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The Legend of the Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegel in the land of Flanders and elsewhere

by Charles de Coster · English · Gutenberg #37599 · 557,327 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Legend of the Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegel in the land of Flanders and elsewhere

Author: Charles de Coster

Illustrator: Albert Delstanche

Translator: Geoffrey Arundel Whitworth


        
Release date: October 2, 2011 [eBook #37599]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LEGEND OF THE GLORIOUS ADVENTURES OF TYL ULENSPIEGEL IN THE LAND OF FLANDERS AND ELSEWHERE ***




Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously
made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)








                           THE LEGEND OF THE
                          GLORIOUS ADVENTURES
                       OF TYL ULENSPIEGEL IN THE
                      LAND OF FLANDERS & ELSEWHERE



                          by CHARLES DE COSTER

                       Translated from the French
                         By Geoffrey Whitworth







ILLUSTRATIONS


    Lamme and Ulenspiegel at the Minne-Water            Frontispiece
    At Damme when the Hawthorn was in flower        Facing page    2
    Claes and Soetkin                                              8
    Philip and the Monkey                                         26
    Nele and Ulenspiegel                                          44
    The Feast of the Blind Men                                    54
    The Monk's Sermon                                             76
    Father and Son                                                94
    Ulenspiegel and Soetkin by the Dead Body of Claes            118
    "Ah! The lovely month of May!"                               174
    Lamme succours Ulenspiegel                                   218
    The Mock Marriage                                            224
    Lamme the Victor                                             232
    "'Tis van te beven de klinkaert"                             242
    The Death of Betkin                                          248
    "The ashes of Claes beat upon my heart"                      262
    Nele accuses Hans                                            268
    Katheline led to the Trial by Water                          278
    "Shame on you!" cried Ulenspiegel                            284
    The Sixth Song                                               302







FOREWORD


The book here offered in English to the English-speaking public has
long been known and admired by students as the first and perhaps
the most notable example of modern Belgian literature. Its author
was born of obscure parentage in 1827, and, after a life passed
in not much less obscurity, died in 1879. The ten years which were
devoted to the composition of "The Legend of Tyl Ulenspiegel" were
devoted to what proved, for de Coster, little more than a labour of
love. Recognition came to him but from the few, and it was not till
some thirty years after his death that an official monument was raised
at Brussels to his memory, and an official oration delivered in his
praise by Camille Lemonnier.

To the undiscerning among his contemporaries de Coster may have
appeared little else than a rather eccentric journalist with
archaeological tastes. For a time, indeed, he held a post on the
Royal Commission which was appointed in 1860 to investigate and
publish old Flemish laws. And towards the end of his life he became
a Professor of History and French Literature at the Military School
in Brussels. Never, certainly, has a work of imagination, planned
on an epic scale, been composed with a closer regard for historical
detail than this Legend. But if our present age is less likely to be
held by this than by those other qualities in the book of vitality
and passion, it can only be that de Coster poured into his work not
merely the knowledge and accuracy of an historian, but the love as
well and the ardour of a poet and a patriot.

The objection--if it be an objection--that de Coster borrowed
unblushingly from his predecessors need never be disputed. His style
is frankly Rabelaisian. The stage whereon his actors play their parts
is set, scene almost for scene, from the generally available documents
that served such a writer as Thomas Motley for his "History of the
Rise of the Dutch Republic." Even the name, the very lineaments
of Ulenspiegel, are borrowed from that familiar figure of the
sixteenth-century chap-books [1] whose jolly pranks and schoolboy
frolics have been crystallized in the French word espieglerie,
and in our own day set to music in one of the symphonic poems of
Richard Strauss.

Yet from such well-worn ingredients de Coster's genius has mixed a
potion most individually his own. The style of Rabelais is tempered
with a finish, a neatness, and a wit that are as truly the product
of the modern spirit as was the flamboyant jollity of Rabelais
the product of his own Renaissance age; the sensible, historical
foreground of a Motley becomes the coloured background to a romantic
drama of human vice and virtue, linked in its turn to a conception
of the cosmic process which has no other home, surely, than in the
author's brain. While Ulenspiegel himself is now not simply the type
of young high spirits and animal good humour, but a being as complex,
as many-sided almost as humanity--all brightness of intellect, all
warmth of heart, all honour, and all dream--the immortal Spirit of
Flanders that knows not what it is to be beaten, whose last song must
for ever remain unsung.

What shall we say of those other homely personages who fill the
scene--symbols no less of Flemish character at its finest and of the
enduringly domestic springs of Flemish national life? Claes the trusty
fatherhood, Soetkin the valiant motherhood of Flanders, Nele her true
heart, Lamme Goedzak her great belly that hungers always for more and
yet more good things to eat and is never satisfied? Or what, again,
of the tragic Katheline, half witch, half martyr, and the centre of
that dark intrigue which seems to throb like a shuttle through the
mazy pattern of the plot, threading it all into unity?

From yet another standpoint: as an envisagement of the horrors of the
Spanish Inquisition, de Coster's work is probably without parallel
in an already well-tilled field. The sinister figure of the King of
Spain broods over it all like a Kaiser, and the episodes of stake and
torture are recorded with a realism which might appear exaggerated
had not modern Belgium--though in terms of "scientific warfare"--an
even more devilish tale to tell. The fact is that de Coster's trick of
stating horror and leaving it to make its full effect without a touch
of the rhetoric of indignation, proves the deadliest of all corrosive
weapons; and it is hardly surprising that the book had been hailed
in some quarters as a Protestant tract. But de Coster himself was in
no sense a theological partisan, and his sympathy with the Beggarmen
sprang from his enthusiasm for national liberty far more than from
any bias towards the Protestant cause as such. That Catholicism has
ever been identified with tyranny the best Catholic will most deplore,
nor will de Coster's "traditional" irreverence blind such a reader's
eyes to the spiritual generosity which permeates the whole work,
and is, indeed, its most essential characteristic.

It remains to add that, in the interests of war-time publishing,
the present version represents a curtailment of the Legend as it left
the author's hands. Here and there also, to maintain the continuity of
incident, the translator has permitted himself some slight modification
of the original text. By this means it is hoped that the proportions
of the whole have been fairly maintained, and that no vital aspect
of plot or atmosphere has been altogether suppressed or allowed an
undue prominence.


G. A. W.







HERE BEGINS THE FIRST BOOK OF THE LEGEND OF THE GLORIOUS JOYOUS AND
HEROIC ADVENTURES OF TYL ULENSPIEGEL AND LAMME GOEDZAK IN THE LAND
OF FLANDERS AND ELSEWHERE


I


At Damme, in Flanders, when the May hawthorn was coming into flower,
Ulenspiegel was born, the son of Claes.

When she had wrapped him in warm swaddling-clothes, Katheline, the
midwife, made a careful examination of the infant's head, and found
a piece of skin hanging therefrom.

"Born with a caul!" she cried out joyfully. "Born under a lucky
star!" But a moment later, noticing a small black mole on the baby's
shoulder, she fell into lamentation.

"Alas!" she wept, "it is the black finger-print of the devil!"

"Monsieur Satan," said Claes, "must have risen early this morning,
if already he has found time to set his sign upon my son!"

"Be sure, he never went to bed," answered Katheline. "Here is
Chanticleer only just awakening the hens!"

And so saying she went out of the room, leaving the baby in the arms
of Claes.

Then it was that the dawn came bursting through the clouds of night,
and the swallows skimmed chirruping over the fields, while the sun
began to show his dazzling face on the horizon. Claes opened the
window and thus addressed himself to Ulenspiegel.

"O babe born with a caul, behold! Here is my Lord the Sun who comes
to make his salutation to the land of Flanders. Gaze on Him whenever
you can; and if ever in after years you come to be in any doubt or
difficulty, not knowing what is right to do, ask counsel of Him. He
is bright and He is warm. Be sincere as that brightness, and virtuous
as that warmth."

"Claes, my good man," said Soetkin, "you are preaching to the
deaf. Come, drink, son of mine."

And so saying, the mother offered to her new-born babe a draught from
nature's fountain.






II


While Ulenspiegel nestled close and drank his fill, all the birds in
the country-side began to waken.

Claes, who was tying up sticks, regarded his wife as she gave the
breast to Ulenspiegel.

"Wife," he said, "hast made good provision of this fine milk?"

"The pitchers are full," she said, "but that doth not suffice for my
peace of mind."

"It seems that you are downhearted over your good fortune," said Claes.

"I was thinking," she said, "that there is not so much as a penny
piece in that leather bag of ours hanging on the wall."

