Thou didst give her poison," said he, "for the cow is dead."
+
+"Master sheriff," answered Katheline, "I am here before you, in
+your power. I dare say to you, nevertheless, that a beast can die of
+sickness, like a man, in spite of the assistance of the surgeons and
+the doctors. And I swear by my Lord Christ who died on the cross for
+our sins, that I have wished no harm to this cow, but sought to cure
+her by simple remedies."
+
+Then said the sheriff, enraged:
+
+"This devil's hag will not always deny, let her be put on another
+bench for the torment!"
+
+And therewith he drank a great glass of brandy.
+
+The executioner made Katheline sit on the lid of an oaken coffin
+placed upon trestles. The said lid, shaped like a roof, was sharp
+as a blade. A great fire was burning in the fireplace, for it was
+then November.
+
+Katheline, seated upon the coffin and a spit of sharpened wood, was
+shod with tight shoes of new leather and set before the fire. When
+she felt the sharp wooden edge of the coffin and the pointed spit
+entering her flesh, and when the fire heated and shrank the leather
+of her shoes, she cried:
+
+"I suffer a thousand pangs! Who will give me black poison?"
+
+"Put her nearer the fire," said the sheriff. Then questioning
+Katheline:
+
+"How often," said he, "didst thou bestride a broom to go to the
+Sabbath? How often didst thou blast the corn in the ear, the fruit
+upon the tree, the babe in the mother's womb? How often didst thou
+turn two brothers to sworn foes, and two sisters into rivals filled
+with hatred?"
+
+Katheline would have spoken, but could not, and moved her arms as
+though to say no. The sheriff then:
+
+"She will only speak when she feels all her witch fat melt in the
+fire. Put her nearer."
+
+Katheline cried out. The sheriff said:
+
+"Pray to Satan that he may cool thee."
+
+She made a movement as though she would take off her shoes that were
+smoking in the fierceness of the fire.
+
+"Pray to Satan that he pull off thy shoes," said the sheriff.
+
+The clock was striking ten, the furious creature's dinner hour;
+he went away with the executioner and the clerk, leaving Katheline
+alone before the fire, in the torture chamber.
+
+At eleven they came back and found Katheline seated stiff and
+motionless. The clerk said:
+
+"She is dead, I think."
+
+The sheriff ordered the executioner to take Katheline down from the
+coffin and the shoes from off her feet. Not being able to pull them
+off, he cut them away, and the feet of Katheline were disclosed red
+and bleeding.
+
+And the sheriff, thinking of his meal, looked at her without a word;
+but presently she recovered her senses, and falling on the ground
+and unable to rise for all her efforts, she said to the sheriff:
+
+"Once on a time wouldst fain have had me to wife, but now thou
+shalt not have me. Four times three it is the sacred number, and the
+thirteenth is the husband."
+
+Then as the sheriff would have spoken, she said to him:
+
+"Stay silent, he has hearing finer than the archangel that in heaven
+counts the heart beats of the just. Why dost thou come so late? Four
+times three it is the sacred number, he slayeth those that desire me."
+
+The sheriff said:
+
+"She receives the devil in her bed."
+
+"She is out of her wits with the anguish of the torment," said
+the clerk.
+
+Katheline was taken back to prison. Three days after, the sheriff's
+court being assembled in the Vierschare, Katheline after deliberation
+was condemned to the fire.
+
+The executioner and his assistants brought her to the marketplace
+of Damme where there was a scaffold on which she mounted. In the
+marketplace were the provost, the herald, and the judges.
+
+The trumpets of the town herald sounded three times, and turning to
+the people he announced:
+
+"The magistrate of Damme, having had compassion on the woman Katheline,
+has been pleased not to exact punishment according to the extreme
+rigour of the law of the town, but in order to bear witness that
+she is a witch, her hair shall be burned, she shall pay twenty gold
+carolus by way of fine, and shall be banished for three years from
+the precincts of Damme under pain of losing one limb."
+
+And the people applauded this harsh lenity.
+
+The executioner thereupon bound Katheline to the stake, set a wig of
+tow upon her shaven head and set it on fire. And the tow burned long
+and Katheline cried out and wept.
+
+Then she was unbound and taken without the boundaries of Damme upon
+a cart, for her feet were burned.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+Ulenspiegel being now at Bois-le-Duc in Brabant, the magnates of the
+town would fain have appointed him their fool, but he would none of
+this dignity. "Pilgrim on pilgrimage cannot play fool as a permanency,
+but only at inns and on the highways."
+
+At this same time Philip, who was King of England, came to visit the
+countries of his future inheritance, Flanders, Brabant, Hainault,
+Holland, and Zealand. He was then in his twenty-ninth year; in his
+grayish eyes dwelt sour melancholy, savage dissimulation, and cruel
+resolution. Cold was his countenance, and stiff his head covered with
+tawny hair; stiff, too, his meagre torso and spindle limbs. Slow was
+his speech and thick as though he had wool in his mouth.
+
+Amid tourneys, jousts, and feastings, he visited the joyous duchy of
+Brabant, the rich county Flanders, and his other seignories. Everywhere
+he swore to observe and confirm the privileges; but when at Brussels
+he took oath upon the Testament to observe the Golden Bull of Brabant
+his hand clenched so tight that he must needs take it away from the
+sacred book.
+
+He went to Antwerp, where they put up twenty-three triumphal arches to
+receive him. The city disbursed two hundred and eighty-seven thousand
+florins to pay for these arches and for the costumes of eighteen
+hundred and seventy-nine merchants all clad in crimson velvet and for
+the rich livery of four hundred and sixteen lackeys and the brilliant
+silk trappings of four thousand burgesses, all clad alike. Many feasts
+were given by the rhetoricians of all the cities in the Low Countries,
+or nearly all.
+
+There were seen, with their fools male and female, the Prince of Love,
+of Tournai, mounted upon a sow that was called Astarte; the King
+of Fools, of Lille, who led a horse by the tail and walked behind;
+the Prince of Pleasure, of Valenciennes, who amused himself counting
+how many times his donkey broke wind; the Abbot of Mirth, of Arras,
+who drank Brussels wine from a flask shaped like a breviary, and
+that was gay reading; the Abbot of the Paux-Pourvus, of Ath, who was
+provided with linen full of holes and boots down at heel, but had a
+sausage with which he made good provision for his belly; the Provost
+of Madcaps, a young man mounted on a shy goat, and who trotting in the
+crowd got many a thwack because of her; the Abbot of the Silver Dish,
+from Quesnoy, who mounted on his horse pretended to be sitting in a
+dish, saying "there is no beast so big that fire cannot cook him."
+
+And they played all kinds of harmless foolery, but the King remained
+sad and severe.
+
+That same evening, the Markgrave of Antwerp, the burgomasters,
+captains and deans, assembled together to find out some game or play
+that might win Philip the King to laughter.
+
+Said the Markgrave:
+
+"Have ye not heard tell of a certain Pierkin Jacobsen, the town-fool
+of Bois-le-Duc, and far renowned for his merry tricks?"
+
+"Yes," said the others.
+
+"Well!" said the Markgrave, "let us summon him to come hither, and
+bid him do us some nimblewitted turn, since our own fool has his
+boots stuffed with lead."
+
+"Let us summon him hither," said they.
+
+When the messenger from Antwerp came to Bois-le-Duc, they told him that
+the fool Pierkin had snuffed out his candle with over-much laughing,
+but that there was in the town another fool, a bird of passage,
+called Ulenspiegel. The messenger went to look for him in a tavern
+where he was eating a fricassee of mussels and making a petticoat
+for a girl with the shells.
+
+Ulenspiegel was delighted when he knew that it was for him the courier
+of the commune had come all the way from Antwerp, mounted upon a fine
+horse of Vuern-Ambacht and leading another by the bridle.
+
+Without setting foot to ground, the courier asked him if he knew
+where to find a new trick to make King Philip laugh.
+
+"I have a mine of them under my hair," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+They went away together. The two horses galloping loose-reined brought
+Ulenspiegel and the courier to Antwerp.
+
+Ulenspiegel made his appearance before the Markgrave, the two
+burgomasters, and the officials of the commune.
+
+"What do you intend to do?" asked the Markgrave.
+
+"Fly in the air," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"How will you set about this?" asked the Markgrave.
+
+"Do you know," asked Ulenspiegel, "what is worth less than a burst
+bladder?"
+
+"I do not know," said the Markgrave.
+
+"A secret that has been let out," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+In the meanwhile, the heralds of the games, mounted upon their handsome
+steeds caparisoned with crimson velvet, rode through all the main
+streets, squares, and carfaxes of the city, sounding clarions and
+with beat of drum. In this fashion they announced to the signorkes
+and the signorkinnes that Ulenspiegel, the fool of Damme, would fly
+in the air at the quay, there being present upon a staging King Philip
+and his high illustrious and distinguished company.
+
+Over against the staging there was a house built in the Italian
+fashion, with a gutter running along the whole length of the roof. A
+garret window opened upon the gutter.
+
+Ulenspiegel on this day went through the city everywhere riding upon
+an ass. A footman ran alongside him. Ulenspiegel had donned the fine
+robe of crimson silk the magnates of the commune had given him. His
+headgear was a hood, crimson as well, on which were seen two asses'
+ears with a bell on the tip of each. He wore a necklace of copper
+medallions embossed with the shield of Antwerp. On the sleeves of the
+robe there tinkled at each pointed elbow a gilt bell. He had shoes
+with gilt soles, and a bell at the tip of each.
+
+His ass was caparisoned with crimson silk and on each thigh carried
+the shield of Antwerp broidered in fine gold.
+
+The footman brandished a donkey's head in one hand and in the other
+a branch at the end of which chimed a cowbell from a forest-bred cow.
+
+Ulenspiegel, leaving his ass and his footman in the street, climbed
+up into the gutter.
+
+There, shaking his bells, he opened out his arms as if he was on the
+point of flying. Then leaning down towards King Philip, he said:
+
+"I thought there was no fool in Antwerp save only me, but I perceive
+the town is full of them. If you had told me you were going to fly,
+I should not have believed you; but let a fool come and tell you he
+will do it, and you believe him. How would you have me fly, since I
+have no wings?"
+
+Some laughed, others swore, but all said:
+
+"This fool says what is none the less quite true."
+
+But King Philip remained stiff as a king of stone.
+
+And the magnates of the commune said softly one to the other:
+
+"There was no need to make such great festival for such a sour-face."
+
+And they gave three florins to Ulenspiegel, who departed, first
+perforce restoring to them the robe of crimson silk.
+
+"What are three florins in the pouch of a young man but a snowball
+before a fire, a full bottle in front of you, wide-throated
+drinkers? Three florins! The leaves fall from the trees and sprout
+again upon them, but florins leave pouches and return thither no more:
+the butterflies flitter away with the summer time, and the florins,
+too, although they weigh two estrelins and nine as."
+
+So saying, Ulenspiegel contemplated his three florins closely.
+
+"What a haughty mien," murmured he, "hath the Emperor Charles upon the
+obverse, cuirassed and helmeted, holding a sword in one hand and in
+the other the globe of this poor earthly world! He is by the grace of
+God Emperor of the Romans, King of Spain, and so forth, and he is most
+gracious towards these our countries, this emperor in the cuirass. And
+here on the reverse is a shield on which are graven and displayed the
+arms of a duke, count, etc., pertaining to his divers possessions,
+with this goodly device: Da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos: 'Give
+me strength against thy enemies.' He was valiant indeed against those
+of the reformed that have goods to confiscate, and he inheriteth
+them. Ah! were I the Emperor Charles, I would have florins minted
+for everybody, and each man being rich, no one should work more."
+
+But Ulenspiegel looked in vain at the lovely money; it was gone
+towards the land of ruin to the clinking of quart pots and the chiming
+of bottles.
+
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+While he displayed himself on the gutter all clad in crimson silk,
+Ulenspiegel had not seen Nele who from the crowd was looking on him
+smiling. She was living at this time at Borgerhout near Antwerp,
+and thought that if some fool was to fly before King Philip, it could
+only be her friend Ulenspiegel.
+
+As he marched along the way, plunged in reverie, he did not hear a
+sound of hastening steps behind him, but felt two hands that were
+laid flat upon his eyes. Guessing Nele instinctively:
+
+"Are you there?" said he.
+
+"Aye," she said, "I have been running behind you ever since you came
+out of the city. Come with me."
+
+"But where," said he, "where is Katheline?"
+
+"Thou dost not know it," said she, "that she was tortured unjustly for
+a witch, then banished out of Damme for three years, and that they
+burned her feet and burned tow upon her head. I tell thee this that
+thou mayest have no fear of her, for she is out of her wits because
+of the cruel torment. Often she spends whole hours looking at her
+feet and saying: 'Hanske, my sweet devil, see what they did to thy
+dear. And her poor feet are like two wounds.' Then she weeps, saying:
+'Other women have a husband or a lover, but I live at this moment as a
+widow.' I tell her then that Hanske will hate her if she speaks of him
+before other folk than me. And she obeys me like a child save when she
+sees a cow or an ox, the cause of her torture; then she flees running
+without stay, and nothing can stop her, fences, streams, or ditches,
+till she falls for weariness in some corner of the wayside or against
+the wall of a farm, whither I go and take her up and dress her poor
+feet that are by then all bleeding. And I deem that in burning the
+hank of tow they burned also her brain in her head."
+
+And both were grieved thinking upon Katheline.
+
+They came to her and saw her sitting upon a bench in the sun against
+the wall of a house. Ulenspiegel said to her:
+
+"Do you know me?"
+
+"Four times three," quoth she, "it is the sacred number, and the
+thirteenth is Thereb. Who art thou, child of this wicked world?"
+
+"I am Ulenspiegel," he answered, "the son of Soetkin and of Claes."
+
+She shook her head and knew him; then beckoning him close with her
+finger and bending to his ear:
+
+"If thou see him whose kisses are as snow, tell him to come back to
+me, Ulenspiegel."
+
+Then showing her burned hair:
+
+"I am ill," she said; "they have taken my wits, but when he comes he
+will fill my head again, which now is all empty. Hearest thou? it
+sounds like a bell; it is my soul knocking at the door to depart,
+because it burns. If Hanske comes and has no mind to fill me my head
+again, I will tell him to make a hole in it with a knife: the soul
+that is there, ever knocking to come out, grieveth me cruelly, and
+I shall die, yea. And now I never sleep, and I look for him always,
+and he must fill me my head again, yea."
+
+And sinking down again, she groaned.
+
+And the peasants that were coming back from the fields to go to
+dinner, while the church bell called them to it, passed before
+Katheline saying:
+
+"There is the madwife."
+
+And they made the sign of the cross.
+
+And Nele and Ulenspiegel wept, and Ulenspiegel must needs go on upon
+his pilgrimage.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+At this time as he pilgrimaged he entered into the service of one
+Josse, surnamed the Kwaebakker, the cross baker, because of his
+vinegar face. The Kwaebakker gave him three stale loaves every week
+for his food, and for lodging a sloping garret under the roof, where
+the rain rained and the wind blew marvellously.
+
+Seeing himself so evilly entreated, Ulenspiegel played him different
+tricks and this among them. When they bake in the early morning,
+the flour must be bolted over night. One night, then, when the moon
+was shining, Ulenspiegel asked for a candle to see to work and had
+this answer from his master:
+
+"Bolt the flour in the light of the moon."
+
+Ulenspiegel, obeying him, bolted the flour upon the earth, where the
+moonlight was shining.
+
+In the morning the Kwaebakker, coming to see how much work Ulenspiegel
+had done, found him still bolting and said to him:
+
+"Does flour now cost nothing at all that it should be bolted on the
+ground like this?"
+
+"I bolted the flour in the moonlight as you had bidden me," answered
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+The baker replied:
+
+"Pack-donkey, it was in a sieve you should have done it."
+
+"I thought the moon was a new-fangled kind of sieve," replied
+Ulenspiegel. "But there will be no great loss, I will scrape up
+the flour."
+
+"It is too late," answered the Kwaebakker, "to get ready the dough
+and to bake it."
+
+Ulenspiegel rejoined:
+
+"Baes, our neighbour's dough is ready in the mill; shall I go and
+take that?"
+
+"Go to the gallows," replied the Kwaebakker, "and fetch what is
+on that."
+
+"I go, baes," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+He ran to the gallows field, found there the dried hand of a robber,
+brought it to the Kwaebakker, and said:
+
+"Here is a hand of glory that maketh invisible all those that carry
+it. Wilt thou henceforward conceal thy evil disposition?"
+
+"I shall inform the commune against you," replied the Kwaebakker, "and
+you will see that you have infringed upon the rights of the overlord."
+
+When they were both before the burgomaster, the Kwaebakker, wishing
+to tell the whole rosary of Ulenspiegel's misdeeds and delinquencies,
+saw that he was opening his eyes to their widest. He became so angry
+at this that interrupting his deposition he said to him:
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+Ulenspiegel replied:
+
+"You told me you would accuse me in such wise that I 'would see.' I
+am trying to see, that is why I look."
+
+"Out of my eyes," cried the baker.
+
+"If I was in your eyes," answered Ulenspiegel, "I could only come out,
+seeing that you shut them, through your nostrils."
+
+The burgomaster, seeing that this day was the day for the fair of
+japes, would listen to them no longer.
+
+Ulenspiegel and the Kwaebakker went away together, the Kwaebakker
+raised his cudgel on him; Ulenspiegel dodged it, saying:
+
+"Baes, since it is with blows my flour is to be sifted, you take the
+bran of it--it is your anger: I keep the white--it is my gaiety."
+
+Then showing him his nether face:
+
+"And here," he added, "is the door of the oven, if you want to bake."
+
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+Ulenspiegel as he pilgrimaged would gladly have turned highway robber,
+but he found the stones too heavy to carry.
+
+He was trudging by chance on the road to Audenaerde where there was
+then a garrison of Flemish reiters charged with the defence of the
+town against the French bands that ravaged the country like locusts.
+
+The reiters had at their head a certain captain, a Frisian born,
+by name Kornjuin. They also overran the low country and pillaged the
+peoples, who were thus, as usual, devoured on both sides.
+
+Everything was good in their eyes: hens, chickens, ducks, pigeons,
+calves, and pigs. One day, as they were coming back laden with plunder,
+Kornjuin and his lieutenants saw at the foot of a tree Ulenspiegel
+lying asleep and dreaming of fricassees.
+
+"What do you do for a living?" asked Kornjuin.
+
+"I'm dying of hunger," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"What is your trade?"
+
+"To go on pilgrimage for my sins, look on at others toiling, dance on
+the rope, paint pretty faces, carve knife handles, play the rommel-pot,
+and blow the trumpet."
+
+Now if Ulenspiegel spoke so bold of trumpets, it was because he had
+learned that the post of watchman to the Castle of Audenaerde was
+vacant after the death of an old man who had held it.
+
+Kornjuin said to him:
+
+"You shall be trumpeter to the town."
+
+Ulenspiegel went with him and was posted on the tallest tower on the
+ramparts, in a little box of a cell well ventilated by the four winds,
+all except the south wind that fanned it only with one wing.
+
+He was enjoined to sound the trumpet as soon as he might see an enemy
+coming and, to that end, to keep his head clear and his eyes keen;
+and so they did not give him overmuch either to eat or to drink.
+
+The captain and his soldiers stayed in the tower and feasted there all
+day long at the expense of the low country. There was killed and eaten
+there more than one capon whose one crime was to be plump. Ulenspiegel,
+always forgotten and forced to be satisfied with his meagre soup, found
+no pleasure in the smell of the sauces. The French came and carried
+off a great deal of cattle; Ulenspiegel did not sound his trumpet.
+
+Kornjuin climbed up to his cell and said to him:
+
+"Why did you not sound the trumpet?"
+
+Ulenspiegel said to him:
+
+"I give you no thanks for your provender."
+
+The next day, the captain ordered a great feast for himself and his
+soldiers, but Ulenspiegel was still forgotten. They were on the point
+of beginning to gorge, when Ulenspiegel blew his trumpet.
+
+Kornjuin and his soldiers, thinking it was the French, left their
+wines and meats, leapt upon their horses, rode hastily out of the town,
+but found nothing in the country but an ox chewing the cud in the sun,
+and brought him back with them.
+
+Meanwhile, Ulenspiegel had filled himself with wines and meats. The
+captain as he returned saw him standing, smiling, and his legs
+tottering at the door of the feast hall. He said to him:
+
+"It is traitor's work to sound the alarm when you do not see the enemy,
+and not to sound it when you do see them."
+
+"Master captain," said Ulenspiegel, "I am in my tower so puffed out
+and swollen up with the four winds that I could float like a bladder
+if I had not blown in my trumpet to ease me. Have me hanged now,
+or another time when you need an ass's skin for your drums."
+
+Kornjuin went away without a word.
+
+Meanwhile, news came to Audenaerde that the gracious Emperor Charles
+was about to come to the town, with a most noble company. On this
+occasion the sheriffs gave Ulenspiegel a pair of spectacles that he
+might the better discern His Sacred Majesty's coming. Ulenspiegel was
+to blow three blasts on the trumpet as soon as he saw the Emperor
+marching upon Luppeghem, which is a quarter of a league away from
+the Borg-poort.
+
+Thus the townsfolk would have time to ring their bells, to make ready
+fireworks, to put the meats in the oven, and to broach the hogsheads.
+
+One day, towards noon, the wind was blowing from Brabant and the sky
+was clear: Ulenspiegel saw on the road leading to Luppeghem a great
+band of horsemen mounted on caracoling steeds, the long feathers
+in their caps streaming in the wind. Some carried banners. He who
+rode proudly at their head wore a bonnet of cloth of gold with great
+plumes. He was arrayed in brown velvet broidered with brocatel.
+
+Ulenspiegel put on his spectacles and saw it was the Emperor Charles
+the Fifth who was coming to give the folk of Audenaerde permission
+to serve him their choicest wines and their choicest viands.
+
+His whole band was moving leisurely, snuffing up the fresh air that
+awakens appetite, but Ulenspiegel thought that they made good cheer
+by custom and might very well fast for one day without perishing. So
+he looked on at them as they came and did not blow his trumpet.
+
+They came on laughing and talking freely, whilst His Sacred Majesty
+looked into his stomach to see if there was enough room for the dinner
+of the Audenaerde folk. He appeared surprised and displeased that no
+bell rang to announce his coming.
+
+At this juncture a peasant entered the town running, to announce that
+he had seen a French band riding in the neighbourhood and marching
+upon the town to devour and pillage everything.
+
+At this word the porter fastened the gate and sent a servant of the
+commune to warn the other porters of the town. But the reiters feasted
+without knowing anything.
+
+His Majesty was still coming on, annoyed not to hear bells and cannon
+and arquebuses sounding and thundering and volleying. Straining his
+ears in vain, he heard nothing but the chime marking the half hour. He
+arrived before the gate, found it shut and beat on it with his fist
+to have it opened.
+
+And the lords in his retinue, angry like him, muttered sour
+speeches. The porter who was on the summit of the ramparts cried out
+to them that if they did not put an end to this hubbub he would spray
+them with grapeshot to cool their impatience.
+
+But His Majesty in a fury:
+
+"Blind hog," said he, "dost thou not know thy Emperor?"
+
+The porter answered:
+
+That the least hoggish are not always the most gilded; that he knew,
+besides, that the French were good mockers by their nature, since
+the Emperor Charles, at this moment waging war in Italy, could not
+be at the gates of Audenaerde.
+
+Thereupon Charles and the lords cried out the more, saying:
+
+"If thou dost not open, we shall roast thee on the point of a
+spear. And thou shalt eat thy keys first and foremost."
+
+At the noise they were making, an old man-at-arms came out from the
+artillery room and showing his nose above the wall:
+
+"Porter," said he, "you are all wrong, it is our Emperor yonder;
+I know him well, though he has aged since he took Maria van der
+Gheynst from here to the Castle of Lallaing."
+
+The porter fell down stiff as death with terror, and the man-at-arms
+seized his keys and went to open the gate.
+
+The Emperor asked why he had been forced to wait so long: the
+man-at-arms having told him, His Majesty ordered him to shut the gate
+again, and to fetch him the reiters of Kornjuin, whom he commanded
+to march before him beating their tambourines and playing their fifes.
+
+Soon one by one the bells awoke to sound full peal. Thus preceded,
+His Majesty came with an imperial din to the Great Marketplace. The
+burgomasters and sheriffs were all assembled there; the sheriff
+Ian Guigelaar came out at the noise. He went back into the council
+chamber saying:
+
+"Keyser Karel is alhier! The Emperor Charles is here!"
+
+Sorely affrighted to hear these tidings, the burgomasters, sheriffs,
+and councillors came out from the Townhall to go in a body to greet
+the Emperor, while their men ran throughout the whole town to have
+the fireworks got ready, to put the chickens to the fire, and to
+broach the casks.
+
+Men, women, and children ran everywhere crying:
+
+"Keyser Karel is op't groot marckt! The Emperor is in the Great
+Market!"
+
+Ere long great was the crowd in the square.
+
+The Emperor, in deep anger, asked the two burgomasters if they did not
+deserve to be hanged for thus failing in respect to their sovereign.
+
+The burgomasters replied that they deserved hanging indeed, but
+that Ulenspiegel, the trumpeter of the tower, deserved it much
+more, seeing that upon the rumour of His Majesty's coming he had
+been stationed there, equipped with a good pair of barnacles, with
+express instructions that he should sound his trumpet three times
+as soon as he should see the imperial convoy approaching. But he had
+done nothing of this.
+
+The Emperor, still angry, asked them to send for Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Why," said he, "having such clear spectacles, didst thou not blow
+a point on the trumpet at my coming?"
+
+So saying, he passed his hand over his eyes, because of the brightness
+of the sun, and looked at Ulenspiegel.
+
+Ulenspiegel also passed his hand over his eyes, and replied that
+since he had seen His Sacred Majesty looking between his fingers,
+he had no longer desired to make use of the spectacles.
+
+The Emperor told him he was to be hanged, the town porter said it was
+well done, and the burgomasters were so terrified at this sentence that
+they made no word of answer, neither to approve it nor to oppose it.
+
+The executioner and his assistants were sent for. They came carrying a
+ladder and a new rope, seized Ulenspiegel by the collar, as he walked
+in front of Kornjuin's hundred reiters, keeping very quiet and saying
+his prayers. But they mocked him bitterly.
+
+The people who were following said:
+
+"It is a great cruelty to put to death a poor young man in this way
+for so small a fault."
+
+And the weavers were there in great numbers and under arms, and
+they said:
+
+"We shall not leave Ulenspiegel to be hanged: it is contrary to the
+law of Audenaerde."
+
+By now they were come to the gallows field, Ulenspiegel was hoisted up
+on the ladder, and the executioner put the rope on him. The weavers
+flocked up around the gallows. The provost was there on horseback,
+resting the rod of justice on his horse's shoulder, the wand wherewith
+at the Emperor's word he should give the signal for the execution.
+
+All the assembled people cried out:
+
+"Mercy! mercy for Ulenspiegel!"
+
+Ulenspiegel upon his ladder said:
+
+"Pity! gracious Emperor!"
+
+The Emperor lifted his hand and said:
+
+"If this rascal asks me for something I cannot do, he shall have
+his life!"
+
+"Speak, Ulenspiegel," cried the people.
+
+The women wept and said:
+
+"He can ask for nothing, poor fellow, for the Emperor can do all
+things."
+
+And all said:
+
+"Speak, Ulenspiegel!"
+
+"Sacred Majesty," said Ulenspiegel, "I shall ask thee neither for
+money, nor for lands, nor for life, but only one thing, for which thou
+must not, if I dare to say it, have me whipped nor laid on the rack,
+before I depart to the land of spirits."
+
+"I promise thee this," said the Emperor.
+
+"Majesty," said Ulenspiegel, "I ask that before I be hanged, you
+shall come and kiss the mouth with which I speak no Flemish."
+
+The Emperor, laughing like all the people, replied:
+
+"I cannot do what thou dost ask, and thou shalt not hang, Ulenspiegel."
+
+But he condemned the burgomasters and sheriffs to wear spectacles on
+the back of their heads for six months, in order, said he, that if
+the Audenaerde folk do not see in front, they may at least see behind.
+
+And by imperial decree, these spectacles are still seen in the arms
+of the town.
+
+And Ulenspiegel went away modestly, with a little bag of money the
+women had given him.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+Ulenspiegel being at Liege, in the fish market, he followed after a
+big young man who with a net bag under one arm filled with every kind
+of poultry was filling another with haddocks, trout, eels, and pike.
+
+Ulenspiegel knew Lamme Goedzak.
+
+"What are you doing here, Lamme?" said he.
+
+"You know," said he, "how many Flanders folk have come to this kind
+country of Liege; for me, I follow my love here. And you?"
+
+"I seek a master to serve for my bread," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"That is very dry food," said Lamme. "It would be better for you to
+pass from dish to mouth a rosary of ortolans with a thrush for Credo."
+
+"You are rich?" asked Ulenspiegel.
+
+Lamme Goedzak answered:
+
+"I have lost my father, my mother, and my young sister that used to
+beat me so soundly; I shall inherit their goods, and I live with a
+one-eyed servant woman, a great doctor in fricassees."
+
+"Would you like me to carry your fish and your poultry?" asked
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Aye," said Lamme.
+
+And together they wandered about the market.
+
+Suddenly Lamme said:
+
+"Do you know why you are mad?"
+
+"No," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Because you are carrying your fish and your poultry in your hand,
+instead of carrying them in your belly."
+
+"You have said well, Lamme," said Ulenspiegel; "but since I have no
+longer even bread, the ortolans won't look at me now."
+
+"You shall eat them, Ulenspiegel," said Lamme, "and you shall serve
+me if my cook will have you."
+
+While they were wending their way, Lamme pointed out to Ulenspiegel
+a pretty, neat, and lovesome girl, in silk attire, who was hastening
+about the market here and there and looked at Lamme with her soft eyes.
+
+An old man, her father, walked behind her, laden with two net bags,
+one of fish, the other of game.
+
+"That one," said Lamme, pointing to her, "I am going to make her
+my wife."
+
+"Aye," said Ulenspiegel, "I know her, she is Flemish from Zotteghem,
+she lives in the rue Vinave-d'Isle, and the neighbours say that her
+mother sweeps the street, in front of the house, instead of her,
+and that her father irons her shifts."
+
+But Lamme made no answer and said gleefully:
+
+"She looked at me."
+
+They came together to Lamme's house, near the Pont-des-Arches, and
+knocked at the door. A one-eyed serving woman came and opened to
+them. Ulenspiegel saw she was old, lean and long, flat and fierce.
+
+"La Sanginne," said Lamme to her, "will you have this one to help
+you in your work?"
+
+"I will take him on trial," said she.
+
+"Take him, then," said he, "and make him know and test the delights
+of your cookery."
+
+La Sanginne then put three black puddings on the table, a quart of
+cervoise ale, and a big hunch of bread.
+
+While Ulenspiegel ate, Lamme also munched a black pudding.
+
+"Do you know," said he, "where our soul hath its habitation?"
+
+"No, Lamme," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"In our stomach it dwelleth," said Lamme, "to delve therein without
+ceasing and ever renew in our bodies the force of life. And what are
+its best companions? They are all good and choice eatables and wine
+of the Meuse over and above."
+
+"Aye," said Ulenspiegel, "black puddings are agreeable company for
+the lonely soul."
+
+"He wants more of them, give him some, la Sanginne," said Lamme.
+
+La Sanginne gave him more, this time white puddings.
+
+While he was eating largely, Lamme, grown pensive, said:
+
+"When I die, my belly will die with me, and there below in purgatory,
+I shall be left fasting, carrying my paunch about with me all flabby
+and empty."
+
+"The black seem to me better," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"You have eaten six," replied la Sanginne, "and you shall have
+no more."
+
+"You know," said Lamme, "that you will be well treated here and will
+eat like myself."
+
+"I will remember that word," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+Ulenspiegel, seeing that he ate the same as Lamme, was happy and
+content. The black puddings had given him so high a spirit that on
+that day he made all the caldrons, pans, and cooking pots shine and
+glitter like so many suns.
+
+Living well in this house, he delighted to haunt kitchen and cellar,
+leaving the garret to the cats. One day, la Sanginne had two fowls
+to roast and bade Ulenspiegel turn the spit while she went to the
+market to fetch herbs for the seasoning.
+
+The two fowls being roasted, Ulenspiegel ate one. La Sanginne,
+returning, said:
+
+"There were two fowls, now I see only one."
+
+"Open your other eye, you will see both of them," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+She went all in a rage to tell the business to Lamme Goedzak, who
+came down into the kitchen and said to Ulenspiegel:
+
+"Why do you make game of my servant? There were two fowls."
+
+"There were of a truth two, Lamme," said Ulenspiegel, "but when I came
+here you told me I should drink and eat as yourself. There were two
+fowls; I have eaten one, you will eat the other; my pleasure is past,
+yours is to come; are you not better off than I?"
+
+"Yea," said Lamme, smiling, "but do everything la Sanginne bids you,
+and you will have but half tasks."
+
+"I shall watch that, Lamme," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+And so, every time that la Sanginne bade him do anything, he only did
+the half of it; if she told him to draw two buckets of water from the
+well, he brought back only one; if she told him to go and fill a jug
+of cervoise from the cask, he poured half of it down his throat on
+the way and so on with the rest.
+
+At length la Sanginne, grown tired of these ways, told Lamme that
+if this good-for-naught remained in the house, she would go away on
+the spot.
+
+Lamme went down to Ulenspiegel and said to him:
+
+"You must depart, my son, although you have come to look well in
+this house. Listen to that cock crowing, it is two o'clock of the
+afternoon, it is a presage of rain. I would fain not turn you out of
+doors in this ill weather that is about to come upon us; but consider,
+my son, that la Sanginne by her fricassees is the warden of my life;
+I cannot, without risking a speedy death, allow her to leave me. Go,
+then, my boy, with God's grace, and to enliven your way take these
+three florins and this string of saveloys."
+
+And Ulenspiegel went away grieving, regretting Lamme and his fleshpots.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+November came to Damme and elsewhere, but the winter was tardy. No
+snow, no rain, nor cold weather; the sun shone from morning to evening
+without dimming: the children rolled about in the dust of the streets
+and the highways; at the hour of repose, after supper, the merchants,
+shopkeepers, goldsmiths, wheelwrights, and artisans came out upon their
+doorsteps to look on the sky that was always blue, the trees whose
+leaves were still not falling, the storks standing up on the ridges
+of the roofs, and the swallows that had not yet gone away. The roses
+had flowered thrice, and for the fourth time were in bud; the nights
+were warm, the nightingale had not ceased to sing.
+
+The folk of Damme said:
+
+"Winter is dead, let us burn winter."
+
+And they built a giant figure with a bear's face, a long beard of
+shavings, a thick shock head of flax. They clothed him in white
+garments and burned him with great ceremony.
+
+Claes was steeped in melancholy, he blessed not the sky that was
+ever blue, nor the swallows that would not depart. For now nobody in
+Damme was burning charcoal save for cooking, and each having enough
+did not go to buy from Claes, who had disbursed all his savings to
+pay for his stock.
+
+So, if standing on his doorstep, the coalman felt the tip of his nose
+grow chilly in some puff of sharpish wind:
+
+"Ah!" he would say, "it is my bread coming to me!"
+
+But the sharp wind would not continue to blow, and the sky stayed
+always blue, and the leaves would not fall. And Claes refused to
+sell his stock at half price to the miser Grypstuiver, the dean of
+the fishmongers. And soon bread began to lack in the cottage.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+But King Philip was not hungry, and ate pastries by the side of his
+wife, ugly Mary, of the royal house of the Tudors. He did not love her
+for love, but hoped by begetting a child on this miserable creature
+to give the English nation a Spanish monarch.
+
+He loathed this union which was a union of a paving stone and of
+a burning coal. Still, they were sufficiently united to have poor
+Protestants burned and drowned by hundreds.
+
+When Philip was not away from London, or slipped out in disguise
+to wallow in some evil haunt, the bedtime hour brought the wedded
+pair together.
+
+Then Queen Mary, attired in fine linen of Tournai and Irish lace,
+would lie down supine upon the nuptial couch, while Philip would stand
+before her rigid as a post, and look if he could not see in his wife
+some sign or symptom of motherhood; but seeing none he was wroth,
+said no word, and stared at his nails.
+
+Then the barren ghoul spoke tenderly and with her eyes, which she
+sought to make soft, begged the frosty Philip for love. Tears, cries,
+entreaties, she spared nothing to win a lukewarm caress from him who
+loved her not at all.
+
+Vainly, joining her hands, she dragged herself at his feet; in vain,
+like a woman out of her wits, she wept and laughed together to soften
+him; nor the laugh nor the tears melted the stone of that hard heart.
+
+In vain, like an amorous snake, she coiled her thin arms about him
+and clasped against her flat breast the narrow cage in which dwelt
+the stunted soul of the bloody king; he budged no more than if he
+had been stock or stone.
+
+She tried, poor ugly thing, to make herself alluring; she called him
+by all the sweet names that women wild with love give the lover of
+their choice; Philip still stared at his nails.
+
+Sometimes he answered:
+
+"Will you not have any children?"
+
+At that word, Mary's head fell forward on her breast.
+
+"Is it my fault," said she, "if I am barren? Take pity upon me,
+I live a widow's life."
+
+"Why have you no children?" said Philip.
+
+Then the Queen fell on the carpet like one smitten with death. And
+in her eyes were only tears, and she would have wept blood, if she
+had been able, the poor ghoul.
+
+And in this wise God avenged upon their murderers the victims with
+which they had strewn the soil of England.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+The rumour ran among the people that the Emperor Charles was minded
+to take away from the monks the free heirship of all who died in
+their convents, which mightily displeased the Pope.
+
+Ulenspiegel being then upon the banks of the Meuse thought that the
+Emperor thus reaped his profit on all sides, since he was the heir
+when the family did not inherit. He sate him down on the bank of the
+river and cast into it a well-baited line. Then munching an ancient
+piece of brown bread, he regretted that he had no wine of Romagna to
+wash it down withal, but he bethought him that a man cannot always
+have his comforts.
+
+However, he tossed some of his bread into the water, saying that he
+who eats without sharing his meal with his neighbour is not worthy
+to have victual to eat.
+
+Up came a gudgeon, that first came to nose at a crumb, licked it all
+about and opened up his innocent mouth, believing, doubtless, that
+the bread would fall into it of its own accord. While he was thus
+gazing into the air, he was all at once gulped down by a treacherous
+pike that darted out on him like an arrow.
+
+The pike did the same to a carp that was catching flies in their
+flight, heedless of any danger. Being thus nobly replete, he remained
+motionless and still, dilly-dallying, scorning the small fry that
+in any case made haste to flee from his presence with all their
+fins. While he was basking in this fashion, upon him came swift,
+voracious jaws agape, a fasting pike that with one bound hurled himself
+upon him. A fierce battle was joined between them: undying jaw strokes
+were given and taken; the water ran red with their blood. The pike
+that had dined could ill defend himself against the pike that was
+fasting; and the latter having hauled off, returned with a rush and
+flung himself like a bullet on his adversary, who, awaiting him with
+wide-open jaws, swallowed his head half way, and would fain have
+got rid of it again, but could not because of his backward slanting
+teeth. And both thrashed about miserably.
+
+Thus interlocked together, they saw not a stout hook that, fastened
+to a silk twine, rose up from the bottom of the water, sank deep in
+under the fin of the pike that had dined, drew him out of the water
+with his adversary, and cast them both rudely on the grass together.
+
+Ulenspiegel, as he killed them, said:
+
+"Pikes, my dears, would you two be the Pope and the Emperor devouring
+each the other, and would not I be the people who in God's hour seize
+you on the hook, both of you amid your battles?"
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+Meanwhile Katheline, who had not left Borgerhout, never ceased from
+wandering through the outskirts of the place, still saying: "Hanske,
+my man, they have made a fire upon my head: make a hole in it that
+my soul may win out. Alas! it beats ever against it and with every
+blow it is a cruel pang."
+
+And Nele tended her in her madness, and by her side thought sadly of
+her friend Ulenspiegel.
+
+And at Damme Claes tied his faggots, sold his charcoal, and many
+times fell into melancholy, thinking that the banished Ulenspiegel
+could not for long and long come back to their cottage.
+
+Soetkin stayed all day long at the window, looking if she would not
+see her son Ulenspiegel coming.
+
+The latter, being arrived in the neighbourhood of Cologne, thought
+that for the moment he had a fancy for gardening.
+
+He went and offered himself as servant to Jan of Zuursmoel, who being
+a captain of landsknechts, had narrowly escaped hanging in default of
+ransom and had an utter horror of hemp, which in the Fleming tongue
+was then called kennip.