Claes took hold of the bag and shook it. But in vain. There was no
sign of any money. He looked crestfallen. Nevertheless, hoping to
comfort his good wife--

"What are you worrying about?" says he. "Have we not in the bin that
cake we offered Katheline yesterday? And don't I see a great piece of
meat over there that should make good milk for the child for three
days at the least? And this tub of butter, is it a ghost-tub? And
are they spectres, those apples ranged like flags and banners all
in battle order, row after row, in the storeroom? And is there no
promise of cool refreshment guarded safe in the paunch of our fine
old cask of cuyte de Bruges?"

Soetkin said: "When we take the child to be christened we shall have
to give two patards to the priest, and a florin for the feasting."

But at this moment Katheline returned, with a great bundle of herbs
in her arms.

"For the child that is born with a caul," she cried. "Angelica that
keeps men from luxury; fenel that preserves them from Satan...."

"Have you none of that herb," asked Claes, "which is called florins?"

"No," said she.

"Very well," he answered, "I shall go and see if I cannot find any
growing in the canal."

And with that he went off, with his line and his fishing-net, knowing
that he would not be likely to meet any one, since it was yet an hour
before the oosterzon, which is, in the land of Flanders, six o'clock
in the morning.






III


Claes came to the Bruges canal, not far from the sea. There, having
baited his hook, he cast it into the water and let out the line. On
the opposite bank, a little boy was lying against a clump of earth,
fast asleep. The boy, who was not dressed like a peasant, woke up at
the noise that Claes was making, and began to run away, fearing no
doubt that it was the village constable come to dislodge him from his
bed and to hale him off as a vagabond to the steen. But he soon lost
his fear when he recognized Claes, and when Claes called out to him:

"Would you like to earn a penny, my boy? Well then, drive the fish
over to my side!"

At this proposal the little boy, who was somewhat stout for his years,
jumped into the water, and arming himself with a plume of long reeds,
he began to drive the fish towards Claes. When the fishing was over,
Claes drew up his line and his landing-net, and came over by the lock
gate towards where the youngster was standing.

"Your name," said Claes, "is Lamme by baptism, and Goedzak by nature,
because you are of a gentle disposition, and you dwell in the rue
Heron behind the Church of Our Lady. But tell me why it is that,
young as you are, and well dressed, you are yet obliged to sleep out
here in the open?"

"Woe is me, Mr. Charcoal-burner," answered the boy. "I have a sister
at home, a year younger than I am, who fairly thrashes me at the
least occasion of disagreement. But I dare not take my revenge upon
her back for fear of doing her some injury, sir. Last night at supper
I was very hungry, and I was clearing out with my fingers the bottom
of a dish of beef and beans. She wanted to share it, but there was
not enough for us both, sir. And when she saw me licking my lips
because the sauce smelt good, she went mad with rage, and smote me
with all her force, so hard indeed that I fled away from the house,
beaten all black and blue."

Claes asked him what his father and mother were doing during this
scene.

"My father hit me on one shoulder and my mother on the other, crying,
'Strike back at her, you coward!' but I, not wishing to strike a girl,
made my escape."

All at once, Lamme went pale all over and began to tremble in every
limb, and Claes saw a tall woman approaching, and by her side a young
girl, very thin and fierce of aspect.

"Oh, oh!" cried Lamme, holding on to Claes by his breeches, "here
are my mother and my sister come to find me. Protect me, please,
Mr. Charcoal-burner!"

"Wait," said Claes. "First of all let me give you this penny-farthing
as your wages, and now let us go and meet them without fear."

When the two women saw Lamme, they ran up and both began to belabour
him--the mother because of the fright he had given her, the sister
because it was her habit so to do. Lamme took refuge behind Claes,
and cried out:

"I have earned a penny-farthing! I have earned a penny-farthing! Do
not beat me!"

By this time, however, his mother had begun to embrace him, while the
girl was trying to force open his hands and to get at the money. But
Lamme shouted:

"The money belongs to me. You shall not have it."

And he kept his fingers tightly closed. But Claes shook the girl
roughly by the ears, and said to her:

"If you go on picking quarrels like this with your brother, he that is
as good and gentle as a lamb, I shall put you in a black charcoal-pit,
and then it won't be I any longer that will be shaking you by the ears,
but the red devil himself from hell, and he will pull you into pieces
with his great claws and his teeth that are like forks."

At these words the girl averted her eyes from Claes, nor did she go
near Lamme, but hid behind her mother's skirts, and when she got back
into the town, she went about crying everywhere:

"The Charcoal-man has beaten me, and he keeps the devil in his cave."

Nevertheless she did not attack Lamme any more; but being the bigger
of the two, she made him work in her place, and the gentle simpleton
obeyed her right willingly.

Now Claes, on his way home, sold his catch to a farmer that often used
to buy fish from him. And when he was home again, he said to Soetkin:

"Behold! Here's what I have found in the bellies of four pike, nine
carp, and a basketful of eels." And he threw on the table a couple
of florins and half a farthing.

"Why don't you go fishing every day, my man?" asked Soetkin.

"For fear of becoming a fish myself, and being caught on the hook of
the village constable," he told her.






IV


Claes, the father of Ulenspiegel, was known in Damme by the name
of Kooldraeger, that is to say, the Charcoal-burner. Claes had a
black head of hair, bright eyes, and a skin the colour of his own
merchandise--save only on Sundays and Feast Days, when his cottage
ran with soap and water. He was a short, thick-set man, strong,
and of a joyful countenance.

Towards the end of the day, when evening was coming on, he would
sometimes visit the tavern on the road to Bruges, there to rinse his
charcoal-blackened throat with a draught of cuyte; and then the women
standing at their doorways to sniff the evening dew would cry out to
him in friendly greeting:

"A good night and a good drink to you, Charcoal-burner."

"A good night to you, and a lively husband!" Claes would reply.

And sometimes the girls, trooping home together from their work in
the fields, would line up in front of him right across the road,
barring his way.

"What will you give us for the right of passage?" they would cry. "A
scarlet ribbon, a buckle of gold, a pair of velvet slippers, or a
florin piece for alms?"

But Claes, holding one of the girls fast by the waist, would give
her a hearty kiss on her fresh cheek or on her neck, just whichever
happened to be nearest, and then he would say:

"You must ask the rest, my dears, of your sweethearts."

And off they would go amidst peals of laughter.

As for the children, they always recognized Claes by his loud voice
and by the noise his clogs made on the road, and they would run up
to him and cry:

"Good evening, Charcoal-burner."

"The same to you, my little angels," he would answer; "but come no
nearer, lest perchance I turn you into blackamoors."

But the children were bold, and oftentimes would make the venture. Then
Claes would seize one of them by the doublet, and rubbing his blackened
hands up and down the little fellow's nose, would send him off all
sooty, but laughing just the same, to the huge delight of the others.

Soetkin, wife of Claes, was a good wife and mother. She was up with
the dawn, and worked as diligently as any ant. She and Claes laboured
together in the field, yoking themselves to the plough as though they
had been oxen. It was hard work dragging it along, but even the plough
was not so heavy as the harrow, that rustic implement whose task it
was to tear up the hardened earth with teeth of wood. But Claes and
his wife worked always with a gay heart, and enlivened themselves with
singing. And in vain was the earth hard, in vain did the sun hurl
down on them his hottest beams, in vain were their knees stiffened
with bending and their loins tired with the cruel effort of dragging
the harrow along, for they had only to stop a moment while Soetkin
turned to Claes her gentle face, and while Claes kissed that mirror
of a gentle heart, and straightway they forgot how tired they were.






V


Now the previous day, the town crier had given notice from before
the Town Hall that Madame, the wife of the Emperor Charles, being
near the time of her delivery, it behoved the people to say prayers
on her behalf.

Katheline came to Claes in a great state of excitement.

"Whatever is the matter, my good woman?" he asked.

"Alas!" she cried, catching her breath, "behold! This night the
ghosts are mowing men down like grass. Little girls are being buried
alive. The executioner is dancing on the body of the dead. And broken,
this night, is that Stone which has been sweating blood these nine
months past and more!"

"Mercy on us!" groaned Soetkin. "Mercy on us, O Lord! This is a black
omen indeed for the land of Flanders."

"Do you see these things with your own eyes wide awake, or perchance
in a dream?" Claes asked her.