+
+One day, Jan of Zuursmoel, wishing to show Ulenspiegel his tasks,
+brought him to the end of his garden and there they saw a cantle of
+land, next to the garden, all planted over with green kennip.
+
+Jan of Zuursmoel said to Ulenspiegel:
+
+"Every time you see this ugly plant, you must entreat it shamefully,
+for this it is that serveth for rack and gallows."
+
+"I will shamefully entreat it," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+Jan of Zuursmoel being one day at table with certain gourmand friends
+of his, the cook said to Ulenspiegel:
+
+"Go to the cellar and get some zennip," which is mustard.
+
+Ulenspiegel, cunningly taking it kennip instead of zennip, foully
+and shamefully entreated the pot of zennip in the cellar and came
+back to put it on the table, not without laughing.
+
+"Why are you laughing?" asked Jan of Zuursmoel. "Do you think that
+our nostrils are made of brass? Eat of this zennip, since it is you
+that dressed it yourself."
+
+"I like better things grilled with cinnamon," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+Jan of Zuursmoel got up to beat him.
+
+"There is," said he, "foulness in this pot of mustard."
+
+"Baes," said Ulenspiegel, "have you no mind of the day when I went at
+your heels to the far end of your garden? There, you bade me, showing
+the zennip: 'Everywhere you see that plant, entreat it foully, for
+this it is that serveth for rack and gallows.' I did entreat it so,
+baes, I did entreat it shamefully with great affronting; do not now
+go to murder me for my obedience."
+
+"I said kennip and not zennip," shouted Jan of Zuursmoel in a fury.
+
+"Baes, you said zennip and not kennip," retorted Ulenspiegel.
+
+Thus they argued loud and long, Ulenspiegel speaking humbly, Jan of
+Zuursmoel screaming like an eagle and mixing up zennip, kennip, kemp,
+zemp, zemp, kemp, zemp, like a skein of ravelled silk.
+
+And the guests laughed like devils eating cutlets of Dominican friars
+and inquisitors' kidneys.
+
+But Ulenspiegel must needs leave Jan of Zuursmoel.
+
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+Nele was still always miserable for the sake of herself and her
+witless mother.
+
+Ulenspiegel hired himself to a tailor who said to him:
+
+"When you sew, sew close, so that I can see nothing."
+
+Ulenspiegel went and sat under a cask and there began to sew.
+
+"That is not what I mean," cried the tailor.
+
+"I am close in a cask; how do you think any one can see in
+it?" answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Come," said the tailor, "take your seat there on the table and make
+your stitches close one to the other and make the coat like this
+wolf--" wolf was the name of a peasant's jerkin.
+
+Ulenspiegel took the jerkin, cut it in pieces and sewed it so as to
+give it the semblance and shape of a wolf.
+
+The tailor, seeing this, cried out:
+
+"What have you made, in the devil's name?"
+
+"A wolf," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Evil mocker," said the tailor, "I had told you a wolf, it is true,
+but you know that wolf is said of a peasant's jerkin."
+
+Sometime after he said:
+
+"Boy, cast these sleeves on to this doublet before you go to your bed."
+
+Ulenspiegel hung up the doublet on a nail and spent the whole night
+throwing the sleeves at it.
+
+The tailor came down to the noise.
+
+"Good-for-naught," said he, "what new ill trick are you playing
+me now?"
+
+"Is that an ill trick?" answered Ulenspiegel. "See those sleeves,
+I have thrown them all night long against the doublet, and they don't
+stick to it yet."
+
+"That is natural," said the tailor. "And that is why I am throwing
+you out into the street: see if you will stick there better than the
+sleeves did."
+
+
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+Meanwhile Nele, when Katheline was in the house of some kindly
+neighbour, and well looked after, Nele used to go far far afield,
+all alone, as far as Antwerp, all along by the Scheldt or elsewhere,
+ever seeking, both on the river banks and on the dusty highways,
+if she could not see her friend Ulenspiegel.
+
+One fair-day, being at Hamburg, he saw merchants everywhere, and
+among them certain old Jews living on usury and old clothes.
+
+Ulenspiegel, desiring to be a merchant, too, saw lying on the ground
+some lumps of horse dung and brought them to his lodging, which was
+a bastion of the rampart wall. There he dried them, and then bought
+red silk and green silk and made little bags with them, and put the
+horse dung in the bags and tied them with ribbon, as if they had been
+full of musk.
+
+Then with some pieces of board he made himself a pedlar's tray, hung
+it about his neck by means of old cords and came into the market,
+carrying in front of him his tray filled with these sachets. In the
+evening to light them up he had a little candle burning in their midst.
+
+When any came and asked him what he had for sale, he would reply
+mysteriously:
+
+"I will tell you, but let us not speak too loud."
+
+"What is it then?" the customers would say.
+
+"These," Ulenspiegel replied, "are prophetical seeds, fetched straight
+from Araby into Flanders, and prepared with mighty art by the master
+Abdul-Medil of the kin of the great Mahomet."
+
+Certain customers would say one to another:
+
+"He is a Turk."
+
+But the others:
+
+"This is a pilgrim coming out of Flanders," they would say; "do you
+not hear it by his speech?"
+
+And the ragged, lousy, wretched poor folk came to Ulenspiegel and
+said to him:
+
+"Give us of these prophetical seeds?"
+
+"When you have florins to buy them," answered Ulenspiegel. And the
+poor, ragged, lousy, wretched went away sorrowful, saying:
+
+"There is no content in this world but for the rich."
+
+The tale of these seeds for sale was soon spread abroad in the
+market. The citizens said one to another:
+
+"There is a Flanders man there that hath prophetical seeds blessed
+at Jerusalem upon the tomb of Our Lord Jesus, but they say he has no
+mind to sell them."
+
+And all the good citizens came to Ulenspiegel and asked him for
+his seeds.
+
+But Ulenspiegel, who meant to have great profits, answered that they
+were not as yet ripened sufficiently, and he had an eye upon two rich
+Jews that went wandering about the market.
+
+"I would fain know," said one of the citizens, "what will come of my
+ship that is on the sea."
+
+"It will go as far as heaven, if the waves are high enough," said
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+Another said, showing him his pretty daughter, all full of blushes:
+
+"This one will doubtless turn out well?"
+
+"Everything turns to what nature will have," replied Ulenspiegel,
+for he had just seen the girl give a key to a young man who, puffed
+up with content, said to Ulenspiegel:
+
+"Master merchant, give me one of your prophesying bags, that I may
+see whether I shall sleep alone to-night."
+
+"It is written," replied Ulenspiegel, "that he who soweth the rye of
+seduction reaps the ergot of cuckoldom."
+
+The young man became wrathful.
+
+"What are you talking about?" said he.
+
+"The seeds say," replied Ulenspiegel, "that they wish thee a happy
+marriage and a wife that will not bring thee Vulcan's hat. Dost thou
+know that headgear?"
+
+Then declaiming like a preacher:
+
+"For she," said he, "that giveth earnest upon the marriage bargain
+leaves afterwards the whole merchandise to others for nothing."
+
+Hereupon the girl, wishing to pretend assurance:
+
+"Is all that to be seen in the prophesying sachets?"
+
+"There is a key to be seen there also," said Ulenspiegel low in
+her ear.
+
+But the young man had gone already with the key.
+
+Suddenly Ulenspiegel perceived a thief sneaking from a pork butcher's
+stall a sausage an ell long and putting it under his cloak. But the
+merchant saw him not. The thief, full of glee, came to Ulenspiegel
+and said to him:
+
+"What are you selling there, prophet of ill?"
+
+"Sachets wherein you shall see that you will be hanged for loving
+sausage overly much," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+At that word the thief fled swiftly, while the robbed merchant
+cried out:
+
+"Stop thief! stop thief!"
+
+But he was too late.
+
+While Ulenspiegel was speaking, the two rich Jews, who had listened
+with the sharpest attention, came up to him and said:
+
+"What sellest thou there, Fleming?"
+
+"Sachets," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"What can one see," they asked, "by means of thy prophetical seeds?"
+
+"Future events, when one sucks them," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+The two Jews consulted one another, and the elder said to the other:
+
+"We could see thus when our Messiah will come; that would be a mighty
+consolement to us. Let us buy one of these sachets. How much is your
+price?" said they.
+
+"Fifty florins," replied Ulenspiegel. "If ye are not willing to pay
+this for it, ye may as well be off. He that will not buy the field
+must leave the dung where it is."
+
+Seeing Ulenspiegel so determined, they counted out his money, took
+away one of the sachets and hied them to their place of assembly,
+whither came all the Jews hastily flocking, having learned that one of
+the two old men had bought a secret device by which he could discover
+and announce the coming of the Messiah.
+
+Apprised of the matter, they would all fain have sucked at the
+prophesying sachet without paying; but the elder of the two Jews,
+who had bought it and whose name was Jehu, claimed to do this himself.
+
+"Son of Israel," said he, holding the sachet in his hand, "the
+Christians mock at us, we are driven out from among our fellowmen, and
+folk cry out after us as they cry out after thieves. The Philistines
+would fain abase us lower than the earth; they spit in our faces,
+for God hath cut our bowstrings and shaken the bridle before us. Must
+it still be long, Lord, God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, that
+evil cometh to us when we look for good, and the shadows fall when
+we hope for the light? Wilt thou soon appear upon the earth, divine
+Messiah? When shall the Christians hide themselves in the caves and
+the holes of the earth because of the terror they will have of thee
+and of thy glory magnifical when thou dost rise up to chastise them?"
+
+And the Jews began to clamour.
+
+"Come, Messias! Suck, Jehu!"
+
+Jehu sucked, and spewing out, cried lamentably:
+
+"I tell you verily this is nothing else but dung, and that pilgrim
+out of Flanders is a robber."
+
+Then all the Jews, rushing up, tore open the sachet and saw what it
+contained, and went off in high fury to the fair to find Ulenspiegel
+there, who forsooth had not awaited their coming.
+
+
+
+
+
+L
+
+A man of Damme, not being able to pay Claes for his coal, gave him his
+most valuable possession, which was an arbalest with twelve quarrels
+well pointed to serve as missiles.
+
+In hours when work was slack Claes went shooting with the cross
+bow; more than one hare was killed by his prowess and turned into a
+fricassee all through harbouring an inordinate love of cabbages.
+
+Then would Claes eat greedily, and Soetkin would say, looking out
+upon the empty high road:
+
+"Thyl, my son, dost thou not smell the fragrance of the sauces? He is
+an-hungered without doubt at this hour." And all pensive, she would
+fain have kept him his share of the feast.
+
+"If he is hungry," said Claes, "it is his own fault; let him come back,
+he shall fare as we do."
+
+Claes kept pigeons; he liked, besides, to hear singing and chirruping
+about him, warblers, goldfinches, sparrows, and other birds that sing
+and chatter. And so he was swift and ready to shoot the buzzards and
+the royal sparhawks that were devourers of this poor folk.
+
+Now once when he was measuring coal in the yard, Soetkin pointed out
+to him a great bird hovering high in air above the dove cote.
+
+Claes seized his cross bow and said:
+
+"May the Devil save his Hawkship!"
+
+Having made ready his cross bow, he took his stand in the yard,
+following every movement of the bird, so as not to miss it. The light
+in the sky was between day and night, Claes could only discern a black
+speck. He loosed the quarrel and saw a stork come tumbling down into
+the yard.
+
+Claes was sorely grieved thereat; but Soetkin was grieved worse,
+and cried out:
+
+"Cruel, thou hast slain God's own bird!"
+
+Then she took up the stork, and saw that she was but wounded in a wing,
+went to fetch a balsam, and said while she was dressing the wound:
+
+"Stork, my dear, 'tis not clever of you that we all love, to hover
+in the sky like the sparhawk we all hate. And so poor folks' arrows
+fly to the wrong address. Art thou hurt in thy poor wing, stork,
+that dost submit so patiently, knowing that our hands are the loving
+hands of friends?"
+
+When the stork was healed, she had everything to eat that she wanted;
+but she liked best the fish Claes went and caught in the canal for
+her. And every time the bird of God saw him coming, she opened her
+huge beak.
+
+She followed Claes about like a dog, but stayed in the kitchen for
+preference, warming her belly by the fire, and knocking with her beak
+on Soetkin's front as she got the dinner ready, as much as to ask her:
+
+"Is there nothing for me?"
+
+And it was merry to behold this solemn messenger of good luck wandering
+about the cottage on her long stilts.
+
+
+
+
+
+LI
+
+Now the bad days were come again; Claes was working alone and sadly
+on the land, for there was not work enough for two. Soetkin stayed
+in the cottage alone, dressing in every possible way the beans that
+were their daily fare, in order to liven her man's appetite. And she
+went singing and laughing so that he should not suffer to see her
+sad. The stork stayed close beside her, mounted on one leg and beak
+buried in her feathers.
+
+A man on horseback stopped before the cottage; he was all arrayed in
+black, very lean, and had an air of profound sadness.
+
+"Is there any one within?" he asked.
+
+"God bless Your Melancholy," answered Soetkin; "but am I, for one, a
+phantom that seeing me here you should ask if there is any one within?"
+
+"Where is your father?" asked the horseman.
+
+"If my father's name be Claes, he is out yonder," answered Soetkin,
+"and you see him sowing corn."
+
+The horseman went away, and Soetkin, too, all downcast, for she must go
+for the sixth time to fetch bread from the baker's without paying for
+it. When she came back thence with empty hands, she was astonished
+to see Claes coming back to their house, triumphant and lordly,
+upon the horse of the man in black, who was going afoot beside him
+and holding the rein. Claes was proudly holding in one hand against
+his thigh a leathern wallet that seemed well stuffed.
+
+Dismounting, he embraced the man, banged him merrily, then shaking
+the bag, he cried out:
+
+"Long live my brother Josse, the good hermit! God keep him in joy,
+in fat, in mirth, in health! He is the Josse of benediction, the
+Josse of plenty, the Josse of rich fat soups! The stork did not play
+us false!" And he put the bag down upon the table.
+
+Therewith said Soetkin lamentably:
+
+"My man, we shall not eat to-day: the baker has denied me bread."
+
+"Bread?" said Claes, opening the bag and pouring out a stream of
+gold on the table, "bread? Lo, here is bread, butter, meat, wine,
+beer! Here be hams, marrow bones, pies of herons, ortolans, fat hens,
+as for great lords! Here is beer in hogsheads and wine by the cask! Mad
+and mad will be the baker that will deny us bread, we shall buy no
+more in his shop."
+
+"But, my man...!" said Soetkin all a-daze.
+
+"Now, then, hearken," said Claes, "and be light of heart. Katheline,
+instead of wearing out her term of banishment in the marquisate of
+Antwerp, went on foot, under Nele's guidance, as far as Meyborg. There
+Nele told my brother Josse that often we live in black want, in spite
+of my sore toil. According to what this good fellow messenger has
+told me but now"--and Claes pointed to the horseman in black--"Josse
+hath abandoned the Roman religion to adhere to the heresy of Luther."
+
+The man in black replied:
+
+"Those be the heretics that follow the cult of the Great Harlot. For
+the Pope hath betrayed his trust and is a seller of holy things."
+
+"Ah!" said Soetkin, "speak not so loud, good sir, you will cause us
+to be burned all three."
+
+"And so," said Claes, "Josse said to this good fellow messenger that
+since he was about to fight among the troops of Frederick of Saxony,
+and was taking him fifty well-found men at arms, he had no need,
+going into war, of so much money, to bequeath it in some ill hour to
+some rogue of a landsknecht. 'So,' said he, 'take it to my brother
+Claes, with my blessing, these seven hundred gold florins carolus:
+tell him to live in comfort and think upon his soul's salvation'."
+
+"Aye," said the horseman, "it is time for it, for God will render
+unto man according to his works, and will entreat each one according
+as he hath deserved in his life."
+
+"Good sir," said Claes, "it will not be forbidden me in the meantime to
+rejoice at this good tidings; deign to stay within here, we shall, to
+do it honour, eat goodly tripe, carbonadoes without stint, a neat ham
+which lately I beheld so plump and appetizing in the pork butcher's,
+that it made my teeth come out a foot long out of my jaws."
+
+"Alas!" said the other, "madmen thus take their joy the while the
+eyes of God are upon their ways."
+
+"Come now, messenger," said Claes, "Will you or will you not eat and
+drink with us?"
+
+The man replied:
+
+"It will be time for the faithful to give their souls up to earthly
+joys when great Babylon is fallen!"
+
+Soetkin and Claes making the sign of the cross, he would have gone
+away:
+
+Claes said to him:
+
+"Since it is your pleasure thus to go away without being made much
+of, give my brother Josse the kiss of peace and watch over him in
+the battle."
+
+"I will do so," said the man.
+
+And he went away, while Soetkin went to bring wherewithal to feast
+propitious fortune. The stork that day had for supper two gudgeons
+and a cod's head.
+
+The news spread swiftly through Damme that Claes the poor had become
+Claes the rich through the act of his brother Josse, and the dean said
+that Katheline had doubtless cast a spell on Josse, since Claes had
+received from him a sum of money, a very great sum, beyond a doubt,
+and had not given the poorest robe to Our Lady.
+
+Claes and Soetkin were happy, Claes working in the fields or selling
+his coal, and Soetkin showing herself a brave housekeeper at home.
+
+But Soetkin, always sad, sought unceasingly with her eyes for
+Ulenspiegel along the highway.
+
+
+
+
+
+LII
+
+That day the Emperor Charles received from England a letter in which
+his son said to him:
+
+
+    Sir and Father:
+
+
+    It displeases me to have to live in this land where the accursed
+    heretics breed like fleas and caterpillars and locusts. Fire and
+    sword would not be amiss to lop them from off the trunk of the
+    life-giving tree our mother Holy Church. As if this grief were
+    not enough for me, still it must needs be that they will not look
+    on me as their king, but as their queen's husband, and having no
+    authority apart from her. They make game of me, saying in malicious
+    pamphlets, whose authors and printers none can discover, that the
+    Pope pays me to trouble and harm the realm with impious hangings
+    and burnings, and when I would raise some urgent levy from them,
+    for oftentimes they leave me without money, out of mere malice,
+    they reply in evil lampoons that I have but to ask money from Satan
+    whose work I do. The men of the Parliament make excuses and hunch
+    up their backs in fear lest I should bite, but they grant nothing.
+
+    All the while the walls of London are covered with lampoons
+    representing me as a parricide ready to strike down Your Majesty
+    to have your inheritance.
+
+    But you know, my lord and father, that in spite of all my
+    legitimate ambition and pride, I wish Your Majesty a long and
+    glorious reign.
+
+    They scatter also throughout the town a drawing all too cleverly
+    engraved on copper, in which I am seen making cats play upon
+    a harpsichord with their paws, shut up inside the instruments,
+    with their tails protruding through round holes into which they
+    are fastened with iron pins. A man, who is myself, is burning
+    their tails with a red-hot iron, and so making them strike on the
+    keys with their paws and yowl desperately. I am depicted as so
+    ugly that I cannot even bear to look at myself in it. And they
+    show me laughing. Now you must know, dear sir and father, if I
+    happened to take this profane pleasure at any time, I doubtless
+    endeavoured to amuse myself by making these cats mew, but I never
+    laughed. They make it a crime in me, in their rebel's talk, what
+    they call the newfangledness and cruelty of this harpsichord,
+    although the beasts have no souls, and though men and especially
+    all royal personages may use them even unto death for their
+    diversion. But in this land of England they are so well mated
+    with beasts that they treat them better than their servants;
+    stables and kennels here are palaces, and there are lords even
+    that sleep with their horses on the same litter.
+
+    Furthermore, my noble wife and queen is barren; they declare by
+    way of brutal insult that I am the reason, and not she who is
+    also jealous, sullen, and gluttonous of love beyond degree. Dear
+    sir and father, every day I implore our Lord God to have me in
+    his grace, hoping for another throne, were it among the Turks,
+    while awaiting that to which I am called by the honour of being
+    the son of your most glorious and greatly victorious Majesty.
+
+
+        (Signed) Philip.
+
+
+To this letter the Emperor made answer:
+
+
+    Sir and Son:
+
+
+    Your enemies are strong, I do not contest the fact, but endeavour
+    to endure with patience the waiting for a more illustrious crown. I
+    have already announced to divers the intention I have conceived
+    of withdrawing from the Low Countries and my other dominions,
+    for I am well aware that old and gouty as I now become, I cannot
+    well make head against Henry of France, second of the name,
+    for Fortune loveth the young. Think also that as the master of
+    England you wound by your power our enemy France.
+
+    I was foully beaten before Metz, and lost forty thousand men
+    there. I was forced to flee before him of Saxony. If God doth not
+    restore me by a touch of his good and divine will unto my full
+    strength and vigour, I am minded, dear sir and son, to quit my
+    realms and leave them to you.
+
+    Have therefore patience and meanwhile do your duty fully against
+    the heretics, sparing none of them, men, women, girls, nor babes,
+    for word has come to me, to my great grief, that madame the queen
+    would fain ofttimes have shown them grace.
+
+
+        Your affectionate father,
+            (Signed) Charles.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIII
+
+Having tramped a long time, Ulenspiegel's feet were bleeding, and in
+the bishopric of Mayence he met with a pilgrims' cart that brought
+him to Rome.
+
+When he came into the city and got down from his cart, he descried
+upon the threshold of an inn a pretty goodwife who smiled, seeing
+him look at her.
+
+Auguring well from this good humour:
+
+"Hostess," said he, "will you give a sanctuary to a pilgrim on
+pilgrimage, for I have come to my time and must be brought to bed
+with the remission of my sins."
+
+"We grant sanctuary to all that pay us."
+
+"I have a hundred ducats in my wallet," said Ulenspiegel, who had
+but one, "and I would be pleased to spend the first one with you in
+drinking a bottle of old wine of Rome."
+
+"Wine is not dear in these holy places," answered she. "Come in and
+drink for a soldo."
+
+They drank together so long and emptied so many flagons with small
+talk that the hostess was forced to bid her servant give the customers
+their drink, while she and Ulenspiegel withdrew into a back parlour
+all of marble and as cold as winter.
+
+Leaning her head on his shoulder she asked him who he was. Ulenspiegel
+replied:
+
+"I am Sire of Geeland, Count of Gavergeeten, Baron of Tuchtendell,
+and at Damme, which is my birthplace, I have five and twenty bonniers
+of moonshine."
+
+"What land is that?" asked the hostess, drinking out of Ulenspiegel's
+tankard.
+
+"It is," said he, "a soil wherein are sown the seeds of illusion,
+of wild hopes and airy promises. But thou wast not born in the
+moonlight land, sweet hostess of the amber skin, and eyes shining like
+pearls. 'Tis the sun's colour the embrowned gold of thy hair; it was
+Venus that without jealousy bestowed on thee thy plump shoulders,
+thy full breasts, thy round arms, thy dainty hands. Shall we sup
+together to-night?"
+
+"Handsome pilgrim of Flanders," said she, "why do you come hither?"
+
+"To talk with the Pope," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Alas!" said she, joining her hands, "talk with the Pope! I that am
+of this land, I have never been able to do that."
+
+"I shall do it," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"But," said she, "know you where he goes, what manner of man he is,
+what are his habits and his ways of living?"
+
+"They told me on my way," said Ulenspiegel, "that he has to name
+Julius the Third, that he is wanton, gay, and dissolute, a good talker
+and quick in repartee. They told me, too, that he had conceived an
+extraordinary friendship for a little beggar fellow, black, dirty,
+and forbidding, who begged for alms with a monkey, and that on his
+arriving at the pontifical throne, he made him cardinal of the Mount,
+and that he is ill whenever a day goes by without seeing him."
+
+"Drink," said she, "and do not speak so loud."
+
+"They told me, too," said Ulenspiegel, "that he swore like a trooper:
+Al dispetto di Dio, potta di Dio; one day when at supper he did
+not find a cold peacock he had had kept for himself, saying, 'I,
+the Vicar of God, may very well swear over a peacock since my master
+lost his temper for an apple!' You see, my dear, that I know the Pope
+and what he is."
+
+"Alas!" said she, "but don't speak of it to other people. And in any
+case you will never see him."
+
+"I shall speak with him," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"If you do, I give you a hundred florins."
+
+"They are mine already," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+The next day, although he was leg-weary, he went about the town
+and discovered where the Pope would say mass that day, at St. John
+Lateran. Ulenspiegel went thither and stationed himself as near and as
+plain to the Pope as he could compass, and every time the Pope raised
+the chalice or the host, Ulenspiegel turned his back upon the altar.
+
+Beside the Pope was a cardinal serving, brown of visage, cunning
+and portly, who, with an ape on his shoulder, gave the people the
+sacrament with many wanton gestures. He called the Pope's attention
+to Ulenspiegel, and as soon as the mass was completed, His Holiness
+sent four famous soldiers such as are known in these warlike lands,
+to seize the pilgrim.
+
+"What is your belief?" the Pope asked him.
+
+"Most Holy Father," replied Ulenspiegel, "I hold the same belief as
+my hostess."
+
+The Pope sent for the goodwife.
+
+"What dost thou believe?" he said to her.
+
+"What your Holiness believes," she answered.
+
+"And I the same," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+The Pope then asked him why he had turned his back on the Holy
+Sacrament.
+
+"I felt myself unworthy to look upon it face to face," replied
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Thou art a pilgrim," said the Pope.
+
+"Yea," said he, "and from Flanders I come to beg the remission of
+my sins."
+
+The Pope gave him his blessing, and Ulenspiegel departed with the
+hostess, who told him out one hundred florins. Thus ballasted he left
+Rome to return thence to the land of Flanders.
+
+But he must needs pay seven ducats for his pardon inscribed on
+parchment.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+In these days there came two Premonstratensian friars to Damme with
+indulgences for sale. They were attired, over their monkish array,
+in a fine shirt trimmed with lace.
+
+Posting themselves at the church door when it was fair weather,
+and under the porch when it was foul and rainy, they put up their
+tariff, in which they marked down for six liards, for a patard, a half
+livre of Paris, for seven, for twelve florins carolus, a hundred, two
+hundred, four hundred years of indulgence, and according to the price,
+demiplenary or full plenary, and forgiveness for the most heinous
+crimes, even that of desiring to violate Madame the Virgin. But that
+one cost seventeen florins.
+
+They delivered to buyers who paid them certain little bits of parchment
+on which was written the number of years of indulgence. Above was
+found this inscription:
+
+
+        He that would not be
+        Stewed, roast, or fried
+        A thousand years in purgatory
+        Still in hell burning,
+        Let him buy indulgence,
+        Grace and compassion,
+        For a little silver,
+        God will repay him.
+
+
+And there came buyers from ten leagues roundabout. One of the good
+friars often preached to the people; he had a face well blossomed
+and carried his three chins and his paunch with no false modesty.
+
+"Miserable man!" he would say, fixing his eyes on one or another
+of his hearers; "miserable man! lo, there thou art, in hell! The
+fire burns thee cruelly: they are boiling thee in the cauldron of
+oil in which they cook Astarte's olie koekjes; thou art but a black
+pudding on Lucifer's frying pan, a leg of mutton on Guilguiroth's,
+the great devil, for thou art first cut into joints. Look now on this
+great sinner, who contemned indulgences; see that dish of fricadelle;
+'tis he, 'tis he, his impious body, his damned body boiled down to
+this. And what a sauce! sulphur, pitch, and tar! And all these poor
+sinners are thus eaten only to be reborn continually to anguish. And
+it is there that there is verily weeping and wailing and gnashing of
+teeth. Have pity, God of compassion! Aye, there thou art in hell,
+poor damned one, suffering all these torments. Should one give a
+denier for thee, thou feelest all at once an easement in thy right
+hand; should another half denier be given, there are both thy hands
+out of the flame. But the rest of the body? A florin, and here falls
+the healing dew of the indulgence. O coolness delicious! And for ten
+days, a hundred days, a thousand years, according to what is paid:
+no more roast, no more olie koekje, nor fricassee! And if it be not
+for thee, sinner, are there not yonder in the hidden deeps of the fire
+poor souls thy parents, a beloved wife, some dear girl with whom thou
+once delightedst to sin?"
+
+And so saying, the monk would give a nudge to the friar who stood
+beside him, with a silver basin. And the friar, lowering his eyes
+at this signal, would shake his basin impressively to call the money
+to it.
+
+"Hast thou not," the monk would continue, "hast thou not in this
+dreadful fire a son, a daughter, some darling babe? They cry, they
+weep, they call on thee. Canst thou remain deaf to those lamentable
+voices? Thou couldst not; thy heart of ice will melt, but that
+will cost thee a carolus. And see: at the chime of the carolus
+upon this common metal ... (the other monk still shook his basin)
+a void is made within the fire, and the poor soul mounts up to the
+lip of some volcano. Lo, there it is in the cool air, in the free
+air! Where are the torments of the fire? The sea is near at hand, it
+plunges in, it swims on back, on front, above the waves and beneath
+the waves. Hearken how it crieth out for joy, look how it wallows in
+the water! The angels look on it and rejoice. They await it, but still
+it hath not enough, fain would it become a fish. It knoweth not that
+there on high are delicious baths full of perfumes in which float
+great lumps of sugar candy white and cold as ice. A shark cometh:
+the soul dreads him not. It climbs upon his back, but he feels it
+not; it would fain go with him into the depths of the sea. There it
+goeth to salute the angels of the waters, that eat waterzoey in coral
+kettles and fresh oysters on platters of mother of pearl. And how it
+is welcomed, feasted, made much of; the angels still call it from on
+high. At length, nobly refreshed, and happy, dost thou see it, how it
+flies up singing like a lark up to the highest heaven where God sitteth
+throned in glory? There it findeth all its earthly relatives and
+friends, save those that having slandered and missaid the indulgences
+of our Mother Holy Church, burn in the abyss of hell. And so for ever,
+ever, ever and always, even from age to age, throughout eternity of
+agony. But the other soul, that is close to God, refreshing itself
+in the delicious baths and eating the sugar candy. Buy indulgences,
+my brothers; they are to be had for crusadoes, for gold florins. Buy,
+buy, buy! this is the holy shop; there is here for the poor and for
+the rich, but unhappily there can be no credit, my brothers, for to
+buy and not pay ready money is a crime in the Lord's eyes."
+
+The brother who was not preaching went on shaking his dish. Florins,
+crusadoes, ducats, patards, sols, and deniers fell into it thick
+as hail.
+
+Claes, seeing himself a rich man, paid a florin for ten thousand years'
+indulgence. The monks gave him a piece of parchment in exchange.
+
+Soon, seeing that there was nobody left in Damme who had not bought
+indulgence except the very scum of poverty, they went away together
+to Heyst.
+
+
+
+
+
+LV
+
+Clad in his pilgrim's garb and duly and well absolved of his sins,
+Ulenspiegel left Rome, tramping ever straight on before him, and came
+to Bamberg, where the best vegetables in the world are.
+
+He went into an inn where there was a jolly hostess, who said to him:
+
+"Young master, would you have victual for your money?"
+
+"Aye," said Ulenspiegel. "But for what sum does one eat here?"
+
+The hostess answered:
+
+"You eat at the nobles' table for six florins; at the citizens'
+table for four florins, at the house table for two."
+
+"The most money is the best for me," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+So he went and sate down at the nobles' table. When he was well filled
+and had washed down his dinner with Rhine wine, he said to his hostess:
+
+"Goodwife, I have eaten well for my money. Give me the six florins."
+
+The hostess said to him:
+
+"Are you making game of me? Pay your score."
+
+"Dear baesine," replied Ulenspiegel, "you have not the countenance of
+a fraudulent debtor; I see in it, on the contrary, so great a good
+faith, so much loyalty and love of neighbours that you would liefer
+pay me eighteen florins than refuse me the six you owe me. Those
+lovely eyes! 'tis the sun blazing on me, making the madness of love
+spring up higher than couch grass in a deserted garden."
+
+The hostess answered:
+
+"I have nothing to do with your madness or your couch grass; pay and
+be off."
+
+"To be off," said Ulenspiegel, "and never you see again! Far rather
+would I die on the spot. Baesine, gentle baesine, I am little used to
+eat for six florins, I, a poor young man wandering by hill and dale;
+I am stuffed and full, and presently my tongue will hang out like
+a dog's in the sun: be so good as to pay me, I have well and duly
+earned the six florins by my hard jaw work; give me them and I will
+caress you, kiss you, embrace you with so great heat of gratitude that
+twenty-seven lovers could not all together suffice for such a task."
+
+"You are talking for money," said she.
+
+"Would you have me eat you for nothing?" said he.
+
+"No," said she, defending herself from him.
+
+"Ah!" he sighed, pursuing her, "your skin is like cream, your hair
+like pheasant roasted golden on the spit, your lips like cherries! Is
+there any woman more dainty than you?"
+
+"It becomes you well, nasty ruffian," said she, smiling, "to come
+still demanding six florins from me. Be happy that I have fed you
+gratis and asked you for nothing."
+
+"If you only knew," said Ulenspiegel, "how much space there is still!"
+
+"Go!" said the hostess, "before my husband comes."
+
+"I will be a lenient creditor," replied Ulenspiegel; "give me just
+one florin for future thirst."
+
+"Here," said she, "bad boy."
+
+And she gave it to him.
+
+"Will you kindly go away?" said she.
+
+"To go kindly would be to go to you, my dear, but it is going unkindly
+to leave your beauteous eyes. If you would deign to keep me with you
+I should eat no more than but a florin every day."
+
+"Must I take a yard stick?" said she.
+
+"Take mine," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+She laughed, but he must needs be gone.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+Lamme Goedzak, in these days, came once more to live in Damme, the
+country of Liege being far from tranquil on account of heresy. His
+wife followed him with a good will, because the Liege people, good
+mockers by nature, made game of her husband's easy meekness.
+
+Lamme often visited Claes, who since he had his inheritance, haunted
+the tavern of the Blauwe Torre and had chosen out a table there
+for himself and his boon companions. At the next table there sat,
+meanly drinking his pint pot, Josse Grypstuiver, the miserly dean of
+the fishmongers, a scurvy fellow, niggard, living on red herrings,
+loving money more than his soul's salvation. Claes had put in his
+pouch the piece of parchment on which were marked his ten thousand
+years of indulgence.
+
+One night when he was at the Blauwe Torre in the company of Lamme
+Goedzak, Jan van Roosebekke, and Mathys van Assche, Josse Grypstuiver
+being present, Claes made good play with the pot, and Jan Roosebekke
+said to him:
+
+"'Tis a sin to drink so much!"
+
+Claes replied:
+
+"You only burn half a day for a quart too much. And I have ten thousand
+years of indulgence in my pouch. Who would like a hundred so as to
+be able to drown his belly without fear or favour?"
+
+All cried out:
+
+"What is your price for them?"
+
+"A quart," replied Claes, "but I will give a hundred and fifty for
+a muske conyn."
+
+Certain drinkers paid Claes, one a stoup, one a piece of ham, and he
+cut off a little strip of parchment for each of them. It was not Claes
+who ate and drank the price of the indulgence, but Lamme Goedzak,
+who ate until he was visibly a-swelling while Claes came and went
+through the tavern retailing his wares.
+
+Grypstuiver, turning his sour face towards him:
+
+"Have you a piece for ten days?" said he.
+
+"No," said Claes, "it's too hard to cut."
+
+And everyone laughed, and Grypstuiver swallowed his rage. Then Claes
+went off to his cottage, followed by Lamme, walking as if his legs
+were made of wool.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+Towards the end of her third year of banishment Katheline came back to
+her own house at Damme. And she never ceased to say in witless fashion:
+"Fire on my head, the soul is knocking, make a hole, it would fain come
+out." And she still fled away at the sight of oxen and of sheep. And
+she sat on the bench under the lime trees, behind her cottage, wagging
+her head and looking, without knowing them, at the folk of Damme,
+who said as they passed by in front of her, "There is the madwife."
+
+At this time, strolling by highways and byways, Ulenspiegel saw on
+the high road an ass harnessed with leather studded with copper nails,
+and its head adorned with tufts and tassels of red wool.
+
+Certain old women stood about the ass all talking at the same time
+and saying: "No one can take possession of it, it is the horrible
+mount of the great wizard the Baron de Raix, who was burned alive
+for having sacrificed eight children to the devil----" "Gossips, he
+ran away so quickly that they could not catch him. Satan is in him
+to protect him----" "For while being weary, he stayed on his way,
+the sergeants of the commune came to take him bodily, but he reared
+and brayed so terribly that they dared not come near him----" "And it
+was not the braying of an ass but the roaring voice of a demon----"
+"So they left him to browse on thistles without putting him on his
+trial or burning him alive as a wizard----" "These folk have no kind
+of courage----"
+
+In spite of all this fine talk, as soon as the donkey pricked up
+his ears or lashed his ribs with his tail, the women fled shrieking,
+to come in again chattering and jabbering, and to do the same thing
+again at the least movement of the donkey.
+
+But Ulenspiegel, contemplating them and laughing:
+
+"Ah," said he, "endless curiosity and everlasting babble flow like
+a river from the mouths of gossips and especially the old ones,
+for in the young, the flood is less common because of their amorous
+employments."
+
+Considering next the ass:
+
+"This wizard beast," said he, "is nimble and without doubt no sloucher;
+I can either ride or sell him."
+
+He went off without a word, to fetch a peck of oats, made the ass
+eat them, leaped lightly on his back, and tightening up the rein,
+turned to the north, the east, and the west, and from afar blessed
+the old women. These, swooning for terror, knelt down, and that day
+at the evening hour in the village it was told how an angel with a
+pheasant plumed hat on his head had come, had blessed them all and
+taken away the wizard's ass, by special favour of God.
+
+And Ulenspiegel went off bestriding his ass among rich fat meadows
+where the horses leaped in freedom, where cows and heifers grazed,
+lying idly in the sun. And he called him Jef.
+
+The ass stopped and dined merrily on thistles. Sometimes he shivered
+with all his skin the while, and lashed his ribs with his tail to
+drive off the greedy horse flies that would fain dine like himself,
+but on his flesh.
+
+Ulenspiegel, whose stomach cried hunger, was melancholy.
+
+"You would be full happy," said he, "master ass, dining like this on
+fine fat thistles, if no one came to disturb you in your comfort and
+remind you that you are mortal, that is to say, born to endure every
+kind of hardship."
+
+"Even like thee," he went on, gripping him with his legs, "even
+like thyself He of the Holy Slipper hath his gadfly, 'tis Master
+Luther; and his High Majesty King Charles hath his also, that is
+Messire Francois first of the name, the King with the long nose
+and the still longer sword. It is then permissible for me, a poor
+little fellow wandering like a Jew, to have my gadfly, too, master
+donkey. Alas, all my pockets have holes, and through the holes away
+go gadding all my lovely ducats, florins, and daelders, like a legion
+of mice scattering to flight before the jaws of a cat. I know not
+why money will have naught to do with me, me who so greatly desire
+money. Fortune is no woman, whatever they say, for she loveth but the
+scurvy miser loons that coffer her up, pouch her up, lock her up under
+twenty keys, and never allow her to show as much as the tip of her
+little golden nose at the window. That is the gadfly that devours me
+and stings me, and tickles me but not to make me laugh. You are not
+listening to me, master donkey, and you are thinking of nothing but
+your grazing. Ah! belly worshipper, filling thy belly, thy long ears
+are deaf to the cry of an empty stomach. Listen to me, I want you to."
+
+And he lashed him bitterly. The ass began to bray.
+
+"Let us come away now that you have sung your song," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+But the donkey would not budge any more than a stone post, and
+seemed to have resolved to eat to the last one every thistle along
+the way. And there was no lack of them.
+
+Ulenspiegel, perceiving this, he dismounted, cut a bunch of thistles,
+got up on his donkey again, held the bunch under his muzzle, and led
+him by the nose as far as the territories of the Landgrave of Hesse.
+
+"Master donkey," said he, as they went on their way, "you run nimbly
+behind my bunch of thistles, a thin diet and poor, and leave behind
+you the fine highway all thick beset with these dainty plants. Even
+so do men, smelling some after the bouquet of glory that Fortune
+holds under their noses, others after the nosegay of gain, others the
+nosegay of love. At the end of the road they perceive like you that
+they have pursued that which is but little, and have left behind
+them that which is somewhat, that is to say, health, work, rest,
+and comfort in their homes."
+
+So conversing with his ass, Ulenspiegel came before the landgrave's
+palace.
+
+Two captains of musketeers were playing dice on the stair.
+
+One of them, red headed and of giant size, caught sight of Ulenspiegel
+modestly sitting upon Jef and watching their play.
+
+"What do you want with us," said he, "hungry pilgrim-face?"
+
+"I am exceedingly hungry, in very deed," said Ulenspiegel, "and am
+pilgrimaging against my will."
+
+"If you are hungry," rejoined the captain, "eat with your neck the
+rope that swings from the nearest gallows destined for vagabonds."