"With my own eyes," Katheline told him. And then all pale and tearful,
she continued in these words:

"To-night two children are born: the one in Spain--the infant
Philip--and the other in this land of Flanders--the son of Claes,
he that later on shall be known by the name of Ulenspiegel. Philip
will grow up to be a common hangman, being the child of the Emperor
Charles the Fifth, the destroyer of our country. But Ulenspiegel
will be a master of the merry words and frolics of youth, yet good
of heart withal, having for his father Claes, the brave working man
that knows how to earn his own living with courage, honesty, and
gentleness. Charles the Emperor and Philip the King will go riding
their way through life, doing evil by battle, extortion, and other
crimes. But Claes, working hard all the week, living according to right
and according to law, and laughing at his laborious lot instead of
being cast down thereby, will be the model of all the good workpeople
of Flanders. Ulenspiegel, young and immortal, will ramble over the
world and never settle in one place. And he will be peasant, nobleman,
painter, sculptor, all in one. And he will continue his wanderings
hither and thither, lauding things beautiful and good, and laughing
stupidity to scorn. Claes, then, O noble people of Flanders, is your
courage; Soetkin your valiant motherhood; Ulenspiegel your soul. A
sweet and gentle maiden, lover of Ulenspiegel and immortal like him,
shall be your heart; and Lamme Goedzak, with his pot-belly, shall be
your stomach. And up aloft shall stand the devourers of the people; and
beneath them their victims. On high the thieving hornets; and below the
busy bees. While in heaven bleed for evermore the wounds of Christ."

And when she had thus spoken, Katheline, the kindly sorceress, went
to sleep.






VI


One day Claes caught a large salmon, and on the Sunday he and Soetkin
and Katheline and the little Ulenspiegel had it for their dinner. But
Katheline only ate enough to satisfy a sparrow.

"How now, mother?" said Claes. "What has happened to the air of
Flanders? Has it suddenly grown solid, so that to breathe it is as
nourishing as a plate of beef? Why, if such were the case, I suppose
you will be telling me that the rain is as good as soup, and the hail
like beans, and the snow some sort of celestial fricassee, fit cheer
for a poor traveller?"

But Katheline shook her head, and said not a word.

"Dear me," said Claes, "our mother is in the dumps it seems! What
can it be that grieves her so?"

But Katheline spake as follows, in a voice that was like a breath
of wind:

"The wicked night falls blackly. He tells of his coming from afar,
screaming like the sea-eagle. I tremble, and pray to Our Lady--all
in vain. For the Night knows neither walls nor hedges, neither doors
nor windows. Everywhere, like a spirit, he finds a way in. The ladder
creaks. The Night has entered into the loft where I am sleeping. The
Night seizes me in arms that are cold and hard as marble. His face
is frozen, and his kisses like damp snow. The whole cottage seems to
be tossed about over the earth, riding like a ship at sea...."

Claes said: "I would counsel you to go every morning to Mass, that
our Lord Christ may give you strength to chase away this phantom
from hell."

"He is so beautiful!" said Katheline.






VII


Ulenspiegel was weaned, and began to grow like a young poplar. And
soon Claes gave up caressing him, but loved him in a roughish manner,
fearing to make a milksop of him. And when Ulenspiegel came home
complaining that he had got the worst of it in some boyish affray,
Claes would give him a beating because, forsooth, he had not beaten
the others. And with such an education Ulenspiegel grew up as valiant
as a young lion.

When Claes was from home, Ulenspiegel would ask his mother to give him
a liard with which he might go out and amuse himself. Soetkin would
grow angry, and ask why he wanted to go out for amusement--he would
do better to stay at home and tie up faggots. And when he saw that
she was not going to give him anything, the boy would start yelling
like an eagle, while Soetkin made a great clatter with the pots and
pans that she was washing in the wooden tub, pretending that she did
not hear his noise. Then Ulenspiegel would fall to weeping, and the
gentle mother would stop her pretence at harshness, and would come
and kiss him.

"Will a denier be enough for you?" she would say.

Now it should be noted that a denier is equal to six liards.

Thus did his mother dote on Ulenspiegel even to excess; and when
Claes was not there, he was king in the house.






VIII


One morning Soetkin saw Claes pacing up and down the kitchen with
head bent, like a man lost in thought.

"Whatever is the matter with you, my man?" she asked him. "You are
pale, and you look angry and distracted."

Claes answered her in a low voice, like a dog growling.

"The Emperor is about to reissue those cursed placards. Death once
again is hovering over the land of Flanders. The Informers are to
have one half of the property of their victims, if so be that such
property does not exceed the value of one hundred florins."

"We are poor," Soetkin said.

"Not poor enough," Claes answered. "Evil folk there are--crows
and corpse-devouring vultures--who would as readily denounce us
to the Emperor for half a sackful of coal as for half a sackful of
florins. What had she, poor old Widow Tanneken that was wife to Sis
the tailor, she that was buried alive at Heyst? Nothing but a Latin
Bible, three gold florins, and a few household utensils of English
pewter. But they were coveted by a neighbour. Then there was Joanna
Martens whom they burnt as a witch after she had been thrown into
the water, for her body did not sink and they held it for a sign of
sorcery. She had a few miserable pieces of furniture and seven gold
pieces in a bag, and the Informer wanted his half of them. Alas! I
could go on till to-morrow morning giving you instances of the same
kind. But to cut a long story short, Mother, life's no longer worth
living in Flanders, and all on account of these placards. Soon every
night-time the death-cart will be passing through the town, and we
shall hear the arid click of bones as the skeletons shake in the wind."

Soetkin said: "You ought not to try and frighten me, my man. The
Emperor is the father of Flanders and Brabant, and as such he is
endowed with long-suffering, gentleness, patience, and pity."

"He would be obliged to renounce too much if he were all that,"
Claes answered, "for he has inherited a great amount of confiscated
property."

At that very moment the sound of a trumpet was heard, and the clash
of the Heralds' cymbals. Claes and Soetkin, carrying Ulenspiegel in
their arms by turns, rushed out towards where the sound came from,
and with them went a great concourse of people. They came to the Town
Hall, in front of which stood the Heralds on horseback, blowing their
trumpets and sounding their cymbals, and the Provost with his staff
of justice, and the Town Proctor, also on horseback and holding in
his hands the Imperial Edict which he was preparing to read out to
the assembled multitude.

Claes heard every word, how "that it was once again forbidden to all
and sundry to print, read, to possess or to defend, the writings,
books or doctrines of Martin Luther, of John Wycliffe, John Hus,
Marcilius de Padua, AEcolampadius, Ulricus Zwynglius, Philip Melancthon,
Franciscus Lambertus, Joannes Pomeranus, Otto Brunselsius, Justus
Jonas, Joannes Puperis, and Gorciamus; as well as any copies of the
New Testament printed by Adrien de Berghes, Christophe de Remonda,
and Joannes Xel, which books were full of Lutheran and other kinds
of heresy, and had been condemned and rejected by the Doctors of
Theology at the University of Louvain.

"Likewise and in the same manner it was forbidden to paint, portray
or cause to be painted or portrayed any opprobrious paintings or
figures of God, or of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or of the saints;
or to break, destroy or deface the images or pictures made to the
honour, remembrance or recollection of God, the Virgin Mary, or of
the saints recognized by the Church.

"Furthermore," said the placard, "no one, whatever his position in
life, should presume to discuss or dispute concerning Holy Writ, even
in regard to matters admittedly doubtful, unless he were a theologian,
well known and approved by some established university.

"His Sacred Majesty decreed, among other penalties, that
suspected persons should not be allowed to carry on any honourable
occupation. And as for men who had fallen again into error, or who
were obstinate in the same, they should be condemned to be burnt by
fire, slow or fast, either in a covering of straw, or else bound
to a stake, according to the discretion of the judge. Others, if
they were men of noble or of gentle birth, were to be executed at
the point of the sword, while working people were to be hung, and
the women buried alive. Afterwards their heads were to be fixed on
the top of poles for an example. The property of all the aforesaid,
in so far as it was situate in places subject to confiscation, was
to be made over to the benefit of the Emperor.

"To the Informers His Sacred Majesty gave one half of all the property
of the dead, provided that such property did not exceed, on any one
occasion, a hundred pounds gross in Flemish money. As for the half
that went to the Emperor, he would reserve it for works of piety and
mercy, as was done in the case of the confiscations at Rome."

And Claes went away sadly, with Soetkin and Ulenspiegel.






IX


Once again did Soetkin bear under her girdle the sign of approaching
motherhood; and Katheline also was in a like condition. But she was
afraid, and never ventured out of her house.

When Soetkin went to see her, "Alas!" said Katheline, "what shall I
do? Must I smother the ill-starred fruit of my womb? I would rather
die myself. And yet if the Sergeant summons me for having a child
without being married, they will make me pay twenty florins like a
girl of no reputation, and I shall be flogged in the Market Square."

Soetkin consoled and comforted her as sweetly as she could, then left
her, and returned thoughtfully home.

One day she said to Claes:

"If I brought two children into the world instead of one, would you
be angry? Would you beat me, my man?"

"That I cannot say," Claes answered.

"But if the second were not really mine, but turned out to be like
this child of Katheline's, the offspring of some one unknown--the
devil maybe?"

"Devils beget fire, death, smoke," Claes replied, "but
children--no. Yet will I take for my own the child of Katheline."

"You will?" cried Soetkin. "You really will?"

"I have said it," Claes replied.

Soetkin hurried off to tell Katheline the news, who when she heard
it could not contain her delight, but cried aloud with joy.

"He has spoken, the good man, and his words are the salvation of my
body. He will be blessed by God--and blessed by the devil as well,
if really"--and she trembled as she spoke the words--"if really it is
the devil who is father to the little one that begins to stir beneath
my breast!"

And in due time Soetkin and Katheline brought into the world,
the one a baby boy and the other a baby girl. Both were brought to
baptism as the children of Claes. Soetkin's son was christened Hans,
and did not live. But Katheline's daughter, who was christened Nele,
grew up finely.

She drank of the liquor of life from a fourfold flagon. Two of the
flagons belonged to Katheline, and two were Soetkin's. And there was
many a sweet dispute as to whose turn it was to give the child to
drink. But much against her will, Katheline was obliged to let her
milk dry up, lest questions should be asked as to where it came from,
and she no mother....

But when the little Nele, that was her daughter, was weaned, then
Katheline took her home to live with her, nor did she let her go back
to Soetkin except when Nele called for her "mother."

The neighbours said that it was a right and natural thing to do for
Katheline to look after the child of Claes and Soetkin. For they
were needy and poverty-stricken, whereas Katheline was comparatively
well off.






X


One day Soetkin said to Claes:

"Husband, I am heart-broken. This is now the third day that Tyl has
been away. Know you not where he is?"

Claes answered her sadly:

"He is with all the others, roving vagabonds like himself, on the high
road. Verily, it was cruel of God to give us such a son. When he was
born I thought of him as the joy of our old age, and as another help
in our house, for I hoped to make a good workman of him. But now some
evil chance hath turned him into a thief and a good-for-nothing."

"You are too hard on him, my man," said Soetkin. "He is our son, and he
is but nine years old, and filled with childish folly. It is needful
that he also, like the trees of the field, should let fall his husks
by the wayside ere he decks himself with the full foliage of virtue
and honesty. He is mischievous; I do not deny it. But later on this
spirit of his will be turned to good account, if instead of driving
him to tricks and frolics it is put to some useful purpose. He makes
fun of the neighbours; true. But one day you will find him take his
rightful place in the midst of a circle of gay and happy friends. He
is always laughing and frivolous; yes, but a young face that is too
serious bodes ill for the future. And if he is always running about,
it is because his growing body needs to be exercised; and if he is
idle and does no work, it is because he is not yet old enough to
feel the duty of labour. And if, now and then, he does stay away
from us for half a week at a time, it is only because he fails to
realize the grief he causes us; for he has a good heart, husband,
and at bottom he loves us."

Claes shook his head and said nothing, and went to sleep, leaving
Soetkin to her lonely tears. And she, in the morning, afraid lest her
son had fallen sick upon the road, went out and stood at the cottage
doorstep to see if he were coming back. But there was no sign of him,
and she came back into the cottage, and sat by the window, gazing
out all the time into the street. And many a time did her heart dance
within her bosom at the light footfall of some urchin that she thought
might be her own; but when the sound passed by, and she knew that it
was not Ulenspiegel, then she wept, poor mother that she was.

Ulenspiegel, meanwhile, with the fellow-scamps that bore him company,
was away at Bruges, at the Saturday market.

There were to be seen the shoemakers and the cobblers, each in his
separate stall, the tailors selling suits of clothes, the miesevangers
from Antwerp (they that snare tom-tits by night with the aid of an
owl); and the poulterers too, and the rascally dog-fanciers, and
sellers of catskins that are made into gloves, and of breast-pads and
doublets: buyers too of every kind, townsmen and townswomen, valets,
servants, pantlers and butlers, and cooks, male and female, all
together, buying and selling, each according to his quality shouting
his wares, crying up or crying down, with every trick of the trade.

Now in one corner of the market-place stood a wonderful tent made
of cloth, raised aloft on four piles. At the door of the tent was
a peasant from the level land of Alost, and by his side two monks
begged for alms. For the sum of one patard the peasant offered to
show to the curious or devout a genuine piece of the shoulder-bone of
St. Mary of Egypt. There he was, yelling out in his broken voice the
merits of the saint, and not omitting from his song that tale which
tells how she, being without money, paid the young ferryman in the
beautiful coinage of Nature herself, lest by refusing a workman his
due she might be guilty of sin. And all the while the two monks kept
nodding their heads, as much as to say that it was Gospel truth that
the peasant was speaking. And at their side was a fat, red-faced woman,
as lewd-looking as Astarte, blowing a raucous bagpipe, while at her
side a young girl sang in a voice sweet as a bird's, though no one
heeded her. Now above the door of the tent, and swung between two
poles by a cord fastened to either handle, was a tub of Holy Water
which the fat woman affirmed had been brought from Rome; and the two
monks lolled their heads backwards and forwards in confirmation or what
she said. Ulenspiegel, looking at the tub, grew suddenly thoughtful.

For to one of the posts of the tent was tied a donkey--a donkey that
to all appearance was wont to feed on hay rather than on oats. For
its head was down, and it scanned the earth in futile hopes of seeing
but a thistle growing there.

"Comrades," said Ulenspiegel, pointing to the fat old woman, the two
monks, and the melancholy donkey, "since the masters play so well,
let us also make the donkey dance."

And so saying he went to a stall close by and purchased six liards'
worth of pepper. Then he lifted up the tail of the donkey, and placed
the pepper underneath it.

When the donkey began to feel the sting of the pepper, he cast his eye
backwards under his tail, endeavouring to discover the cause of the
unaccustomed heat. Thinking that it must be at the least some fiery
devil from hell, the donkey conceived the not unnatural desire to run
away and escape him; so he began to bray as loud as he could, and to
kick up his heels, and to shake the post with all his strength. At
the first shock, the tub hanging between the two poles tipped over,
and the holy water ran about over the tent and over those that were
inside. And soon the tent itself collapsed, covering with a dripping
mantle all those who were listening to the wondrous tale of St. Mary
of Egypt. And Ulenspiegel and his comrades could hear a mighty noise
issuing from beneath the tent, a noise of moaning and lamentation. For
the devout folk that were within began to accuse one another of having
overturned the tub, and presently grew red with rage, and fell upon
each other with many furious blows. The tent began to bulge here and
there above the frantic efforts of the combatants. And each time that
Ulenspiegel descried some rounded form outlined through the cloth of
the tent, he went and gave it a prick with a pin. This was the signal
for new and louder cries, and for fiercer and more general fisticuffs.

Ulenspiegel was delighted, and soon he was to become even more so,
when he saw the donkey begin to run away, dragging behind him tent,
tub, tent-posts and all, while the master of the tent, with his wife
and daughter, hung on behind the baggage. At last the donkey, being
able to go no farther, raised his nose in the air, and gave vent to
bray after bray, a music that only ceased at those moments when he
was looking back under his tail to see if the fire that still raged
there would not soon go out.

All this time, the devout assembly in the tent were still
a-fighting. But the two monks, without troubling at all about what
was going on inside, began to gather up the money that had fallen
from the collection-plate, and Ulenspiegel assisted them devotedly,
but not without some profit to himself....






XI


Now all this time that the vagabond son of the charcoal-burner was
growing up in merriment and mischief, the moody scion of His Sacred
Majesty the Emperor was vegetating like a weed in moody melancholy. The
Lords and Ladies of the Court used to watch him as he mouched along
the rooms and passages of the palace at Valladolid, a frail, pitiful
specimen of humanity, with legs that shook and scarce seemed able
to support the weight of the big head that was covered with stiff
blond hair.

He loved to haunt dark corridors, and he would stay sitting there
whole hours together, with his legs stretched out in front of him,
hoping that some valet or other might trip over them by mistake; then
he would have the fellow flogged; for he took pleasure in listening
to his cries under the lash. But he never laughed.