+
+"Messire captain," replied Ulenspiegel, "if you were to give me that
+fine gold cord you wear on your hat, I should go and hang myself with
+my teeth to that fat ham that swings yonder at the cook shop."
+
+"Where do you come from?" asked the captain.
+
+"From Flanders," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"What would you?"
+
+"Show His Highness the Landgrave a painting after my fashion."
+
+"If you are a painter and out of Flanders," said the captain, "come
+within, and I will bring you to my master."
+
+Being come before the landgrave, Ulenspiegel saluted him three times
+and more.
+
+"May Your Highness," said he, "deign to excuse my impertinence in
+daring to come to lay at your noble feet a painting I made for you,
+wherein I had the honour to pourtray Madame the Virgin in imperial
+array."
+
+"This painting," he went on, "may perhaps be to your liking, and in
+that case I vaunt myself sufficiently of my skill to hope to raise
+myself to that fine chair of crimson velvet wherein, during his life,
+the ever to be lamented painter of Your Magnanimity had place."
+
+The landgrave having contemplated the picture, which was a beautiful
+one:
+
+"Thou shalt be our painter," said he, "take thy seat in the chair."
+
+And gaily he kissed him on both cheeks. Ulenspiegel sat down.
+
+"Thou art full ragged," said the landgrave, scrutinizing him.
+
+Ulenspiegel replied:
+
+"In very truth, Monseigneur, Jef, the which is my ass, dined upon
+thistles, but I, for three days, I have lived only on want and fed
+only upon the savour of hope."
+
+"Thou shalt sup presently on better meat," replied the landgrave,
+"but where is thy ass?"
+
+Ulenspiegel answered:
+
+"I left him on the Great Marketplace, over against the palace of Your
+Goodness; I should be glad indeed if Jef had shelter and litter and
+fodder for the night."
+
+The landgrave gave instant command to one of his pages to treat
+Ulenspiegel's ass like one of his own.
+
+Soon came the hour of the supper, that was as a revel and a feast. And
+the meats gave up a noble savour and the wines rained down their
+throats.
+
+Ulenspiegel and the landgrave being both fire red like live coals,
+Ulenspiegel became gay, but the landgrave remained pensive.
+
+"Our painter," said he, suddenly, "thou must paint my portrait,
+for it is a great satisfaction to a mortal prince to bequeath to his
+descendants the memory of his countenance."
+
+"Sire Landgrave," said Ulenspiegel, "your pleasure is my will, but it
+seems to my poor self that pourtrayed alone by yourself Your Lordship
+will have no great joy in ages to come. You must be accompanied by your
+noble wife, Madame the Landgravine, and your ladies and lords, your
+most warlike captains and officers, in the midst of whom Monseigneur
+and Madame will shine like two suns surrounded by lanterns."
+
+"True indeed, our painter," replied the landgrave, "and what should
+I have to pay thee for this great work?"
+
+"One hundred florins, in advance or otherwise," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Here they are in advance," said the landgrave.
+
+"Kind and good lord," replied Ulenspiegel, "you put oil in my lamp,
+it shall burn in your honour."
+
+The next day he asked the landgrave to cause to pass before him all
+those for whom he reserved the honour of figuring in the portraiture.
+
+Came then the Duke of Lunebourg, the commander of the lansquenets
+in the landgrave's service. This was a big heavy man, carrying with
+difficulty his paunch swollen with victuals. He drew near Ulenspiegel
+and whispered a word in his ear:
+
+"If you do not, in making my portrait, take away half my fat, I shall
+have you hanged by my troopers."
+
+The duke passed on.
+
+And then a noble lady, the which had a hump on her back and a bosom
+as flat as the blade of an executioner's glaive:
+
+"Messire painter," said she, "if you do not give me two humps for
+the one that you shall take away, and do not put them in front,
+I shall have you quartered as a poisoner."
+
+The lady passed on.
+
+Then came a young maid of honour, fair, fresh, and pretty, but who
+lacked three teeth under her upper lip.
+
+"Messire painter," she said, "if you do not make me laugh and show
+thirty-two teeth, I shall have you cut to pieces by my lover, who is
+over there."
+
+And pointing out the captain of musketeers who had before been playing
+dice on the palace stairway, she passed on.
+
+The procession continued; Ulenspiegel remained alone with the
+landgrave.
+
+"If thou hast the ill-luck," said the landgrave, "to err in one
+feature the pourtraying all these countenances, I shall have thy head
+cut off like a chicken's."
+
+"Bereft of my head," thought Ulenspiegel, "quartered, chopped in
+pieces, or hanged at least, it will be much more comfortable to
+pourtray nothing at all. I will bethink me for it."
+
+"Where," he asked the landgrave, "is the hall that I am to decorate
+with all these paintings?"
+
+"Follow me," said the landgrave.
+
+And showing him a great room with spacious walls all bare and empty:
+
+"This," he said, "is the hall."
+
+"I should greatly like," said Ulenspiegel, "that they should set
+great curtains on these walls, so as to assure my paintings against
+the insults of flies and against dust."
+
+"That shall be done," said the landgrave.
+
+The curtains being put in place, Ulenspiegel asked for three
+apprentices, as he said, to make them prepare his colours.
+
+For thirty days, Ulenspiegel and the apprentices did nothing but
+hold feast and revel, sparing neither the choice viands nor the old
+wines. The landgrave watched over all.
+
+However, on the thirty-first day he came and put in his nose at the
+door of the room which Ulenspiegel had enjoined on him not to enter.
+
+"Well, Thyl, where are thy portraits?"
+
+"Far away," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Could not one see them?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+The thirty-sixth day, he put his nose in at the door again.
+
+"Well, Thyl?" he asked.
+
+"Ah! sire Landgrave, they are travelling towards the end."
+
+The sixtieth day, the landgrave became angry, and entering the room:
+
+"Thou art immediately to show me the pictures," said he.
+
+"Yea, great lord," replied Ulenspiegel, "but deign not to draw aside
+this curtain until you have summoned hither the lords and captains
+and ladies of your court."
+
+"I consent to this," said the landgrave.
+
+They all came at his command.
+
+Ulenspiegel stood before the curtain closely drawn.
+
+"Monseigneur Landgrave," said he, "Madame Landgravine, and you,
+Monseigneur de Lunebourg, and you other beauteous dames and valiant
+captains, I have pourtrayed as best I could your pretty or warlike
+faces behind this curtain. It will be easy to recognize each one of
+you there. You are curious to see yourselves, it is natural, but pray
+have patience and permit me to say a word or two to you. Beauteous
+ladies and valiant captains, who are all of noble blood, you can see
+and admire my painting; but if among you there is one of low origin,
+he will see nothing save the blank wall. And now deign to open your
+noble eyes."
+
+Ulenspiegel pulled the curtain back.
+
+"Noble men alone see aught, alone they see aught there, the noble
+ladies, so shall men say ere long: 'blind in painting as a base fellow,
+clear seeing as a noble gentleman'!"
+
+All opened their eyes to the widest, pretending to see, mutually
+pointing themselves out to one another, showing and recognizing each
+other, but seeing nothing in reality but the white wall, which made
+them grieved.
+
+All at once the fool who was there bounded three feet into the air
+and shaking his bells:
+
+"Let me be looked on as base," said he, "a base fellow full of
+basest baseness, but I will say and cry and proclaim with trumpets
+and flourish of trumpets that I see there a bare wall, a blank wall,
+a naked wall. So help me God and all His saints!"
+
+Ulenspiegel replied:
+
+"When fools begin to talk it is time for wise men to be off."
+
+He was making to leave the palace when the landgrave staying him:
+
+"Fool full of folly," said he, "that goest about the world praising
+things fine and good and mocking at things stupid with wide mouth,
+thou that hast dared before so many noble dames and most high and
+mighty lords to make a vulgar mock of pride of blasonry and lordship,
+thou wilt be hanged one day for thy over-free speech."
+
+"If the rope be a golden rope," replied Ulenspiegel, "it will break
+with terror to see me coming."
+
+"There," said the landgrave, giving him fifteen florins, "there is
+the first piece of it."
+
+"All thanks, Monseigneur," answered Ulenspiegel, "every inn by the way
+shall have a strand of it, a strand all of gold that maketh Croesuses
+of all these thieving innkeepers."
+
+And away he went on his ass, his bonnet high, his plume streaming in
+the wind, merry and jolly.
+
+
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+The leaves were yellowing on the trees and the autumn wind was
+beginning to blow. Katheline sometimes had her reason for an hour or
+two or three. And Claes then said that the spirit of God had visited
+her in His great compassion. At these moments she had power by passes
+and by words to cast a spell upon Nele, who saw more than a hundred
+leagues away all that happened in city places, in the streets, or
+within the houses.
+
+On this day then, Katheline, being in her wits, was eating olie
+koekjes well washed down with dobbel-cuyt in company with Claes,
+Soetkin, and Nele.
+
+Said Claes:
+
+"To-day is the day of the abdication of His Sacred Majesty the Emperor
+Charles the Fifth. Nele, my dear, could you see as far as Brussels
+in Brabant?"
+
+"I could, if Katheline is willing," answered Nele.
+
+Then Katheline made the girl sit upon a bench, and by her words and
+passes, acting like a spell, Nele sank down all deep in slumber.
+
+Katheline said to her:
+
+"Go into the little house in the Park, which is the favourite abode
+of the Emperor Charles the Fifth."
+
+"I am," said Nele, speaking low and as though she was being stifled,
+"I am in a little chamber painted green with oil colours. There there
+is a man bordering upon four and fifty years, bald and gray, with
+a fair beard on a jutting chin, with an evil look in his gray eyes,
+full of cunning, of cruelty, and feigned good nature. And this man he
+is called Sacred Majesty. He is in catarrh and coughs sorely. Beside
+him is another, young, with an ugly mask like an ape hydrocephalous;
+that one I saw at Antwerp, it is King Philip. His Sacred Majesty at
+this moment is reproaching him for having slept abroad last night;
+doubtless, he saith, to go and find some vile creature in a filthy den
+in the low quarters of the city. He says his hair stinks of the tavern,
+which is no pleasure for a king that hath only to choose sweet bodies,
+skins of satin refreshed in baths of perfumes, and hands of great
+ladies amorous, which is far better, saith he, than a wild sow, come
+hardly washed from the arms of a drunken trooper. There is, saith he,
+never a maiden, wife, or widow who would resist him, among the most
+noble and beauteous, that illumine their loves with perfumed tapers,
+not by the greasy glimmer of stinking tallow-dips.
+
+"The king replied that he will obey His Sacred Majesty in all things.
+
+"Then His Sacred Majesty coughs and drinks some mouthfuls of hypocras.
+
+"'You will presently,' says he, addressing Philip, 'see the States
+General, prelates, nobles, and burgesses: Orange the Silent, Egmont
+the Vain, de Hornes the Unpopular, Brederode the Lion; and also all
+those of the Fleece of Gold of whom I make you sovereign. You will
+see there a hundred wearers of baubles, who would all cut their noses
+off to have the privilege of hanging them from a gold chain on their
+breasts, in token of higher nobility.'
+
+"Then, changing his tone and full of sadness, His Sacred Majesty
+saith to King Philip:
+
+"'Thou knowest, my son, that I am about to abdicate in thy favour,
+to give the world a great spectacle and to speak in front of a huge
+crowd, though hiccupping and coughing--for all my life I have eaten
+over much, my son--and thy heart must be hard indeed, if having heard
+me, thou dost not shed a few tears.'
+
+"'I shall weep, father,' answers King Philip.
+
+"Then His Sacred Majesty speaks to a valet called Dubois:
+
+"'Dubois,' says he, 'give me a piece of Madeira sugar, I have a
+hiccup. If only it will not seize me when I shall be speaking to
+all these people. Will that goose I had yesterday never be done
+with! Should I drink a tankard of Orleans wine? No, it is too
+harsh! Should I eat a few anchovies? They are very oily. Dubois,
+give me some Romagna wine.'
+
+"Dubois gives His Majesty what he asketh, then puts upon him a gown
+of crimson velvet, wraps him in a gold cloak, girds on his sword, puts
+into his hands the sceptre and the globe, and the crown upon his head.
+
+"Then His Sacred Majesty leaves the house in the Park, riding on a
+low mule and followed by King Philip and many high personages. In
+this fashion they go into a great building that they call a palace,
+and there they find in a chamber a tall slender man, richly clad,
+whom they call Orange.
+
+"His Sacred Majesty speaks to this man and says to him: 'Do I look
+well, cousin William?'
+
+"But the man makes no answer, not a word.
+
+"His Sacred Majesty then says to him, half laughing, half angry:
+
+"'You will be dumb always, then, cousin, even to tell the truth to old
+broken-down things? Ought I to reign still or to abdicate, Silent One?'
+
+"'Sacred Majesty,' replied the slender man, 'when winter cometh the
+most vigorous oaks let their leaves fall.'
+
+"Three of the clock strikes.
+
+"'Silent One,' says he, 'lend me thy shoulder, that I may lean on it.'
+
+"And he enters with him and with his retinue into a great hall,
+takes his seat under a canopy and on a dais covered with silk or
+crimson carpets. There are three seats on it: His Sacred Majesty
+takes the middle one, more ornate than the others, and surmounted
+with an imperial crown; King Philip sits on the second, and the third
+is for a woman, who is doubtless a queen. To the right and to the
+left, seated upon tapestried benches and cushioned, are men clad in
+red and wearing a little gold sheep on their necks. Behind them are
+placed many persons who are doubtless princes and lords. Over against
+them and at the foot of the dais are seated, upon benches that have
+no cushions, men clad in cloth. I hear them say that they are thus
+modestly seated and clad only because they are themselves paying all
+their proper charges. All rose up when His Sacred Majesty came in,
+but he soon sate him down and signed to all to sit down likewise.
+
+"An old man next speaks long about the gout, then the woman, who
+seemeth to be a queen, hands His Sacred Majesty a roll of parchment in
+which are written things which His Sacred Majesty reads out, coughing,
+and in a voice low and indistinct, and speaking of himself says:
+
+"'I have made many voyages in Spain, in Italy, in the Low Countries,
+in England and in Africa, all for the glory of God, the lustre of my
+arms, and the welfare of my peoples.'
+
+"Then having spoken long, he says that he is broken and weary,
+and fain to deliver the crown of Spain, the counties, duchies,
+marquisates of these lands into his son's hands.
+
+"Then he weeps, and all weep with him.
+
+"King Philip now rises, and falling upon his knees:
+
+"'Sacred Majesty,' he says, 'is it for me to accept this crown at
+your hands when you are so capable of wearing it still!'
+
+"Then His Sacred Majesty whispered in his ear to speak comfortably
+to the men seated upon the cushioned benches.
+
+"King Philip, turning towards them, says to them in a harsh tone and
+without rising:
+
+"'I understand French passing well, but not sufficiently to speak
+to you in that tongue. Ye will hear what the Bishop of Arras, Master
+Grandvelle, shall say to you on my behalf.'
+
+"'Thou sayest ill, my son,' says His Sacred Majesty.
+
+"And indeed the assembly murmurs, seeing the young king so arrogant
+and so haughty. The woman, who is the queen, speaks also to make her
+eulogy, then comes the turn of an aged man of learning who, when he has
+made an end, receives a sign from the hand of His Sacred Majesty by
+way of thanks. These ceremonies and harangues being over, His Sacred
+Majesty declares his subjects released from their oath of fidelity,
+signs the acts drawn up to that end, and rising up from his throne,
+sets his son therein. And everyone in the hall weeps. Then they go
+back to the house in the Park.
+
+"There, being once more in the green chamber, alone and all doors
+fast shut, His Sacred Majesty laughs loud and long, and speaking to
+King Philip who laughs not:
+
+"'Did you see,' he says, speaking, hiccuping, and laughing all
+together, 'how little is needed to move these good souls? What a deluge
+of tears! And that fat Maes who, when he finished his long discourse,
+wept like a calf. You yourself seemed touched, but not enough. These
+are the true spectacles the common folk must have. My son, we men love
+our mistresses the more the more they cost us. It is the same with
+peoples. The more we make them pay, the more they love us. In Germany
+I tolerated the reformed faith that I punished severely in the Low
+Countries. If the princes of Germany had been catholic, I would have
+been Lutheran and confiscated their goods. They believe in the reality
+of my zeal for the Roman faith and regret to see me leave them. There
+have perished at my hands, in the Low Countries and for heresy, fifty
+thousand of their most hardy men and prettiest maids. I am departing,
+they lament. Without counting confiscations, I have made them pay more
+than the Indies and Peru: they are heartbroken at losing me. I have
+torn up the peace of Cadzand, broken Ghent, suppressed everything that
+could come in my way; liberties, franchises, privileges, everything
+is at the discretion of the prince's officers: these good souls think
+they are still free because I allow them to shoot with the cross
+bow and carry the banners of their guilds in procession. They felt
+my hand as master: put in a cage, they find themselves comfortable
+there, they sing in it and weep for me. My son, be to them as I have
+been: benign in words, harsh in deeds; lick as long as there is no
+need to bite. Swear, swear always to their liberties, franchises,
+and privileges, but if there be any peril to yourself, destroy
+them all. They are iron if one touch them with a faltering hand,
+glass if you brush them with a strong arm. Smite heresy not because
+of its divergence from the Roman religion, but because in these Low
+Countries it would destroy our authority; those that attack the Pope,
+who weareth a triple crown, have speedily done with princes that have
+but one. Make it treason, as I did liberty of conscience, entailing the
+confiscation of goods, and you will inherit them as I did all my life,
+and when you depart, to abdicate or to die, they will say:--'Oh! the
+good prince!' and they will weep.
+
+"And I hear nothing more," went on Nele, "for His Sacred Majesty has
+lain down on a bed and is asleep, and King Philip, arrogant and proud,
+looks upon him with no love."
+
+Having said so much, Nele was awakened by Katheline. And Claes,
+pensive, looked at the flame on the hearth lightening up the chimney
+place.
+
+
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+Ulenspiegel, leaving the landgrave of Hesse, mounted his ass and
+crossing the town square, met certain wrathful countenances of lords
+and ladies, but he took no heed of them.
+
+Soon he arrived on the lands of the Duke of Lunebourg, and there fell
+in with a band of Smaedelyke broeders, jolly Flemings from Sluys who
+laid aside some money every Saturday so that once a year they could
+go for a tour in Germany.
+
+They were going on their way singing, in an open cart drawn by a
+stout horse of Vuerne-Ambacht, that brought them gambolling by the
+highways and marshy lands of the duchy of Lunebourg. Among them were
+some that played the fife, the rebeck, the viol, and the bagpipe with
+a mighty din. Beside the cart there walked at frequent intervals
+a dikzak playing on the rommel-pot and going afoot in the hope of
+melting off some of his great belly.
+
+As they were down to their last florin they saw Ulenspiegel come
+up to them, laden with chiming coin, and went into an inn and paid
+for his draught. Ulenspiegel gladly accepted. Seeing the while the
+Smaedelyke broeders were winking as they looked at him and smiling
+while they poured out his wine for him, he had wind of some trick,
+went outside, and posted himself at the door to hear their talk. He
+heard the dikzak saying of him:
+
+"This is the painter of the landgrave who gave him more than a thousand
+florins for a picture. Let us feast him full with beer and wine,
+he will pay us back twofold."
+
+"Amen," said the others.
+
+Ulenspiegel went to fasten his ass all saddled a thousand paces
+away at a farmer's, gave two patards to a girl to take charge of it,
+came back into the chamber of the inn and sat down at the Smaedelyke
+broeders' table, without uttering a word. They poured out wine for him
+and paid. Ulenspiegel rattled the landgrave's florins in his satchel,
+saying that he had just sold his ass to a countryman for seventeen
+silver daelders.
+
+They travelled on, eating and drinking, playing the fife, the
+bagpipe, and rommel-pot, and picking up by the way the goodwives
+they thought comely. In this way they begot foundling children, and
+beyond all, Ulenspiegel, whose gossip later bore a son which she named
+Eulenspiegelken, which signifies, in high German, little mirror and
+owl, and that because she did not understand clearly the meaning of
+her casual man's name, and also perhaps in memory of the hour when
+the child was made. And this is the Eulenspiegelken wrongly said to
+have been born at Krittingen, in the land of Saxony.
+
+Drawn by their stout horse they went along a highway at the side of
+which was a village and an inn with the sign In den ketele: "In the
+Kettle." Thence issued a goodly savour of fricassee.
+
+The dikzak who played the rommel-pot went to the baes and said to him,
+speaking of Ulenspiegel:
+
+"That is the landgrave's painter; he will pay for all."
+
+The baes, perusing Ulenspiegel's appearance, which was excellent,
+and hearing the chink of florins and daelders, set upon the table
+wherewith to eat and drink; Ulenspiegel did not shrink from it. And
+ever and always jingled the crowns in his wallet. Many a time, too, he
+had stuck his hand on his hat saying it covered his chief treasure. The
+revels having lasted two days and one night, the Smaedelyke broeders
+said to Ulenspiegel:
+
+"Let us be off from here and pay the bill."
+
+Ulenspiegel answered:
+
+"When the rat is in the cheese, doth he ask to leave it?"
+
+"Nay," said they.
+
+"And when a man eats well and drinks well, does he seek out the dust
+of the roads and the water from springs full of leeches?"
+
+"Nay, indeed," said they.
+
+"Well, then," said Ulenspiegel, "let us stay here as long as my florins
+and daelders serve us as funnels to pour into our throats the drinks
+that bring us to laughter."
+
+And he bade the host bring still more wine and more sausage.
+
+While they drank and ate, Ulenspiegel said:
+
+"'Tis I who pay, I am landgrave for the nonce. If my wallet were empty,
+what would you do, comrades? You might take my soft felt headgear
+and you might find it full of carolus, in the crown as well as round
+the brim."
+
+"Let us feel," cried they all with one accord. And sighing they felt
+in it between their fingers large coins of the size and dimensions
+of gold carolus. But one among them handled it so lovingly that
+Ulenspiegel took it back, saying:
+
+"Impetuous dairy man, you must learn to await the milking hour."
+
+"Give me the half of your hat," said the Smaedelyke broeders.
+
+"Nay," answered Ulenspiegel, "I don't want you to have a madman's
+brain, one half in the shade and the other in the sun."
+
+Then giving his headgear over to the baes:
+
+"You," said he, "do you keep it in any case, for it is hot. For my
+part, I am going out to ease me."
+
+He went, and the host took charge of the hat.
+
+Presently he left the inn, went to the peasant's cottage, got up upon
+his ass, and went off full speed along the road that leads to Embden.
+
+The Smaedelyke broeders, not seeing him come back, said one to another:
+
+"Has he gone? Who will pay the charges?"
+
+The baes, seized with fear, cut open Ulenspiegel's hat with a
+knife. But instead of the carolus, he found nothing in it between
+the felt and the lining but worthless copper counters.
+
+Raging then against the Smaedelyke broeders he said to them:
+
+"Brothers of roguery, ye shall not stir out of here save leaving
+behind all your clothes except only your shirts."
+
+And they had every man to strip off his clothes to pay his shot.
+
+In this fashion they went in their shirts over hill and dale, for
+they would by no means sell their horse nor their cart.
+
+And all that beheld them in so pitiable a plight, gave them freely
+bread to eat, beer, and sometimes meat; for everywhere they told the
+tale how they had been despoiled by robbers.
+
+And among the lot they had but one pair of breeches.
+
+And thus they came back to Sluys in their shirts, dancing in their
+cart and playing the rommel-pot.
+
+
+
+
+
+LX
+
+Meanwhile Ulenspiegel bestrode the back of Jef through the lands and
+the marshes of the Duke of Lunebourg. The Flemings call this duke
+Water-Signorke because it is always damp in his country.
+
+Jef obeyed Ulenspiegel like a dog, drank bruinbier, danced better
+than a Hungarian master of arts in posturing, pretended to be dead
+and lay down on his back at the least signal.
+
+Ulenspiegel knew that the Duke of Lunebourg, annoyed and angry at
+Ulenspiegel's making a mock of him at Darmstadt before the landgrave
+of Hesse, had forbidden him to set foot on his territories on pain
+of the halter. Suddenly he saw His Ducal Highness in person, and
+as he knew it was a hasty and violent Highness, he was seized with
+fright. Speaking to his ass:
+
+"Jef," said he, "here is Monseigneur of Lunebourg coming. I feel
+a sore itch of rope on my neck; but may it not be the hangman that
+will scratch me for it. Jef, I would gladly be scratched, but not
+hanged. Think that we are brothers in distress and long ears; think,
+too, what a good friend you would lose if you lost me."
+
+And Ulenspiegel wiped his eyes, and Jef began to bray.
+
+Continuing his discourse:
+
+"We live together in mirth," said Ulenspiegel to him, "or in moan,
+according to circumstances; do you remember, Jef?..." The ass continued
+to bray, for he was hungry.
+
+"And you will never be able to forget me," said his master, "for
+what friendship is strong but that which laughs with the same joy
+and weeps with the same distress! Jef, you must get down on your back."
+
+The gentle ass obeyed, and was seen by the duke with all four hoofs
+in the air. Ulenspiegel quickly took seat on his belly. The duke came
+to him.
+
+"What dost thou here?" said he, "knowest thou not that in my last
+edict I forbade thee under pain of the rope to set thy dusty foot on
+my territory?"
+
+Ulenspiegel replied:
+
+"Gracious lord, have compassion upon me!"
+
+Then showing his ass:
+
+"You know full well," said he, "that by law and by justice, he is
+always free that dwelleth between his own four posts."
+
+The duke answered:
+
+"Be off from out my territories, else thou shalt die."
+
+"Monseigneur," replied Ulenspiegel, "I should be off from them so
+swiftly mounted on a florin or two!"
+
+"Rogue," said the duke, "wilt thou, not satisfied with thy
+disobedience, ask money of me to boot?"
+
+"Needs must indeed, Monseigneur, I cannot take it from you...."
+
+The duke gave him a florin.
+
+Then said Ulenspiegel, speaking to his ass:
+
+"Up, Jef, and salute Monseigneur."
+
+The ass got up and began to bray again. Then both of them took
+themselves off.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+Soetkin and Nele were seated at one of the windows of the cottage
+and looked into the street.
+
+Soetkin said to Nele:
+
+"Dearest, see you not my boy Ulenspiegel coming?"
+
+"No," said Nele, "we shall never see him again, the naughty vagabond."
+
+"Nele," said Soetkin, "you must not be angry with him but sorry for
+him, for he is away from his home, poor fellow."
+
+"I know full well," said Nele, "he hath another house far from here,
+richer than his own, where some beauteous dame doubtless gives him
+lodging."
+
+"That would be good luck indeed for him," said Soetkin; "mayhap there
+he feedeth upon ortolans."
+
+"Why do they not give him stones to eat: speedily would he be here
+then, the glutton!" said Nele.
+
+Then Soetkin laughed and said:
+
+"Whence doth it arise then, dearest, all this big anger?"
+
+But Claes, who, all pensive, too, was binding faggots in a corner.
+
+"Do you not see," said he, "that she is infatuate for him?"
+
+"Lo you," said Soetkin, "the crafty cunning thing that never murmured
+word of it! Is it so, dearest, that you long for him?"
+
+"Never believe it," said Nele.
+
+"You will have there," said Claes, "a stout husband with a big mouth,
+a hollow belly, and a long tongue, turning florins into liards and
+never a half-penny for his work, always loafing about and measuring
+the highways with the ell wand of vagabondage."
+
+But Nele replied, all red and cross:
+
+"Why did you not make something different of him?"
+
+"There," said Soetkin, "now she is weeping; hold your tongue, husband."
+
+
+
+
+
+LXII
+
+Ulenspiegel upon a day came to Nuremberg and gave himself out for
+a great physician, the conqueror of sickness, a most illustrious
+purger, renowned queller of fevers, celebrated scavenger of plagues,
+and scourge invincible of the itch and mange.
+
+There were in the hospital so many sick that they could not know
+where to put them. The master hospitaller hearing of Ulenspiegel's
+coming, came to see him and inquired if it was true that he could
+heal all diseases.
+
+"Except the last sickness," replied Ulenspiegel; "but promise me
+two hundred florins for the cure of all the others, and I will not
+accept a liard till all your sick confess themselves cured and leave
+the hospital."
+
+On the morrow he came to the said hospital with a confident look and
+carrying his phiz solemnly and doctorally. Once within the wards,
+he took each sick man separately and said:
+
+"Swear," quoth he, "not to confide to any what I am about to tell
+thee in thine ear. What is thy malady?"
+
+The sick man would tell him, and swear by his almighty God to hold
+his tongue.
+
+"Know," said Ulenspiegel, "that I mean to reduce one of you to
+powder by means of fire, that of this dust or powder I shall concoct
+a marvellous mixture and give it to all the sick to drink. The one
+that cannot walk shall be burned. To-morrow I shall come here and
+standing in the street with the master hospitaller, I shall summon
+you all crying, 'Let him that is not sick take up his duds and come!'"
+
+In the morning, Ulenspiegel came and called out as he had said. All
+the sick, the lame, the rheumy, the coughing, the fever stricken,
+would fain come out together. All were in the street, even some that
+for ten years had not left their bed.
+
+The master hospitaller asked them if they were cured and could walk.
+
+"Aye," replied they, imagining that one of them was burning in the
+courtyard.
+
+Ulenspiegel then said to the master hospitaller:
+
+"Pay me, since they are all outside, and declare themselves cured."
+
+The master paid him two hundred florins. And Ulenspiegel departed.
+
+But on the second day the master beheld his sick folk coming back in
+a worse state than before, save one who, being cured in the open air,
+was found drunk and singing through the streets: "Noel to the great
+physician Ulenspiegel!"
+
+
+
+
+
+LXIII
+
+The two hundred florins having gone their light ways Ulenspiegel came
+to Vienne where he hired himself to a wheelwright who continually
+scolded his workmen because they did not blow the bellows of his
+forge strongly enough:
+
+"Keep time," he would be crying always, "follow with the bellows."
+
+One day when the baes went into the garden Ulenspiegel took down the
+bellows, carried it off on his shoulders, and followed his master. The
+latter being astonished to see him so strangely burthened, Ulenspiegel
+said to him:
+
+"Baes, you ordered me to follow with the bellows, where am I to put
+this one while I go and fetch the other."
+
+"Dear lad," said the baes, "I did not say that; go and put the bellows
+back in its place."
+
+However, he studied how to pay him out for this trick. Thenceforward
+he rose every day at midnight, awoke his men and made them work.
+
+Then men said to him:
+
+"Baes, why do you wake us up in the middle of the night?"
+
+"'Tis a custom of mine," replied the baes, "not to allow my workmen
+to stay more than half the night in a bed for the first seven days."
+
+The following night he awaked his men at midnight again. Ulenspiegel,
+who slept in the garret, took his bed on his back and thus laden came
+down into the forge.
+
+The baes said to him:
+
+"Are you mad? Why do you not leave your bed in its place?"
+
+"'Tis a custom I have," answered Ulenspiegel, "to spend for the
+first seven days half the night on top of my bed and the other half
+under it."
+
+"Well, for me, it is a second custom I have to throw into the street my
+impudent workmen with leave to pass the first week above the pavement
+and the second below it."
+
+"In your cellar, baes, if you please, beside the casks of bruinbier,"
+replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXIV
+
+Having left the wheelwright and gone back to Flanders, he must hire
+himself as apprentice to a shoemaker who liked better to stay in the
+streets than to wield the awl in his workshop. Ulenspiegel, seeing
+him for the hundredth time ready to go abroad, asked him how he must
+cut the leather for vamps.
+
+"Cut it," replied the baes, "for big feet and average feet, so that
+all that lead big cattle and little cattle may get into them handily."
+
+"So shall it be, baes," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+When the shoemaker had gone out, Ulenspiegel cut out vamps only good
+to make shoes for fillies, asses, heifers, sows, and ewes.
+
+Coming back to his workshop, the baes, seeing his leather in pieces:
+
+"What have you done there, good-for-nothing botcher?" said he.
+
+"What you bade me," Ulenspiegel made answer.
+
+"I bade you," replied the baes, "cut me shoes in which might be put
+handily everything that leads oxen, swine, and sheep, and you make
+me shoes for the feet of the beasts."
+
+Ulenspiegel replied:
+
+"Baes, what leads the boar but the sow, the donkey but the ass, the
+bull but the heifer, the ram but the ewe, in the season when all the
+beasts are in love?"
+
+Then he went away, and must needs remain outside.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXV
+
+At this time 'twas April, the air had been soft and sweet, then it
+froze hard and the sky was gray as on All Souls' Day. The third year
+of Ulenspiegel's banishment had long since run out and Nele awaited
+her friend from day to day. "Alas!" said she, "it will snow on the
+pear trees, on the flowering jasmine, on all the poor plants unfolded
+confidingly in the genial warmth of an untimely springtide. Already
+the little flakes are falling from the sky upon the roadways. And it
+snoweth, too, upon my poor heart.
+
+"Where are the bright rays playing on bright faces, on the roofs
+they made still redder than their wont, on the window panes they
+caused to flame? Where are they, warming earth and sky, bird and
+insect? Alas! now night and day I am chilled to the bone with sadness
+and my long waiting. Where art thou, Ulenspiegel, my dear?"
+
+
+
+
+
+LXVI
+
+Ulenspiegel, drawing near Renaix in Flanders, was hungry and thirsty,
+but he would by no means complain, and endeavoured to make folk laugh
+so they might give him bread. But he laughed not over well, and they
+passed him by and gave him nothing.
+
+It was cold: turn and turn about it snowed, rained, and hailed on the
+back of the wanderer. If he passed through the villages, the water
+came in his mouth only to see a dog gnawing a bone in the angle of
+a wall. Fain and fain would he have earned a florin, but had no idea
+how the florin could fall into his pouch.
+
+Looking up, he saw the pigeons that from the roof of the dove cote
+dropped white pieces on the highway, but they were not florins. He
+searched on the ground along the causeways, but florins do not bloom
+among the paving stones.
+
+Looking to the right hand he saw a rascal cloud that moved onward into
+the sky, like a great watering pot, but he knew that if aught were
+to fall from this cloud it would not be a plump of florins. Looking
+to the left hand he saw a great idle horse-chestnut tree, living and
+doing nothing: "Ah!" he said to himself, "why are there no florin
+trees? They would be splendid trees, indeed!"
+
+Suddenly the big cloud burst asunder, and the hailstones fell thick
+like pebbles on Ulenspiegel's back. "Alas," said he, "I feel it sure
+enough, stones are never thrown but at wandering dogs." Then starting
+to run: "It is not my fault," said he to himself, "if I have not a
+palace nor even a tent to shelter my poor thin body. Ah! the cruel
+hailstones: they are hard as cannon shot. No, it is not my fault if
+I trail my wretched tatters about the world, it is only that such
+was my good pleasure. Why am I not emperor? These hailstones would
+fain force themselves into my ears like ill words." And he was still
+running:--"Poor nose," he added, "you will soon be pierced through and
+through like fretwork, and mayst serve as a pepperpot at the feasts
+of the great folk of this world on whom it never hails." Then wiping
+his cheeks:--"These," said he, "would do well for ladles for cooks
+that are too hot at their ovens. Ah! far-off memory of the sauces
+of long ago. I am hungry. Empty belly, complain not; sad entrails,
+grumble no more. Where dost thou hide, propitious fortune? take me
+to the place where the pasture is."
+
+While he talked thus with himself, the sky cleared and grew bright
+with a strong sun, the hail ceased, and Ulenspiegel said: "Good morrow,
+sun, my one friend, that comest to dry me!"
+
+But he still kept on running, being cold. Suddenly from afar he saw
+coming along the road a black-and-white dog running straight before
+him, tongue hanging out and the eyes bolting from his head.
+
+"This brute," said Ulenspiegel, "has the madness in his belly!" He
+hastily picked up a big stone and climbed upon a tree; as he reached
+the first bough, the dog passed and Ulenspiegel launched the stone upon
+his skull. The dog stopped, and wretchedly and stiffly tried to get up
+the tree and bite Ulenspiegel, but he could not, and fell back to die.
+
+Ulenspiegel was nowise glad at this, and still less when, coming
+down from the tree, he perceived that the dog's mouth was not dry
+and parched as is usual when these animals are smitten with the
+hydrophobia. Then studying his skin, he saw it was fine and good to
+sell, stripped him of it, washed it, hung it on his staff, let it
+dry a little in the sun, and then put it away in his satchel.
+
+Hunger and thirst tormented him more and more, and he went into many
+farmhouses, not daring to offer his skin for sale, for fear that it
+might have belonged to one of the farmers' dogs. He asked for bread,
+and was refused it. Night came on. His limbs were weary, he went into
+a little inn. There he beheld an ancient baesine caressing a wheezy
+old dog whose skin was like a dead man's.
+
+"Whence comest thou, traveller?" asked the aged baesine.
+
+Ulenspiegel made answer:
+
+"I come from Rome, where I healed the Pope's dog of a sorry rheum
+that grieved him sore."
+
+"Then thou hast seen the Pope?" said she to him, drawing him a glass
+of beer.
+
+"Alas!" said Ulenspiegel, emptying the glass, "I have but been
+permitted to kiss his holy foot and his holy slipper."
+
+All this while the baesine's old dog was coughing, but without
+spitting.
+
+"When didst thou do this?" asked the old woman.
+
+"The month before the last," answered Ulenspiegel, "I arrived,
+being looked for, and knocked at the door. 'Who is there?' asked the
+chamberlain arch-cardinal, arch-privy, arch-extraordinary to His
+Most Holy Holiness.' ''Tis I,' I answered, 'Monseigneur Cardinal,
+come from Flanders expressly to kiss the Pope's foot and heal his dog
+of his rheum.' 'Ah! 'tis thou, Ulenspiegel?' said the Pope, speaking
+from the other side of a little door. 'I would rejoice to see thee,
+but that is a thing for the moment impossible. I am forbidden by the
+Holy Decretals to display my face to strangers when the holy razor is
+being passed over it.' 'Alas!' said I, 'I am an unfortunate man, I that
+am come from a land so far to kiss Your Holiness his foot and cure his
+dog of the rheum. Must I indeed return without being satisfied?' 'Nay,'
+said the Holy Father; and then I heard him call. 'Arch-chamberlain,
+roll my chair as far as the door, and open the little wicket at the
+foot of the door.' The which was done. And I beheld thrust through
+the wicket a foot shod with a golden slipper, and I heard a voice,
+speaking like a peal of thunder, saying: 'This is the redoubtable foot
+of the Prince of Princes, King of Kings, Emperor of Emperors. Kiss it,
+Christian man, kiss the holy slipper.' And I kissed the holy slipper,
+and my nose was sweetly filled with the celestial perfume that was
+exhaled from that foot. Then the wicket was shut again, and the same
+formidable voice bade me to wait. The wicket opened once more, and
+from it there issued, with all due respect, an animal bereft of its
+hair, blear-eyed, coughing, swollen like a wine skin and forced to
+walk with its legs straddling by reason of the hugeness of its belly.
+
+"The Holy Father deigned to address me again: 'Ulenspiegel,' said he,
+'thou dost look upon my dog; he was seized with a rheum and other
+maladies through gnawing the bones of heretics that had been broken
+for them. Cure him, my son; thou wilt have much good thereby.'"
+
+"Drink," said the old woman.
+
+"Pour out," answered Ulenspiegel. Continuing his tale: "I purged the
+dog," said he, "by the aid of a wonder-working draught concocted by
+myself. He made water through this for three days and three nights
+without ceasing, and was cured."
+
+"Jesus God en Maria!" said the old woman; "let me kiss thee, glorious
+pilgrim, who hast seen the Pope and mayst also cure my dog."
+
+But Ulenspiegel, recking little of the old woman's kisses, said to
+her: "Those who have touched with their lips the holy slipper may not
+within a space of two years receive the kisses of any woman. First
+give me for supper some goodly carbonadoes, a black pudding or so,
+and a sufficiency of beer, and I shall make your dog's voice so clear
+that he will be able to chant the aves in e la in the rood-loft of
+the great church."
+
+"May it be true what thou sayest," whined the old woman, "and I shall
+give thee a florin."
+
+"I shall accomplish it," said Ulenspiegel, "but only after supper."
+
+She served him all he had asked for. He ate and drank his fill, and
+he would even have embraced the old woman for gratitude of his jaw,
+had it not been for what he had said to her.
+
+While he was eating, the old dog put his paws on his knee to have a
+bone. Ulenspiegel gave him several; then he said to his hostess:
+
+"If a man had eaten in your inn and not paid, what would you do?"
+
+"I would have his best garment off that robber," answered the old
+woman.