Another day he would select some other corridor in which to lay a
similar trap, and once again he would sit himself down with his legs
stretched out in front of him. Then one of the Ladies of the Court,
mayhap, or one of the Lords or pages, would stumble across him;
and if they fell down and hurt themselves, he took delight in their
discomfiture. But he never laughed. And if by chance any one knocked
against him but did not fall down, he would cry out as if he had been
struck. He liked to see the other's fright. But he never laughed.

His Sacred Majesty was informed of these goings-on, and he commanded
that no notice should be taken of the child, saying that if his son
did not want people to walk over his legs he should not place his
legs in a position where they were liable to be walked over. Philip
was angry at this, but he said nothing and was no more seen, till
one fine summer day when he went out into the courtyard to warm his
shivering body in the sun.

Charles, riding back from the war, saw his son thus brewing his
melancholy.

"How now?" cried the Emperor. "What a difference there is between us
two, my son! At your age I loved nothing better than to go climbing
trees after squirrels. Or, with the aid of a rope, to clamber down some
steep cliff to take young eagles out of their nests. I might easily
have broken my bones at the game; but they only grew the harder. And
when I went out hunting, the deer fled into the thickets at sight of
me, armed with my trusty arquebus."

"Ah, my Lord Father," sighed the child, "but you see, I have the
stomach-ache."

"For that," said Charles, "good wine from Paxarete is a most certain
remedy."

"I don't like wine. I have a headache, my Lord Father."

"Then you should run and jump and play about like other children of
your age."

"I have stiff legs, my Lord Father."

"And how should it be otherwise," said Charles, "seeing that you
make no more use of them than if they were of wood? But you shall
go riding on a high-mettled horse."

The child began to cry.

"Oh no, for mercy's sake! I have a pain in my back!"

"Come, come," said Charles, "are you ill everywhere then?"

"I should not be ill at all," answered the child, "if only they would
let me alone."

"Do you think to pass your royal life away in dreams like a
scholar?" the Emperor asked impatiently. "Such people as that, if
indeed it be necessary for the inking of their parchments, may rightly
seek out silence, solitude, retirement from the world. But for thee,
son of the sword, I would desire warm blood, a lynx's eye, a fox's
craft, and the strength of Hercules. Why do you cross yourself? Blood
of God! What should a lion's cub be doing with this mimicry of women
at their prayers!"

"Hark! It is the Angelus, my Lord Father," answered the child.






XII


May and June that year were in very truth the months of flowers. Never
had Flanders known the hawthorn so fragrant, never the gardens so gay
with roses, jasmine, and honeysuckle. And when the wind blew eastwards
from England it carried with it the breath of all this flowery land,
and the people, at Antwerp and elsewhere, sniffed the air joyfully
and cried aloud:

"How good the scent of the wind that blows from Flanders!"

Then it was that the bees were busy sucking honey from the flowers,
making wax, and laying their eggs within the hives that were all too
small to house the swarms. What workman's music they made, under that
canopy of azure sky that was spread so dazzlingly over the rich earth!

The hives were made of rushes, straw, osiers or of wattled hay. And
there the bees, like clever basket-makers, lined and tunnelled
the hives with their beautifully fitting tools. And as for the
bread-makers, this long time past their numbers were scarce sufficient
for the work they had to do. In a single swarm there would be as many
as three thousand bees and two thousand seven hundred drones! The
quality of the comb was so exquisite that the Dean of Damme dispatched
eleven combs to the Emperor Charles out of gratitude for the new
edicts that had revived in Flanders the earlier vigour of the Holy
Inquisition. It was Philip, forsooth, that ate them all; but little
good did they do him!

But in Flanders, the rascals of the roads, the beggars and vagabonds
and all that lazy good-for-nothing crowd who would risk hanging rather
than do a day's work, were soon enticed by the taste of the honey to
come along and steal their share. And by night they prowled around
the hives in gangs. Now Claes had made some hives for the purpose
of attracting the wandering swarms of bees, and some of these hives
were full already, but there were others that stood empty waiting for
the bees. Claes kept watch all night to guard this sugary wealth of
his; and when he was tired he asked Ulenspiegel to take his place,
the which Ulenspiegel did right willingly.

It was a cold night, and Ulenspiegel to avoid the chill took refuge
in one of the hives, curling himself up inside, and looking out from
two openings that had been made in the roof of the hive.

Just as he was going off to sleep, he heard a rustle in the bushy
hedge near by, and then the voices of two men. They were thieves,
no doubt, and peering forth from the openings aforesaid, Ulenspiegel
saw that they both had long hair and long beards, which was strange,
for a long beard is usually the sign of a nobleman. However, the two
men went peering from hive to hive, and coming at last to the one in
which Ulenspiegel was hiding, they tried its weight, and then----

"Let us take this one," they said. "It is the heaviest."

Whereupon they slung it up between them, on a couple of poles, and
carried it off. Ulenspiegel did not at all fancy being thus carted
away in a hive. But the night was clear, and the two thieves marched
along with never a word. When they had gone about fifty paces they
would stop to take breath, and then set off again. The man in front
grumbled angrily all the time at the weight of his burden. And the
man behind whined in a querulous fashion. Even so are there always
to be found two sorts of idle fellows in this world, those who are
angry at having to work, and those who merely whine at having to.

Ulenspiegel, since there seemed nothing else to do, took hold of the
hair of the man in front and gave it a pull. And he did the same to the
beard of the man at the rear; and to such purpose that the two men soon
grew annoyed at what was happening, and Mr. Angry said to Mr. Whining:

"Hi there, stop pulling my hair, you, or else I'll give you such a
whack on the head that it'll squash down into your chest, and then
you'll be looking out of your two sides like a thief through the
prison grille!"

"I should never think of doing such a thing as to pull your hair,"
said the whiner. "But what are you doing there, pulling at my beard?"

To which Mr. Angry made answer:

"It isn't I that would go hunting for fleas in the wool of a leper!"

"O sir," said the whiner, "for goodness' sake don't go shaking the
hive about like this. My poor arms cannot support it any longer."

"I shall shake it out of your arms altogether," said the other. Then
unloading himself, he placed the hive upon the ground and fell upon
his companion. And so they fought together, the one cursing, and the
other crying out for mercy.

Ulenspiegel, hearing the sound of blows, came out from the hive,
dragged it behind him into the wood close by, and having placed it
where he could find it again, returned to Claes.

And thus you may see what sort of a profit it is that thieves derive
from their quarrels.






XIII


As he grew up, Ulenspiegel acquired the habit of wandering about among
the fairs and markets of the country-side, and whenever he hit upon a
man who played the oboe, the rebec, or the bagpipes, he would offer him
a patard for a lesson in the art of making those instruments to sing.

He became especially accomplished in the art of playing the rommelpot,
an instrument which is constructed out of a round pot, a bladder, and
a straight piece of straw. And this is the way he played it. First of
all he moistened the bladder and held it over the pot. Then he drew
the centre of the bladder round the joint of a straw which itself was
attached to the bottom of the pot. Finally he stretched the bladder
as tightly as he dared over the sides of the pot. In the morning,
when the bladder was dry, it sounded like a tambourine when struck,
and if one rubbed the straw it gave forth a humming sound as fine
in tone as that of any violin. And Ulenspiegel, with his musical
pot that played music like the baying of a mastiff, went out with
the other children on the day of Epiphany carrying a star made of
luminous paper, and singing carols.

Sometimes an artist would come to Damme to paint the members of one
of the Guilds, upon their knees. Ulenspiegel was always anxious
to see how the artist worked, and he would beg to be allowed to
grind the colours in return for nothing but a slice of bread, three
liards, and a pint of ale. But while he worked away at the grinding
he would carefully study the method of his master. When the artist
went away Ulenspiegel would endeavour to paint pictures like him;
and his favourite colour was scarlet. In this way he tried to paint
the portraits of Claes, of Soetkin, and of Katheline and Nele, as
well as those of the pots and pans in the kitchen. When Claes beheld
these works of art he predicted that if only he worked hard enough
Ulenspiegel would one day be able to earn florins by the dozen for
painting the inscriptions on the festal cars, or speel-wagen as they
are called in Zeeland and the land of Flanders.

Ulenspiegel also learnt to carve in wood and in stone, for once a
master-mason came to Damme to carve a stall in the choir of Notre
Dame. And this stall was made in such a way that the Dean--who was an
old man--could sit down when he so desired, yet seem to all appearance
as if he were still standing upright.

It was Ulenspiegel too who made the first carved knife-handle ever
used by the people of Zeeland. He fashioned this handle in the form
of a cage. Inside was a death's head that moved; and above it a hound
couchant. And this was the signification: "Soul true till death."