+
+"'Tis well," replied Ulenspiegel; then he took the dog under his arm
+and went into the stable. There he shut him up along with a bone,
+took the dead dog's skin out of his satchel, and coming back to
+the old woman, he asked her if she had said she would have his best
+garment off the man who would refuse to pay for his meal.
+
+"Well, then, your dog dined with me and did not pay: so I have,
+following your own rede, taken his best and his only coat."
+
+And he showed her the skin of the dead dog.
+
+"Ah!" said the old woman, weeping, "it is cruel of thee, master
+doctor. Poor old dog! he was my child to me, a poor widow. Why didst
+thou take from me the only friend I had in the world? I have no more
+now to do but to die."
+
+"I will bring him to life again," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Bring him to life!" said she. "And he will fawn on me again, and he
+will look at me again, and he will lick me again, and he will wag his
+poor old stump of a tail again when he looks at me! Do this, master
+doctor, and thou shalt have dined here gratis, a most costly dinner,
+and I shall give thee a florin still over and above the bargain."
+
+"I will bring him to life again," said Ulenspiegel; "but I must have
+hot water, syrup to glue the seams together, a needle and thread and
+sauce from the carbonadoes; and I would be alone during the operation."
+
+The old woman gave him what he asked for; he took up the skin of the
+dead dog and went off to the stable.
+
+There he smeared the old dog's muzzle with sauce, and the brute
+submitted to it with delight; he drew a great stripe of syrup under
+his belly, put syrup on his paws and sauce on his tail.
+
+Then crying out loudly three times, he said: "Staet op! staet op! ik
+bevel 't, vuilen hond!"
+
+And then lightly putting the dead dog's skin in his satchel he fetched
+the living dog a great kick and so pitched him into the inn chamber.
+
+The old woman, seeing her dog alive and licking himself, was eager
+to embrace him; but Ulenspiegel did not permit this.
+
+"You may not," said he, "caress this dog until he has washed off with
+his tongue all the syrup with which he is anointed; only then will the
+seams in the skin be closed up. Count out to me now my ten florins."
+
+"I said one," answered the old woman.
+
+"One for the operation, nine for the resurrection," replied
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+She counted them out to him. Ulenspiegel went off, flinging into the
+inn chamber the skin of the dead dog and saying:
+
+"There, woman, keep his old skin: it will serve you to patch up the
+new one when it will have holes in it."
+
+
+
+
+
+LXVII
+
+On that Sunday at Bruges was held the procession of the Blessed
+Blood. Claes said to his wife and to Nele to go to see it and that
+mayhap they might find Ulenspiegel in the town. As for himself,
+said he, he would keep the cottage if the pilgrim should perchance
+return thither.
+
+The two women went off together; Claes, remaining at Damme, sate on
+the doorstep and found the town very empty and deserted. He heard
+nothing except the crystalline chime of some village bell, while from
+Bruges there came to him by fits and starts the music of the carillons
+and a great din of falconets and fireworks let off in honour of the
+Blessed Blood.
+
+Claes, looking pensively for Ulenspiegel along the roads, saw nothing,
+only the sky pure and blue and cloudless, a few dogs lying tongue
+out in the sun, bold sparrows bathing and twittering in the dust,
+a cat spying after them, and the sunlight entering every house like
+a friend and making the brass kettles and pewter tankards on every
+dresser glisten and shine.
+
+But Claes was downcast amid all this glee, and looking for his son
+he sought to see him behind the gray mist along the meadows, to hear
+him in the glad rustling of the leaves and the gay concert of the
+birds in the trees. Suddenly he saw on the road from Maldeghem a man
+of great stature, and knew it was not Ulenspiegel. He saw him pause
+at the edge of a field of carrots and eat eagerly.
+
+"There's a man mightily an-hungered," said Claes.
+
+Having lost sight of him for a moment, he saw him reappear at the
+corner of the street of the Heron, and he recognized the messenger
+from Josse who had brought him the seven hundred gold carolus. He
+went to him in the highway and said:
+
+"Come to my house."
+
+The man replied:
+
+"Blessed are they that are kind to the wandering travelling man."
+
+On the outer sill of the cottage window there was crumbled bread that
+Soetkin kept for the birds of the neighbourhood. Here they came in the
+winter to find their food. The man caught up these crumbs and ate them.
+
+"You are hungry and thirsty," said Claes.
+
+The man replied:
+
+"Since I was stripped by robbers a week past, I have lived only on
+carrots from the fields and roots in the woods."
+
+"It is then," said Claes, "time to indulge in feasting. And here," said
+he, opening the cupboard, "here is a full bowlful of peas, eggs, black
+puddings, hams, sausage of Ghent, waterzoey: hotchpotch of fish. Below,
+in the cellar, sleeps Louvain wine, made in the manner of the wines
+of Burgundy, red and clear as a ruby; it asks but the awakening of
+glasses. Come, now, let us put a faggot on the fire. Do you hear the
+black puddings sizzling on the grid? 'Tis the song of good feeding."
+
+Claes, turning them over, said to the man:
+
+"Have you not seen my boy Ulenspiegel?"
+
+"Nay," he answered.
+
+"Do you bring me any tidings of my brother Josse?" said Claes, putting
+upon the table grilled puddings, an omelette of fat ham, cheese, and
+great tankards, and red clear wine of Louvain sparkling in the flasks.
+
+The man replied:
+
+"Thy brother Josse died upon the rack at Sippenaken, near Aix. And
+that was for having borne arms, being a heretic, against the Emperor."
+
+Claes was as one beside himself, and said, trembling in every limb,
+for his wrath was extreme:
+
+"Evil murderers! Josse! my poor brother!"
+
+The man said then in no gentle tone:
+
+"Our joys and our woes are not of this world."
+
+And he began to eat. Then he said:
+
+"I gave thy brother help in his prison, passing myself off for a
+countryman from Nieswiller, a relation of his. I have come hither
+because he said to me: 'If thou dost not die for the faith as I do,
+go to my brother Claes; enjoin upon him to live in the Lord's peace,
+doing the works of mercy, rearing his son in secret in the law of
+Christ. The money I gave him was taken from the poor and ignorant
+people; let him use it to bring Thyl up in the knowledge of God and
+the word.'"
+
+Having said this, the messenger gave Claes the kiss of peace.
+
+And Claes, lamenting:
+
+"Died on the rack," said he, "my poor brother!"
+
+And he could not recover himself out of his great sorrow. All the
+same, as he saw that the man was thirsty and held out his glass,
+he poured wine for him, but he ate and drank joylessly.
+
+Soetkin and Nele were away during seven days; during this time the
+messenger from Josse lived under Claes's roof.
+
+Every night they heard Katheline crying terribly in the cottage:
+
+"The fire, the fire! Make a hole: the soul would fain escape!"
+
+And Claes would go to her, and calm her with soothing speech, then
+come back into his own house.
+
+At the end of seven days the man departed and would accept no more
+from Claes but two carolus to feed and shelter him upon his way.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXVIII
+
+Nele and Soetkin being come back from Bruges, Claes, in his kitchen,
+seated on the floor after the fashion of tailors, was putting
+buttons on an old pair of breeches. Nele was close by him tarring on
+against the stork Titus Bibulus Schnouffius who, dashing at the bird
+and retreating by turns, was yelping in the shrillest voice. The
+stork standing on one foot, looking at him gravely and pensively,
+withdrew her long neck into the feathers on her breast. Titus Bibulus
+Schnouffius, seeing her so pacific, yelped more and more terribly. But
+all of a sudden the bird, tired and sick of this music, lashed out
+her bill like an arrow on the back of the dog, who fled yelling:
+
+"Help, help!"
+
+Claes laughed, Nele, too, and Soetkin never ceased looking into the
+street, seeking if she could not see Ulenspiegel coming.
+
+Suddenly she said:
+
+"Here is the provost and four constables. It cannot surely be us they
+want. There are two of them turning behind the cottage."
+
+Claes lifted his nose from his task.
+
+"And two that are stopping in front," went on Soetkin.
+
+Claes got up.
+
+"Who are they going to arrest in this street?" said she. "Jesus
+God! my husband, they are coming in here."
+
+Claes leaped from the kitchen into the garden, followed by Nele.
+
+He said to her:
+
+"Save the carolus, they are behind the chimney-back."
+
+Nele understood, then seeing that he was making through the hedge,
+that the constables seized him by the collar, that he was fighting
+to get loose from them, she cried and wept:
+
+"He is innocent! he is innocent! do not hurt Claes, my
+father! Ulenspiegel, where art thou? Thou wouldst kill both of them!"
+
+And she threw herself upon one of the constables and tore his face
+with her nails. Then crying out "They will kill him!" she fell down
+on the sward of the garden and rolled about on it, distraught.
+
+Katheline had come at the noise, and standing straight and motionless,
+was contemplating the sight, saying as she shook her head from side
+to side: "The fire! the fire! Make a hole! the soul would fain escape!"
+
+Soetkin saw nothing, and speaking to the constables that had come
+into the cottage:
+
+"Sirs, whom seek ye in our poor dwelling? If it is my son, he is far
+away. Are your legs long ones?"
+
+Saying so, she was full of mirth.
+
+At this moment Nele, crying out for help, Soetkin ran into the garden,
+saw her husband seized by the collar and struggling on the highway
+close to the hedge.
+
+"Strike!" she said. "Kill! Where art thou, Ulenspiegel?"
+
+And she would have gone to help her husband, but one of the constables
+seized her round the body, not without peril.
+
+Claes struggled and struck so hard that he might well have escaped,
+if the two constables to whom Soetkin had spoken had not come to the
+help of the two that were holding him.
+
+They brought him with both his hands tied into the kitchen where
+Soetkin and Nele were weeping and sobbing.
+
+"Messire provost," said Soetkin, "what hath my poor man done then,
+that you should bind him thus with ropes?"
+
+"Heretic," said one of the constables.
+
+"Heretic?" returned Soetkin, "thou a heretic, thou? These devils
+have lied."
+
+Claes answered:
+
+"I place myself in God's keeping."
+
+He went out; Nele and Soetkin followed him weeping and believing that
+they also were to be brought before the judge. Men and women came to
+them; when they knew that Claes was going thus bound because he was
+suspect of heresy, they were so sore afraid that they went back into
+their homes in haste, and shut all the doors behind them. Only a few
+girls dared go to Claes and say to him:
+
+"Whither goest thou thus bound, coal man?"
+
+"To the grace of God, my girls," he replied.
+
+They brought him to the prison of the commune; Soetkin and Nele sat
+down upon the threshold. Towards evening, Soetkin bade Nele leave
+her and go to see if Ulenspiegel was not coming back.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXIX
+
+Soon the news ran abroad through the villages round about that a
+man had been cast into prison for heresy and that the inquisitor
+Titelman, the dean of Renaix, nicknamed the Inquisitor Pitiless,
+would conduct the interrogatories. Ulenspiegel was then living at
+Koolkerke, in the most private favours of a pretty farmer, an amiable
+widow that denied him nothing that was hers. There he was very well
+off, spoiled and caressed until the day when a treacherous rival,
+the sheriff of the commune, lay in wait for him one morning as he
+came out of the tavern and would fain have rubbed him down with an
+oaken towel. But Ulenspiegel, to cool his anger, cast him in a pond
+whence the sheriff crept out as best he could, green as a toad and
+steeped full as a sponge.
+
+Ulenspiegel for this high feat, must leave Koolkerke and set off with
+all speed towards Damme, fearing the sheriff's vengeance.
+
+The evening was falling cool, Ulenspiegel ran swiftly; fain would
+he have been at home already, in his mind's eye he saw Nele sewing,
+Soetkin preparing supper, Claes binding faggots, Schnouffius gnawing
+on a bone and the stork knocking with her bill on the housewife's
+front to have some scraps of food.
+
+A pedlar afoot said to him as he passed:
+
+"Whither away in such hurry?"
+
+"To Damme, to my own home," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+The pedlar answered:
+
+"The town is not safe now by reason of the folk of the reformed faith
+that are being arrested there."
+
+And he went on his way.
+
+Arrived before the inn of the Roode-Schildt, Ulenspiegel went in to
+drink a glass of dobbel-cuyt. The baes said to him:
+
+"Are not you the son of Claes?"
+
+"I am," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Make haste, then," said the baes, "for the ill hour has struck for
+your father."
+
+Ulenspiegel asked what he meant.
+
+The baes replied that he would know all too soon.
+
+And Ulenspiegel continued to run.
+
+As he was at the entrance to Damme, the dogs that were on the doorsteps
+jumped out at his legs yelping and barking. The goodwives came out
+at the noise and said to him, all talking at once:
+
+"Whence come you?" "Have you news of your father?" "Where is your
+mother?" "Is she with him in prison, too?" "Alas! if only they do
+not burn him!"
+
+Ulenspiegel ran the harder.
+
+He met Nele, who said to him:
+
+"Thyl, do not go to your house: the town governors have put a guard
+in it on behalf of His Majesty."
+
+Ulenspiegel stopped.
+
+"Nele," said he, "is it true that my father Claes is in prison?"
+
+"Yea," said Nele, "and Soetkin weeps on the threshold."
+
+Then the heart of the prodigal son was swollen with anguish and he
+said to Nele:
+
+"I am going to see them."
+
+"That is not what you should do," said she, "but you should obey
+Claes instead, who said to me before he was taken: 'save the carolus,
+they are behind the chimney-back.' They are what you must save first
+and foremost, for it is the inheritance of Soetkin, the poor woman."
+
+Ulenspiegel, listening no whit, ran to the gaol. There he saw Soetkin
+seated on the threshold; she embraced him with tears, and they wept
+together.
+
+The people assembling, because of these two, in a crowd in front of
+the gaol, the constables came and told Ulenspiegel and Soetkin that
+they were to be off out of that and at the speediest possible.
+
+Mother and son went away to Nele's cottage, next door to their own
+home, before which they saw one of the lansquenet troopers summoned
+from Bruges through fear of the troubles that might arise during
+the trial and during the execution. For the folk of Damme loved
+Claes greatly.
+
+The trooper was sitting on the pavement, before the door, busy sucking
+the last drop of brandy out of a flask. Finding nothing more in it,
+he flung it some paces away, and drawing his dagger, he amused himself
+in digging up the paving stones.
+
+Soetkin, all tears, entered Katheline's house.
+
+And Katheline shaking her head: "The fire! Make a hole, the soul
+would fain escape," said she.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXX
+
+The bell that is called Borgstorm--the storm of the burg--having
+summoned the judges to the tribunal, they met in the Vierschare,
+at the stroke of four, about the linden tree of judgment.
+
+Claes was brought before them and saw seated beneath the canopy
+the bailiff of Damme, and beside him and opposite him the mayor,
+the aldermen, and the clerk.
+
+The people flocked up at the sound of the bell in great multitude. Many
+said:
+
+"The judges are not there to do the works of justice, but of imperial
+serfdom."
+
+The clerk announced that the tribunal having first met in the
+Vierschare, around the linden tree, had decided that, considering
+the denunciations and testimonies before it, there had been good
+ground for seizing the body of Claes, coal vendor, native of Damme,
+husband of Soetkin, the daughter of Joostens. They would now, he added,
+proceed to the hearing of the witnesses.
+
+Hans Barbier, a neighbour of Claes, was the first heard. Having taken
+the oath, he said: "Upon my soul's salvation, I affirm and asseverate
+that Claes, present before this court, has been known to me for almost
+seventeen years, that he has always lived honestly and decently,
+and according to the laws and rules of our holy mother the Church,
+has never spoken opprobriously of her, nor to my knowledge harboured
+any heretic, nor hidden Luther's book, nor spoken of the said book,
+nor done anything that could bring him into suspicion of having
+transgressed the laws and regulations of the empire. So help me God
+and all His saints."
+
+Jan Van Roosebekke was next heard, and said "that during the absence
+of Soetkin, Claes's wife, he had often thought he heard in the
+accused man's house the voices of two men, and that often at night,
+after the curfew, he had seen in a small chamber beneath the roof a
+light, and two men, one of them was Claes, conversing together. As for
+saying whether the other man was heretic or no, he could not, having
+only seen him at a distance. As for what concerns Claes," he added,
+"I will say, speaking in all truth, that since I have known him,
+he always kept his Easter regularly, communicated on the principal
+feast days, went to mass every Sunday, except that of the Blessed
+Blood and those following. And I know nothing further but this. So
+help me God and all His saints."
+
+Questioned if he had not seen Claes in the tavern of the Blauwe Torre
+selling indulgences and mocking at purgatory, Jan Van Roosebekke
+replied that in fact Claes had sold indulgences, but without contempt
+or mockery, and that he, Jan Van Roosebekke, had bought even as also
+was fain to do Josse Grypstuiver, the dean of the fishmongers, who
+was there present among the crowd.
+
+Thereafter the bailiff said he would proclaim the actions and conduct
+for the which Claes was brought before the court of the Vierschare.
+
+"The informer," said he, "having, as it happened, remained at Damme,
+so as not to go to Bruges to spend his money in riot and revelry,
+as is too often done at these holy times, was soberly taking the air
+on his own doorstep. Being there he saw a man walking in the street
+of the Heron. Claes, perceiving this man, went to him and saluted
+him. The man was arrayed in black cloth. He went into Claes's house,
+and the door of the cottage was left ajar. Curious to know what this
+man might be, the informer went into the porch, heard Claes speaking
+in the kitchen with the stranger, of a certain Josse, his brother,
+who having been taken prisoner among the reformed troops, had been
+for this put to death on the rack not far from Aix. The stranger
+said to Claes that the money he had received from his brother being
+money gained through the ignorance of poor folk, he was to employ
+it in bringing up his son in the reformed religion. He had enjoined
+Claes also to leave the bosom of our Mother Holy Church, and uttered
+other impious words to which Claes made answer only with these words:
+'Cruel murderers! my poor brother!' And the accused thus blasphemed
+against our Holy Father the Pope and his Royal Majesty, accusing them
+of cruelty because they most justly punished heresy as a crime, being
+treason divine and human. When the man had made an end of eating,
+the informer heard Claes cry aloud: 'Poor Josse, may God have thee
+in His glory, they were cruel to thee!' Thus he even accused God of
+impiety, deeming that He may receive heretics into His heaven. And
+Claes ceased not to say 'My poor brother!' The stranger, then entering
+into frenzy like a preacher in his preaching, cried: 'She shall fall,
+great Babylon the Romish whore, and she shall become the habitation
+of demons and the haunt of every obscene bird!' Claes said: 'Cruel
+murderers! My poor brother!' The stranger, continuing his discourse,
+said: 'For the angel will take up that stone which is as great as
+a millstone. And it shall be cast into the sea, and he will say:
+'Thus great Babylon shall be cast out, and she shall no more be
+found.' 'Messire,' said Claes, 'your mouth is filled with anger, but
+tell me when shall come the reign when they that are meek and lowly
+of heart shall be able to live in peace upon the earth?' 'Never,'
+replied the stranger, 'so long as Antichrist, which is the Pope and
+the enemy of truth, reigneth.' 'Ah,' said Claes, 'you speak of our
+Holy Father without respect. Assuredly he knoweth naught of the cruel
+torments with which the poor reformers are punished.' The stranger
+made answer: 'He is not ignorant of these, for it is he that issueth
+the edicts, hath them enforced by the Emperor, now by the king,
+who hath the profit of confiscations, inherits from the dead, and
+readily brings suit for heresy against the rich.' Claes replied:
+'These things are told in the country of Flanders, I must needs
+believe them; man's flesh is weak, even when it is royal flesh. My
+poor Josse!' And Claes by this signified that it was through base
+desire of lucre that His Majesty punished heresiarchs. The stranger,
+wishing to harangue further, Claes replied: 'Be so good, messire, as
+to hold no more such discourses with me, for if they were overheard,
+they would stir up some grievous suit against me.'
+
+"Claes arose to go to the cellar and came up thence with a jug of
+beer. 'I will shut the door,' said he then, and the informer heard no
+more, for he must needs lightly leave the house. The door that had
+been shut was nevertheless opened again at nightfall. The stranger
+came out, but went back speedily and knocked at it saying: 'Claes,
+I am cold, I have nowhere to lodge: give me shelter, no one has seen
+me come in, the town is deserted and empty.' Claes received him in
+his house, lighted a lantern, and was seen preceding the heretic,
+mounting the stairs and bringing the stranger underneath the roof to
+a little chamber whose window looked towards the country...."
+
+"Who, then," cried Claes, "who can have recounted all if not thou,
+vile fishmonger, whom I saw on that Sunday upon thy threshold, stiff as
+a post, hypocritically watching the swallows flying through the air?"
+
+And with his finger he pointed to Josse Grypstuiver, the dean of the
+fishmongers, who showed his ugly face amid the crowd of the people.
+
+The fishmonger smiled cruelly, seeing Claes betray himself in this
+fashion. All the people, men, women, and girls, said one to the other:
+
+"The poor fellow, his words will past doubt cause his death."
+
+But the clerk continued his announcement:
+
+"The heretic and Claes," said he, "conversed together for long that
+night, and also during other nights, during which the stranger could
+be seen making many gestures of threatening or blessing, and lifting
+his arms to heaven as the manner is of his fellows in heresy. Claes
+seemed to approve of his words.
+
+"Certes, during these days, evenings and nights, they talked
+opprobriously of the mass, of confession, of indulgences, and of His
+Royal Majesty...."
+
+"No man hath heard it," said Claes, "and I cannot be accused thus
+without proofs!"
+
+The clerk continued:
+
+"Another thing was heard. When the stranger came out from thy house,
+on the seventh day at the tenth hour, the night being fallen already,
+thou didst walk in the way with him as far as close to the boundary of
+the field of Katheline. There he asked what thou hadst done with the
+wicked idols"--and at that the bailiff crossed himself--"of Madame
+Virgin, Master Saint Nicholas, and Master Saint Martin. Thou didst
+answer that thou hadst broken them to pieces and cast them into the
+well. And they were in fact found in thy well last night, and the
+fragments are in the torture-chamber."
+
+At this word Claes appeared overwhelmed. The bailiff asked him if
+he had nothing to say in answer: Claes made a sign with his head to
+say no.
+
+The bailiff asked him if he did not wish to retract the evil thought
+that had made him break up the images and the impious error that by
+reason whereof he had uttered words opprobrious to His Divine Majesty
+and His Royal Majesty.
+
+Claes answered that his body was His Royal Majesty's but that his
+conscience was Christ's, whose law he meant to follow. The bailiff
+asked him if this law was that of our Mother Holy Church. Claes
+made answer:
+
+"It is contained in the holy Gospel."
+
+Called upon to answer the question whether the Pope is the
+representative of God upon earth:
+
+"No," said he.
+
+Asked if he believed it was forbidden to worship the images of
+Madame the Virgin and Messieurs the Saints, he replied that it was
+idolatry. Questioned on the point as to whether auricular confession
+be a good and salutary thing, he replied:
+
+"Christ said: 'Confess yourselves one to another'."
+
+He was valiant and stout in his answers, though he seemed sorely
+troubled and affrighted at the bottom of his heart.
+
+Eight o'clock having struck, and the night falling, the members of
+the court withdrew, deferring till the morrow their final judgment.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXI
+
+In Katheline's cottage Soetkin wept distraught with anguish. And she
+said over and over again:
+
+"My husband! my poor husband!"
+
+Ulenspiegel and Nele embraced her with utmost tenderness. Then taking
+them into her arms she wept in silence. And then she signed to them
+to leave her alone. Nele said to Ulenspiegel:
+
+"Let us leave her there, it is her own wish: let us save the carolus."
+
+They went away together; Katheline kept moving round Soetkin, saying:
+
+"Make a hole: the soul would fain escape!"
+
+And Soetkin, with fixed eyes, looked at her without seeing her.
+
+The cottages of Claes and Katheline touched, that of Claes set back
+with a little garden in front, Katheline's had a patch of ground
+planted with beans giving upon the street. This patch was surrounded
+with a green hedge in which Ulenspiegel to get to Nele's and Nele to
+get to Ulenspiegel's, had made a big hole in their childish days.
+
+Ulenspiegel and Nele came into this garden patch, and from there saw
+the trooper who with head wagging spat into the air, but the spittle
+fell back on his doublet. A wicker flask lay by his side:
+
+"Nele," said Ulenspiegel, in a whisper, "this drunken trooper has not
+drunk out his thirst; he must drink more still. We shall then be his
+master. Let us take his flask."
+
+At the sound of their voices, the lansquenet turned his heavy head in
+their direction, hunted for his flask, and not finding it, he went
+on spitting into the air and tried to see his spittle falling back
+in the moonlight.
+
+"He is full of brandy to the teeth," said Ulenspiegel; "do you hear
+how he can hardly spit?"
+
+However, the trooper, having spit and stared in the air a long while,
+put out his arm again to get his hand on the flask. He found it,
+put his mouth to its neck, threw his head back, turned the flagon
+upside down, tapped on it to make it give up all its juice and sucked
+at it like a babe at its mother's breast. Finding nothing in it,
+he resigned himself, put the flask down beside him, swore a little
+in high German, spat again, waggled his head to right and left, and
+went to sleep muttering inarticulate and unintelligible paternosters.
+
+Ulenspiegel, knowing that this sleep would not last, and that it must
+be thickened further, slipped through the hole in the hedge, took
+the trooper's flask, and gave it to Nele, who filled it with brandy.
+
+The trooper did not cease to snore; Ulenspiegel passed again through
+the hole in the hedge and put the full flask between his legs, came
+back into Katheline's bean patch and waited behind the hedge with Nele.
+
+Because of the chill of the newly drawn liquor the trooper awoke a
+little, and with his first movement sought what was making him cold
+under the doublet.
+
+Judging with drunken intuition that this might well be a full flask,
+he put his hand to it. Ulenspiegel and Nele saw him, in the light of
+the moon, shake the flask to hear the lap of the liquor, taste it,
+laugh, marvel that it should be so full, drink a mouthful, then a good
+gulp, put it down on the ground, take it up again and drink once more.
+
+Then he sang:
+
+
+        When Seigneur Maan comes up the way
+        To bid good e'en to lady Zee,
+
+
+To high Germans, dame Zee, which is the sea, is the wife of Seigneur
+Maan, which is the moon and the master of women. And so he sang:
+
+
+        When Seigneur Maan comes up the way
+        To bid good e'en to lady Zee,
+        The lady Zee will straight purvey
+        A cup of wine spiced daintily,
+        When Seigneur Maan comes up the way.
+
+        With him she then will sup that day
+        And give of kisses a relay:
+        And when he's cleared the supper tray
+        Within her bed to slumber lay
+        When Seigneur Maan comes up the way.
+
+        Just so, my dear, provide for me,
+        Good food and wine spiced daintily
+        Just so, my dear, provide for me
+        When Seigneur Maan comes up the way.
+
+
+Then drinking and singing a quatrain turn and turn about, he went to
+sleep. And he could not hear Nele saying: "They are in a pot behind
+the chimney-back"; nor see Ulenspiegel go through the stable into
+Claes's kitchen, lift the slab of the chimney-back, find the pot and
+the carolus, come back into Katheline's garden, hide the carolus there
+beside the well wall, knowing full well that if they were searched
+for it would be inside and not outside.
+
+Then they returned to Soetkin and found the sad wife weeping and
+saying:
+
+"My husband! My poor husband!"
+
+Nele and Ulenspiegel watched by her until morning.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXII
+
+On the morrow, the Borgstorm summoned with loud peals the judges to
+the court of the Vierschare.
+
+When they were seated on the four benches, about the tree of justice,
+they interrogated Claes afresh and asked him if he wished to recant
+his errors.
+
+Claes raised his hand towards heaven:
+
+"Christ, my Lord, seeth me from on high," said he, "I looked upon
+his sun when my boy Ulenspiegel was born. Where is he now, the
+runagate? Soetkin, my gentle goodwife, wilt thou be brave against
+ill fortune?"
+
+Then looking at the linden tree, he said, cursing it:
+
+"Storm winds and drought! make all the trees of the land of our father
+die as they stand rather than see freedom of conscience condemned
+to death under their shade. Where art thou, my son Ulenspiegel? I
+was hard to thee. Messieurs, have pity upon me and judge me as Our
+Compassionate Lord would judge me."
+
+All that heard him wept, save the judges.
+
+Then he asked if there was no pardon for him, saying:
+
+"I toiled all my days, earning but little; I was good to the poor and
+comfortable to all men. I left the Romish Church to obey the spirit
+of God that spoke to me. I ask for no other boon than to commute the
+penalty of the fire into that of perpetual banishment for life from
+the land of Flanders, a penalty already full grievous."
+
+All that were present cried aloud:
+
+"Pity, sirs! Mercy!"
+
+But Josse Grypstuiver did not cry with them.
+
+The bailiff signed to the people there to be silent and said that
+the edicts contained an express prohibition against asking mercy
+for heretics; but that if Claes would abjure his error, he should be
+executed by the rope instead of by fire.
+
+And among the people ran the word:
+
+"Fire or rope, it is death."
+
+And the women wept, and the men growled sullen and low.
+
+Then said Claes:
+
+"I will not abjure. Do with my body as your mercy pleases."
+
+The dean of Renaix, Titelman, cried out:
+
+"It is intolerable to see such heretic vermin lift up its head before
+its judges; to burn their bodies is but a fleeting pain; we must
+save their souls and force them by the torment to deny their errors,
+that they may not give the people the dangerous spectacle of heretics
+dying in final impenitence."
+
+At this word the women wept more and more and the men said:
+
+"Where confession is made, there is penalty, but no torture."
+
+The court decided that, torture not being laid down in the Ordinances,
+there was no ground for making Claes undergo it. Once more called
+upon to abjure he replied:
+
+"I cannot."
+
+He was, in accordance with the edicts, declared guilty of simony,
+because of the sale of the indulgences, a heretic, harbourer of
+heretics, and as such, condemned to be burned alive until death ensued
+before the doors of the Townhall.
+
+His body would be left for two days' space fastened to the stake
+to serve as an example and warning, and thereafter interred in that
+place where the bodies of executed criminals are wont to be buried.
+
+The court awarded to the informer, Josse Grypstuiver, who was not
+named, fifty florins on the first hundred florins of the inheritance,
+and a tenth part of the remainder.
+
+Having heard this sentence, Claes said to the dean of the fishmongers:
+
+"Thou shalt come to an ill death and a bad end, thou man of evil,
+who for wretched pelf dost make a widow of a happy wife, and an
+unhappy orphan of a lighthearted son."
+
+The judges had allowed Claes to speak, for they also, all but
+Titelman, held in scorn and loathing the informing of the dean of
+the fishmongers.
+
+The latter appeared all livid with shame and rage.
+
+And Claes was taken back to gaol.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXIII
+
+On the morrow, which was the day before Claes was to die, the sentence
+was made known to Nele, to Ulenspiegel, and to Soetkin.
+
+They asked the judges for permission to enter the prison, which was
+granted, but not to Nele.
+
+When they went in, they saw Claes fastened to the wall with a long
+chain. A little wood fire was burning in the fireplace because of
+the dampness. For it is ordained by law and justice, in Flanders,
+to be indulgent with those that are to die, and to give them bread,
+meat or cheese, and wine. But the greedy gaolers often violate the
+law, and many of them eat the greater part and the best of the poor
+prisoners' food.
+
+Claes embraced Ulenspiegel and Soetkin weeping, but he was the first
+to dry his eyes, because such was his will, being a man and head of
+a family.
+
+Soetkin wept and Ulenspiegel said:
+
+"I will break these cruel irons."
+
+Soetkin wept, saying:
+
+"I will go to King Philip, he will grant pardon."
+
+Claes replied:
+
+"The king inherits the goods of the martyrs." Then he added:
+"Beloved wife and son, I am about to go sadly and dolorously out of
+this world. If I have some fear of suffering for my body, I am sore
+troubled also thinking that, when I am no more, ye will both be poor
+and in need, for the king will take all your goods."
+
+Ulenspiegel answered, speaking in a whisper:
+
+"Nele saved all yesterday with me."
+
+"I am full glad of it," replied Claes; "the informer will not laugh
+over my spoils."
+
+"Rather let him die first," said Soetkin, her eye full of hate and
+without weeping.
+
+But Claes, thinking of the carolus, said:
+
+"Thou wast cunning, Thylken my dear boy; she will not be hungry then
+in her old age, Soetkin my widow."
+
+And Claes embraced her, pressing her body tightly to his breast, and
+she wept more, thinking that soon she must lose his sweet protection.
+
+Claes looked at Ulenspiegel and said:
+
+"Son, thou didst often sin as thou didst run upon the highways, as do
+wicked lads; thou must do so no more, my child, nor leave the afflicted
+widow alone in her house, for thou owest her protection and defence,
+thou the male."
+
+"Father, this I shall do," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"O my poor husband!" said Soetkin, embracing him. "What great crime
+have we committed? We lived by us two peaceably, an honest simple
+life, loving one another well, Lord God, thou knowest it. We arose
+betimes to labour, and at night, giving thee thanks, we ate our daily
+bread. I will go to the king and rend him with my nails. Lord God,
+we were not guilty folk!"
+
+But the gaoler came in and they must needs depart.
+
+Soetkin begged to remain. Claes felt her poor face burn his own,
+and Soetkin's tears, falling in floods, wetting his cheeks, and all
+her poor body shivering and trembling in his arms. He begged that
+she might stay with him.
+
+The gaoler said again that they must go, and took Soetkin from out
+of Claes's arms.
+
+Claes said to Ulenspiegel:
+
+"Watch over her."
+
+Ulenspiegel said he would do this. Then he went away with Soetkin,
+the son supporting the mother.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXIV
+
+On the morrow, which was the day of execution, the neighbours came and
+in pity shut up Ulenspiegel, Soetkin, and Nele, in Katheline's house.
+
+But they had not thought that they could hear from afar the cries of
+the victim, and through the windows see the flame of the fire.
+
+Katheline went roaming about the town, nodding her head and saying:
+
+"Make a hole, the soul would fain come forth!"
+
+At nine o'clock Claes was brought out from the prison, in his shirt,
+his hands bound behind his back. In accordance with the sentence,
+the pyre was prepared in the street of Notre Dame around a stake
+set up before the doors of the Townhall. The executioner and his
+assistants had not yet made an end of piling up the wood.
+
+Claes, in the midst of his gaolers, waited patiently till this task
+was finished, while the provost, on horseback, and the liveried men
+of the bailiwick, and the nine lansquenets summoned from Bruges, could
+barely keep within bounds of respect the people growling and unruly.
+
+All said, it was sheer cruelty to murder thus in his old age,
+unjustly, a poor fellow so kind hearted, compassionate, and stout
+hearted in toil.
+
+Suddenly they all knelt down and prayed. The bells of Notre Dame were
+tolling for the dead.
+
+Katheline also was in the crowd of the common people, in the first
+row, and all beside herself. Looking at Claes and the pyre, she said,
+nodding her head:
+
+"The fire! the fire! Make a hole; the soul would fain escape!"
+
+Soetkin and Nele, hearing the bells tolling, both crossed
+themselves. But Ulenspiegel did not, saying that he would no longer
+worship God after the fashion of murderers. And he ran about the
+cottage, seeking to break down doors and to leap out through windows;
+but all were guarded.
+
+Suddenly Soetkin cried out, hiding her face in her apron:
+
+"The smoke!"
+
+The three afflicted ones saw indeed in the sky a great whirl of
+smoke, all black. It was the smoke of the pyre on which was Claes
+bound to a stake, and which the executioner had just set fire to in
+three places in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the
+Holy Ghost. Claes looked about him, and not perceiving Soetkin and
+Ulenspiegel in the crowd, he was glad, thinking they would not behold
+him suffering.
+
+No other sound was to be heard but the voice of Claes praying, the
+wood crackling, men growling, women weeping, Katheline saying:--"Take
+away the fire, make a hole: the soul would fain escape."--and the
+bells of Notre Dame tolling for the dead.
+
+Suddenly Soetkin became white as snow, shuddered in all her body
+without weeping, and pointed with her finger to the sky. A long narrow
+flame had just spouted up from the pyre and rose at moments above
+the roofs of the low houses. It was cruelly tormenting to Claes, for
+according to the whims of the wind it gnawed at his legs, touched his
+beard and made it frizzle and smoke, licked at his hair and burned it.
+
+Ulenspiegel held Soetkin in his arms and would have dragged her away
+from the window. They heard a piercing cry, it came from Claes whose
+body was burning on one side only. But he held his tongue and wept,
+and his breast was all wet with his tears.
+
+Then Soetkin and Ulenspiegel heard a great noise of voices. This was
+the citizens, women and children, crying out:
+
+"Claes was not condemned to burn by a slow fire, but by a great
+one. Executioner, make the pyre burn up!"
+
+The executioner did so, but the fire did not catch quickly enough.
+
+"Strangle him," they cried.
+
+And they cast stones at the provost.
+
+"The flame! The great flame!" cried Soetkin.
+
+In very deed, a red flame climbed up the sky in the midst of the smoke.
+
+"He is about to die," said the widow. "Lord God, have pity upon the
+soul of the innocent. Where is the king, that I may rip out his heart
+with my nails?"
+
+The bells of Notre Dame were tolling for the dead.
+
+Soetkin heard Claes again utter a loud cry, but she saw not his body
+writhing from the torment of the flame, nor his face twisting, nor
+his head that he turned every way and beat against the wood of the
+stake. The people continued to cry out and to hiss; women and boys
+threw stones, and all heard Claes saying, from the midst of the flame
+and the smoke:
+
+"Soetkin! Thyl!"
+
+And his head fell forward on his breast like a head of lead.
+
+And a lamentable shrill and piercing cry was heard coming from out of
+Katheline's cottage. Then none heard aught else, save the poor witless
+woman nodding her head and saying: "The soul would fain escape!"
+
+Claes was dead. The pyre having burned out sank down at the foot of
+the stake. And the poor body, all blackened, stayed on it hanging by
+the neck.
+
+And the bells of Notre Dame tolled for the dead.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXV
+
+Soetkin was in Katheline's standing against the wall, her head hanging
+low and her hands joined together. She was holding Ulenspiegel in
+her embrace, neither speaking nor weeping.
+
+Ulenspiegel also remained silent; he was terrified to feel the fire
+of fever with which his mother's body burned.
+
+The neighbours, being back from the place of execution, said that
+Claes had ended his sufferings.
+
+"He is in glory," said the widow.
+
+"Pray," said Nele to Ulenspiegel: and she gave him her rosary; but
+he would by no means make use of it, because, said he, the beads had
+been blessed by the Pope.
+
+Night having fallen, Ulenspiegel said to the widow: "Mother, we must
+put you in bed: I shall watch beside you."
+
+But Soetkin: "I have no need," said she, "that you should watch;
+sleep is good for young men."
+
+Nele made ready a bed for each in the kitchen, then she went away.
+
+They stayed together as long as the remains of a fire of roots burned
+in the chimney place.
+
+Soetkin went to bed, Ulenspiegel likewise, and heard her weeping
+beneath the coverlets.
+
+Outside, in the silence of night, the wind made the trees by the
+canal complain with a sound as of the sea, and, harbinger of autumn,
+flung dust in whirlwinds against the cottage windows.
+
+Ulenspiegel saw as it might be a man coming and going; he heard as
+it might be a sound of feet in the kitchen. Looking, he saw no man;
+hearkening, he heard nothing now but the wind soughing in the chimney
+and Soetkin weeping under her bedclothes.
+
+Then he heard steps again, and behind him, at his head, a sigh.... "Who
+is there?" he said.
+
+None answered, but three knocks were given on the table. Ulenspiegel
+grew afraid, and trembling: "Who is there?" he said again. He received
+no answer but three knocks on the table and he felt two arms clasp
+and strain him, and a body lean upon his face, a body whose skin
+was wrinkled and that had a great hole in its breast and a smell
+of burning:
+
+"Father," said Ulenspiegel, "is it thy poor body that weighs thus
+upon me?"
+
+He got no answer, and although the shade was beside him, he heard a cry
+without: "Thyl! Thyl!" Suddenly Soetkin rose and came to Ulenspiegel's
+bed, "Dost thou hear naught?" said she.
+
+"Aye," said he, "the father calling on me."
+
+"I," said Soetkin, "I felt a cold body beside me in my bed; and the
+mattresses moved, and the curtains were shaken and I heard a voice
+saying: Soetkin; a voice low as a breath, and a step light as the sound
+of a gnat's wings." Then speaking to Claes's spirit:--"Husband," she
+said, "if thou desirest aught in heaven where God keeps thee in his
+glory, thou must tell us what it is, that we may carry out thy will."
+
+Suddenly a blast blew the door open impetuously, filling the chamber
+with dust, and Ulenspiegel and Soetkin heard the far-off croakings
+of ravens.
+
+They went out together and came to the pyre.
+
+The night was black, save when the clouds, driven away by the sharp
+north wind and galloping like stags across the sky, left the face of
+the moon clear and shining.
+
+A constable of the commune was patrolling, keeping guard on the
+pyre. Ulenspiegel and Soetkin heard the sound of his steps upon
+the hard ground and the voice of a raven, doubtless calling others,
+for from afar croakings answered him.
+
+Ulenspiegel and Soetkin having drawn near to the dead fire, the raven
+alit upon Claes's shoulder; they heard the blows of his beak upon
+the body, and soon other ravens arrived.
+
+Ulenspiegel would have leaped upon the pyre and struck at the ravens:
+the constable said to him:
+
+"Wizard, seekest thou hands of glory? Know that the hands of men
+burned do not render invisible, but only the hands of men hanged as
+thou shalt be one day."
+
+"Messire Constable," answered Ulenspiegel, "I am no wizard, but the
+orphaned son of him who is there fastened, and this woman is his
+widow. We were but minded to kiss him once again and to have a little
+of his ashes in memory of him. Give us leave for this, messire, who
+art no trooper from a foreign country, but a very son of this land."
+
+"Be it as thou wouldst," replied the constable.
+
+The orphan and the widow, going over the burnt wood, came to the body;
+both kissed with tears the face of Claes.
+
+Ulenspiegel took from the place of the heart, where the flames had
+made a great hole, a little of the dead man's ashes. Then kneeling,
+Soetkin and he prayed. When the dawn appeared pallid in the heavens,
+they were both there still; but the constable drove them away for
+fear of being punished because of his good-will.
+
+Returning, Soetkin took a piece of red silk and a piece of black silk;
+with these she made a sachet, and then put the ashes in it, and to
+the sachet sewed two ribbands, so that Ulenspiegel could always wear
+it on his neck. When she was putting the sachet in its place on him,
+she said to him:
+
+"Let these ashes, that are the heart of my man, this red that is
+his blood, this black that is our mourning, be ever on thy breast,
+like the fire of vengeance upon the murderers."
+
+"I would have it even so," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+And the widow embraced the orphan, and the sun arose.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXVI
+
+On the morrow came the constables and criers of the commune to Claes's
+house to set all its plenishing in the street and proceed to the
+sale by law appointed. Soetkin from Katheline's saw them bring down
+the brass and iron cradle which from father to son had always been
+in the house of Claes where the poor dead man had been born, where
+Ulenspiegel also had been born. Then they brought down the bed where
+Soetkin had conceived her son and where she had spent such good nights
+on her husband's shoulder. Then came, too, the cupboard where she put
+away her bread, the press in which, in good times, meats were kept,
+pans, kettles, and cooking pots no longer shining and scoured as in
+the good days of happiness, but sullied with the dust of neglect. And
+they recalled to her the family feasts when the neighbours used to
+come drawn to the good savours.
+
+Then came, too, a cask and a little cask of simpel and dobbel-cuyt,
+and, in a basket, flasks of wine, of which there were at least thirty;
+and all was set down upon the street, down to the last nail the poor
+widow heard them dragging noisily out of the walls.
+
+Sitting, she looked on without uttering cry or complaint, and all
+heartbroken, beholding these humble riches carried off. The crier
+having lighted a candle, the things were sold by auction. The candle
+was near its end when the dean of the fishmongers had bought all for
+a miserable price to sell again; and he seemed to be as pleased as
+a weasel sucking the brain of a hen.
+
+Ulenspiegel said in his heart: "Thou shalt not laugh long, murderer."
+
+The sale ended, meanwhile, and the constables who were searching
+everywhere did not find the carolus. The fishmonger exclaimed:
+
+"Ye search ill: I know that Claes had seven hundred six months ago."
+
+Ulenspiegel said in his heart: "Thou shalt not be the heir to them,
+murderer."
+
+Suddenly Soetkin turning towards him:
+
+"The informer!" said she, showing him the fishmonger.
+
+"I know that," said he.
+
+"Would you suffer him," said she, "to inherit from the father's blood?"
+
+"Rather would I endure a whole day on the torture bench," replied
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+Quoth Soetkin:
+
+"I, too, but do not give me away for pity, whatever torment you may
+see me enduring."
+
+"Alas! you are a woman," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Poor lad," said she, "I brought you into the world, and know how to
+suffer. But you, if I saw you...." Then growing pale: "I will pray
+Madame the Virgin, who saw her son upon the cross."
+
+And she wept, caressing Ulenspiegel.
+
+And thus was made between them a pact of hate and force.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXVII
+
+The fishmonger need pay only one half of the price of his purchase,
+the other half serving to pay him the reward of his informing, until
+they should have recovered the seven hundred carolus that had impelled
+him to his villainy.
+
+Soetkin spent the nights in weeping and the day in the tasks of
+housekeeping. Often Ulenspiegel heard her talking all alone and saying:
+
+"If he inherits, I shall kill myself."
+
+Knowing that she would indeed do as she said, Nele and he did all
+they could to get Soetkin to retire to Walcheren, where she had
+kinsfolk. Soetkin would by no means do this, saying she had no need
+to run away from the worms that would soon eat her widowed bones.
+
+In the meanwhile, the fishmonger had gone afresh to the bailiff and
+had told him that the defunct had inherited seven hundred carolus but
+a few months before, that he was a niggardly man and living on little,
+and therefore had not spent all that large amount, which was doubtless
+hidden away in some corner.
+
+The bailiff asked him what harm had Ulenspiegel and Soetkin done
+him that having robbed one of a father and the other of her husband,
+he still racked his wits to harass them cruelly.
+
+The fishmonger replied that being a leading burgess of Damme, he
+desired to have the laws of the empire respected and thus to deserve
+His Majesty's clemency.
+
+Having said so much, he deposited in the bailiff's hands a written
+charge, and brought forward witnesses who, speaking in all truth and
+sincerity, must certify reluctantly that the fishmonger was no liar.
+
+The members of the Chamber of Aldermen, having heard the testimony
+of the witnesses, declared the indications of guilt sufficient to
+warrant the application of torture. They sent, therefore, to have
+the house thoroughly searched once again by sergeants who had full
+powers to fetch the mother and the son to the town gaol, where they
+were detained until the executioner should come from Bruges, whither
+they sent to summon him immediately.
+
+When Ulenspiegel and Soetkin passed along the street, their hands tied
+behind them, the fishmonger was posted on the threshold of his house,
+to look at them.
+
+And the citizens of Damme, men and women, were on the thresholds of
+their houses also. Mathyssen, a near neighbour of the fishmonger,
+heard Ulenspiegel say to the informer:
+
+"God will curse thee, tormentor of widows!"
+
+And Soetkin saying to him:
+
+"Thou wilt come to an ill end, persecutor of orphans!"
+
+The folk of Damme having thus learned that it was upon a second
+denunciation by Grypstuiver that the widow and the orphan were thus
+being haled off to prison, hooted the fishmonger, and that night
+flung stones through his windows. And his door was covered with filth.
+
+And he no longer dared to leave his own house.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXVIII
+
+Towards ten o'clock in the forenoon Ulenspiegel and Soetkin were
+brought into the torture chamber.
+
+There were the bailiff, the clerk and the sheriffs, the executioner
+from Bruges, his assistant and a barber surgeon.
+
+The bailiff asked Soetkin if she was not holding back goods that
+belonged to the Emperor. She replied that having nothing, she could
+hold back nothing.
+
+"And thou?" asked the bailiff, speaking to Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Seven months since," said he, "we inherited seven hundred carolus;
+some of these we ate. As for the others, I cannot tell where they are;
+I think indeed that the traveller on foot that stayed in our house, for
+our undoing, took the rest away, for I have seen nothing since then."
+
+The bailiff asked again if both persisted in declaring themselves
+innocent.
+
+They answered that they were holding back nothing that belonged to
+the Emperor.
+
+The bailiff then said gravely and sadly:
+
+"The charges against you being serious and the accusation well
+sustained, you must needs, if you do not confess, undergo the
+question."
+
+"Spare the widow," said Ulenspiegel. "The fishmonger has bought
+up everything."
+
+"Poor lad," said Soetkin, "men cannot endure pain as women can."
+
+Seeing Ulenspiegel pale as the dead because of her, she said again:
+
+"I have hate and force."
+
+"Spare the widow," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Take me in his stead," said Soetkin.
+
+The bailiff asked the executioner if he had in readiness the implements
+and all things needful to discover the truth.
+
+The executioner replied:
+
+"They are all here."
+
+The judges, having consulted, decided that, in order to come at the
+truth, they should begin with the woman.
+
+"For," said one of the sheriffs, "there is no son so cruel or hard
+hearted as to see his mother suffer without making confession of the
+crime and so to deliver her; the same will do any mother, were she
+a tigress at heart, for her offspring."
+
+Speaking to the executioner, the bailiff said:
+
+"Make the woman sit in the chair and put the baguettes on her hands
+and her feet."
+
+The executioner obeyed.
+
+"Oh, do not do that, Messieurs Judges!" cried Ulenspiegel. "Bind me
+in her place, break my fingers and my toes, but spare the widow."
+
+"The fishmonger," said Soetkin. "I have hate and force."
+
+Ulenspiegel seemed livid pale, trembling, beside himself, and held
+his peace.
+
+The baguettes were little rods of boxwood, placed between each finger
+and toe, touching the bone, and joined together with strings by an
+instrument so craftily designed that the executioner could, at the
+behest of the judge, squeeze all the fingers together, strip the
+bones of their flesh, grind them terribly, or give the victim only
+a slight pain.
+
+He put the baguettes on Soetkin's hands and feet.
+
+"Tighten," said the bailiff.
+
+He did so cruelly.
+
+Then the bailiff, addressing himself to Soetkin:
+
+"Discover to me," said he, "the place where the carolus are hidden."
+
+"I do not know it," she replied, groaning.
+
+"Harder," said he.
+
+Ulenspiegel twisted his arms that were bound behind his back to be
+rid of the rope and so come to Soetkin's aid.
+
+"Do not tighten them, messieurs judges," said he, "do not tighten them,
+these be but woman's bones, thin and brittle. A bird could break them
+with its beak. Do not tighten them, sirs--master executioner, I do
+not speak to you, for you must needs be obedient to these gentlemen's
+orders. O do not bid him tighten them; have pity!"
+
+"The fishmonger," said Soetkin.
+
+And Ulenspiegel held his peace.
+
+However, seeing that the executioner was locking the baguettes tighter
+still, he cried out again:
+
+"Pity, sirs!" he said. "Ye are breaking the widow's fingers that she
+needeth to work withal. Alas! her feet! Will she never walk again
+now? Pity, sirs!"
+
+"Thou shalt come to an ill end, fishmonger," cried Soetkin.
+
+And the bones crackled and the blood from her feet fell in little
+drops.
+
+Ulenspiegel looked at all this, and trembling with anguish and with
+rage, he said:
+
+"A woman's bones, do not break them, sirs!"
+
+"The fishmonger," groaned Soetkin.
+
+And her voice was low and stifled like the voice of a ghost.
+
+Ulenspiegel trembled and cried out:
+
+"Master judges, her hands are bleeding and her feet, too. The widow's
+bones are broken, broken!"
+
+The barber surgeon touched them with his finger, and Soetkin uttered
+a loud scream.
+
+"Confess for her," said the bailiff to Ulenspiegel.
+
+But Soetkin looked at him with eyes like the eyes of the dead, wide
+open and staring. And he knew he could not speak, and he wept and
+said nothing.
+
+But the bailiff said next:
+
+"Since this woman is gifted with a man's fortitude, we must try her
+courage before the torments of her son."
+
+Soetkin heard nothing, for she had lost her senses by reason of the
+great agony she had suffered.
+
+They brought her back to consciousness with much vinegar. Then
+Ulenspiegel was stripped naked before the widow's eyes. The executioner
+shaved his head and his whole body, so as to spy that he had no wicked
+spell on him. Then he perceived on his back the little black mark
+he carried from his birth. He thrust a long needle into it several
+times; but as the blood came, he decided that there was no sorcery
+in the mark. At the bailiff's order, the hands of Ulenspiegel were
+tied with two cords running over a pulley fixed to the roof so that
+the executioner at the judges' pleasure could hoist him up and let
+him drop with a brutal jerk; which he did nine times, having first
+hung a weight of twenty-five pounds on each foot.
+
+At the ninth time, the skin of his wrists and ankles tore, and the
+bones of his legs began to come out of their sockets.
+
+"Confess," said the bailiff.
+
+"No," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+Soetkin looked at her son and could find no strength either to cry out
+or to speak; only she stretched forth her arms, fluttering her bleeding
+hands and showing thus that they must make an end of this torment.
+
+The executioner ran Ulenspiegel up and down yet again. And the skin
+of his wrists and ankles was torn still more; and the bones of his
+legs came out of their sockets further still; but he uttered no cry.
+
+Soetkin wept and fluttered her bleeding hands.
+
+"Confess the concealment," said the bailiff, "and you shall have
+pardon for it."
+
+"The fishmonger hath need of pardon," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Wilt thou mock thy judges?" said one of the sheriffs.
+
+"Mock? Alas!" replied Ulenspiegel, "I but feign to mock, believe me."
+
+Soetkin then saw the executioner, who, at the bailiff's order, was
+blowing up a brazier of red coals, and an assistant who was lighting
+two candles. She would fain have risen up on her murdered feet,
+but fell back to a sitting posture, and exclaiming:
+
+"Take away that fire!" she cried. "Ah! master judges, spare his poor
+youth. Take away the fire!"
+
+"The fishmonger!" cried Ulenspiegel, seeing her weakening.
+
+"Raise Ulenspiegel a foot above the ground," said the bailiff;
+"set the brazier underneath his feet and a candle under either armpit."
+
+The executioner obeyed. What hair was left in his armpits crackled
+and smoked in the flame.
+
+Ulenspiegel cried out, and Soetkin, weeping, said:
+
+"Take the fire away!"
+
+The bailiff said:
+
+"Confess the concealment and thou shalt be set at liberty. Confess
+for him, woman."
+
+And Ulenspiegel said: "Who will throw the fishmonger into the fire
+that burneth for ever?"
+
+Soetkin made sign with her head that she had nothing to
+say. Ulenspiegel ground and gnashed his teeth, and Soetkin looked at
+him with haggard eyes and all in tears.
+
+Nevertheless, when the executioner, having blown out the candles,
+set the burning brazier under Ulenspiegel's feet, she cried:
+
+"Master judges, have pity upon him: he knows not what he saith."
+
+"Why doth he not know what he saith?" asked the bailiff, craftily.
+
+"Do not question her, master judges; ye see full well that she is
+out of her wits with torment. The fishmonger lied," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Wilt thou say the same as he, woman?" asked the bailiff.
+
+Soetkin made sign with her head to say yes.
+
+"Burn the fishmonger!" cried Ulenspiegel.
+
+Soetkin held her peace, raising her clenched fist into the air as
+though to curse.
+
+Yet seeing the brazier burn up more fiercely under her son's feet,
+she cried:
+
+"O Lord God! Madame Mary that art in heaven, put an end to this
+torment! Have pity! Take the brazier away!"
+
+"The fishmonger!" groaned Ulenspiegel again.
+
+And he vomited blood in great gushes through nose and mouth, and
+letting his head fall, hung suspended above the coals.
+
+Then Soetkin cried:
+
+"He is dead, my poor orphan! They have killed him! Ah! him, too. Take
+away this brazier, master judges! Let me take him into my arms
+to die also, I, too, to die with him. Ye know I cannot flee on my
+broken feet."
+
+"Give the widow her son," said the bailiff.
+
+Then the judges deliberated together.
+
+The executioner unbound Ulenspiegel, and laid him all naked and
+covered with blood upon Soetkin's knees, while the barber surgeon
+put back his bones in their sockets.
+
+All the while Soetkin embraced Ulenspiegel, and said, weeping:
+
+"Son, poor martyr! If the judges will, I shall heal thee, I; but
+awaken, Thyl, my son! Master judges, if ye have killed him on me,
+I shall go to His Majesty; for ye have done contrary to all laws
+and justice, and ye shall see what one poor woman can do against
+wicked men. But, sirs, leave us free together. We have nothing but
+our two selves in the world, poor wretches on whom the hand of God
+has been heavy."
+
+Having deliberated, the judges gave out the following sentence:
+
+"Inasmuch as you, Soetkin, lawful widow of Claes, and you, Thyl, son
+of Claes, and called Ulenspiegel, having been accused of fraudulently
+withholding the goods that by confiscation were the property of His
+Majesty the King, maugre all privileges contrary to this, despite
+severe torture and adequate ordeal, have confessed to nothing:
+
+"The court, considering the absence of sufficient proofs, and in
+you, woman, the piteous condition of your members, and in you, man,
+the harsh torment you have undergone, declares you both at liberty,
+and accords you permission to take up your abode in the house of him
+or her who may please to give you lodging, in spite of your poverty.
+
+"Thus decreed at Damme, the three and twentieth day of October in
+the year of Our Lord 1558."
+
+"Thanks be to you, master judges," said Soetkin.
+
+"The fishmonger!" groaned Ulenspiegel.
+
+And mother and son were taken to the house of Katheline in a cart.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXIX
+
+In this year, which was the fifty-eighth of the century, Katheline
+went into Soetkin's house, and said:
+
+"Last night, having anointed myself with a balsam, I was carried
+to the tower of Notre Dame, and I beheld the spirits of the element
+passing on to the angels the prayers of men who flying towards the
+farthest heavens, bore them to the throne. And the sky was all over
+sprinkled with radiant stars. Suddenly there rose up from a fire pile
+a shape that seemed all black and climbed up to set himself beside
+me on the tower. I recognized Claes as he was in life, clad in his
+coalman's attire. 'What dost thou,' said he, 'on the tower of Notre
+Dame?' 'But thyself,' I replied, 'whither goest thou, flying through
+the air like a bird?' 'I go,' he said, 'to the judgment, dost thou not
+hear the angel's trump?' I was quite close to him, and felt that his
+spiritual body was not solid like the bodies of living men; but so
+tenuous that moving forward against him, I entered into it as into
+a hot vapour. At my feet, in all the land of Flanders, there shone
+a few lights, and I said to myself: 'Those who rise early and work
+late are the blessed of God.'
+
+"And all the while I heard the angel's trumpet sounding through the
+night. And I saw then another shade that mounted, coming out of Spain;
+this one was old and decrepit, had a chin like a slipper and preserve
+of quince on its lips. It wore on its back a cloak of crimson velvet
+lined with ermine, on its head a crown imperial, in one hand an
+anchovy which it was munching, in the other a tankard full of beer.
+
+"It came, doubtless for weariness, and sate down on the tower of Notre
+Dame. Kneeling down, I said to it: 'Crowned Majesty, I revere you,
+but I know you not. Whence come you and what do you in the world?' 'I
+come,' it said, 'from Saint Just in Estramadura, and I was the Emperor
+Charles the Fifth.' 'But,' said I, 'whither go you as now on this
+cold night, through these clouds laden with hail?' 'I go,' it said,
+'to the judgment.' Just as the Emperor was fain to finish his anchovy
+and to drink his beer from his tankard, the angel's trumpet sounded,
+and he flew up into the air growling and grumbling at being thus
+interrupted in his meal. I followed His Sacred Majesty. He went through
+space, hiccoughing with fatigue, wheezing with asthma, and sometimes
+vomiting, for death had come on him during a spell of indigestion. We
+mounted continually, like arrows sped from a bow of cornelwood. The
+stars glided beside us, tracing lines of fire in the sky; we saw
+them break loose and fall. And still the trumpet of the angel kept
+a-sounding. What a mighty and sonorous blare! At every flourish,
+as it beat against the mists of the air, they opened up as though
+some hurricane blast had blown upon them from near at hand. And so
+was our path marked out for us. Having been borne away for a thousand
+leagues and more, we beheld Christ in his glory, seated on a throne of
+stars, and on his right hand was the angel that inscribes the deeds
+of men upon a brazen register, and on his left hand Mary his mother,
+entreating him without ceasing for sinners.
+
+"Claes and the Emperor Charles knelt down before the throne.
+
+"The angel cast the crown from off Charles's head: 'There is but one
+emperor here,' said he, 'that is Christ.'
+
+"His Sacred Majesty seemed angry; nevertheless, speaking humbly:
+'Might I not,' said he, 'keep this anchovy and this tankard of beer,
+for this long journey made me hungry.'
+
+"'As thou wast all thy life long,' rejoined the angel; 'but eat and
+drink none the less.'
+
+"The Emperor drained the tankard of beer and munched at the anchovy.
+
+"Then Christ spake and said:
+
+"'Dost thou offer a cleansed soul for judgment?'
+
+"'I hope as much, my sweet Lord, for I confessed myself,' replied
+the Emperor Charles.
+
+"'And thou, Claes?' said Christ, 'thou dost not tremble as doth
+this emperor.'
+
+"'My Lord Jesus,' answered Claes, 'there is no soul that is clean;
+I am not, therefore, afraid of Thee who art the supreme good and the
+supreme justice, but withal I fear for my sins that were many.'
+
+"'Speak, carrion,' said the angel, addressing the Emperor.
+
+"'I, Lord,' replied Charles in an embarrassed voice, 'being anointed
+by the finger of Thy priests, I was consecrated King of Castile,
+Emperor of Germany, and King of the Romans. I had ever at heart the
+preservation of the power that cometh from Thee, and to that end
+I wrought by the rope, by the steel, by the pit, and by the fire
+against all them of the reform."
+
+"But the angel:
+
+"'Belly-aching liar,' said he, 'thou wouldst fain deceive us. Thou
+didst tolerate the reformers in Germany, because thou wast afeard of
+them, and had them beheaded, burned, hanged, and buried alive in the
+Low Countries, where thou hadst no fear save not to inherit enough from
+these toiling bees so rich in plenteous honey. A hundred thousand souls
+perished by thy doing, not because thou didst love Christ, monseigneur,
+but because thou wast a despot, tyrant, devourer of countries, loving
+but thyself, and after thyself, meats, fishes, wines, and beers,
+for thou wast as great a glutton as any dog, and thirsty as a sponge.'
+
+"'And thou, Claes, speak,' said Christ.
+
+"But the angel, standing up:
+
+"'This one hath naught to say. He was good, hard-working like the
+poor Flanders folk, willing to toil and willing to laugh, keeping the
+faith he owed his princes and believing that his princes would keep
+the faith they owed to him. He had money, he was accused, and as he
+had harboured one of the reformed, he was burned alive.'
+
+"'Ah,' said Mary, 'poor martyr, but there are in heaven cool springs,
+fountains of milk, and choice wine that will refresh thee, and I will
+myself lead thee to them, coalman!'
+
+"The trumpet of the angel sounded again, and I saw arising from
+the depths of the abyss a man naked and beautiful, with a crown
+of iron. And on the round of the crown were inscribed these words:
+'Dark until the day of doom!'
+
+"He drew near to the throne and said to Christ:
+
+"'I am thy slave until I am thy master.'
+
+"'Satan,' said Mary, 'a day shall come when there will be no more
+slaves or masters, and when Christ who is love, Satan who is pride,
+will signify: Might and Knowledge.'
+
+"'Woman,' said Satan, 'thou art fair and kind.'
+
+"Then speaking to Christ, and pointing to the Emperor:
+
+"'What is to be done with this one?' said he.
+
+"Christ replied:
+
+"'Thou shalt put the crowned worm in a chamber where thou shalt
+collect all the implements of torment used during his reign. Each
+time a wretched, innocent man endureth the torment of the water, which
+bloweth men up like bladders; of the candles, that burneth the soles
+of the feet and the armpits; the strappado, which breaketh the limbs;
+the riving asunder by four galleys; every time a free soul gives up
+its last breath on the fire, he must undergo all these deaths in turn,
+all these tortures, that he may learn what evil may be wrought by an
+unjust man that hath at command millions of his fellow men: let him
+rot in gaols, die upon scaffolds, groan in exile far from his own
+country; let him be dishonoured, shamefully entreated, scourged;
+let him be rich and harried by the treasury; let informers bring
+accusations against him, and confiscations ruin him. Thou shalt
+make of him an ass, that he may be meek, ill treated, and ill fed;
+a poor man, that he may ask for alms and be greeted with insults;
+a worker that he may toil too much and eat too little; then when he
+shall have suffered sorely in his man's body and soul, thou shalt turn
+him into a dog, that he may be friendly, and be beaten; a slave in
+the Indies, that he may be sold by auction; a soldier, that he may
+fight for another man and be slain without knowing wherefore. And
+when, at the end of three hundred years, he will thus have gone
+through every form of suffering, every distress, thou shalt make a
+free man of him, and if in this condition he is good as was Claes,
+thou shalt give his body eternal repose, in a spot shaded at noon,
+visited by the sun in the morning, under a goodly tree, and covered
+by a cool verdant sward. And his friends will come to shed their tears
+of grief upon his tomb, and sow violets, the blossoms of remembrance.'
+
+"'Pardon, my son,' said Mary, 'he knew not what he did, for power
+hardeneth the heart.'
+
+"'There is no pardon,' said Christ.
+
+"'Ah!' said His Sacred Majesty, 'if only I had a glass of Andalusian
+wine!'
+
+"'Come,' said Satan, 'past is the time of wine, of meats and fowls.'
+
+"And he bore away to the uttermost deeps of hell the soul of the poor
+emperor, still munching his fragment of anchovy.
+
+"Satan for pity left it to him. Then I saw Madame the Virgin leading
+Claes to the highest height of heaven, there where was naught but
+stars hanging like clusters of grapes to the vaulted roof. And there
+angels laved him and he became handsome and young. Then they gave
+him rystpap to eat, in silver spoons. And heaven closed again."
+
+"He is in glory," said the widow.
+
+"The ashes beat against my heart," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXX
+
+During the next three and twenty days Katheline grew white, and thin,
+drying up as though she were devoured by a fire within more consuming
+than the fire of madness.
+
+She said no longer: "The fire! Make a hole: the soul would fain
+escape," but ever in ecstasy and delight she would say to Nele:
+"Spouse am I: spouse thou art to be. Handsome; long hair; hot love;
+knees cold and cold arms!"
+
+And Soetkin looked on her grieving, for she thought this some new
+madness.
+
+Katheline continued:
+
+"Thrice three make nine, the sacred number. He that in the night hath
+eyes shining as a cat's alone seeth the mystery."
+
+One night Soetkin, hearing her, made a movement of doubting.
+
+But Katheline:
+
+"Four and three," said she, "misfortune under Saturn; under Venus,
+the marriage number. Cold arms! Cold knees! Heart of fire!"
+
+Soetkin made answer:
+
+"It is not well to speak of wicked heathen idols."
+
+Hearing which Katheline made the sign of the cross and said:
+
+"Blessed be the gray horseman. Nele must have a husband, a handsome
+husband carrying a sword, a black husband with a shining face."
+
+"Aye," said Ulenspiegel, "a fricassee of husbands for which I shall
+make the sauce with my knife."
+
+Nele looked at her friend with eyes all moist for the pleasure of
+seeing him so jealous.
+
+"I want no husband," said she.
+
+Katheline replied:
+
+"When he that is clad in gray shall come, ever booted and spurred in
+another fashion."
+
+Soetkin said:
+
+"Pray to God for the poor madwife."
+
+"Ulenspiegel," said Katheline, "go fetch us four quarts of dobbel-cuyt
+whilst I go to prepare the heete-koeken"; which are pancakes in the
+land of France.
+
+Soetkin asked why she made feast on Saturday like the Jews.
+
+Katheline answered:
+
+"Because the dough is ready."
+
+Ulenspiegel was standing holding in his hand the great pewter pot,
+which held the exact measure.
+
+"Mother, what must I do?"
+
+"Go," said Katheline.
+
+Soetkin would not answer, not being mistress in the house: she said
+to Ulenspiegel, "Go, my son."
+
+Ulenspiegel ran up to the Scaeck, whence he brought back the four
+quarts of dobbel-cuyt.
+
+Soon the perfume of the heete-koeken spread throughout the kitchen,
+and all were hungry, even the sorrow-stricken widow.
+
+Ulenspiegel ate heartily. Katheline had given him a great tankard
+saying that being the only male, and head in the house, he must drink
+more than the others and sing afterwards.
+
+Saying this, she had a crafty look; but Ulenspiegel drank and did
+not sing. Nele wept, looking at Soetkin all pale and huddled down;
+only Katheline was gay.
+
+After the meal Soetkin and Ulenspiegel went up to the garret to go
+to bed; Katheline and Nele remained in the kitchen where the beds
+were prepared.
+
+Towards two in the morning, Ulenspiegel had long been asleep by
+reason of the heavy drink; Soetkin, with eyes open even as she had
+every night, was praying to Madame the Virgin to send her sleep,
+but Madame did not give ear.
+
+Suddenly she heard the cry of a sea eagle and from the kitchen a like
+cry in answer; then from afar in the country, other cries resounded,
+and always she deemed that there was an answer from the kitchen.
+
+Thinking that these were night birds, she paid no heed to them. She
+heard the neighing of horses and the clatter of iron-shod hoofs
+striking on the causeway; she opened the window of the garret and saw
+indeed two horses, saddled, pawing the ground, and browsing on the
+grass of the roadside. Then she heard the voice of a woman crying out,
+a man's voice threatening, blows struck, fresh cries, the banging of
+a door, and an agonized foot climbing the steps of the stair.
+
+Ulenspiegel snored and heard nothing at all; the garret door opened;
+Nele came in all but naked, out of breath, panting, weeping, and
+sobbing, against the door she thrust a table, chairs, an old stove,
+all she could find in the shape of furniture. The last stars were
+nearly extinguished, the cocks were beginning to crow.
+
+Ulenspiegel, at the noise that Nele had made, had turned in his bed,
+but still continued to sleep.
+
+Nele then, flinging herself on Soetkin's neck: "Soetkin," she said,
+"I am afraid, light the candle."
+
+Soetkin did so; and Nele still groaned the while.
+
+The candle being lit, Soetkin looked at Nele and saw the girl's
+chemise torn at the shoulder and on her forehead, her cheek, and her
+neck bloody scratches such as might be made by fingernails.
+
+"Nele," said Soetkin, embracing her, "whence come you wounded in
+this fashion?"
+
+The girl, still trembling and moaning, said: "Do not have us burned,
+Soetkin."
+
+In the meantime, Ulenspiegel awaked and was blinking in the
+candlelight. Soetkin said: "Who is below there?"
+
+Nele replied:
+
+"Hold thy peace, it is the husband she wants to give me."
+
+Soetkin and Nele all at once heard Katheline cry out, and their limbs
+gave way under both of them.
+
+"He is beating her, he is beating her on my account," said Nele.
+
+"Who is in the house?" cried Ulenspiegel, leaping out of his bed. Then
+rubbing his eyes, he went searching about the chamber until he had
+got his hands on a weighty poker lying in a corner.
+
+"No one," said Nele, "nobody at all; do not go down, Ulenspiegel!"
+
+But he, paying no heed to anything, ran to the door, flinging aside
+chairs, tables, and stove. Katheline ceased not to cry out below;
+Nele and Soetkin clung to Ulenspiegel on the landing, one with her
+arms about his body, the other holding by his legs, saying: "Do not
+go down, Ulenspiegel, they are devils."
+
+"Aye," he replied, "devil-husband of Nele, I will join him in wedlock
+with my poker. Betrothal of iron and flesh! Let me go down."
+
+But still they would not let go, for they were strong by reason of
+their holding on the balusters. He dragged them down the steps of
+the staircase, and they were afraid at thus drawing nearer to the
+devils. But they could do nothing against him. Descending by leaps and
+bounds like a great snowball from the top of a mountain, he went into
+the kitchen, saw Katheline worn out and wan in the light of the dawn,
+and heard her saying: "Hanske, why dost thou leave me alone? It is
+not my fault if Nele is bad."
+
+Ulenspiegel, without staying to listen to her, opened the stable
+door. Finding no one within, he dashed out into the garden and from
+thence into the highway; far off he saw two horses galloping and
+losing themselves in the mist. He ran to catch them up, but could not,
+for they went like the storm winds sweeping up the withered leaves.
+
+Vexed and wild with anger and despair, he came back again, saying
+between his teeth: "They have violated her! they have violated
+her!" And with an ill flame burning in his eyes he looked on Nele,
+who, all shuddering, standing before the widow and Katheline, said:
+"No Thyl, no, my beloved, no!"
+
+Saying so, she looked into his eyes so seriously and so candidly
+that Ulenspiegel well perceived that she spoke the truth. Then
+questioning her:
+
+"Whence came these cries?" said he; "where were those men going? Why
+is thy chemise torn at the shoulder and the back? Why hast thou on
+thy cheek and forehead the marks of fingernails?"
+
+"Listen," said she, "but do not have us burned, Ulenspiegel. Katheline,
+may God preserve her from hell! has now for three and twenty days a
+devil for lover, clad in black, booted and spurred. His face shines
+with the fire seen in summertime upon the waves of the sea when it
+is hot."
+
+"Why art thou gone, Hanske, my darling?" said Katheline. "Nele is bad."
+
+But Nele, going on with her tale, said: "He cries like a sea eagle
+to announce his presence. My mother sees him in the kitchen every
+Saturday. She says that his kisses are cold and his body like snow. He
+beats her when she does not do all that he would have her do. He once
+brought her some florins, but he took all the others from her."
+
+During this tale, Soetkin, clasping her hands, prayed for
+Katheline. Katheline said, rejoicing:
+
+"Mine is my body no longer, mine no longer is my spirit, but
+his. Hanske, my darling, bring me to the sabbath again. There is only
+Nele that never hath mind to come; Nele is bad."
+
+"At daybreak he was wont to depart," continued the girl; "and on the
+morrow my mother would tell me a hundred marvels.... But there is no
+need to look on me with such cruel eyes, Ulenspiegel. Yesterday she
+told me that a fine seigneur, clothed in gray and called Hilbert,
+desired to have me in marriage and would come here to show himself
+to me. I answered that I had no mind for any husband, neither ugly
+nor handsome. By her maternal authority she forced me to remain up
+to wait their coming; for she loses none of her wits when it is a
+matter of her amours. We were half undressed, ready to go to bed;
+I was sleeping upon yonder chair. When they came within I did not
+wake. Suddenly I felt someone embracing me and kissing me on the
+neck. And by the light of the shining moon I beheld a face as bright
+as the crests of the waves of the sea in July, when it is like to
+thunder, and I heard one saying to me in a whispering voice: 'I am
+Hilbert, thy husband; be mine and I shall make thee rich.' The face of
+him that spake had a smell as of fish. I repulsed him; he would have
+taken me by force, but I had the strength of ten men like him. Even
+so he tore my chemise, wounded my face, and went on saying, 'Be mine,
+I shall make thee rich.' 'Aye,' I said, 'like my mother, from whom
+thou wilt take her last liard.' Then he redoubled his violence, but
+could avail naught against me. Then as he was uglier than a corpse,
+I gave him my nails in his eyes so hard that he screamed for the pain
+and I could break loose and come hither to Soetkin."
+
+Katheline kept repeating:
+
+"Nele is bad. Why hast thou gone so quickly, Hanske, my darling?"
+
+"Where wast thou, ill mother," said Soetkin, "while they would have
+taken away thy child's honour?"
+
+"Nele is bad," said Katheline. "I was with my black lord, when the
+gray devil came to us, his face all bloody, and said: 'Come away, lad:
+the house is a bad house; the men in it would beat us to the death,
+and the women have knives at their fingertips.' Then they ran to
+their horses and disappeared in the mist. Nele is bad!"
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXXI
+
+On the morrow, while they were drinking hot milk, Soetkin said to
+Katheline:
+
+"Thou seest that sorrow is driving me already out of this world,
+wouldst thou drive me to flee from it through thy damned witchcrafts?"
+
+But Katheline kept saying:
+
+"Nele is bad. Come back, Hanske, my darling."
+
+On the next Wednesday the devils came back together. Since the Saturday
+Nele slept at the house of the widow Van den Houte, saying that she
+could not stay at Katheline's by reason of the presence of Ulenspiegel,
+a young bachelor.
+
+Katheline received her black lord and his friend in the keet,
+which is the wash house and the bakery appurtenant to the main
+dwelling. And then they held feast and revel with old wines and
+smoked ox tongues, that were always there awaiting them. The black
+devil said to Katheline:
+
+"We have need," said he, "for an important task that is to be done,
+of a heavy sum of money; give us what thou canst."
+
+Katheline, being unwilling to give more than a florin, they threatened
+to kill her. But they let her off with two gold carolus and seven
+deniers.
+
+"Come no more on the Saturday," she told them. "Ulenspiegel knows
+that day and will await you with weapons to kill you, and I should
+die after you."
+
+"We shall come next Tuesday," said they.
+
+On that day Ulenspiegel and Nele slept without fear of the devils,
+for they believed that they came only on Saturday.
+
+Katheline rose and went into the keet, to see if her friends had come.
+
+She was sorely impatient, because since she had seen Hanske again,
+her madness had greatly lessened, for folk said it was love-madness.
+
+Not seeing them, she was brokenhearted; when she heard the sea eagle
+cry from the direction of Sluys, in the country, she went towards
+the cry. Going in the meadow at the foot of a dyke of faggots and
+green sod, she heard from the other side of the dyke the two devils
+talking together. One said:
+
+"I shall have the half of it."
+
+The other replied:
+
+"Thou shalt have none of it; what is Katheline's is mine."
+
+Then they cursed and blasphemed like madmen, disputing between them who
+should have to himself alone the money and the loves of Katheline and
+Nele together. Transfixed with fear, daring neither to speak nor budge,
+Katheline presently heard them fighting, then one of them saying:
+
+"This steel is cold." Then a rattling breath and the fall of a
+heavy body.
+
+Affrighted, she walked back to her cottage. At two o'clock in the
+night she heard again, but now in her garden, the cry of the sea
+eagle. She went to open and saw before the door her lover devil
+alone. She asked him:
+
+"What hast thou done with the other?"
+
+"He will not come again," he answered.
+
+Then embracing her he caressed her. And he seemed to her colder than
+usual. And Katheline's spirit was well awaked. When he went away,
+he asked her for twenty florins, all she had: she gave him seventeen.
+
+On the morrow, being curious, she went along by the dyke; but she
+saw nothing, save at a spot as big as a man's coffin blood upon the
+turf that was less solid under foot. But that night rain washed away
+the blood.
+
+The next Wednesday she heard the cry of the sea eagle once more in
+her garden.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXXII
+
+Each time he needed money to pay their share of expenses at Katheline's
+Ulenspiegel went by night to lift the stone from the hole dug beside
+the well, and took out a carolus.
+
+One night the three women were spinning; Ulenspiegel was carving with
+his knife a box that the bailiff had entrusted to him, and on which
+he was skilfully graving a goodly chase, with a pack of Hainaut dogs,
+mastiffs from Crete, the which are most savage beasts; Brabant dogs
+going in pairs and called ear biters, and other dogs, straight-legged,
+crook-legged, short-legged, and greyhounds.
+
+Katheline being present, Nele asked Soetkin if she had hidden her
+treasure well. The widow answered without any misgivings that it
+could not be better than in the side of the well wall.
+
+Towards the midnight, being Thursday, Soetkin was awakened by Bibulus
+Schnouffius, barking very sharply, but not for long. Deeming that it
+was some false alarm, she went to sleep again.
+
+Friday morning, early, Soetkin and Ulenspiegel, having risen, did not
+see Katheline as usual in the kitchen, nor the fire lit, nor the milk
+boiling on the fire. They were dumbfounded and looked to see if she
+was not perchance in the garden. They saw her there, though it was
+misty rain, dishevelled, in her body linen all soaked and chilled,
+but not daring to enter.
+
+Ulenspiegel, going to her, said:
+
+"What dost thou there, half naked, when it rains?"
+
+"Ah," she said, "aye, aye, a great portent!"
+
+And she showed the dog with his throat cut and lying stiff.
+
+Ulenspiegel thought at once of the treasure; he ran to it. The hole
+was empty and the earth strewed far about.
+
+Leaping on Katheline and beating her:
+
+"Where are the carolus?" he said.
+
+"Aye, aye, a great portent!" replied Katheline.
+
+Nele, defending her mother, cried out:
+
+"Mercy and pity, Ulenspiegel!"
+
+He ceased to strike. Soetkin then showed herself and asked what was
+the matter.
+
+Ulenspiegel showed her the dog killed and the hole empty. Soetkin
+went white and said:
+
+"Thou dost smite me cruelly, Lord God. My poor feet!"