Thus it was that Ulenspiegel began to fulfil the prophecy that
Katheline had made when she said that he would be painter, sculptor,
workman, nobleman, all in one. For you must know that from father to
son the family of Claes bore arms three pint pots argent au naturel
on a ground bruinbier.

But Ulenspiegel would stick to no one profession, and Claes told him
that if he went on in this good-for-nothing way he would chase him
out of the house.






XIV


On his return from the wars, the Emperor wanted to know why his son
Philip was not there to welcome him.

The Archbishop--the royal Governor--said that the child had refused to
leave his solitude and the books which were the only things he loved.

The Emperor asked where he was to be found at the moment. The Governor
did not know exactly, but said they had better go and look for him
somewhere where it was dark. This they did.

When they had looked through a good number of rooms they came at last
to a kind of closet, unpaved and lit only by a skylight. There they
found a stake stuck into the ground, and a dear little monkey bound
to the stake by a cord round the waist. (Now this monkey had been
sent from the Indies as a present to His Highness to amuse him with
its youthful gambols).... Round the bottom of the stake were some
smoking sticks still glowing, and the closet was filled with a foul
smell as of burning hair.

The poor animal had suffered so much pain while being burnt to death
that its little body no longer looked the body of a living animal,
but seemed rather like the fragment of some root, all wrinkled and
distorted. And its mouth, still open with the death-cry, was filled
with froth mixed with blood; and the face was wet with tears.

"Who has done this?" said the Emperor.

The Governor did not dare to answer, and the two men stood there
silent, sad, and angry.

All at once, in the silence, there was heard a sound of feeble coughing
that came from a corner in the shadow behind them. His Majesty turned
and beheld Philip, his son, dressed all in black, sucking an orange.

"Don Philip," he said, "come and greet your father."

The child did not move, but gazed at his father with timid eyes that
showed no spark of love.

"Is it you," asked the Emperor, "who have burnt alive in the fire
this little animal?"

The child bowed his head.

But the Emperor: "If you have been cruel enough to do such a deed,
at least be brave enough to own up to it."

The child made no answer.

His Majesty seized the orange from the child's hands, threw it to the
ground, and was about to beat his son, who was shaking with terror,
when the Archbishop restrained him, whispering in his ear:

"The day will surely come when His Highness shall prove a mighty
burner of heretics." The Emperor smiled, and the two of them went away,
leaving Philip alone with the monkey.

But others there were, not monkeys, that were destined to meet their
death in the flames....






XV


November was come, the month of hail-storms, when sufferers from cold
in the head abandon themselves freely to their concerts of coughing
and spitting. This also is the month when the turnip-fields are
filled with gangs of youths that there disport themselves and steal
whatever they can, to the mighty wrath of the peasants, who try in
vain to catch them, chasing after them with sticks and pitchforks.

Well, on an evening when Ulenspiegel was returning home from one of
these raids, he heard close by, in a corner of the hedgerow, a sound
as of groaning. He leant down, and beheld a dog lying stretched out
on the stones.

"Hallo!" he cried. "Poor little beast! What are you doing out here
so late at night?"

He patted the dog, and found that its back was all wet, as though some
one had been trying to drown it. He took it in his arms to warm it,
and when he had reached home he said:

"I have brought back a wounded animal. What shall we do with it?"

"Dress its wounds," said Claes.

Ulenspiegel laid the dog on the table; whereupon he and Claes and
Soetkin saw that it was a little red-haired Luxemburg terrier, and that
it was wounded in the back. Soetkin sponged the wounds, and anointed
them with ointment, and bound them up with linen bandages. Then
Ulenspiegel took the dog and put it in his bed; but Soetkin desired
to have it in her own, saying she was afraid that Ulenspiegel would
hurt the little red-haired thing. For in those days Ulenspiegel was
wont to toss about in his sleep all night like a young devil in a
stoup of holy water. Ulenspiegel, however, had his way, and he took
such care of the dog that in the space of six days it was walking
about like any other dog, and giving itself great airs.

And the village schoolmaster christened him Titus Bibulus Schnouffius:
Titus after a certain good Emperor of the Romans who was fond of
befriending lost dogs; Bibulus because the dog loved beer with all
the passion of a confirmed drunkard; and Schnouffius because he would
always run about sniffing and putting his nose into every rat-hole
and mole-hole he could find.






XVI


The young prince of Spain was now fifteen years old, and his custom was
to wander about the rooms and passages and stairways of the castle. But
chiefly was he to be found prowling around the women's quarters,
trying to pick a quarrel with one of the pages, who themselves were
wont to lurk on the look out, like cats, in the corridors; while
others, again, out in the courtyard, would stand singing some tender
ballad, nose in air. When the young prince heard one singing thus,
he would show himself at one of the windows, and the heart of that
poor page would be stricken with fear as he saw that white face there,
instead of the gentle eyes of his beloved.

Now among the Ladies of the Court there was a gentle dame from Dudzeel
near by Damme in Flanders. Fair-fleshed she was, like fine ripe fruit,
and marvellously beautiful, for she had green eyes and reddish hair
all wavy and gleaming gold. And of a gay humour was she, and of an
ardent complexion, nor did she make any effort to conceal her taste
for that fortunate lord to whom for the time being she was pleased
to grant the freedom of the fair estate of her love. Such a one there
was even now, handsome and proud, and she loved him well. Every day,
at a certain hour, she went to find him--a thing which Philip was
not long in finding out.

So, one day, sitting himself down on a bench that stood against a
window, he lay in wait for her, and there she saw him as she passed
by, with her bright eyes and her mouth half open, all meet for love
and fresh from her bath, with the gear of her dress of yellow brocade
swinging about her as she stepped along. Without rising from his seat,
Philip accosted her.

"Madame," says he, "could you not spare a moment?"

Restive as some eager mare, stayed in her course towards the gallant
stallion that is neighing for her in the field, the lady made answer:

"All here must needs obey the royal will of your Highness."

"Then sit you down by my side," said the Prince. And gazing at her
lewdly, harshly, cunningly, he spake again:

"I would have you recite to me the Pater Noster in Flemish. They
taught it me once, but I no longer remember it."

The poor lady did as she was bid; and then the Prince commanded her
to say it all over again, but more slowly. And so on, and so on,
until she had recited it ten times over. After that he began to speak
flatteringly to her, praising her beautiful hair, her fresh complexion,
and her bright eyes. But he dared not to say a word concerning her
lovely shoulders or her rounded throat, or of aught else beside.

When at last she was beginning to hope that she might be able to
get away, and was already scanning anxiously the courtyard where her
lord was awaiting her, the Prince demanded of her if she could rightly
tell him what were the several virtues of woman? She answered nothing,
fearing that she might say something to displease him. He then answered
for her, setting the matter forth in this wise:

"The virtues of woman are these: chastity, regard for her own honour,
and a modest manner of life." And he counselled her, therefore,
that she should dress decently and should always be careful to hide
those things which were meet to be hidden. The lady nodded assent,
saying that for His Hyperborean Highness she would certainly take
care to cover herself with ten bear-skins rather than with a single
length of muslin.

Having put him to shame by this answer, she made off gladly.

But in Philip's heart the fire of youth was alight--not the fiery glow
that dares the souls of the brave to lofty deeds, but a dark fire from
hell itself, the fire of Satan. And it flamed in his grey eyes like
the beam of a winter's moon shining down upon a charnel-house. And
it burned within him cruelly....






XVII


Now this beautiful, gay-hearted lady left Valladolid one day for her
Chateau of Dudzeel in Flanders.

Passing through Damme, with her fat attendant behind her, she noticed
a lad of about fifteen years of age sitting against the wall of a
cottage blowing a pair of bagpipes. In front of him was a dog with
red hair howling dismally, because, as it seemed, he did not at
all appreciate the music which his master was making. The sun shone
brightly, and at the lad's side there stood a pretty young girl in
fits of laughter at the pitiful howling of the dog.

This then was the sight that met the eye of the beautiful lady and
her fat attendant as they passed in front of the cottage: none else
but Ulenspiegel blowing his pipes, and Nele in fits of laughter,
and Titus Bibulus Schnouffius howling with all his might.

"You naughty boy," said the dame to Ulenspiegel, "will you never stop
making this poor red-hair howl like this?"

But Ulenspiegel, staring back at her, blew his pipes more valiantly
than ever, and Bibulus Schnouffius howled the more dismally, and Nele
laughed all the louder.