+
+And she said that because of the agony she had in them and the torment
+borne in vain for the gold carolus. Nele, seeing Soetkin so gentle,
+fell in despair and wept; Katheline, waving a piece of parchment, said:
+
+"Aye, a great portent. Last night he came, kindly and goodly. No
+longer was there on his face that livid glow that gave me so much
+affright. He spoke to me with a great tenderness. I was ravished
+with joy, my heart melted within me. He said to me, 'Now I am rich,
+and will before long bring thee a thousand florins.' 'Aye,' said I,
+'I am more glad for thy sake than for mine, Hanske, my darling.' 'But
+hast thou not here,' he asked, 'some other person thou lovest and
+whom I might make rich?' 'Nay,' I replied, 'those that be here have
+no need of thee.' 'Thou art proud,' said he, 'are then Soetkin and
+Ulenspiegel rich?' 'They live with no help from their neighbours,' I
+replied. 'In spite of the confiscation?' said he. To which I answered
+that you had endured the torture rather than allow your money to be
+taken. 'I was not without knowledge of that,' said he. And he began,
+laughing quiet and low, to jeer at the bailiff and the sheriffs,
+for that they had not been able to make you confess. Then I laughed
+equally. 'They had not been so silly,' said he, 'as to hide their
+treasure in their house.' I laughed. 'Nor in the cellar, here.' 'No,
+no,' said I. 'Nor in the garden?' I made no reply. 'Ah,' said he,
+'it would be too much of an imprudence.' 'Not much,' said I, 'for
+neither the water nor the wall will speak.' And he continued to laugh.
+
+"Last night he went away sooner than usual, after giving me a powder
+with which, said he, I could go to the finest of sabbaths. I brought
+him, in my linen, to the garden gate, and I was all overcome with
+sleep. I went, as he had said, to the sabbath, and came back only at
+daybreak, when I found myself here, and saw the dog dead and the hole
+empty. That is a very heavy blow for me, who loved him so tenderly
+and gave him my soul. But you shall have all I have, and I shall work
+with my feet and my hands to maintain you."
+
+"I am the corn under the millstone: God and a robber devil strike me
+at the same time," said Soetkin.
+
+"Robber, do not say so," rejoined Katheline; "he is a devil, a
+devil. And for proof, I will show you the parchment he left in the
+yard; there is written upon it: 'Never forget to do my service. In
+thrice two weeks and five days I shall return thee the twofold of
+the treasure. Have no doubt, else thou shalt die.' And he will keep
+his word, I am convinced and sure."
+
+"Poor witless one!" said Soetkin.
+
+And that was her last word of reproach.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXXIII
+
+The two weeks having thrice passed by and the five days as well,
+the lover devil never came back. And still Katheline lived without
+despairing of it.
+
+Soetkin, never working now, remained continually in front of the fire,
+coughing and bent. Nele gave her the best and most fragrant herbs:
+but no remedy had power upon her. Ulenspiegel never left the cottage,
+fearing that Soetkin might die while he was abroad.
+
+Then it came that the widow could neither eat nor drink without
+vomiting. The barber surgeon came and bled her; the blood being taken
+from her, she was so weak that she could not leave her stool. At
+length, withered up with sorrow and pain, she said one evening:
+
+"Claes, my husband! Thyl, my son! I thank thee, God who takest
+me away!"
+
+And she died on a sigh.
+
+Katheline not daring to watch by her, Ulenspiegel and Nele did it
+together, and all night long they prayed for the dead woman.
+
+At dawn there entered by the open window a swallow.
+
+Nele said:
+
+"The bird of souls, 'tis a good omen: Soetkin is in heaven."
+
+The swallow flew round the chamber thrice and went off with a cry.
+
+Then there entered a second swallow, bigger and blacker than the
+other. It circled around Ulenspiegel, and he said:
+
+"Father and Mother, the ashes beat against my breast, I shall do what
+ye ask."
+
+And the second went away crying shrill like the first. The day showed
+brighter; Ulenspiegel saw thousands of swallows skimming the meadows,
+and the sun arose.
+
+And Soetkin was buried in the field of the poor.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXXIV
+
+After Soetkin's death, Ulenspiegel, dreamy, sorrowful, or angry,
+wandered about the kitchen, hearing nothing, taking what food or
+drink was given him, without choosing. And he often rose at night.
+
+In vain did Nele with her soft voice exhort him to hope. Vainly
+did Katheline tell him that she knew Soetkin was in paradise with
+Claes. To all Ulenspiegel replied:
+
+"The ashes are beating."
+
+And he was as a man distraught, and Nele wept to see him in this
+plight.
+
+Meanwhile, the fishmonger remained in his house alone like a parricide,
+and dared not go forth save by night; for men and women, passing near
+him, hooted him and called him murderer, and children fled before him,
+for they had been told that he was the executioner. He wandered alone
+and solitary, not daring to go into any of the three taverns of Damme;
+for he was pointed at in them, and if he merely remained standing
+for a minute inside, the drinkers went away.
+
+Hence it came that the baesen wished not to see him again, and if he
+presented himself, shut their door to him. Then the fishmonger would
+offer a humble remonstrance: they would reply that it was their right
+and not their obligation to sell.
+
+Tired of the struggle, the fishmonger used to go to drink in 't Roode
+Valck, at the Red Falcon, a little wine shop away from the town on
+the edge of the Sluys Canal. There they served him; for they were
+grubbing folk to whom any money was welcome. But the baes of the
+Roode Valck never spoke a word to him nor did his wife. There were
+two children and a dog in the house: when the fishmonger would have
+caressed the children, they ran away; and when he called the dog,
+the dog tried to bite him.
+
+One evening Ulenspiegel stood on the threshold: Mathyssens the cooper,
+seeing him so pensive and dreaming, said to him:
+
+"You should work with your hands and forget this sad blow."
+
+Ulenspiegel answered:
+
+"The ashes of Claes beat against my breast."
+
+"Ah," said Mathyssens, "he leads a sadder life than thou, the wretched
+fishmonger. No man speaks to him, and everyone flees from him, so that
+he is driven to go among the poor ragamuffins at the Roode Valck to
+drink his quart of bruinbier by himself. 'Tis a sore punishment."
+
+"The ashes beat!" said Ulenspiegel again.
+
+That same evening, while the clock on Notre Dame was striking the
+ninth hour, Ulenspiegel went towards the Roode Valck, and seeing that
+the fishmonger was not there, he went wandering under the trees on
+the edge of the canal. The moon was shining bright and clear.
+
+He saw the murderer coming.
+
+As he passed before him, he could see him near at hand, and heard
+him say, speaking aloud like those who live alone:
+
+"Where have they hidden these carolus?"
+
+"Where the devil has found them," answered Ulenspiegel striking him
+full in the face with his fist.
+
+"Alas!" said the fishmonger, "I know thee who thou art, thou art the
+son. Have pity, I am old and weak. What I did, it was not for hate,
+but to serve His Majesty. Deign to pardon me. I wilt give thee back the
+furniture I purchased, thou wilt not have to pay me one single patard
+for it. Is not that enough? I paid seven gold florins for them. Thou
+shalt have all and a demi-florin to boot, for I am not rich, it must
+not be imagined."
+
+And he would have gone on his knees before him.
+
+Ulenspiegel, seeing him so ugly, so trembling, and so cowardly and
+mean, flung him into the canal.
+
+And he went away.
+
+
+
+
+
+LXXXV
+
+On the doomfires smoked the fat of the victims. Ulenspiegel, thinking
+of Claes and Soetkin, wept in solitude.
+
+One night he went to find Katheline and ask her for a remedy and
+for vengeance.
+
+She was alone with Nele sewing beside the lamp. At the noise he made
+on coming within, Katheline dully lifted up her head like a woman
+awakened out of a heavy slumber.
+
+He said to her:
+
+"The ashes of Claes beat upon my breast; I would fain save the land
+of Flanders. I asked the Great God of heaven and earth, but He gave
+me no answer."
+
+Katheline said:
+
+"The Great God could not hear you: first you must address yourself
+to the spirits of the elemental world, which being of double nature,
+celestial and terrestrial, receive the complaints of poor humankind,
+and transmit them to the angels, which after bear them to the throne."
+
+"Help me," said he, "in my design; I will pay thee with my blood if
+need be."
+
+Replied Katheline:
+
+"I will help thee, if a girl that loveth thee would bring thee with
+her to the sabbath of the Spirits of the Springtide, which is the
+Easter of the Sap."
+
+"I will bring him," said Nele.
+
+Katheline poured into a crystal goblet a grayish coloured mixture
+of which she gave them both to drink; with this mixture she rubbed
+their temples, their nostrils, palms of the hand and wrists, made them
+swallow a pinch of a white powder, and bade them look at the other,
+that their two souls might become as but one.
+
+Ulenspiegel looked at Nele, and the kind soft eyes of the girl lit
+up a great fire within him; then by reason of the mixture he felt as
+it might have been a thousand crabs tearing at him.
+
+Then they took off their clothes, and they were beautiful thus in
+the lamplight, he in his proud strength, she in her delicious grace;
+but they could not see one another, for already they were as though
+in sleep. Then Katheline laid Nele's neck upon Ulenspiegel's arm,
+and taking his hand put it upon the maiden's heart.
+
+And they remained thus naked and lying one beside the other.
+
+It seemed to them twain that their bodies touching each other were
+of fire soft as the sun in the month of roses.
+
+They rose up, as they told later, mounted upon the window sill,
+launched themselves thence into void space, and felt the air bear
+them up as the water bears the ships.
+
+Then they perceived nothing any more, neither the earth where poor
+men were sleeping, nor the heavens where but now the clouds were
+rolling beneath their feet. And they set their feet on Sirius, the
+Cold Star. Then from there they were cast upon the pole.
+
+There they saw, not without fear, a naked giant, the Giant Winter,
+with tawny hair, seated upon ice mounds and against a wall of ice. In
+shallow pools bears and seals were moving hither and thither, a
+bellowing flock, all about him. In a hoarse voice, he called up hail
+and snow and cold floods and gray clouds and red and foul-smelling
+fogs, and the winds, among which the bitter north wind hath the
+strongest blast. And all raged together at once in this deadly place.
+
+Smiling upon these horrors, the giant was lying upon a bed of flowers
+faded by his hand, upon leaves withered at his breath. Then leaning
+over and scratching the earth with his nails, biting it with his teeth,
+he delved a hole to seek for the heart of the earth; to devour it,
+and also to put black coal in the place where shady forests were,
+straw where the corn was, sand in the room of the fertile earth. But
+the heart of the earth being of fire, he dared not touch it and
+recoiled abashed and afraid.
+
+He was throned like a king, draining his cup of oil, in the midst
+of his bears and his seals, and of the skeleton bones of all those
+whom he had killed upon the sea, upon land, and in the cottages of
+poor folk. He listened with delight to the roaring of the bears,
+the bellowing of the seals, and the dry rattling of the bones of the
+skeletons of men and beasts under the claws of vultures and ravens
+seeking a last rag of flesh on them, and the sound of ice lumps dashed
+one against the other by the gloomy water.
+
+And the voice of the giant was like the roar of hurricanes, the
+clamour of wintry storms, and the wind howling in chimneys.
+
+"I am acold and am afeard," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"He hath no power against spirits," answered Nele.
+
+Suddenly there was a great stir among the seals, which dashed in haste
+into the water, the bears, which laying their ears flat with fright,
+roared lamentably, and the ravens, which lost themselves in the clouds
+with agonized croakings.
+
+And lo, Nele and Ulenspiegel heard the dull thudding blows of a ram
+upon the wall of ice that served as a support to the Giant Winter. And
+the wall split and cracked and shook to and fro on its foundations.
+
+But the Giant Winter heard nothing, and he went on howling and shouting
+in glee, filling and draining his cup of oil; and he went on searching
+for the heart of the earth to freeze it, and not daring to lay hold
+of it.
+
+Meantime, the blows reechoed louder and harder, and the wall cracked
+more and more, and the rain of icicles flying in splintered pieces
+ceased not to fall about him.
+
+And the bears roared lamentably and without ceasing, and the seals
+complained in the leaden gloomy water.
+
+The wall crumbled and fell, and it became light in the sky; a man
+descended therefrom, naked and beautiful, leaning one hand upon a
+golden axe. And this man was Lucifer, King Springtide.
+
+When the giant beheld him, he flung far away his cup of oil, and
+implored him not to slay him.
+
+And at the warm breath of King Springtide, the Giant Winter lost all
+strength. Then the king took chains of diamonds, bound him with these,
+and tied him to the pole.
+
+Then staying, he uttered a cry, but a tender, amorous cry. And from
+the sky came down a blonde woman, naked and beautiful. Placing herself
+beside the king, she said to him:
+
+"Thou art my vanquisher, mighty man."
+
+He made answer:
+
+"If thou art an-hungered, eat; if thou art athirst, drink; if thou
+art afraid, come close to me: I am thy male and thy mate."
+
+"I am," said she, "hungry and athirst only for thee."
+
+The king shouted yet again seven times terribly. And there was a mighty
+din of thunder and lightning, and behind him there took shape a canopy
+of suns and of stars. And the twain sat them down upon thrones.
+
+Then the king and the woman, without a movement of their noble faces,
+and without a gesture impairing their might and their calm majesty,
+cried aloud.
+
+At these cries there was an undulating movement in the earth, the
+hard stone and the ice floes. And Nele and Ulenspiegel heard a noise
+such as might be made by gigantic birds seeking to break the shell
+of enormous eggs with blows of their beak.
+
+And in this huge movement of the earth which rose and fell like the
+waves of the sea there were shapes like the shape of an egg.
+
+Suddenly from everywhere came forth trees with their dry branches
+dovetailed and interlocked together, while their boles moved, swaying
+like drunken men. Then they drew apart, leaving between them a huge
+void space. From the stirring soil came forth the genii of the earth;
+from the deeps of the forest the woodland spirits; from the sea near
+by the genii of the water.
+
+Ulenspiegel and Nele saw there the dwarfs that are the wardens of
+treasure, hunchbacked, hairy, clumsy-foot, ugly and grinning, princes
+of the stones, men of the woods living like trees, and, by way of mouth
+and stomach, having a tuft of roots at the lower part of their face,
+thus to suck up their food from the bosom of the earth; the emperors
+of mines, who cannot speak, have neither heart nor entrails, and move
+like bright automatons. There, too, were dwarfs of flesh and bone,
+with lizard tails, toads' heads, and lantern for headgear, who leap
+by night upon the shoulders of drunken men afoot or timid travellers,
+leap down again and waving their lantern, lead into pools and bogholes
+the poor devils who imagine that this lantern is the candle burning
+in their homes.
+
+There, too, were the flower-maidens, flowers of feminine strength
+and haleness, naked and not blushing, proud of their beauty, having
+for their only cloak their hair.
+
+Their eyes shone with the wet lustre of mother of pearl in water;
+the flesh of their bodies was firm, white, and gilded by the light;
+from their red mouths partly open came a breath more sweet and fragrant
+than jasmine.
+
+These are they that wander by eventide in parks and gardens, or in the
+deeps of the woods, in shady bridle ways, amorous and seeking some
+human soul to enjoy it. So soon as passeth before them a young man
+and a young maid, they seek to slay the maid, but when they cannot,
+they breathe into the sweetling, still reluctant, desires of love so
+that she may yield herself to the lover; for then the flower-maiden
+hath half of the kisses.
+
+Ulenspiegel and Nele saw also coming down from the high heavens the
+guardian spirits of the stars, the genii of the winds, of the breeze
+and the rain, winged young men that make the earth fertile.
+
+Then in every quarter of the sky appeared the birds of souls,
+the dear swallows. When they were come, the light appeared
+stronger. Flower-maids, princes of the stones, emperors of the mines,
+men of the woods, spirits of the water, of fire, and of the earth
+all cried out in unison: "Light! Sap! Glory to King Springtide!"
+
+Although the sound of their unanimous outcry was greater than that of
+the raging sea, the thunder, and the unleashed tempest, it sounded
+as solemn music in the ears of Nele and of Ulenspiegel, who, silent
+and motionless, remained huddled together behind the rugged trunk of
+an oak tree.
+
+But they were still more affrighted when the spirits, thousands upon
+thousands, took their places upon seats that were immense spiders,
+toads with elephants, trunks, interlacing serpents, crocodiles
+standing up on their tails and holding a band of spirits in their jaws,
+serpents carrying more than thirty dwarfs, both men and women, seated
+astraddle on their undulating bodies, and full a hundred thousand
+insects bigger than Goliaths, armed with swords, spears, jagged
+scythes, forks with seven tines, and every other kind of dreadful
+murdering implements. They fought together with tremendous din, the
+strong devouring the weak, growing fat upon them, and showing thus
+that Death is made from Life and that Life is made from Death.
+
+And from among this crowd of spirits, swarming, shifting, dense,
+confused, there arose a noise like low thunder and a hundred weavers'
+looms, fullers and locksmiths all working together.
+
+Suddenly appeared the spirits of the sap, short, squat, round about
+the loins as big as the great Heidelberg tun, with thighs as big as
+hogsheads, and muscles so marvellously strong and powerful that one
+would have said their bodies were made up of large eggs and small
+eggs joined to one another and covered with a red, oily skin, shining
+like their sparse beard and their red hair; and they carried enormous
+tankards filled with a strange liquor.
+
+When the other spirits beheld them coming, a great tremor of joy ran
+among them; trees and plants moved and shook, and the earth opened
+up in cracks to drink.
+
+And the spirits of the sap poured out the wine: and all things
+incontinently budded, were green, flourished; the sward was full of
+whispering insects, and the sky of birds and butterflies; the spirits
+poured on and on, and those below received the wine as best they might:
+the flower-maids, opening their mouths or leaping up upon their red
+cupbearers, and kissing them to have more; some, clasping their hands
+in sign of entreaty; others who, in ecstasy, let it rain over them;
+but all greedy or parched, flying, standing, running or motionless,
+seeking to have the wine, and more intensely alive with every drop
+they attained to receiving. And there were no oldsters there, but
+ugly or goodly, all were full of prime strength and keenest youth.
+
+And they laughed, shouted, sang, pursuing one another upon the trees
+like squirrels, in the air like birds, every male seeking his female
+and under the skies of God falling to the holy deed of kind.
+
+And the spirits of the sap brought to the king and the queen the
+great cup full of their wine. And the king and the queen drank and
+embraced one another.
+
+Then the king, holding the queen in his arm, cast upon the trees,
+the flowers and the spirits, the dregs of his cup and cried aloud:
+
+"Glory to Life! Glory to the free Air! Glory to Force!"
+
+And all shouted:
+
+"Glory to Nature! Glory to Force!"
+
+And Ulenspiegel took Nele into his arms. Thus enlaced, a dance began:
+a round circling dance like a dance of leaves that a whirlwind
+swings together, where all was in motion, trees, plants, insects,
+butterflies, heaven and earth, king and queen, flower-maidens, emperors
+of mines, princes of stones, spirits of the waters, hunchback dwarfs,
+men of the woods, lantern bearers, guardian spirits of the stars,
+and the hundred thousand horrific insects mingling their spears,
+their saw-edged scythes, their seven-pronged forks; a giddy dance,
+swaying about in space and filling it, a dance in which the sun,
+the moon, the planets, the stars, the wind, the clouds, all took part.
+
+And the oak to which Nele and Ulenspiegel were clinging rolled with
+the whirl, and Ulenspiegel said to Nele:
+
+"Dear one, we are about to die."
+
+A spirit heard them and saw that they were mortals:
+
+"Mankind," he bawled, "mankind in this place!"
+
+And he wrenched them from the tree and flung them in the crowd.
+
+And Ulenspiegel and Nele fell soft and limp on the backs of the
+spirits, which bandied them about from one to another, saying:
+
+"Hail to mankind! Welcome be the earth worms! Who would have the lad
+and lass? They come to visit us, the puny things."
+
+And Ulenspiegel and Nele flew from one to another, crying:
+
+"Mercy!"
+
+But the spirits paid no heed, and both went fluttering, legs in air,
+head down, turning and circling like feathers in the winter winds,
+while the spirits said:
+
+"Glory to the manlings male and female, let them dance like us!"
+
+The flower-maidens, wishing to sever Nele from Ulenspiegel, smote
+her and would have killed her, had not King Springtide, staying the
+dance with a gesture, cried out:
+
+"Let these two lice be brought before me!"
+
+And they were separated one from the other; and each flower-maiden
+said, endeavouring to take Ulenspiegel from her rivals:
+
+"Thyl, wouldst thou not die for me?"
+
+"I will do so in a moment," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+And the dwarf wood sprites that were carrying Nele said:
+
+"Why art thou not a spirit like us, that we might take thee to us!"
+
+Nele answered:
+
+"Have patience."
+
+Thus they arrived before the king's throne; and they trembled sore
+seeing his golden axe and his iron crown.
+
+And he said to them:
+
+"What are ye come hither to do, ye puny things?"
+
+They made no answer.
+
+"I know thee, witches' shoot," added the King, "and thee too, sprout
+of the coalman; but having by the power of spells achieved the deed
+of penetrating to this laboratory of Nature, why have ye now your
+beaks locked like capons stuffed with crumb?"
+
+Nele trembled, looking at the terrible demon; but Ulenspiegel,
+recovering his manly hardihood, replied:
+
+"The ashes of Claes beat upon my heart. Divine Highness, death goeth
+throughout the land of Flanders, mowing down, in the Pope's name,
+the strongest men, the sweetest women; her privileges are destroyed,
+her charters abolished, famine gnaweth her, her weavers and cloth
+merchants leave her to go to the foreigner seeking freedom for their
+work. She will die soon if no one comes to her help. Highness, I
+am but a poor mean fellow come into the world like any other, who
+have lived as I could, imperfect, limited, ignorant, not virtuous,
+in no wise chaste or deserving of any favour human or divine. But
+Soetkin died of the effects of the torture and her grief, but Claes
+burned in a terrible fire, and I was minded to avenge them, and did
+so once; I was minded also to see this poor soil happier, this poor
+soil in which their bones are sown, and I asked God for the death of
+the persecutors, but he did not hearken to me nor heed me. Weary and
+sick of complaints, I evoked thee by the potency of Katheline's spell,
+and we come, I and my trembling she-comrade, to thy feet, to ask you,
+Divine Highnesses, to save this poor earth."
+
+The king and his spouse replied together:
+
+
+       "Through war and through fire
+        Through death, through the sword.
+            Seek the Seven.
+
+       "In death and blood
+        In ruin and tears,
+            Find the Seven.
+
+       "Foul, cruel, bad, deformed,
+        Mere Scourge of the poor earth.
+            Burn the Seven.
+
+       "Wait, hear and see!
+        Say, wretch, art thou not glad?
+            Find the Seven."
+
+
+And all the spirits fell to chanting in unison:
+
+
+       "In death and blood,
+        In ruin and tears
+            Find the Seven.
+
+       "Wait, hear and see!
+        Say, wretch, art thou not glad?
+            Find the Seven."
+
+
+"But," said Ulenspiegel, "Highness, and ye, spirits, I understand
+not your talk. Ye make a mock of me, sans doubt."
+
+But without heeding him they said:
+
+
+       "When the North
+        Shall kiss the West
+        Ruin shall end;
+        Find thou the Seven
+        The Girdle find!"
+
+
+And that with so tremendous a chorus and so terrifically loud, strong,
+and sonorous that the earth trembled and the heavens shivered. And
+the birds whistling, the owls bubbling, the sparrows twittering in
+affright, the sea eagles complaining, all flew round aghast. And the
+beasts of the earth, lions, serpents, bears, stags, bucks, wolves,
+dogs, and cats roared, hissed, belled, howled, barked, and mewed
+terribly.
+
+And the spirits chanted:
+
+
+       "Wait, hear and see,
+        Love thou the Seven
+        The Girdle love."
+
+
+And the cocks crowed, and all the spirits vanished save one malicious
+emperor of mines who seizing Ulenspiegel and Nele each by an arm,
+hurled them brutally out into the void.
+
+They found themselves lying beside each other, as though for sleep,
+and they shivered in the keen wind of the morning.
+
+And Ulenspiegel saw the delicious body of Nele all gilded in the sun
+that was then rising.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+I
+
+On that morning, which was in September, Ulenspiegel took his stick,
+three florins that Katheline gave him, a piece of pig's liver, and
+a slice of bread, and set out from Damme, going in the direction of
+Antwerp, seeking the Seven. Nele was sleeping.
+
+As he journeyed, he was followed by a dog that came sniffing about
+him because of the liver, and leaped up on his legs. Ulenspiegel
+would have driven him away, and seeing that the dog was determined
+to follow him, addressed this discourse to him:
+
+"Doggie, my dear, thou art but ill advised to leave the home where
+good messes await thee, delicious scraps, and bones full of marrow,
+to follow upon the road of adventure a vagabond fellow who mayhap will
+not always have even roots to give thee for thy food. Be guided by me,
+dog of no prudence, and go back to thine own baes. Avoid the rains,
+snows, hails, drizzles, mists, hoarfrosts, and other lean fare that
+fall upon the wanderer's back. Stay in the corner of the hearth,
+keeping thyself snug and warm, rolled up into a ball before the gay
+fire; leave me to walk in the mud, the dust, the cold, and the heat,
+roasted to-day, to-morrow frozen, feasted on Friday, famished on
+Sunday. Thou wilt do a sensible thing if thou dost return whence thou
+comest, dogling of small experience."
+
+The animal did not appear to hear Ulenspiegel at all. Wagging
+his tail and leaping all he could, he went barking for appetite's
+sake. Ulenspiegel thought it was for friendliness, but he never
+thought of the liver he carried in his satchel.
+
+He walked on; the dog followed him. Having thus gone more than a
+league, they saw in the road a cart drawn by an ass hanging its
+head. Upon a bank on the roadside there sat, between two clumps of
+thistles, a big man holding in one hand a knuckle bone of mutton,
+which he was gnawing, and in the other a flask whose juice he was
+draining. When he was not in the act of eating or of drinking, he
+whimpered and wept.
+
+Ulenspiegel having stopped, the dog stopped likewise. Smelling the
+mutton and the liver, he climbed up the bank. There, sitting on his
+hindquarters beside the man, he pawed his doublet, that he might share
+the feast, but the man, repulsing him with an elbow and holding the
+knuckle bone high in air, groaned lamentably. The dog imitated him for
+greedy longing. The ass, cross to find himself harnessed to the cart,
+and so unable to reach the thistles, began to bray.
+
+"What wouldst thou have, Jan?" asked the man of his ass.
+
+"Nothing," answered Ulenspiegel, "except that he would fain breakfast
+on these thistles that flourish beside you as they grow on the
+roodscreen of Tessenderloo beside and above Monseigneur Christ. That
+dog, too, would not be grieved to effect a wedlock of jaws with the
+bone you have there; in the meanwhile, I am going to give him the
+liver I have here."
+
+The liver having been devoured by the dog, the man looked at his
+bone picked it again to have the meat that still remained on it,
+then he gave it thus denuded of flesh to the dog, who, setting his
+forepaws on it, began to crunch it on the grass.
+
+Then the man looked at Ulenspiegel.
+
+The latter knew Lamme Goedzak, of Damme.
+
+"Lamme," he said, "what dost thou here drinking, eating, and
+whimpering? What trooper can have rudely dressed down your ears?"
+
+"Alas! my wife!" said Lamme.
+
+He was on the point of emptying his wine flask, when Ulenspiegel put
+his hand on his arm.
+
+"Do not drink in this fashion," said he, "for drinking precipitately
+doth no benefit save to the kidneys. It were better if this belonged
+to him that hath no bottle."
+
+"You say well," said Lamme, "but will you drink any better?" And he
+proffered him the flask.
+
+Ulenspiegel took it, lifted up his elbow, then, returning the flask:
+
+"Call me Spaniard," said he, "if there is enough left to moisten
+a sparrow."
+
+Lamme looked at the flask, and without ceasing to whine, groped in
+his satchel, pulled out another flask and a piece of sausage which
+he began to cut in slices and chew in melancholy fashion.
+
+"Dost thou never stop eating, Lamme?" asked Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Often, my son," replied Lamme, "but it is to drive away my mournful
+thoughts. Where art thou, wife?" said he, wiping away a tear.
+
+And he cut off ten slices of sausage.
+
+"Lamme," said Ulenspiegel, "do not eat so fast and without a thought
+of compassion for the poor pilgrim."
+
+Lamme, still weeping, gave him four slices and Ulenspiegel eating
+them was moved and softened by their delicious flavour.
+
+But Lamme, weeping and eating without ceasing, said:
+
+"My wife, my good, dear wife! How sweet and shapely she was of her
+body, light as a butterfly, bright and swift as lightning, singing
+like a lark! Too well, however, loved she to clothe herself with fine
+adornments. Alas! they became her so well! But the flowers themselves
+have also a rich array. If you had seen, my son, her little hands so
+light for caressing, never would you have allowed them to touch pan
+or pot. The kitchen fire would have blackened their colour that was
+clear and bright as the day itself. And what eyes! I melted with love
+merely to look at them.--Take a draught of wine. I shall drink after
+you. Ah! if only she be not dead! Thyl, I kept all the work of my
+house for myself, so as to spare her the smallest task; I swept the
+house, I made the nuptial bed on which she lay down at night weary
+with idleness and comfort; I washed the dishes and the linen which
+I ironed myself.--Eat, Thyl, it is from Ghent, this sausage.--Often
+having gone out a walking she came back late for dinner, but it was
+so great a joy for me to see her that I never ventured to scold her,
+happy when, pouting, she did not turn her back to me at night. I have
+lost all.--Drink of this wine, it is a Brussels vintage, made in the
+same way as Burgundy."
+
+"Why did she go away?" asked Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Do I know that, I?" went on Lamme Goedzak. "Where are the days when
+I used to go to her home, hoping to marry her, and she fled from me
+for love or fear? If she had her arms bare, lovely round white arms,
+and saw me looking at them, all at once she would pull down her sleeves
+over them. At other times she would give herself to my caresses, and
+I could kiss her lovely eyes, which she shut for me, and the wide
+firm nape of her neck; then she would shiver, utter little cries,
+and throwing her head back, hit my nose with it. And she would laugh
+when I said 'oh!' and I would beat her in lover fashion, and there
+was nothing between us but games and laughter.--Thyl, is there any
+wine still left in the flask?"
+
+"Aye," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+Lamme drank and went on with his discourse:
+
+"At other times, more loving, she would fling both arms about my neck
+and say to me, 'How handsome you are!' and she would kiss me gamesomely
+and a hundred times together, on my cheek or my forehead but never on
+the mouth, and when I asked her whence came this great reserve in so
+extended a license, she went running to take from a tankard on a chest
+a doll clad in silk and pearls, and said, shaking and dandling it:
+'I don't want this.' Doubtless her mother, to keep her virtue safe, had
+told her that babies are made by the mouth. Ah! sweet moments! tender
+caresses! Thyl, see if you cannot find a little ham in the pouch of
+this bag."
+
+"Half of one," replied Ulenspiegel, giving it to Lamme, who ate it
+all every bit.
+
+Ulenspiegel watched him doing so, and said:
+
+"This ham doth me great good in my stomach."
+
+"To me also," said Lamme, picking his teeth with his nails. "But I
+shall never again see my darling; she has fled from Damme; would you
+seek her with me in my cart?"
+
+"I will," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"But," said Lamme, "is there nothing at all left in the flask?"
+
+"Nothing at all," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+And they got up into the cart, drawn by the donkey, who sounded in
+melancholy wise the bray of departure.
+
+As for the dog, he had gone off, well fed and filled, without saying
+a word.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+While the cart rolled along upon a dyke between the canal and a pond,
+Ulenspiegel, in deep thought, caressed the ashes of Claes on his
+breast. He asked himself if the vision was false or true, if those
+spirits had mocked him or if they had by riddles told him what in
+good sooth he must find to make the land of his fathers happy.
+
+Vainly groping for the interpretation, he could not discover what
+the Seven and the Girdle meant.
+
+Thinking upon the dead Emperor, the living King, the Lady Governor,
+the Pope of Rome, the Grand Inquisitor, the General of the Jesuits,
+he found in these six great tormentors of the country whom he would
+gladly have burned alive. But he thought it was not they, for they
+were too easy to burn, so the Seven must be elsewhere.
+
+And in his own mind he was always repeating:
+
+
+        When the North
+        Shall kiss the West,
+        Ruin shall end,
+        Love thou the Seven,
+        The Girdle Love.
+
+
+"Alas!" said he to himself, "in death, blood, and tears, find seven,
+burn seven, love seven! My poor wit fails, for who then burns what
+he loves?"
+
+The cart having already swallowed up a long stretch of the road,
+they heard a noise of feet on the sandy earth, and a voice singing:
+
+
+       "Good travellers, saw you him, I pray,
+        My wild lost lover gone astray?
+        He roams at random here and there,
+            Saw you him, pray?
+
+       "As lamb by eagle of the air
+        He bore my heedless heart away:
+        A man whose face shows little hair.
+            Saw you him, pray?
+
+       "When he is met, that Nele with care
+        And toil is very weary, say,
+        Beloved Thyl, where dost delay?
+            Saw you him, pray?
+
+       "Does he not know the dove's despair
+        What time her mate abroad doth stay?
+        Much more a faithful heart must bear.
+            Saw you him, pray?"
+
+
+Ulenspiegel smote upon Lamme's paunch and said to him:
+
+"Hold thy breath, big belly."
+
+"Alas!" answered Lamme, "that is a hard thing for a man of my
+corpulence!"
+
+But Ulenspiegel, paying him no heed, hid behind the tilt of the cart,
+and imitating the voice of a wheezy fellow lilting after drinking,
+he sang:
+
+
+       "Thy wild lover I saw, I say,
+        Within an old worm-eaten shay
+        Beside a glutton one fine day,
+            I saw, I say."
+
+
+"Thyl," said Lamme, "thou hast an ill tongue this morning."
+
+Ulenspiegel, without listening to him, thrust his head out through
+the opening of the tilt and said:
+
+"Nele, do you not know me?"
+
+She, seized with fear, weeping and laughing at the same time, for
+her cheeks were all wet, said to him:
+
+"I see you, nasty traitor!"
+
+"Nele," said Ulenspiegel, "if you want to beat me I have a yard stick
+in here. It is heavy to make the strokes sink well in and knotty to
+make them leave their mark."
+
+"Thyl," said Nele, "art thou going towards the Seven?"
+
+"Aye," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+Nele was carrying a satchel that looked ready to burst; it was so full.
+
+"Thyl," she said, holding it up to him, "I thought it was unwholesome
+for a man to travel without taking with him a good fat goose, a ham,
+and Ghent sausages. And you must eat this in remembrance of me."
+
+As Ulenspiegel was looking at Nele and not at all thinking of taking
+the satchel, Lamme thrust out his head through another hole in the
+canvas and said:
+
+"Forethinking damsel, if he does not accept, it is but in
+forgetfulness; but give me that ham, give me that goose, tender me
+those sausages; I shall keep them for him."
+
+"What," said Nele, "is this good moonface?"
+
+"That," said Ulenspiegel, "is a victim of marriage, who, devoured by
+sorrow, would wither away like an apple in the oven, if he did not
+recuperate his strength with constant nourishment."
+
+"Thou hast said the truth, son," sighed Lamme.
+
+The sun, which was shining strong, burned and scorched Nele's head. She
+covered herself up with her apron. Wishing to be alone with her,
+Ulenspiegel said to Lamme:
+
+"Seest thou that woman wandering yonder in the meadow?"
+
+"I see her," said Lamme.
+
+"Dost thou recognize her?"
+
+"Ah, me!" said Lamme, "could it be my wife? She is not clad like
+a townswoman."
+
+"Thou doubtest still, blind mole," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"If it were not she?" said Lamme.
+
+"Thou wouldst lose nothing by going; on the left there, towards the
+north, there is a kaberdoesje where thou wilt find good bruinbier. We
+shall go thither to join thee. And here is ham to salt thy natural
+thirst withal."
+
+Lamme, getting out of the cart, ran quickly towards the woman that
+was in the meadow.
+
+Ulenspiegel said to Nele:
+
+"Why do you not come beside me?"
+
+Then, helping her to get up into the cart, he made her sit beside him,
+took the apron from about her head and the cloak from her shoulders:
+then giving her a hundred kisses, he said:
+
+"Whither wert thou going, my beloved?"
+
+She answered no word, but she seemed all entranced in ecstasy. And
+Ulenspiegel, transported even as she, said to her:
+
+"So thou art here, indeed! The sweetbriar roses in the hedges have
+not the lovely redness of your fresh skin. You are no queen, but let
+me make you a crown of kisses. Darling arms, all soft, all rosy, that
+Love himself made all on purpose for kissing! Ah, beloved maid, will
+not my rugged man's hands wither that shoulder? The light butterfly
+settles on the crimson carnation, but can I rest on your dazzling
+whiteness without withering it, clumsy lout that I am? God is in his
+heaven, the king upon his throne, and the sun is aloft, triumphing;
+but am I God, the king, or sunlight, to be so near you? Oh, hair softer
+than flossy silk! Nele, I strike, I rend, I tear to pieces! But do
+not be afraid, my love. Thy darling little foot! How comes it to be
+so white! Has it been bathed in milk?"
+
+She would fain have risen.
+
+"What fearest thou?" said Ulenspiegel. "'Tis not the sun that shineth
+on us and paints thee all in gold. Lower not thine eyes. See in
+mine what a lovely fire he lighteth there. Listen, beloved; hear,
+my darling; it is the silent hour of noon; the peasant is in his
+home feeding on his soup, shall not we feed upon love? Why have not
+I a thousand years to pluck one by one on thy knees like a string of
+pearls from the Indies!"
+
+"Golden tongue!" said she.
+
+And Master Sun blazed through the white canvas of the cart, and a lark
+sang above the clover, and Nele drooped her head upon Ulenspiegel's
+shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Meanwhile Lamme came back sweating big drops of perspiration, and
+puffing and blowing like a dolphin.
+
+"Alas!" he said, "I was born under an ill star. After I had to run
+hard to come up with that woman, who was not my wife and who was old,
+I saw by her face that she was full forty-five years of age, and by
+her headdress that she had never been married. She asked me tartly
+what I was coming to do among the clover with my paunch.
+
+"'I am looking for my wife, who has left me,' I replied with all
+gentleness, 'and taking you for her, I came hastening towards you.'
+
+"At that word the old maid told me I had nothing to do but to go back
+whence I had come, and that if my wife had left me, she had done right,
+seeing that all men were scoundrels, heretics, disloyal, poisoners,
+deceiving poor maids despite even their ripe years, and that anyhow
+she would make her dog eat me if I did not make myself scarce as
+quickly as possible.
+
+"I did so, though not without apprehension; for I could see a huge
+mastiff lying growling at her feet. When I had cleared the boundary of
+her field, I sat down and to restore myself I bit into your piece of
+ham you gave me. I was at that moment between two patches of clover;
+suddenly I heard a noise behind me, and turning round, I saw the
+old girl's big mastiff, not threatening now, but wagging his tail to
+and fro with amiability and appetite. It was my ham he was sharp set
+against. So I gave him a few little pieces, when his mistress came up,
+and she cried out:
+
+"'Seize the fellow! seize him, put your teeth in him, my son!'
+
+"And I started to run, and the big mastiff at my stockings, and
+he took a piece of them and the flesh with it. But being angered
+with the pain of this, turning round on him I fetched him such a
+sour blow of my stick on his front paws that I broke at least one
+of them for him. He fell, crying out in his dog's speech 'mercy,'
+which I accorded him. Meanwhile, his mistress was throwing clods of
+earth at me for want of stones. And I ran.
+
+"Alas! is it not cruel and unjust that because a girl had not enough
+beauty to find a man to marry her, she should take revenge on poor
+innocent folk like myself?
+
+"I went away all melancholy to the kaberdoesje that you had pointed
+out to me, hoping to find there the bruinbier of consolation, were
+it but one quart or half a dozen. But I was deceived, for when I went
+within I saw a man and a woman and they fighting. I asked them to be
+so good as to interrupt their battle to give me a pot of bruinbier,
+were it one quart or half a dozen; but the woman, a regular stokfisch,
+in a fury, answered that if I did not be off from there as quickly
+as possible she would make me swallow the sabot with which she was
+beating her husband over the head. And so, my friend, here I am,
+sweating sore and sore wearied. Have you not anything to eat?"
+
+"Aye," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"At last!" said Lamme.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Thus re-united, they went on their way together. The donkey, laying
+back his ears, pulled the cart along.
+
+"Lamme," said Ulenspiegel, "here be we four food comrades: the ass,
+the beast of the good God, feeding on chance-found thistles along
+the meadows; thou, good belly, seeking her that fled from thee; she,
+sweet girl beloved, tender hearted, finding one that is not worthy
+of her, I mean myself the fourth.
+
+"Now, then, my children, courage! the leaves are yellowing and the
+skies will be more gorgeous, for soon will Master Sun go to rest
+amid the autumnal mists, winter will come, the image and likeness
+of death, covering with snowy shrouds those that sleep beneath our
+feet, and I shall be trudging it for the happiness of the land of our
+fathers. Poor dead ones; Soetkin who didst die of grief; Claes that
+diedst in the fire; oak of goodness and ivy of love, I, your seedling,
+I suffer greatly and I shall avenge you, beloved ashes that beat upon
+my breast."
+
+Lamme said:
+
+"We must not weep those that die for justice's sake."
+
+But Ulenspiegel remained rapt in thought; all at once he said:
+
+"This, Nele, is the hour of farewell, for a long long time, and never
+again, it may be, shall I look on thy sweet face."
+
+Nele, looking at him with her eyes gleaming like stars:
+
+"Why," said she, "why do you not leave this cart to come with me
+into the forest where you would find good and dainty things to eat;
+for I know the plants and how to call the birds to me?"
+
+"Damsel," said Lamme, "'tis ill done of thee to seek to stop
+Ulenspiegel in the way, for he must look for the Seven and help me
+to find my wife again."
+
+"Not yet," said Nele; and she wept, laughing tenderly through her
+tears upon her friend Ulenspiegel.
+
+He, seeing this, answered him:
+
+"Your wife, you will always find her soon enough, when you want to
+seek a new sorrow."
+
+"Thyl," said Lamme, "wilt thou leave me thus alone in my cart for
+this damsel? Thou dost not answer and art thinking of the forest,
+where the Seven are not, nor my wife, either. Let us rather seek her
+along this stone paven road on which carts go so well and handily."
+
+"Lamme," said Ulenspiegel, "you have a full satchel in the cart, you
+will not therefore die of hunger if you go without me from here to
+Koolkerke, where I shall join you again. You must be alone there, for
+there you will know towards which point of the compass you must direct
+yourself in order to find your wife again. Listen and hearken. You
+will go at once with your cart to Koolkerke, three leagues away,
+the cool church, so named because like many others it is beaten upon
+by the four winds all at once. Upon the spire there is a vane shapen
+like a cock and swinging to all the winds on its rusty hinges. It is
+the screeching of these hinges that indicates to poor men that have
+lost their lovers the way they must follow to find them again. But
+first they must strike each wall seven times with a hazel wand. If
+the hinges cry out when the wind blows from the north, that is the
+direction in which you must go, but prudently, for the northern wind
+is a wind of war; if from the south, go lightly thither, it is a love
+wind; if from the east, run along full speed, it is gaiety and light;
+if from the west, go softly, it is the wind of rain and tears. Go,
+Lamme, go to Koolkerke, and wait for me there."
+
+"I go thither," said Lamme.
+
+And he set off in his cart.
+
+While Lamme was trundling towards Koolkerke, the wind, which was both
+high and warm, drove like a flock of sheep in the sky the gray clouds
+drifting in bands; the trees complained like the waves of a swelling
+sea. Ulenspiegel and Nele were now a long while in the forest alone
+together. Ulenspiegel was hungry, and Nele looked for roots that were
+good to eat, and found nothing but the kisses her friend gave her,
+and acorns.
+
+Ulenspiegel, having laid down snares, whistled to call the birds
+down, in order to catch and cook any that might come. A nightingale
+settled on a leafy branch close to Nele; she did not catch it, for
+she wished to leave it to sing; a warbler came, and she had pity on
+it, because it was so pretty and proud in its air; then came a lark,
+but Nele told it it would do better to fly away into the heights of
+the sky and sing a hymn to Nature, than to come stupidly to struggle
+on the murderous point of a spit.
+
+And she said the truth, for in the meantime Ulenspiegel had lighted
+a clear fire and cut a wooden spit that only awaited its victims.
+
+But no more birds came now, except a few evil ravens that croaked a
+long way up over their heads.
+
+And so Ulenspiegel did not eat at all.
+
+Now the time had come when Nele must go away and return to
+Katheline. And she went weeping, and Ulenspiegel from afar off watched
+her go.
+
+But she came back, and flinging herself on his neck:
+
+"I am going," she said.
+
+Then she went a few steps, came back again, saying once more:
+
+"I am going."
+
+And thus twenty times and more over and over.
+
+Then she went indeed, and Ulenspiegel remained alone. He set off then
+to go and find Lamme.
+
+When he came up with him, he found him sitting at the foot of the
+tower, with a great pot of bruinbier between his legs and nibbling
+most melancholy-wise at a hazel wand.
+
+"Ulenspiegel," said he, "I think you but sent me here that you might
+be alone with the damsel; I smote as you bade me, seven times with
+the hazel wand on each wall of the tower, and though the wind is
+blowing like the devil, the hinges have not made a sound."
+
+"Without doubt, then, they must have been oiled," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+Then they went away in the direction of the Duchy of Brabant.
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+King Philip, dark and gloomy, dabbled with paper with no respite
+all day long, and even by night, and scribbled over papers and
+parchments. To them he confided the thoughts of his hard heart. Loving
+no man in his life, knowing that no man loved him, fain to bear
+his immense empire alone, a dolorous Atlas, he bowed beneath the
+burden. Phlegmatic and melancholy of temperament, his excessive toil
+devoured his weak body. Detesting every bright or merry face, he had
+conceived hatred for our country because of its gaiety; for our traders
+because of their wealth; for our nobles because of their free speech,
+frank ways and manners, the sanguine mettlesomeness of their gallant
+joviality. He knew, for he had been told, that long before Cardinal
+de Cousa had indicted the abuses of the Church and preached the need
+for reforms, the revolt against the Pope and the Romish Church, having
+been manifested throughout our country under different kinds of sect,
+was in every head like boiling water in a tight shut kettle.
+
+Obstinate and mulish, he thought that his will ought to lie heavy on
+the whole world like the will of God; he desired that our countries,
+little used to ways of servile obedience, should bow beneath the
+old yoke without obtaining any reform. He wanted his Holy Mother the
+Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman, to be one, entire and universal
+with neither modification nor change, and with no other grounds for
+wanting this except that he did want it so. Acting in this like an
+unreasonable woman, tossing and turning by night on his bed as though
+a couch of thorns, incessantly tormented by his thoughts.
+
+"Yea, Master Saint Philip, yea, Lord God, were I to be forced to
+make of the Low Countries a common grave and throw into it all the
+inhabitants, they shall come back to you, my blessed patron, and to
+you, Madame Virgin Mary, and to you, all ye Saints of Paradise."
+
+And he sought to do even as he said, and thus he was more Roman than
+the Pope and more Catholic than the councils.
+
+And Ulenspiegel and Lamme, and the people of Flanders and the Low
+Countries, full of anguish, imagined that they could see from far
+within the gloomy haunt of the Escurial, that crowned spider, with
+long legs and open claws, spreading out his web to entangle them
+around and suck the best of their heart's blood.
+
+Although the Papal Inquisition had, under the reign of Charles,
+killed at the stake, by burying alive, and by the rope, a hundred
+thousand Christians; though the goods of the poor condemned folk had
+found their way into the coffers of the Emperor and the King, as the
+rain flows into the drain, Philip deemed that it was insufficient;
+he imposed new bishops upon the country and proposed to introduce
+into it the Spanish Inquisition.
+
+And the town heralds everywhere read out to the sound of trump and
+tambourine proclamations decreeing to all heretics, men and women
+and girls, death by fire to those who did not abjure their error,
+by the rope to those who should abjure. Women and girls would be
+buried alive, and the executioner should dance upon their bodies.
+
+And the flame of resistance ran throughout the whole land.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The fifth of April, before Easter Day, the lords Count Louis of Nassau,
+Culembourg, and Brederode, the Drinking Hercules, entered with three
+hundred other gentlemen of birth into the Court of Brussels, to the
+Duchess of Parma, the Lady Governor. Going in ordered ranks of four,
+they went in this way up the great stair of the palace.
+
+Being in the chamber where Madame was they presented to her a
+request in which they asked her to seek to obtain from King Philip
+the rescinding of the proclamations touching upon religion and also
+of the Spanish Inquisition, declaring that within our roused and
+discontented country there could result from it only troubles, ruins,
+and universal distress.
+
+And this request was termed The Compromise.
+
+Berlaymont, who later was so treacherous and so cruel to the land
+of his fathers, was standing beside Her Highness, and said to her,
+mocking at the poverty of certain of the confederated nobles:
+
+"Madame, fear nothing, they are nothing but beggars."
+
+Meaning thus that these nobles had ruined themselves in the king's
+service or else in trying to match the Spanish lords by their
+sumptuous display.
+
+To turn to scorn the speech of the Sieur de Berlaymont, the lords
+declared afterwards that they "held it an honour to be esteemed and
+called beggars for the king's service and the good of these lands."
+
+They began to wear a gold medallion about their neck, having the
+king's effigy on one side and on the other two hands locked and passing
+through a beggar's wallet, with these words: "Faithful to the king even
+unto the beggar's wallet." They wore also in their hats and bonnets
+little gold jewels in the shape of beggars' bowls and beggars' hats.
+
+Meanwhile, Lamme was taking his paunch throughout the whole town,
+looking for his wife and not finding her.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Ulenspiegel said to him one morning:
+
+"Follow me: we are going to pay our respects to a high, noble,
+powerful, and redoubted personage."
+
+"Will he tell me where my wife is?" asked Lamme.
+
+"If he knows," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+And they went to call on Brederode, the Drinking Hercules. He was in
+the courtyard of his house.
+
+"What wouldst thou with me?" he asked of Ulenspiegel.
+
+"To speak with you, Monseigneur," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Speak," replied Brederode.
+
+"You," said Ulenspiegel, "are a goodly, valiant, and mighty lord. You
+strangled, once long ago, a Frenchman within his cuirass like a mussel
+in its shell: but if you are mighty and valiant, you are also of good
+counsel. Why, then, do you wear this medal on which I read 'Faithful
+to the king even unto the beggar's wallet?'"
+
+"Aye," asked Lamme, "why, Monseigneur?"
+
+But Brederode made no reply whatever and looked hard at
+Ulenspiegel. The latter continued:
+
+"Why are you, you noble lords, fain to be faithful to the king even
+to the wallet? Is it for the great good he wills you, for the goodly
+amity he bears you? Why, instead of being faithful to him unto the
+wallet, why do ye not make it so that the despoiled tormentor of his
+countries should be ever faithful to the beggar's wallet?"
+
+And Lamme nodded his head in sign of assent.
+
+Brederode looked at Ulenspiegel with his keen glance and smiled,
+seeing his friendly open mien.
+
+"If thou art not," said he, "a spy of King Philip's, thou art a good
+Fleming, and I shall reward thee for either case."
+
+He brought him along, Lamme following, into his office. There,
+pulling his ear till the blood came:
+
+"That," he said, "is for the spy."
+
+Ulenspiegel uttered no cry.
+
+"Bring," he said to his cellarer, "bring that kettle of wine with
+cinnamon."
+
+The cellarer brought the kettle and a great tankard of mulled wine
+perfuming the air.
+
+"Drink," said Brederode to Ulenspiegel; "this is for the good Fleming."
+
+"Ah!" said Ulenspiegel, "good Flemish, lovely cinnamon speech, the
+saints speak not its like."
+
+Then having drunk the half of the wine, he passed the other half
+to Lamme.
+
+"Who is he?" said Brederode, "this big-bellied papzak who is rewarded
+without having done anything?"
+
+"This," answered Ulenspiegel, "is my friend Lamme, who every time he
+drinks wine mulled imagines he is going to find his wife again."
+
+"Aye," said Lamme, draining the wine from the tankard with devout zeal.
+
+"Whither go ye as now?" asked Brederode.
+
+"We are going," answered Ulenspiegel, "in search of the Seven that
+shall save the land of Flanders."
+
+"What Seven?" asked Brederode.
+
+"When I have found them, I shall tell you what they are," answered
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+But Lamme, all merry disposed from having drunk:
+
+"Thyl," said he, "if we were to go to the moon to look for my wife?"
+
+"Order the ladder," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+In May, the month of greenery, Ulenspiegel said to Lamme:
+
+"Lo the lovely month of May! Ah! the clear sky of blue, the happy
+swallows; see the branches on the trees ruddy with sap, the earth
+is in love. 'Tis the moment to hang and burn for religion. They are
+there, the dear little inquisitors. What noble countenances! They
+have all power to correct, to punish, to degrade, to hand over to
+the secular judges, to have their prisons. Ah, the lovely month of
+May!--to arrest the person, to conduct law suits without adhering to
+the customary forms of justice, to burn, hang, behead, and dig for
+poor women and girls the grave of premature death. The finches sing
+in the trees. The good inquisitors have their eye on the rich. And
+the king shall be heir. Go, damsels, dance in the meadows to the
+sound of pipes and shawms. Oh! the lovely month of May!"
+
+The ashes of Claes beat upon the breast of Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Let us on," he said to Lamme. "Happy they that will keep an upright
+heart, and the sword aloft in the black days that are to come!"
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Ulenspiegel passed, one day in the month of August, in the rue
+de Flandre at Brussels, before the house of Jean Sapermillemente,
+so called because his paternal grandsire when angry used to swear in
+this fashion as so to avoid blaspheming the most holy name of God. The
+said Sapermillemente was a master broiderer by trade; but having grown
+deaf and blind by dint of drinking, his wife, an old gossip with a sour
+face, broidered in his stead the coats, doublets, cloaks, and shoes of
+the lords. Her pretty young daughter helped her in this well-paid work.
+
+Passing before the aforesaid house in the last hours of daylight,
+Ulenspiegel saw the girl at the window and heard her crying aloud:
+
+
+       "August, August
+        Tell me, sweet month,
+        ho will take me to wife,
+        Tell me, sweet month?"
+
+
+"I will," said Ulenspiegel, "if you like."
+
+"Thou?" said she. "Come nearer that I may see thee." But he:
+
+"Whence comes it that you are calling in August what the Brabant
+girls call on the Eve of March?"
+
+"Those girls," she said, "have only one month to give them a husband; I
+have twelve, and on the eve of each, not at midnight but for six hours
+up to midnight, I jump out of my bed, I take three steps backwards
+towards the window, I cry what you have heard; then returning, I take
+three steps backwards towards the bed, and at midnight, going to bed,
+I fall asleep, dreaming of the husband I shall have. But the months,
+the sweet months, being mockers by nature, 'tis not of one husband
+I dream now, but of twelve together; you shall be the thirteenth if
+you will."
+
+"The others would be jealous," answered Ulenspiegel. "You cry also
+'Deliverance'."
+
+The girl answered, blushing:
+
+"I cry 'Deliverance' and know what I ask for."
+
+"I know, too, and I am bringing it to you," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+"You must wait," said she, smiling and showing her white teeth.
+
+"Wait," said Ulenspiegel, "nay. A house may fall on my head, a gust of
+wind might blow me into a ditch, a mad pug might bite me in the leg;
+nay, I shall not wait."
+
+"I am too young," said she, "and only cry this for custom's sake."
+
+Ulenspiegel became suspicious, thinking that it is on the Eve of March
+and not of the corn month that the Brabant girls cry to have a husband.
+
+She said, smiling:
+
+"I am too young and only cry this for the sake of the old custom."
+
+"Will you wait till you are too old?" answered Ulenspiegel. "That is
+bad arithmetic. Never have I seen a neck so round, or whiter breasts,
+Flemish breasts full of that good milk that makes men."
+
+"Full?" said she, "not yet, Traveller in a hurry."
+
+"Wait," repeated Ulenspiegel. "Must I have no teeth left to eat you
+raw with, darling? You do not answer, you smile with your eyes clear
+brown and your lips red as cherries."
+
+The girl, looking craftily at him, replied:
+
+"Why dost thou love me so quickly? What is thy trade? Art thou beggar,
+art thou rich?"
+
+"A beggar," said he, "am I, and rich at the same time, if you give
+me your darling self."
+
+She replied:
+
+"That is not what I want to know. Dost thou go to mass? Art thou a
+good Christian? Where dost thou dwell? Wouldst thou dare to say that
+thou art a Beggar, a true blue Beggar resisting the proclamations
+and the Inquisition?"
+
+The ashes of Claes beat upon Ulenspiegel's breast.
+
+"I am a Beggar," said he, "I would fain see dead and eaten by worms
+the oppressors of the Low Countries. Thou lookest on me confounded
+and astonied. This fire of love that burns for thee, darling, is the
+fire of youth. God lighted it; it flames as the sun shines, until
+it dieth down. But the fire of vengeance that broodeth in my heart,
+God lit that as well. It will be the sword, the fire, the rope,
+conflagration, devastation, war, and ruin to the murderers."
+
+"Thou art goodly," said she, sadly, kissing him on both cheeks,
+"but hold thy peace."
+
+"Why dost thou weep?" answered he.
+
+"You must always," she said, "watch here and elsewhere wherever
+you are."
+
+"Have these walls ears?" asked Ulenspiegel.
+
+"No ears but mine," said she.
+
+"Carven by love, I will stop them with a kiss."
+
+"Mad lover, listen to me when I speak to you."
+
+"Why? what have you to say to me?"
+
+"Listen to me," she said, impatient. "Here comes my mother.... Hold
+your tongue, hold your peace above all things before her...."
+
+The old Sapermillemente woman came in. Ulenspiegel studied her.
+
+"Muzzle full of holes like a skimming ladle," said he to himself,
+"eyes with a hard false look, mouth that would laugh and grimace,
+you make me curious."
+
+"God be with you, Messire," said the old woman, "be with you without
+ceasing. I have received moneys, Daughter, good moneys from Messire
+d'Egmont when I took him his cloak on which I had embroidered the
+fool's bauble. Yes, Messire, the fool's bauble against the Red Dog."
+
+"The Cardinal de Granvelle?" asked Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Aye," said she, "against the Red Dog. It is said that he denounces
+their doings to the King; they would fain bring him to death. They
+are right, are they not?"
+
+Ulenspiegel answered not a word.
+
+"You have not seen them in the streets clad in a gray doublet and
+opperst-kleed, gray as the common folk wear them, and the long hanging
+sleeves and their monks' hoods and on all the opperst-kleederen
+the fool's bauble embroidered. I made at least twenty-seven and my
+daughter fifteen. That incensed the Red Dog to see these baubles."
+
+Then speaking in Ulenspiegel's ear:
+
+"I know that the lords have decided to replace the bauble by a sheaf
+of corn in sign of unity. Aye, aye, they mean to struggle against the
+king and the Inquisition. It is well done of them, is it not, Messire?"
+
+Ulenspiegel made no answer.
+
+"The stranger lord is melancholy," said the old woman; "he has his
+mouth tight shut all of a sudden."
+
+Ulenspiegel said not a word and went out.
+
+Presently he went into a gaffhouse so as not to forget to drink. The
+gaff was full of drinkers speaking imprudently of the king, of the
+detested proclamations, of the Inquisition and of the Red Dog who must
+be forced to leave the country. He saw the old woman, all in rags, and
+seeming to doze beside a pint of brandy. She remained like that for a
+long time; then he saw her taking a little platter out of her pocket,
+asking money, especially from those who spoke the most incautiously.
+
+And the men gave her florins, deniers, and patards, and without
+stinginess.
+
+Ulenspiegel, hoping to learn from the girl what the old Sapermillemente
+woman did not say to him, passed before the house again; he saw the
+girl who was not crying out her rhyme any more, but smiled at him
+and winked her eye, a sweet promise.
+
+All on a sudden the old woman came back after him.
+
+Ulenspiegel, angry to see her, ran like a stag into the street crying
+out: "'T brandt! 't brandt! Fire! Fire!" till he came before the house
+of the baker Jacob Pietersen. The front, glazed in the German fashion,
+was flaming red to the sunset. A thick smoke, the smoke of faggots
+turning to red coals in the furnace, was pouring out of the bakehouse
+chimney. Ulenspiegel never ceased to cry as he ran: "'T brandt,
+'t brandt," and pointed out Jacob Pietersen's house. The crowd,
+gathering in front of it, saw the red windows, the thick smoke,
+and cried like Ulenspiegel: "'T brandt, 't brandt, it burns! it
+burns!" The watchman on Notre Dame de la Chapelle blew his trumpet
+while the beadle rang the bell called Wacharm in full peal. And lads
+and lasses ran up in swarms, singing and whistling.
+
+The bell and the trumpet still sounding, the old Sapermillemente
+woman picked up her heels and went off.
+
+Ulenspiegel was watching her. When she was far away, he came into
+the house.
+
+"You here!" said the girl; "is there not a fire then over yonder?"
+
+"Yonder? No," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"But that bell that is ringing so lamentably?"
+
+"It knows not what it doth," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+"And that dolorous trumpet and all these folk running?"
+
+"Infinite is the tale of fools."
+
+"What is burning then?" said she.
+
+"Thy eyes and my flaming heart," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+And he leaped to her mouth.
+
+"You eat me," she said.
+
+"I like cherries," said he.
+
+She looked at him, smiling and distressed. Suddenly bursting into
+tears:
+
+"Come back here no more," she said. "You are a Beggar, a foe to the
+Pope, do not come back...."
+
+"Thy mother!" said he.
+
+"Aye," she said, blushing. "Dost thou know where she is at this
+moment? She is listening where the fire is. Dost thou know where she
+will go presently? To the Red Dog, to report all she knows and make
+ready the work for the duke that is to come. Flee, Ulenspiegel; I save
+thee, but flee. Another kiss, but come back no more; still another,
+thou art goodly, I weep, but begone."
+
+"Brave girl," said Ulenspiegel, holding her embraced.
+
+"I was not always," she said. "I, too, like her...."
+
+"These songs," said he, "these mute appealings of beauty to men prone
+to love...?"
+
+"Aye," said she. "My mother would have it so. Thou, I save thee, loving
+thee for love's sake. The others, I shall save them in remembrance
+of thee, my beloved. When thou art far away, will thy heart pull a
+little towards the girl that repented? Kiss me, darling. She will
+never again for money give victims to the stake. Go, go; nay, stay a
+little still. How soft and smooth thy hand is! There, I kiss thy hand,
+it is the sign of slavery; thou art my master. Listen, come nearer,
+hush. Men, ragged scoundrels and robbers and an Italian among them,
+came here last night, one after the other. My mother brought them into
+the chamber where thou art, and bade me go out from it, and she shut
+the door. I heard these words: 'Stone crucifix.... Borgerhoet gate
+... procession ... Antwerp.... Notre Dame,' suppressed laughter and
+florins counted out on the table.... Flee, here they are; flee away,
+my beloved. Keep a kind memory for me; flee...."
+
+Ulenspiegel ran as she bade him as far as the Old Cock, In den ouden
+Haen, and found there Lamme plunged in melancholy, eating a sausage
+and draining his seventh quart of Louvain peterman.
+
+And he forced him to run like himself, in spite of his belly.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Running thus at full speed, followed by Lamme, he found in the
+Eikenstraat a savage lampoon on Brederode. He went and took it to
+him directly.
+
+"Monseigneur," he said, "I am that good Fleming and that king's
+spy whose ears you dressed down so well, and to whom you gave such
+good mulled wine to drink. He brings you a pretty little pamphlet in
+which among other things you are accused of calling yourself Count
+of Holland, like the king. It is fresh and hot from the press of Jan
+a Calumnia, living near the Vagabonds' Quay, in the blind alley of
+the Thieves of Honour."
+
+Brederode answered, smiling:
+
+"I shall have you flogged for two hours if you do not tell me the
+scribe's real name."
+
+"Monseigneur," replied Ulenspiegel, "have me flogged for two years
+if you will, but you will not be able to make my back tell you what
+my mouth does not know."
+
+And he went away, not without getting a florin for his trouble.
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Since June, the month of roses, the preachings had begun in the
+country of Flanders.
+
+And the apostles of the primitive Christian Church preached everywhere,
+in every place, in fields and in gardens, on the hillocks which in
+times of flood were used to keep cattle on, upon rivers, in boats.
+
+On land, they entrenched themselves as in a camp, surrounding
+themselves with their wains. Upon the rivers and in harbours, boats
+filled with armed men kept guard round about them.
+
+And thus the word of freedom was heard on every side on the soil of
+our fathers.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Ulenspiegel and Lamme being at Bruges, with their cart, which they
+left in a yard close by, went into the church of Saint Sauveur,
+instead of going to the tavern, for there was in their pouches no
+more the merry clink of coins.
+
+Father Cornelis Adriensen, a minor friar, dirty, brazen, furious, and
+a bellowing preacher, was on that day occupying the pulpit of truth.
+
+Beautiful young devout women were thronging all around.
+
+Father Cornelis was discoursing of the Passion. When he came to the
+passage in the Holy Gospel where the Jews cried to Pilate, speaking
+of our Lord Jesus, "Crucify him, crucify him, for we have our law,
+and by that law he must die," Broer Cornelis exclaimed:
+
+"Ye have just heard it, good people, if Our Lord Jesus Christ endured
+a dreadful and a shameful death, it is because there have at all times
+been laws to punish heretics. He was justly condemned, because he
+had disobeyed those laws. And to-day they would fain regard as naught
+the edicts and proclamations. Ah! Jesus! What curse wouldst thou set
+upon these lands. Honoured Mother of God, if the Emperor Charles were
+still alive, and could he see the scandal of these confederate nobles
+who have dared to present to the Lady Governor a request against the
+Inquisition and against the proclamations made for an aim so good,
+which are so ripely thought out, and promulgated after so long
+and so wise reflection and deliberation, to destroy all sects and
+heresies! And they would fain reduce them to nothing, though they are
+more necessary than bread and than cheese! In what foul, loathsome,
+abominable gulf are we to be made to fall to-day? Luther, that vile
+Luther, that mad ox, triumphs in Saxony, in Brunswick, in Lunebourg,
+in Mecklenburg; Brentius, that dung Brentius who lived in Germany upon
+acorns the pigs refused, Brentius triumphs in Wuerttemberg; Servetus the
+Lunatic, who hath a quarter of the moon in his head, the Trinitarian
+Servetus, reigns in Pomerania, in Denmark and in Sweden, and there he
+dares to blaspheme the holy, glorious, and mighty Trinity. Aye. But I
+am informed that he hath been burned alive by Calvin, who was never
+right or good save in that; aye, by the stinking Calvin who smells
+of musty sourness; aye, with his long face like a leather bottle;
+a face of cheese, with his big teeth like a gardener's shovel. Aye,
+these wolves eat one another; aye, the ox Luther, the mad ox, roused
+the princes of Germany to arms against the Anabaptist Muenzer, who was
+a good man, they say, and lived according to the Gospel. And through
+all Germany the bellowings of this ox have been heard, aye!
+
+"Aye, and what do we see in Flanders, Gueldre, Frisia, Holland,
+Zealand? Adamites running naked through the streets; yea, good people,
+naked in the streets, showing their lean flesh without shame to the
+passers-by. There was but one of them, say you: aye--let it pass--one
+is as good as a hundred, a hundred is even as one. And he was burned,
+say you, and he was burned alive, at the request of the Calvinists
+and Lutherans. These wolves eat one another, I say unto you!
+
+"Aye, and what do we see in Flanders, Gueldre, Frisia, Holland,
+Zealand? Free thinkers teaching that all servitude is contrary to
+the word of God. They lie, the stinking heretics; we must submit to
+the Holy Mother Church of Rome. And there, in that accursed city of
+Antwerp, the rendezvous and meeting-ground of all the heretic dogs in
+the world, they have dared to preach that we prepare and bake the host
+with dog's grease. Another saith, 'tis that beggar upon the chamber
+pot at the corner of the street, 'There is no God, nor life eternal,
+nor resurrection of the body, nor everlasting damnation.' 'We can,'
+saith another yonder, in a whining voice, 'baptise without salt, or
+lard, or spittle, without exorcism and without candle.' 'There is no
+purgatory,' says another. There is no purgatory, good people! Ah! it
+were better for you to have committed sin with your mothers, your
+sisters, and your daughters, than to doubt purgatory.
+
+"Aye, and they turn up their nose at the Inquisitor, that holy man,
+aye. They came to Belem, near this place, as many as four thousand
+Calvinists, with weaponed men, banners and drums. Aye. And you can
+smell from here the smoke of their cooking fires. They have taken the
+Church of Saint Catholyne to dishonour it, profane it, desecrate it
+by their damnable preachifying.
+
+"What is this impious and scandalous tolerance? By the thousand devils
+of hell, ye supine, faint-hearted Catholics, why do not ye also take
+weapons into your hands? Ye have, even as these damned Calvinists,
+cuirasses, lances, halberds, swords, daggers, arbalests, knives,
+cudgels, pikes, the town falconets and culverins.
+
+"They are peaceful folk, say you; they desire in all freedom and
+tranquillity to hear the word of God. That is all one to me. Go forth
+from Bruges! hunt me, slay me, blow me up all these Calvinists that
+are without the pale of the Church. Ye are not yet started! Fie on
+you! Ye are hens trembling with fear on your dunghill. I see the moment
+when these damned Calvinists will drum on your wives' and daughters'
+bellies, and you will let them, men of tow and putty. Go not over
+yonder, go not ... ye will get your stockings wet in the battle. Fie
+upon you, men of Bruges! fie upon you, Catholics! That is well done
+and like true Catholics, O cowardly poltroons! Shame upon you, ducks
+and drakes, geese and turkeys that you are!
+
+"Are not they goodly preachers, that you should go in crowds to
+hearken to the lies they belch forth, that the young girls should
+go by night to their sermons, aye, and that in nine months the town
+should be full of little beggar-boys and beggar-girls? There were
+four of them there, four scandalous vagabonds, that preached in the
+cemetery of the church. The first of these vagabonds, livid and lean,
+the ugly loose-belly, had a dirty hat upon his head. Thanks to it
+his ears were not to be seen. Which of you hath seen the ears of
+a preacher? He had no shirt, for his bare arms came linenless out
+through his doublet. I saw it well, though he tries to cover himself
+up with a dirty little cloak, and I saw, too, all right in his black
+canvas breeches, full of open work like the spire of Notre Dame,
+the swinging of his bells and clapper. The other vagabond preached
+in a doublet, and no shoes. Nobody saw his ears. And he had to stop
+short in his preachifying, and the boys and girls began to hoot him,
+crying: 'Yah! Yah! he doesn't know his lesson!' The third of these
+scandalous vagabonds had on his head a dirty ugly little hat, with
+a little feather sticking out of the top. And his ears were not to
+be seen, either. The fourth of the rascals, Hermanus, better arrayed
+than the others, must have been branded on the shoulder twice by the
+executioner, aye, verily.
+
+"They all wear under their headgear greasy silk caps that hide their
+ears. Did you ever see the ears of a preacher? Which of these rogues
+ever dared to show his ears? His ears! Ah! yes, show his ears; they
+have all been cut off. Aye, the executioner has cut the ears off
+every one of them.
+
+"And yet it was round about these scandalous rogues, these cut purses,
+these cobblers that have run away from their stools, these ragamuffin
+preachers, that all the whole populace went crying and shouting:
+'Long live the Beggars!' as if they had all been mad, drunk, or fools.
+
+"Ah, it only remains for us poor Roman Catholics to leave the
+Low Countries, since there they allow this bawling cry: 'Long
+live the Beggars! Long live the Beggars!' What a millstone of a
+curse hath therefore fallen upon this bewitched and foolish folk,
+ah! Jesus! Everywhere, rich and poor, noble and base, young and old,
+men and women, all cry out: 'Long live the Beggars!'
+
+"And what are all these lords, these scald leather seats that have
+come to us from Germany? All their having is gone on harlots, or
+gaming, lechery, lewdness, long-drawn debauchery, rooted villainies,
+abominations of dice and ostentation of outward array. They have not
+even a rusty nail to scratch themselves with where they itch. And
+now they must needs have the goods and wealth of churches and convents.
+
+"And there at their banquet in the house of that rogue De Culembourg,
+with that other rogue De Brederode, they drank in wooden bowls, for
+scorn of Messire de Berlaymont and Madame the Lady Governor. Aye, and
+they shouted 'Long live the Beggars!' Ah! if I had been the good God
+(with all respect), I would have caused their drink, whether it was
+beer or wine, to be changed into a foul and loathy dishwater, aye,
+into foul, abominable, stinking suds, in which they had washed their
+shirts and foul sheets.
+
+"Aye, bawl, donkeys that you are, bawl 'Long live the
+Beggars!' Aye! and I am a prophet. And all the curses, miseries,
+fevers, plagues, conflagrations, ruins, desolations, cankers,
+English sweating sickness and black plagues will fall upon the Low
+Countries. Aye, thus will God be revenged upon your filthy braying of
+'Long live the Beggars!' And there will not be left one stone of your
+houses upon another, and not a morsel of bone in your damned legs
+that ran to this accursed Calvinistry and preachifying. And so, so,
+so, so, so be it. Amen!"
+
+"Let us go, my son," said Ulenspiegel to Lamme.
+
+"In a moment," said Lamme.
+
+And he looked and searched among the beautiful young devotees there
+present at the sermon, but he did not discover his wife.
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Ulenspiegel and Lamme came to the place called Minne-Water, Love-Water;
+but the great doctors and Wysneusen Pedants say it is Minre-Water,
+Minim-Water. Ulenspiegel and Lamme sat down upon the brink, seeing
+pass by beneath the trees all leafy down to their very heads, like a
+low roof, men, women, girls, and boys, hand in hand, garlanded with
+flowers, walking hip to hip, looking tenderly in one another's eyes,
+without seeing anything in this world but themselves.
+
+Ulenspiegel, thinking of Nele, gazed at them. In his melancholy,
+he said:
+
+"Let us go drink."
+
+But Lamme, not hearkening Ulenspiegel, also looked upon the pairs
+of lovers:
+
+"In the old days we, too, used to pass, my wife and I, loving each
+other under the eyes of those who like you and me, on the edge of
+ditches, were stretched out solitary and without a woman."
+
+"Come and drink," said Ulenspiegel, "we shall find the Seven at the
+bottom of a quart."
+
+"A drinker's word," answered Lamme: "you know the Seven are giants
+who could not stand upright under the big dome of the church of
+Saint Sauveur."
+
+Ulenspiegel, thinking wretchedly of Nele, and also that in some
+hostelry he might perchance find a good bed, good supper, a comely
+hostess, said yet again:
+
+"Let us go and drink!"
+
+But Lamme paid no heed, and said, looking at the tower of Notre Dame:
+
+"Madame Holy Mary, patroness of lawful loves, grant me to see again
+her white bosom, that soft pillow."
+
+"Come and drink," said Ulenspiegel, "you shall find her, displaying
+it to the drinkers, in a tavern."
+
+"Dost thou dare think so ill of her?" said Lamme.
+
+"Let us go and drink," said Ulenspiegel, "she is baesine somewhere,
+without a doubt."
+
+"Thirst talk," said Lamme.
+
+Ulenspiegel went on:
+
+"Perchance keepeth she in reserve for poor travellers a dish of
+goodly stewed beef, whose spices perfume the air, not too rich,
+tender, succulent as rose leaves, and swimming like Shrove Tuesday
+fishes amid cloves, nutmeg, cocks' combs, sweetbreads, and other
+celestial dainties."
+
+"Cruel!" said Lamme, "you mean to kill me for sure. Do you not know
+that for two days we have lived on nothing but dry bread and small
+beer?"
+
+"Hunger talk," answered Ulenspiegel. "You are weeping with appetite;
+come and eat and drink. I have here a fine half florin that will
+defray the cost of our feast."
+
+Lamme laughed. They went to find their cart and thus went about
+the town, seeking to know which was the best inn. But seeing several
+crabbed countenances on the baes and no wise pleasing on the baesines,
+they passed on, thinking that a sour face is a poor sign for a
+hospitable kitchen.
+
+They arrived at the Saturday Market and went into the hostelry
+called de Blauwe-Lanteern, the Blue-Lantern. Here there was a baes
+of pleasant aspect.
+
+They put up their cart and had the ass lodged in the stable, in company
+with a peck of oats. They ordered supper to be served, ate their fill,
+slept well, and rose to eat again. Lamme, bursting with comfort, said:
+
+"I hear heavenly music in my stomach."
+
+When the time came to pay, the baes came to Lamme and said to him:
+
+"Ten patards, if you please."
+
+"He has them," said Lamme, pointing to Ulenspiegel who answered:
+
+"I have not."
+
+"And the half florin?" said Lamme.
+
+"I have not got it," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"This is all very well," said the baes: "I shall take the doublet
+and the shirt off both of you."
+
+Suddenly Lamme, plucking up bottle courage:
+
+"And if I want to eat and drink, I," exclaimed he, "to eat and drink,
+aye, drink for twenty-seven florins worth or more, I will do it. Dost
+thou think there is not a sou's value in this belly of mine? Good
+God! it was never fed till now but on ortolans. Never didst thou
+carry the like under thy greasy girdle. For like an ill fellow thou
+hast thy tallow on the collar of thy doublet, and not like me, three
+inches of dainty fat on the paunch!"
+
+The baes had fallen into an ecstasy of rage. A stammerer by nature,
+he wanted to speak quickly; the more he hurried, the more he sneezed
+and sputtered like a dog coming out of the water. Ulenspiegel threw
+little balls of bread at his nose. And Lamme, becoming hotter, went on:
+
+"Aye, I have wherewith to pay for your three scraggy hens, your four
+mangy pullets, and that big idiot of a peacock dragging his dirty
+tail in your yard. And if your skin was not drier than an old cock's,
+if your bones were not crumbling to dust in your breast, I would have
+still enough to eat you, yourself, your snot of a man, your one-eyed
+maid and your cook, who if he had itch would have arms too short to
+scratch himself.
+
+"Do you see," he went on, "do you see this fine bird that, for half
+a florin, wants to seize our doublets and our shirts? Tell me what
+your wardrobe is worth, tattered impertinence, and I will give you
+three liards for it."
+
+But the baes, becoming angrier and angrier, puffed and blew the more.
+
+And Ulenspiegel flung balls in his face.
+
+Lamme, like a roaring lion, said:
+
+"How much do you think, scrawny face, a fine ass is worth, with a
+fine muzzle, long ears, wide chested, with legs of iron? Eighteen
+florins at the least, is not that so, miserable baes? How many old
+nails have you in your coffers to pay for so fine a beast?"
+
+The baes sputtered more and more, but dared not budge.
+
+Lamme said:
+
+"How much do you think a fine cart is worth, all made of ash painted
+red, and equipped all over with Courtrai canvas against the sun
+and the showers? Twenty-four florins at least, hey? And how much is
+twenty-four florins and eighteen florins? Answer that, leper devoid
+of arithmetic. And as it is a market day, and as there are farming
+folk in your miserable hostelry, I am going to sell cart and donkey
+to them at once."
+
+And so it was done, for all knew Lamme. And in fact he got for his
+ass and his cart forty-four florins and ten patards. Then, clinking
+the gold under the nose of the baes, he said to him:
+
+"Dost thou smell in that the savour of feasting to come?"
+
+"Aye," replied the host.
+
+And he said under his breath:
+
+"When you are selling your skin, I will buy a liard's worth to make
+a charm against prodigality with it."
+
+In the meantime, a pretty, taking woman who was in the dark of the
+yard had come again and again to look at Lamme through the window,
+and drew back every time he might have caught sight of her pretty face.
+
+That night, on the staircase, as he was going up without a light,
+tottering a little from the wine he had drunk, he felt a woman who
+flung her arms about him, kissed him on the cheek, the mouth, even
+on the nose, gluttonously, and wetting his face with amorous tears,
+then left him.
+
+Lamme, all sleepy from his drink, went to bed, fell asleep, and next
+day went off to Ghent with Ulenspiegel.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+There he sought for his wife in all the kaberdoesjen, musicos,
+tafelhooren, and taverns. At night, he rejoined Ulenspiegel in den
+zingende Zwaan, at the Singing Swan. Ulenspiegel went wherever he
+could, spreading alarm and rousing the people against the butchers
+of the land of their fathers.
+
+Finding himself in the Friday Market, near the Dulle-Griet, the Great
+Cannon, Ulenspiegel lay down flat on his face on the pavement.
+
+A coalman came and said to him:
+
+"What are you doing there?"
+
+"I am damping my nose to know which way the wind blows," replied
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+A carpenter came along.
+
+"Do you take the pavement," said he, "for a mattress?"
+
+"There are some," replied Ulenspiegel, "who will soon take it for
+a quilt."
+
+A monk stopped.
+
+"What is this moon calf doing there?" he asked.
+
+"He is on his face begging for your blessing, Father," replied
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+The monk having bestowed it, went on his way.
+
+Ulenspiegel then lay with his ear against the ground. A peasant
+came by.
+
+"Dost thou hear any noise from below?" he said.
+
+"Aye," replied Ulenspiegel, "I hear the wood growing, the wood whose
+faggots will serve to burn poor heretics."
+
+"Dost thou hear naught else?" said a constable of the commune to him.
+
+"I hear," said Ulenspiegel, "the gendarmerie coming from Spain; if
+thou hast aught to keep, bury it, for soon the towns will be safe no
+longer by reason of robbers."
+
+"He is mad," said the constable.