The lady's attendant grew angry, and pointed at Ulenspiegel, saying:

"If I beat this wretched little imp of a man with the scabbard of my
sword he would give over his insolent row."

Ulenspiegel looked the attendant in the face and called him
"Jan Papzak" because of his fat belly, and went on blowing his
bagpipes. The attendant came up to him, and threatened him with his
fist. But Bibulus Schnouffius went for him straightway and bit him
in the leg, and the man fell down, crying for mercy:

"Help, help!"

The dame only smiled, and said to Ulenspiegel:

"Tell me, my player of bagpipes, is the road still the same that
leads from Damme to Dudzeel?"

But Ulenspiegel went on playing, and only nodded his head and stared.

"Why do you look at me so fixedly?" she asked him.

But he, still continuing to play, opened his eyes all the wider as
though transported by an ecstasy of admiration.

"Are you not ashamed," she said, "young as you are, to stare at
ladies so?"

Ulenspiegel blushed faintly, but went on blowing his pipes, and
staring more than ever.

"I have already asked you once," the lady insisted, "whether the road
is still the same that leads from Damme to Dudzeel."

"It is green no longer since you deprived it of the honour of carrying
you," Ulenspiegel answered.

"Will you show me the way?" said the lady.

But Ulenspiegel still remained sitting where he was, and still went
on staring at her. And she, seeing him so roguish, and knowing it
all for the gamesomeness of youth, forgave him willingly.

He got up at last, and began to walk back into the cottage.

"Whither are you going?" she asked him.

"To put on my best clothes," he replied.

"Very well," she said.

Then the lady sat herself down on the bench, close to the doorstep,
and tried to talk to Nele. But Nele would not answer her, for she
was jealous.

It was not long before Ulenspiegel returned, well washed and clothed
in fustian. He looked fine in his Sunday clothes, the little man.

"Are you really going off with this fine lady?" Nele asked him.

"I shall soon be back," he told her.

"Let me go instead of you," said Nele.

"No," he said, "the roads are muddy."

"Why, little girl," said the lady, who was annoyed and jealous now
in her turn, "why do you try to hinder him from coming with me?"

Nele did not answer, but great tears gushed from her eyes, and she
gazed at the fine lady in sadness and in anger.

Then the four of them started off, the dame seated like a queen
upon her ambling palfrey, the attendant with his belly that shook
with every step, Ulenspiegel holding the lady's horse by the bridle,
and Bibulus Schnouffius walking at his side, tail proudly in air.

Thus went they on horseback and on foot for some long while. But
Ulenspiegel was not at his ease; dumb as a fish he sniffed the fine
scent of benjamin that floated from the lady, and saw out of the
corner of his eye all her beautiful gear, rare jewels and trinkets,
and the sweet expression of her face, her bright eyes, and bare neck,
and her hair that shone in the sunlight like a hood of gold.

"Why are you so quiet, my little man?" she asked him.

He answered nothing.

"Do you keep your tongue so deep in your boots that you could not
take a message for me?"

"What is it?" said Ulenspiegel.

"I would have you leave me here," said the dame, "and go to Koolkercke,
from whence this wind is blowing. There you will find a gentleman
dressed in black and red motley. Tell him that he must not expect
me to-day, but let him come to-morrow evening to my chateau, by the
postern gate, at ten o' the clock."

"I will not go," said Ulenspiegel.

"Why not?" asked the lady.

"I will not go, not I," Ulenspiegel said again.

"What can it be," the lady asked him, "what can it be that inspires
you with this unyielding will, you angry little cock?"

"I will not go," Ulenspiegel persisted.

"But if I gave you a florin?"

"No," said he.

"A ducat?"

"No."

"A carolus!"

"No," Ulenspiegel repeated, "although"--and this was added with
a sigh--"I should rather see it in my mother's purse than a
mussel-shell!"

The dame laughed, then suddenly cried out in a loud voice:

"My bag! I have lost my little bag! Beautiful it was and rare, made
of silk, and sown with fine pearls! It was hanging from my belt when
we were at Damme!"

Ulenspiegel did not budge, but her attendant came up to his lady.

"Madame," said he, "whatever else you do, be careful not to send
this young robber to look for it, for so you will certainly never
see it again."

"Who will go then?" asked the lady.

"I will," he answered, "old as I am."

And away he went.

Midday had struck. It was very hot. The silence was
profound. Ulenspiegel said not a word, but taking off his new doublet
he laid it on the grass in the shade of a lime-tree, so that the dame
might sit down thereon without fear of the damp. He stood close by,
heaving a sigh.

She looked up at him, and felt compassion on that shy little figure,
and she inquired of him if he was not tired standing there upright
on his young legs. He did not answer, but slid gently down at her
side. She was desirous of resting him, and she drew his head on to her
bare neck, and there it lay so willingly that she would have thought
it the sin of cruelty itself had she bade him find some other pillow.

After a while the attendant came back, saying that he had not been
able to find the bag.

"I have found it myself," replied the lady, "for when I dismounted
from my horse, there it was hanging half open on the stirrup. And
now"--this to Ulenspiegel--"show us the way to Dudzeel, please,
and tell me your name."

"My patron saint," he replied, "is Monsieur Saint Thylbert, a name
which means fleet of foot towards that which is good; my second name
is Claes, and my surname Ulenspiegel. But now, if you would deign to
look at yourself in my mirror, you would see that in all the land of
Flanders there is not one flower so dazzling in its beauty as is the
scented grace of you."

The lady blushed with pleasure, and was not angry with Ulenspiegel.

But Soetkin and Nele sat at home, weeping together, through all this
long absence.






XVIII


When Ulenspiegel returned from Dudzeel and came to the entrance of
the town, he saw Nele standing there leaning with her back against the
toll-gate. She was picking the stones out of a bunch of black grapes,
which she munched one by one, and found therefrom, doubtless, much
delight and refreshment; nevertheless, she did not allow anything
of her enjoyment to appear on her countenance. On the contrary, she
seemed annoyed at something, tearing at the grapes angrily. She looked,
indeed, so sad and sorrowful, so sweetly unhappy, that Ulenspiegel
felt overcome with that pity which is almost love, and coming up to
her from behind, he printed a kiss on the nape of the girl's neck. But
all the return she gave him was a great box on the ear.

"Now I shall not be able to see properly any more," he said.

She burst into tears.

"O Nele," says he, "are you going to set up fountains at the entrance
of all the villages?"

"Be off with you," says she.

"But I can't go away and leave you crying like this, my little pet."

"I am not your little pet," says Nele; "neither am I crying."

"No, you are not crying, but there is certainly some water coming
out of your eyes."

"Will you go away?" She turned on him.

"No," he answered.

All the time she was holding her pinafore in her small trembling hand,
tearing at the stuff in little spasms of rage, and wetting it with
her tears.

"Nele," said Ulenspiegel, "when is it going to be fine again?"

And he smiled at her very lovingly.

"Why do you ask me that?" she said.

"Because when it is fine there is an end of weeping," answered
Ulenspiegel.

"Go back to your beautiful lady of the brocaded gown," she said. "Your
jokes are good enough for her...."

Then Ulenspiegel sang:


        When I see my love crying
        My heart is torn.
        When she smiles 'tis honey,
        Pearls when she weeps.
        Either way I love her.
        And I'll draw a draught of wine,
        Good wine from Louvain,
        And I'll draw a draught of wine,
        When Nele smiles again.


"You villainous man!" she cried, "making fun of me again!"

"Nele," said Ulenspiegel, "it is true that I am a man. But I am not
a villain. For our family is of noble origin, a family of aldermen,
and it carries on its shield three pint pots argent on a ground
bruinbier. But, Nele, tell me now, is it a fact that in Flanders when
a man sows a kiss he always reaps a box on the ear?"

"I refuse to speak to you," said Nele.

"Then why open your mouth to tell me so?"

"I am angry," she said.

Ulenspiegel slapped her on the back very lightly with his hand, saying:

"Kiss a naughty girl and she will cuff you; cuff her, she will
cry. Come then, sweet, cry upon my shoulder since I have cuffed you!"

Nele turned round. He opened his arms, and she threw herself into them.

"You won't go away any more down there, will you Tyl?" she asked him.

But he did not answer, busy as he was in pressing with his the hand
that trembled so pitifully, and in drying with his lips the hot tears
that fell from the eyes of Nele, like heavy drops of rain in a storm.