+
+"He is mad," repeated the townsfolk.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Meanwhile, Lamme could not eat, thinking of the sweet vision of
+the stairs at the Blauwe-Lanteern. His heart turning to Bruges, he
+was led perforce by Ulenspiegel to Antwerp, where he continued his
+sorrowful searchings.
+
+Ulenspiegel being in the taverns, in the midst of good Flemings of the
+reformed faith, or even Catholics that were lovers of liberty, would
+say to them about the proclamations: "They bring us the Inquisition
+under pretext of purging us from heresy, but it is meant for our
+purses, this rhubarb. We have no love to be physicked save at our own
+will and as we choose; we shall be wroth, we shall rebel and take
+arms in our hands. The king knew this well beforehand. Seeing that
+we have no mind to rhubarb, he will advance the syringes, to wit the
+great guns and the little guns, serpents, falconets, and mortars with
+their big mouths. A kingly clyster! There will not be left a single
+rich Fleming in all Flanders physicked in this fashion. Happy is our
+land to have so royal a physician."
+
+But the townsfolk could only laugh.
+
+Ulenspiegel would say: "Laugh to-day, but flee or arm on that day
+when something is broken at Notre Dame."
+
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+On the 15th of August, the great feast of Mary and of the blessing
+of herbs and roots, when filled with corn the hens are deaf to the
+bugle of the cock imploring love, a great stone crucifix was broken at
+one of the gates of Antwerp by an Italian in the pay of the Cardinal
+de Granvelle, and the procession of the Virgin, preceded by fools
+in green, in yellow, and in red, came forth out of the church of
+Notre Dame.
+
+But the Virgin's statue, having been insulted on the way by men whom
+no one knew, was hastily taken back into the choir of the church,
+the iron gates of which were shut.
+
+Ulenspiegel and Lamme went into Notre Dame. Young beggars and
+ragamuffins, and some grown men among them, that nobody knew were
+in front of the choir, making certain signs and grimaces one to
+another. They were making a great din with feet and tongues. No one had
+seen them before in Antwerp, no one ever saw them again. One of them,
+with a face like a burned onion, asked if Mieke, that was Our Lady,
+had been afraid that she had gone back to the church in such a hurry.
+
+"It is not of thee that she is afeared, ugly blackamoor," replied
+Ulenspiegel.
+
+The young man to whom he spoke went up to him, to beat him, but
+Ulenspiegel, gripping him by the collar:
+
+"If you strike me," said he, "I will make you spew out your tongue."
+
+Then turning towards certain men of Antwerp that were present:
+
+"Signorkes and pagaders," said he, pointing out the ragged young men,
+"be cautious, these are spurious Flemings, traitors paid to bring us
+to ill, to misery, and to ruin."
+
+Then speaking to the strangers:
+
+"Hey," said he, "donkey faces, withered with want, whence have ye the
+money that chinks to-day in your pouches? Have ye perchance sold your
+skins beforehand for drumheads?"
+
+"Look at the sermonizer!" said the strangers.
+
+Then they all began to shout together with one accord speaking of
+Our Lady:
+
+"Mieke has a fine robe. Mieke has a fine crown! I will give them to
+my doxy."
+
+They went away, while one of them had got up into a pulpit to proclaim
+insulting and outrageous things from it, and they came back crying:
+
+"Come down, Mieke, come down before we go and fetch you. Perform
+a miracle, that we may see if you can walk as well as you can have
+Mieke carried about, the lazy thing!"
+
+But Ulenspiegel cried in vain: "Workers of ruin, have done with your
+vile talk; all pillage is a crime!" They ceased not at all from their
+talk; and some spoke even of breaking into the choir to force Mieke
+to come down.
+
+Hearing this, an old woman, who sold candles in the church, flung
+in their faces the ashes of her foot warmer; but she was beaten and
+flung down on the floor, and then the riot began.
+
+The markgrave came to the church with his sergeants. Seeing the
+populace assembled, he exhorted them to leave the church, but so
+feebly that only a few went away; the others said:
+
+"First we want to hear the canons singing vespers in honour of Mieke."
+
+The markgrave replied:
+
+"There shall be no singing."
+
+"We will sing ourselves," answered the ragged strangers.
+
+Which they did in the naves and near the porch of the church. Some
+played at Krieke-steenen, at cherry-stones, and said: "Mieke, you
+never game in paradise and you are bored there; play with us."
+
+And insulting the statue without ceasing, they cried out, hooted
+and whistled.
+
+The markgrave pretended to be afraid and departed. By his orders all
+the doors of the church were shut save one.
+
+Without the populace having any hand in it, the ragtag and bobtail
+of the strangers became bolder and shouted more and more. And the
+roofs reechoed as though to the din of a hundred cannon.
+
+One of them, he of the face like a burned onion, appearing to have
+some authority among them, got up into a pulpit, made a sign with
+his hand to them, and began to preach:
+
+"In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," said
+he: "the three making but one, and the one making three, God keep us
+in paradise from arithmetic; this day the twenty-ninth of August,
+Mieke went forth in great pomp of array to show her wooden face to
+the signorkes and pagaders of Antwerp. But Mieke, in the procession
+met the devil Satanas. And Satanas said to her, mocking her: 'There
+you are, high and mighty, prinked up like a queen, Mieke, and borne by
+four signorkes, and you will not look now at the poor pagader Satanas
+that makes his way on foot.' And Mieke answered: 'Begone, Satanas, or
+I bruise thy head still more than ever, foul serpent!' 'Mieke,' said
+Satanas, 'that is the task in which you have been spending your time
+for fifteen hundred years, but the Spirit of the Lord, your master,
+hath delivered me. I am stronger than you are; you shall not walk over
+my head any more, and I am going to make you dance now.' Satanas took
+a great whip, sharp and cutting, and started to flog Mieke, who dared
+not cry out for fear of showing her terror, and then she began to run
+as hard as she could, forcing the signorkes that were carrying her to
+run, too, so as not to let her fall with her gold crown and her jewels
+among the poor common folk. And now Mieke stays as stiff and as still
+as a frightened mouse in her niche, watching Satan, who is seated up at
+the top of the pillar under the little dome, and who says to her, still
+grasping his whip and grinning, 'I will make you pay for the blood and
+tears that flow in your name! Mieke, how goes your virgin birth? This
+is the time to flit. You shall be cut in twain, evil statue of wood,
+for all the statues of flesh and bone that were burned in your name,
+burned, hanged, buried alive without pity.' So spake Satanas; and
+he spoke well. And thou must come down from thy niche, bloody Mieke,
+Mieke the cruel, that wast in no way like thy son Christus."
+
+And all the band of the strangers, hooting and crying out, shouted:
+"Mieke! Mieke! it is time to come out! Are you wetting your linen
+for fear in your niche? Up Brabant for the good Duke. Away with the
+wooden saints! Who will have a bath in the Scheldt! Wood swims better
+than fishes."
+
+The populace listened to them without saying a word.
+
+But Ulenspiegel, getting up into the pulpit, threw down the stair by
+main force the one that was haranguing.
+
+"Fools fit to tie," he said, speaking to the populace; "lunatic fools,
+idiot fools, who see no further than the end of your dirty noses, do
+ye not see that all this is the work of traitors? They mean to make
+you commit sacrilege and pillage that they may declare you rebels,
+empty your coffers, cut off your heads, and burn you alive! And the
+king will inherit. Signorkes and pagaders, do not believe in the
+speeches of these artificers of woes: leave Notre Dame in her niche,
+live stoutly, working happily, spending your earnings and profits. The
+black devil of ruin has his eye upon you, and it is through sackings
+and destruction that he will call up the army of your foes to treat you
+as rebels and make Alba reign over you with dictatorship, inquisition,
+confiscation, and death."
+
+"And he will inherit!"
+
+"Alas," said Lamme, "do not pillage anything, signorkes and pagaders;
+the king is already very angry. The daughter of the embroideress told
+my friend Ulenspiegel so. Do not indulge in pillage, sirs!"
+
+But the populace would not give ear to them.
+
+The unknown kept shouting:
+
+"Sack and turn out! Sack Brabant for the good Duke! To the river with
+wooden saints! They swim better than fishes!"
+
+Ulenspiegel, still in the pulpit, cried in vain:
+
+"Signorkes and pagaders do not suffer pillage! Do not call down ruin
+upon the town!"
+
+He was plucked away from there all torn, face, doublet, and breeches,
+though he avenged himself with both feet and hands. And all bleeding
+he never ceased to cry out:
+
+"Do not suffer pillage!"
+
+But it was in vain.
+
+The unknown and the ragtag and bobtail of the city flung themselves
+on the iron grille of the choir, which they broke through, crying:
+
+"Long live the Beggar!"
+
+They all set to work to break, sack, destroy. Before midnight this
+great church, in which there were seventy altars, every kind of noble
+paintings and precious things, was empty as a nut. The altars were
+broken, the images flung down, and all the locks smashed.
+
+This being done, the same unknown set off to treat like Notre Dame,
+the Minor Brothers, the Franciscans, Saint Peter, Saint Andrew,
+Saint Michael, Saint Pierre-au-Pot, the Bourg, the Fawkens, the White
+Sisters, the Gray Sisters, the Third Order, the Preachers, and all
+the churches and chapels in the city. They took candles and torches
+out of them and ran around everywhere in this manner.
+
+Among them there was no quarrel nor dispute; not one of them was hurt
+in that great demolishing of wood and other materials.
+
+They betook themselves to The Hague to proceed there to the overthrow
+of statues and altars, without the reformed lending them any aid
+either there or elsewhere.
+
+At The Hague, the magistrate asked them where was their commission.
+
+"It is here," said one of them, striking upon his heart.
+
+"Their commission, hear you, signorkes and pagaders?" said Ulenspiegel,
+having been informed of this. "So then there is someone who deputes
+them to this work of sacrilege. Let some robber thief come into my
+cottage; I will do as did the magistrate of The Hague, I will say,
+taking off my bonnet: 'Gentle robber, gracious rogue, worshipful
+rascal, show me your commission.' He will reply that it is in
+his heart that is greedy for my goods. And I shall give him the
+keys of everything. Seek, seek out who it is that profits by this
+pillage. Beware of the Red Dog. The great stone crucifix is flung
+down. Beware of the Red Dog!"
+
+The Great Sovereign Council of Malines having given orders through
+its president Viglius, not to put any obstacle in the way of image
+breaking:--"Alas!" said Ulenspiegel, "the harvest is ripe for the
+Spanish reapers. The Duke! the Duke is marching upon you. Flemings,
+the sea rises, the sea of vengeance. Poor women and girls, flee
+the living grave! Poor men, flee the gallows, the fire, and the
+sword! Philip means to finish the bloody work of Charles. The father
+sowed death and exile, the son hath sworn that he would rather rule
+over a cemetery than over a heretic folk. Flee; here be the executioner
+and the gravediggers."
+
+The populace hearkened to Ulenspiegel, and families left the cities
+by hundreds, and the roads were encumbered with carts laden with the
+household stuff of those that were going into exile.
+
+And Ulenspiegel went everywhere, followed by Lamme grieving and
+looking for his beloved.
+
+And at Damme Nele wept by the side of Katheline the madwife.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Ulenspiegel being at Ghent in the barley month which is October, saw
+Egmont returning from revelling and feasting in the noble company
+of the Abbot of Saint Bavon. Being in a singing humour, he was
+absentmindedly allowing his horse to go at a foot pace. Suddenly he
+saw a man who, carrying a lighted lantern, was walking alongside him.
+
+"What wouldst thou of me?" asked Egmont.
+
+"Good," replied Ulenspiegel, "the good of a lantern when it is lit."
+
+"Begone and leave me," replied the Count.
+
+"I will not begone," rejoined Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Wouldst thou have a stroke of the whip then?"
+
+"I would willingly have ten, if I can put in your head such a lantern
+that you might see clear from here to the Escurial."
+
+"I take no stock in thy lantern nor in the Escurial," replied the
+Count.
+
+"Well, for my part," answered Ulenspiegel, "it burns in me to give
+you a good advice."
+
+Then taking by the bridle the Count's horse, rearing and kicking:
+
+"Monseigneur," said he, "think that now you dance well on your horse
+and that your head dances also very well upon your shoulders; but
+the king, they say, means to interrupt this fine dance, to leave you
+your body, but to take your head and make it dance in a land so far
+away that you will never be able to overtake it. Give me a florin,
+I have earned it."
+
+"The whip, if thou wilt not be off, evil newsmonger."
+
+"Monseigneur, I am Ulenspiegel, the son of Claes, that was burned alive
+for his belief and of Soetkin that died of sorrow. The ashes beating
+upon my breast tell me that Egmont, the gallant soldier, might with
+the gendarmerie in his command oppose the thrice-victorious troops
+of the Duke of Alba."
+
+"Begone," replied Egmont, "I am no traitor."
+
+"Save the countries; you alone can save them," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+The Count would have beaten Ulenspiegel; but he had not waited for
+this and fled away, crying:
+
+"Eat lanterns, eat lanterns, Messire Count. Save the countries."
+
+Another day, Egmont being athirst had stopped in front of the inn
+In 't bondt verken, the Piebald Pig--kept by a woman of Courtrai,
+a pretty piece, called Musekin, the Little Mouse.
+
+The Count, rising up in his stirrups, cried out:
+
+"Bring me to drink!"
+
+Ulenspiegel, who was in Musekin's service, came up to the Count holding
+a pewter tankard in one hand and in the other a flask of red wine.
+
+The Count, seeing him:
+
+"Are you there," said he, "ill-omened raven?"
+
+"Monseigneur," answered Ulenspiegel, "if my omens are black, 'tis
+because they are ill washen; but will you tell me which is the redder,
+the wine that goes down the throat or the blood that leaps out of
+the neck? That is what my lantern asked."
+
+The Count made no answer, but paid and departed.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Ulenspiegel and Lamme, each mounted on an ass, which Simon Simonsen
+had given them, one of the faithfuls of the Prince of Orange, went
+everywhere, warning the burgesses of the black designs of the king
+of blood, and ever on the watch to discover news coming from Spain.
+
+They sold vegetables, being clad like country folk, and haunted all
+the markets.
+
+Coming back from the Brussels market, they saw in a stone house,
+on the Brick Quay, in a low chamber, a handsome dame clad in satin,
+high coloured, well bosomed, and with a lively eye.
+
+She was saying to a fresh young cookmaid:
+
+"Scour me this pan, I do not like rust sauce."
+
+Ulenspiegel put his nose in at the window.
+
+"I," said he, "I like every sauce, for a hungry belly is no great
+picker and chooser among fricassees."
+
+The dame turning round:
+
+"Who," said she, "is this fellow that interferes with my soup?"
+
+"Alas! fair dame," answered Ulenspiegel, "if you would only make it
+in my company, I would teach you travellers' stews unknown to fair
+dames that sit at home."
+
+Then clacking with his tongue, he said:
+
+"I am thirsty."
+
+"For what?" said she.
+
+"For thee," said he.
+
+"He is a pretty fellow," said the cookmaid to the dame. "Let us bring
+him in and let him tell us his adventures."
+
+"But there are two of them," said the dame.
+
+"I will look after one," replied the maid.
+
+"Madame," said Ulenspiegel, "we are two, it is true, myself and my
+poor Lamme, who cannot carry five pounds on his back, but carries
+five hundred on his stomach in meats and drinks with the best will
+in the world."
+
+"My son," said Lamme, "do not mock at an unhappy man to whom it costs
+so much to fill his paunch."
+
+"It will not cost thee a liard to-day," said the dame. "Come within,
+both of you."
+
+"But," said Lamme, "there are also two asses upon which we are."
+
+"Pecks of corn," replied the dame, "are nowise lacking in the stable
+of the Count of Meghem."
+
+The cookmaid left her pan and drew into the yard Ulenspiegel and
+Lamme bestriding their asses, which began to bray incontinent.
+
+"That," said Ulenspiegel, "is the flourish for food near at hand. They
+are trumpeting their joy, the poor asses!"
+
+And having both dismounted, Ulenspiegel said to the cookmaid:
+
+"If you were a she-ass, would you like an ass like me?"
+
+"If I was a woman," she replied, "I should like a young man with a
+jolly face."
+
+"What are you, then, being neither woman nor ass?" asked Lamme.
+
+"A virgin," quoth she, "a virgin is neither woman nor ass either:
+do you understand, big belly?"
+
+Ulenspiegel said to Lamme:
+
+"Do not believe her, 'tis half a wild girl and quarter of two
+she-devils. Her carnal tricks have already bespoken for her in hell
+a place on a mattress to fondle Beelzebub."
+
+"Evil mocker," said the cook, "if your hairs were horsehair I would
+not have them even to walk on them."
+
+"For my part," said Ulenspiegel, "I would like to eat all your hair."
+
+"Golden tongue," said the dame, "must you have them all?"
+
+"No," replied Ulenspiegel, "a thousand would suffice me melted down
+into one like you."
+
+The dame said to him:
+
+"Drink first a quart of bruinbier, eat a piece of ham, cut deep into
+this leg of mutton, disembowel me this pie, swallow me this salad."
+
+Ulenspiegel joined his hands.
+
+"Ham," said he, "is a good meat; bruinbier, heavenly beer; leg
+of mutton, divine flesh; a pie that one disembowels makes one's
+tongue tremble with pleasure in the mouth; a fat salad is princely
+swallowing. But blessed will he be to whom you will give to sup on
+your beauty."
+
+"See how he rattles on," said she. "Eat first of all, vagabond!"
+
+Ulenspiegel replied:
+
+"Shall we not say the benedicite before the graces?"
+
+"No," said she.
+
+Then Lamme, whining, said:
+
+"I am hungry."
+
+"You shall eat," said the fair dame, "since you have no other care
+than for cooked meat."
+
+"And fresh, too, as my wife was," said Lamme. The cookmaid became
+sullen at this word. All the same they ate copiously and drank in
+floods. And the dame that night gave Ulenspiegel his supper, and next
+day and the days that followed.
+
+The asses had double measure of corn and Lamme a double portion. For
+a whole week he never left the kitchen, and he played with the dishes,
+but not with the cook, for he thought of his wife.
+
+That angered the girl, who said it was hardly worth while to cumber
+the world only to think of one's belly.
+
+Meanwhile, Ulenspiegel and the dame lived in good amity. And one day
+she said to him:
+
+"Thyl, thou hast no manners: who art thou?"
+
+"I am," said he, "a son that Happy Chance had one day on Good
+Adventure."
+
+"Thou dost not missay thyself," said she.
+
+"'Tis for fear others may not praise me," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Wouldst thou undertake the defence of thy brothers that are
+persecuted?"
+
+"The ashes of Claes beat upon my breast," replied Ulenspiegel.
+
+"How goodly thou art there!" said she. "Who is this Claes?"
+
+Ulenspiegel replied:
+
+"My father, burned for his belief."
+
+"The Count of Meghem is not like thee," she said. "He would bleed the
+country I love, for I was born at Antwerp the glorious city. Know
+then that he has accorded with the Councillor Scheyf of Brabant to
+admit him into Antwerp with his ten companies of infantry."
+
+"I will denounce him to the citizens," said Ulenspiegel, "and I go
+immediately, light as a ghost."
+
+He went, and on the morrow the townsfolk were in arms.
+
+However, Ulenspiegel and Lamme, having left their asses with a farmer
+of Simon Simonsen's, were forced to hide for fear of the Count de
+Meghem who had them searched for everywhere to have them hanged;
+for he had been told that two heretics had drunk of his wine and
+eaten of his meat.
+
+He was jealous, and said so to the fair dame, who gnashed her teeth
+with anger, wept, and fainted seventeen times. The cookmaid did the
+same, but not so often, and declared upon her share of Paradise and
+eternal salvation that she nor her lady had done nothing, except to
+give the remains of a dinner to two poor pilgrims who, mounted on
+wretched donkeys, had stopped at the kitchen window.
+
+And that day there were shed so many tears that the floor was all damp
+with them. Seeing which, Messire de Meghem was assured that they were
+not lying.
+
+Lamme dared not show himself again at M. de Meghem's house, for the
+cook always called him "My wife!"
+
+And he was exceedingly grieved, thinking of the food; but Ulenspiegel
+always brought him some good dish, for he used to go into the house
+by the rue Sainte Catherine and hide in the garret.
+
+The next day, at vespers, the Count de Meghem confessed to the
+handsome goodwife how that he had determined to fetch the gendarmerie
+he commanded into Bois-le-Duc before daybreak. The goodwife went to
+the garret to recount this to Ulenspiegel.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+Ulenspiegel in pilgrim's robes set out incontinent with neither
+provisions nor money for Bois-le-Duc, in order to warn the citizens. He
+counted on taking a horse by the way at Jeroen Praet's, Simon's
+brother, for whom he had letters from the Prince, and from thence he
+would go full speed by cross-country ways to Bois-le-Duc.
+
+Going along the highway, he saw a band of troopers coming. He was
+sore afraid because of the letters.
+
+But, resolved to set a good face against misadventure, he waited the
+troopers stoutly, and stopped in the way muttering his paternosters;
+when they passed he marched with them, and learned that they were
+going to Bois-le-Duc.
+
+A company of Walloons opened the march, and at the head was Captain
+Lamotte with his guard of six halberdiers; then according to their
+rank, the ensign with a smaller guard, the provost, his halberdiers
+and his two myrmidons, the chief of the watch, the baggage wardens,
+the executioner and his assistant, and fifes and tambourines making
+loud uproar.
+
+Then came a Flemish company of two hundred men, with its captain and
+its standard bearer, and divided into two centuries commanded by the
+troop sergeants, and in decuries commanded by the rot-meesters. The
+provost and the stocks-knechten were likewise preceded by fifes and
+tambourines beating and squealing.
+
+Behind them came, with bursts of laughter, twittering like warblers,
+singing like nightingales, eating, drinking, dancing, standing, lying,
+or riding, their women; handsome wild girls, in two open carts.
+
+Some were clad like lansquenets, but in fine white linen low-necked,
+slashed on the arms, the legs, the doublet, showing their sweet flesh;
+with caps on their heads of fine linen edged with gold, and surmounted
+by handsome ostrich plumes floating in the wind. At their belts of
+cloth-of-gold touched off with red satin, hung the cloth-of-gold
+scabbards of their daggers. And their shoes, stockings, and breeches,
+their doublets, laces, and metal trappings were all made of gold and
+white silk.
+
+Others were also clad in the fashion of landsknechts, but in blue, in
+green, in scarlet, in azure, in crimson, slashed, broidered, blazoned
+at their own caprice. And all wore upon their arm the armlet of the
+colour that indicated their profession.
+
+A hoer-wyfel, their sergeant, would fain have made them keep silence;
+but by their captivating grimaces and speeches they forced him to
+laugh and never obeyed him at all.
+
+Ulenspiegel, in pilgrim array, walked in company with the two troops,
+as a small boat might with a great ship. And he kept on murmuring
+his paternosters.
+
+Suddenly Lamotte said to him:
+
+"Whither art thou going thus, Pilgrim?"
+
+"Master Captain," replied Ulenspiegel, who was hungry, "long ago I
+committed a grave sin and was condemned by the chapter of Notre Dame to
+go a-foot to Rome to ask for pardon from the Holy Father, who accorded
+it to me. I came back to these countries cleansed of my offence on
+condition that on the way I should preach the Sacred Mysteries to
+all and any soldiers I might meet with, who should in return for my
+sermons give me bread and meat. And thus preaching I sustain my poor
+life. Will you grant me permission to keep my vow at the next halt?"
+
+"Yea," said Messire de Lamotte.
+
+Ulenspiegel, mingling and fraternizing with the Walloons and Flemings,
+felt his letters underneath his doublet.
+
+The girls cried out to him:
+
+"Pilgrim, handsome pilgrim, come hither and show us the power of
+your scallops."
+
+Ulenspiegel, drawing near to them, said modestly:
+
+"My sisters in God, mock not ye the poor pilgrim who goeth over
+mountain and by vale to preach the holy faith unto soldiers."
+
+And he devoured with his eyes their dainty charms.
+
+But the girls, thrusting their sprightly faces into the openings in
+the canvas of the carts:
+
+"You are very young," said they, "to preach to soldiers. Come up into
+our carts, we will teach you pleasant discourses."
+
+Ulenspiegel would willingly have obeyed, but could not on account of
+his letters; already two of the girls, reaching their round white
+arms out of the cart, were trying to pull him up to them, when the
+hoer-wyfel, jealous, said to Ulenspiegel: "If you do not take yourself
+off, I will have your head off."
+
+And Ulenspiegel went farther off, looking slyly at the fresh girls,
+all golden in the sun, which shone bright and clear on the road.
+
+They came to Berchem. Philippe de Lannoy, sieur de Beauvoir, the
+commander of the Flemings, ordered them to halt.
+
+At this place there was an oak of middle height, bereft of all its
+branches, except one big bough broken off halfway on which the month
+before there had been an Anabaptist hanged by the neck.
+
+The soldiers stopped; the sutlers came to them, and sold them bread,
+wine, beer, meats of every kind. As for the girls, they sold them
+sugar, castrelins, almonds, tartlets, seeing which Ulenspiegel grew
+still hungrier.
+
+Suddenly climbing up the tree like a monkey, he planted himself astride
+of the great bough that was some seven feet above the earth; there,
+lashing himself with a scourge, while the troopers and the girls made
+circle about him:
+
+"In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,"
+said he. "Amen. It is written: 'He that giveth to the poor lendeth
+to the Lord': soldiers, and ye, beauteous dames, sweet companions in
+love to these valiant warriors, lend ye to the Lord, which is to say:
+give me bread, meat, wine, beer, if ye will, tartlets if it please
+you, and God, who is rich, will repay it you in morsels of ortolans,
+in rivers of malvoisie, in mountains of sugar candy, in rystpap which
+ye shall eat in paradise with silver spoons."
+
+Then bemoaning himself:
+
+"See ye not with what cruel torments of penance I seek to merit
+forgiveness for my sins? Will ye not ease the sharp anguish of this
+scourge that woundeth my back and maketh me to bleed?"
+
+"Who is this mad man?" said the troopers.
+
+"Friends," answered Ulenspiegel, "I am not mad, but repentant
+and famished; for while my spirit weepeth for its guilty crimes,
+my belly weepeth its lack of meat. Blessed soldiers, and you, fair
+damsels, I see there among you fat ham, goose, sausages, wine, beer,
+tartlets. Will you not give somewhat to the pilgrim?"
+
+"Aye, aye," said the Flemish troopers, "he has a good old phiz,
+the preacher."
+
+And all began to throw pieces of food to him like balls. Ulenspiegel
+ceased not to talk, and went on eating, sitting astride the bough.
+
+"Hunger," said he, "maketh man hard-hearted and unfit for prayer,
+but ham taketh away this evil humour all of a sudden."
+
+"Look out, crackpot!" said a troop sergeant, throwing him a bottle
+half full.
+
+Ulenspiegel caught the bottle in the air, and drinking by little
+sips, said:
+
+"If a sharp and raging hunger is a thing harmful to the poor body
+of a man, there is another thing as hurtful, and that is the anguish
+of a poor pilgrim to whom generous soldiers have given, one a slice
+of ham, the others a bottle of beer. For the pilgrim is sober by his
+custom, and if he drank and had in his inside such scanty and trifling
+nourishment, he would be drunk immediately."
+
+As he spoke, he caught once again a goose's thigh in the air.
+
+"This," said he, "is a thing miraculous, to fish meadow fish out of
+the air. But it has disappeared, bone and all. What is greedier than
+dry sand? A barren woman and a famished stomach."
+
+Suddenly he felt a halberd point prick him in the seat. And he heard
+an ensign say:
+
+"Do pilgrims disdain a leg of mutton for the nonce?"
+
+Ulenspiegel saw, spitted on the blade of the halberd, a big knuckle
+bone. Taking it he said:
+
+"I will make a marrow flute of it to sing thy praises, compassionate
+halberdier. And yet," said he, eating at the knuckle bone, "what is
+a meal without dessert, what is a knuckle bone, however succulent,
+if after it the pilgrim doth not behold a tartlet displaying its
+blessed face?"
+
+Saying this he put up his hand to his face, for two tartlets coming
+from the group of girls had flattened themselves out, one on his eye,
+the other on his cheek. And the girls laughed and Ulenspiegel answered:
+
+"All thanks, sweet damsels, who give me accolades of sweetmeats."
+
+But the tartlets had fallen to the ground.
+
+Suddenly the drums beat, the fifes squealed, and the soldiers resumed
+their march.
+
+Messire de Beauvoir bade Ulenspiegel come down from his tree and march
+beside the troop from which he would fain have been a hundred leagues,
+for from the talk of some sour-faced troopers he scented that they
+were suspicious of him, that they would before long seize him for a
+spy, would search him and hang him if they found his letters.
+
+And so, letting himself tumble into a ditch, he cried:
+
+"Pity, soldiers; my leg is broken, I cannot walk farther, let me get
+up into the women's cart."
+
+But he knew that the jealous hoer-wyfel would never allow it.
+
+The girls called to him from their cart:
+
+"Now, come up, dear pilgrim, come. We will love you, caress you,
+feast you, heal you all in one day."
+
+"I know," said he, "a woman's hand is a heavenly balm for every wound."
+
+But the jealous hoer-wyfel, speaking to Messire de Lamotte:
+
+"Messire," said he, "I believe that this pilgrim is fooling us with
+his broken leg, to get into the cart of the women. Give orders to
+leave him in the road."
+
+"That is my will," said Messire de Lamotte.
+
+And Ulenspiegel was left in the ditch.
+
+Certain troopers, believing that he had really broken his leg, were
+sorry for it because of his jollity. They left him meat and wine
+enough for two days. The girls would fain have gone to help him,
+but not being able to, they threw him all the castrelins they had left.
+
+The band was far away; Ulenspiegel made across the fields in his
+pilgrim's robes, bought a horse, and by highways and byways he came
+like the wind to Bois-le-Duc.
+
+At the news of the coming of Messires de Beauvoir and de Lamotte,
+the townspeople took arms to the number of eight hundred, chose
+captains for them, and despatched Ulenspiegel to Antwerp disguised
+as a coalman to ask help from the Drinking Hercules, Brederode.
+
+And the troopers of Messires de Lamotte and de Beauvoir could not
+come into Bois-le-Duc, a city armed and watchful, and ready for a
+stout defence.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+The following month, a certain doctor, Agileus, gave Ulenspiegel two
+florins and letters with which he was to betake himself to Simon Praet,
+who would tell him what he had to do.
+
+At Praet's, Ulenspiegel found food and shelter. He slept well,
+and well liking was his face in the flower of youth; Praet, on the
+contrary, with a wretched and pitiful mien, seemed for ever locked
+in with melancholy thoughts. And Ulenspiegel was astonished to hear
+by night, if by any chance he awoke, the noise of hammering.
+
+However early he might rise, Simon Praet was up before him, and more
+pitiful his look, sadder still his eyes, gleaming like a man's making
+ready for death or for battle.
+
+Often Praet sighed, clasping his hands for prayer, and ever seemed
+filled with indignation. His fingers were black and greasy, and so,
+too, were his arms and his shirt.
+
+Ulenspiegel determined to discover whence came the hammering, and
+the black arms and the melancholy of Praet. One night, having been
+at the Blauwe Gans, the tavern of the Blue Goose, in company with
+Simon who was there against his will, he feigned to be so drunk and
+to have so much in his head that he must needs take it incontinently
+to his pillow.
+
+And Praet brought him home mournfully.
+
+Ulenspiegel slept in the garret, under the cats; Simon's bed was below,
+near the cellar.
+
+Ulenspiegel, continuing his drunken feigning, went climbing staggering
+up the stairs, pretending to be about to fall and holding on by the
+rope. Simon helped him with tender care, like a brother. Having put
+him to bed, condoling with him for his drunkenness, and praying God
+to be good enough to forgive him, he came down, and soon Ulenspiegel
+heard the same noise of hammering that had awakened him many times.
+
+Getting up noiselessly, he went barefoot down the narrow stairs, so
+that after two and seventy steps he found himself in front of a low
+little door, through the chinks of which filtered a thread of light.
+
+Simon was printing broadsides on the old types of the time of Laurens
+Coster, the great fosterer of the noble art of printing.
+
+"What dost thou there?" asked Ulenspiegel.
+
+Simon answered in affright:
+
+"If thou art on the devil's side, denounce me, that I may die; but
+if thou art on God's side let thy mouth be prison to thy tongue."
+
+"I am on God's side," replied Ulenspiegel, "and wish thee no evil. What
+dost thou?"
+
+"I am printing Bibles," answered Simon. "For if by day to keep my wife
+and my children I publish the cruel and wicked edicts of His Majesty,
+by night I sow the true word of God and thus repair the ill I did
+during the day."
+
+"Thou art brave," said Ulenspiegel.
+
+"I have the faith," replied Simon.
+
+In very deed, it was from this holy printing shop that there issued
+the Bibles in Flemish that were distributed through the countries
+of Brabant, of Flanders, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Noord-Brabant,
+Over-Yssel, Gelderland, until the day when Simon was condemned to
+have his head cut off, thus finishing his life for Christ.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+Simon said one day to Ulenspiegel:
+
+"Listen, brother, hast thou courage?"
+
+"I have enough," replied Ulenspiegel, "to serve to flog a Spaniard
+to the death, to kill an assassin, to destroy a murderer."
+
+"Could you," asked the printer, "stay patiently in a chimney place
+to hear what is said in a room?"
+
+Ulenspiegel made answer:--"Having by the grace of God, strong loins
+and supple knees, I can stay a long while as I please, like a cat."
+
+"Hast thou patience and a good memory?" asked Simon.
+
+"The ashes of Claes beat upon my breast," answered Ulenspiegel.
+
+"Hearken, then," said the printer; "you shall take this playing
+card folded in this wise, and you shall go to Dendermonde and knock
+twice loudly and once softly at the door of the house whose outward
+appearance is here limned. One will open to you and ask if you are
+the chimney sweeper; you shall answer that you are thin and that
+you have not lost the card. You shall then show him the card. And
+then, Thyl, you shall do your duty. Great woes hover above the land
+of Flanders. A chimney will be shown to you, prepared and swept in
+advance; you will find in it good climbing irons for your feet, and
+for your seat a little wooden board firmly stayed. When the one that
+opened the door to you bids you climb into the chimney, you shall do
+so, and there you shall remain quiet and still. Illustrious lords will
+meet within the chamber, before the chimney in which you will be. They
+are William the Silent, Prince of Orange, the Counts of Egmont, Hoorn,
+Hoogstraeten, and Ludwig of Nassau, the valiant brother of the Silent
+One. We of the reformed faith would know what these lords will and
+can undertake in order to save the country."
+
+Now on the first of April Ulenspiegel did as he had been bidden,
+and posted himself in the chimney. He was satisfied to see that no
+fire burned in it, and thought that, having no smoke, he would thus
+have better hearing.
+
+Presently, the door of the chamber opened, and he was pierced through
+and through by a gust of wind. But he took this wind patiently,
+saying that it would freshen his attentiveness.
+
+Then he heard the lords of Orange, Egmont, and the others come into
+the chamber. They began to speak of their fears, of the king's anger
+and the bad administration of the public moneys and finances. One of
+them spoke in sharp, haughty clear tones; that was Egmont. Ulenspiegel
+recognized Hoogstraeten by his hoarse voice; De Hoorn by his big
+voice; Count Louis of Nassau by his firm and warrior-like speaking;
+and the Silent One, by his pronouncing all his words slowly as if he
+had first weighed every one in a balance.
+
+The Count of Egmont asked why they were brought together a second
+time, while at Hellegat they had had leisure to determine on what
+they meant to do.
+
+De Hoorn replied:
+
+"The hours go by swiftly, the king grows angry; let us take care not
+to waste time."
+
+The Silent One said then:
+
+"The countries are in danger; we must defend them against the attack
+of an army of foreigners."
+
+Egmont replied, growing angry, that he found it astonishing that the
+king his master should think it necessary to send an army there, at
+a time when all was pacified by the care of the lords and especially
+by himself.
+
+But the Silent:
+
+"Philip hath in the Low Countries fourteen bands of regulars, of whom
+all the soldiers are devoted to him who commanded at Gravelines and
+at Saint Quentin."
+
+"I do not understand," said Egmont.
+
+The prince went on:
+
+"I do not wish to say more, but there will be read to you and the
+assembled lords certain letters, those from the poor prisoner Montigny
+to begin with.
+
+"In these letters, Messire de Montigny wrote:
+
+"'The king is exceeding wroth at what has come to pass in the Low
+Countries, and he will punish the abettors of trouble at a given
+hour.'"
+
+Herewith the Count of Egmont said that he was cold and that it would
+be well to light a great fire of wood. That was done while the two
+lords discussed the letters.
+
+The fire did not catch because of the over-great stopper that was in
+the chimney, and the chamber was filled with smoke.
+
+The Count of Hoogstraeten then read, coughing, the intercepted letters
+of Alava, the Spanish Ambassador, addressed to the Lady Governor.
+
+"The Ambassador," said he, "writes that all the ill that has befallen
+the Low Countries has come from the doings of three men: to wit,
+Orange, Egmont, and Hoorn. We must, says the Ambassador, show a fair
+face to these three lords and tell them that the king recognizes that
+he holds these countries in his obedience through their services. As
+for the two single ones, Montigny and De Berghes, they are in the
+place where they ought to be."
+
+"Ah," said Ulenspiegel, "I like better a smoky chimney in Flanders
+than a cool, airy prison in Spain: for garrottes spring up out of
+the damp walls."
+
+"The said Ambassador adds that the king said in the city of Madrid:
+
+"'By all that hath come to pass in the Low Countries our royal
+reputation is diminished, the service of God is disparaged, and we
+shall rather expose all our other lands than leave such a rebellion
+unpunished. We are determined to go in person to the Low Countries
+and to request the help of the Pope and of the Emperor. Under the
+present evil lies the future good. We will reduce the Low Countries
+under our absolute sway, and will change and modify to our mind state,
+religion, and government.'"
+
+"Ah! Philip King," said Ulenspiegel to himself, "if I could in my mode
+modify thee, thou shouldst undergo a great modification of thy thighs,
+arms, and legs under my Flemish cudgel; I should fasten thy head in
+the middle of thy back with two nails to see whether in that state,
+looking at the graveyard thou leavest behind thee, thou wouldst sing
+in thine own fashion thy song of tyrannical modifying."
+
+Wine was brought in. D'Hoogstraeten rose and said: "I drink to the
+countries!" All followed his example, and putting his tankard down
+empty on the table, he added: "The evil hour strikes for the Belgian
+nobles. We must take thought for means of defending ourselves."
+
+Waiting for an answer, he looked at Egmont, who uttered not a word.
+
+But the Silent One spoke: "We will resist," said he, "if Egmont who
+twice, at Saint Quentin and at Gravelines, made France tremble, who
+has all authority over the Flemish soldiers, will come to our rescue
+and prevent the Spaniard from coming into our countries."
+
+Messire d'Egmont replied: "I think of the king with too much respect
+to believe that we must arm ourselves like rebels against him. Let
+those who fear his anger draw back. I will remain, having no way of
+living save by his help."
+
+"Philip may take cruel vengeance," said the Silent.
+
+"I have complete trust!" answered Egmont.
+
+"Your head included?" asked Ludwig of Nassau.
+
+"Included," replied Egmont, "head, body, and loyal devotion, which
+are his."
+
+"Trusty and well-beloved, I will do even as thou," said De Hoorn. Said
+the Silent:
+
+"We must foresee and not wait."
+
+Then Messire d'Egmont, speaking vehemently, "I have," said he, "had
+two and twenty reformed hanged at Grammont. If the preachings come
+to an end, if the image breakers are punished, the king's anger will
+be appeased."
+
+The Silent replied:
+
+"There are hopes that are uncertain."
+
+"Let us put on the armour of trust," said Egmont.
+
+"Let us put on the armour of trust," said De Hoorn.
+
+"It is iron we should arm with, not trust," replied D'Hoogstraeten.
+
+Hereupon the Silent made a sign that he wished to go.
+
+"Adieu, Prince without land!" said Egmont.
+
+"Adieu, Count without a head!" replied the Silent. Ludwig of Nassau
+said then: "For the sheep the butcher, and glory for the soldier that
+is the saviour of the land of our fathers!"
+
+"I cannot, and will not," said Egmont.
+
+"Blood of the victims," said Ulenspiegel, "fall upon the head of
+the courtier!"
+
+The lords withdrew.
+
+Then Ulenspiegel came down out of his chimney and went immediately
+to bring the news to Praet. The latter said: "Egmont is a traitor,
+God is with the Prince."
+
+
+
+The Duke! the Duke in Brussels! Where are the strong boxes that
+have wings?
+
+
+
+                             END OF VOL. I
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Legend of Ulenspiegel, by Charles de Coster
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