XIX


These were the days when the noble city of Ghent refused to pay the
tax which her son, the Emperor Charles, was demanding of her. The
fact was it was impossible to pay, for already the city was drained
of money by the act of Charles himself. But it seemed that the city
was guilty of a great crime, and Charles resolved to go himself and
exact punishment. For to be whipped by her own son is above all things
painful to a mother.

Now, although he was his enemy, Francis Long-Nose was pleased to offer
the Emperor a free passage through the land of France. Charles accepted
the offer, and instead of being held as a prisoner, he was feted and
feasted in right royal fashion. For this is ever a sovereign bond of
union between kings: each to aid the other against their own peoples.

Charles stayed a long time at Valenciennes, and still gave no sign
of his wrath, so that Mother Ghent began to lay aside her fears,
believing that the Emperor her son was going to forgive her, seeing
that she had acted within her rights.

But at length Charles arrived under the walls of the city with 4000
horse, together with the Duke of Alba and the Prince of Orange. The
poorer townsfolk and the small business men wished to prevent
this filial entry into their city, and would have called to arms
80,000 men of the city and of the country round. But the merchants,
the hoogh-poorters, opposed this suggestion, being afraid of the
predominance of the people. Thus Ghent could easily have cut her son
to pieces, him and his 4000 horse. But it seemed she loved him too
dearly, and even the small tradesmen themselves were fast regaining
their trust in him.

Charles also loved the city, but only for the sake of his coffers that
were stored with her money, and which he hoped to store up fuller yet.

Having made himself master of the place, he established military
posts everywhere, and ordered that they should patrol the city night
and day. Then, in great state, he pronounced his sentence.

The chief merchants of the city with cords round their necks
were to appear before him as he sat on his throne, and to make
a formal apology. Ghent itself was declared guilty of the most
costly crimes--of disloyalty, disregard of treaties, disobedience,
sedition, conspiracy, and high treason. The Emperor declared that
all and every privilege--rights, customs, freedoms, and usages--all
were to be abolished and annulled; and he stipulated for the future
too, as though he were God himself, that none of his successors on
coming to the throne should ever observe any one of these usages
again, except only that which was called the Caroline Concession,
as granted by him to the city.

The Abbey of St. Bavon he razed to the ground, and in place he erected
a fortress whence he could pierce with bullets and at his ease his
mother's very heart. Like a good son that is in a hurry for his
inheritance, he confiscated all the riches of Ghent, its revenues,
its houses, its artillery and munitions of war. Finding it still
too well guarded, he destroyed also the Red Tower, the Tower of the
Trou de Crapaud, the Braampoort, the Steenpoort, the Waalpoort, the
Ketelpoort, and many another of its gates, all carved as they were
and sculptured like jewels in stone.

And afterwards, when strangers came to Ghent, they would ask of
one another:

"Can this indeed be Ghent whose marvels were on the lips of all--this
city so desolated and brought low?"

And the people of Ghent would make answer:

"Charles the Emperor has been to the city. He has ravished her
sacred zone."

And so saying they would be filled with anger and with shame. And
from the ruins of the city gates did the Emperor take away the bricks
wherewith to build his castle.

For it was his will that Ghent should be utterly impoverished, that
thereby he might make it impossible for her ever to oppose his proud
designs, either by her labour or her industry or wealth; therefore he
condemned her to pay that share of the tax of 400,000 caroluses which
she had previously refused him, and in addition 150,000 caroluses down,
and 6000 more every year in perpetuity. Moreover, in earlier days
the city had lent him money upon which he should have paid interest
at the rate of 150 pounds gross annually. But he made himself remit
by force the notes of credit, and by paying off his debt in this way
he actually enriched himself.

Many and many a time had Ghent cherished him and succoured him, but
now he struck her on the breast as it were with a dagger, looking
for blood, since it seemed he had not there found milk enough.

Last shame of all, he cast his eye upon the bell that is called
Roelandt; and the man who had sounded the alarm thereon, bidding all
the citizens to defend the rights of their city, him he had bound and
hung to the clapper of the bell. And he had no pity upon Roelandt, the
very tongue of his mother, the tongue whereby she spake to all the land
of Flanders, Roelandt the proud bell that sings of herself this song:


        When I ring there is a fire
        When I peal there is a storm
            In the land of Flanders.


And thinking that his mother had too loud a voice he carried away her
bell. And the people of the country round would say that Ghent was
dead, now that her son had wrenched away her tongue with his pincers
of iron.






XX


In those days, which were days of spring, fresh and clear, when
all the earth is in love, Soetkin was chatting by the open window,
and Claes humming a tune, while Ulenspiegel was dressing up the dog
Bibulus Schnouffius in a judge's bonnet. The dog plied his paws as
though desirous of passing judgment upon some one, though in reality
it was simply his way of trying to get rid of his ungainly head-gear.

All at once, Ulenspiegel shut the window and ran back into the
room. Then he jumped upon the chairs and the table, reaching up towards
the ceiling with his hands. Soetkin and Claes soon discovered the cause
of this mad behaviour, for there was a tiny little bird, chirruping
with fear, and cowering against a beam in the recess of the ceiling,
and Ulenspiegel was trying to catch it. He had almost succeeded when
Claes spoke out briskly and asked him:

"Why are you jumping about like this?"

"To catch the bird," answered Ulenspiegel, "and put him in a cage,
and feed him with seeds, and make him sing for me."

Meantime the bird, crying in an agony of terror, flew back into the
room, striking its head against the window-pane. Still Ulenspiegel
went on trying to catch it, but suddenly the hand of Claes came down
heavily upon his shoulder.

"Catch the bird if you can," said he, "put it in a cage, make it sing
for your pleasure; but I also will put you in a cage that is fastened
with strong bars of iron, and I will make you sing too. Then you,
who like nothing better than to run about, will be able to do so no
more; and you will be kept standing in the shade when you are chilly,
and in the sun when you are hot. And, one Sunday, we shall all go out
and forget to give you your food, and we shall not return again till
Thursday, and then maybe we shall find our Tyl all stiff and starved
to death."

Soetkin was crying at this picture, but Ulenspiegel started forward.

"What are you going to do?" asked Claes.

"Open the window for the bird to fly out," he answered.

And in fact the bird, which was a goldfinch, flew straight out through
the window, and with a cry of joy mounted up into the air like an
arrow, and then alighted upon a neighbouring apple-tree, smoothing
its wings with its beak, ruffling its plumage. And all kinds of abuse
did it sing in its bird language, all directed against Ulenspiegel.

Then Claes said:

"O son of mine, take care that you never take away its liberty
from either man or beast, for liberty is the greatest good in the
world. Let every one be free, free to go out into the sun when it is
cold, and into the shade when it is hot. And let God give judgment
on His Sacred Majesty, he who, not content with denying freedom of
belief to the people of Flanders, has now put all the noble city of
Ghent into a cage of slavery."






XXI


Now Philip was married to Marie of Portugal, and with her he acquired
her lands for the crown of Spain; and together they had a son, Don
Carlos, he who was afterwards called "the mad" and "the cruel." And
Philip had no love for his wife.

The Queen was lying-in. She kept her bed, and by her side were the
maids of honour, the Duchess of Alba among them.

Oftentimes did Philip leave his wife to go and see the burning
of heretics. And all the gentlemen and ladies of the Court did
likewise. And thus also did the Duchess of Alba and the other noble
ladies whose duty it was to watch by the Queen in her childbed.

Now at that time the ecclesiastical judges had seized a certain
sculptor of Flanders, a good Roman Catholic, on the following charge:
He had been commissioned, it seems, by a certain monk to carve a wooden
statue of Our Lady for a certain sum, and on the monk refusing to pay
the price which had been agreed between them, the sculptor had slashed
at the face of the image with his chisel, saying that he would rather
destroy his work than let it go at the price of a piece of dirt.

He was straightway denounced by the monk as an iconoclast, tortured
most piteously and condemned to be burnt alive. During the torture
they had scalded the soles of his feet, so that he cried out as he
passed along from the prison to the stake: "Cut my feet off! For
God's sake cut my feet off!"

And Philip, hearing these cries from afar, was glad, though smiled
he never a smile.

Queen Marie's dames of honour all left her, wishing to be present at
the burning, and the last of all to desert her was the said Duchess
of Alba, who, hearing the cries of the sculptor, could not forbear
to witness the spectacle.

So, in the presence of King Philip and of his lords, princes, counts,
equerries, and ladies, the sculptor was bound to the stake by a
long chain. And all round the stake was a circle of flaming bundles
of straw and fiery torches, the idea being that if he wished, the
sculptor could be roasted very gently by keeping close to the stake
in the centre of the circle, thus avoiding the full rigour of the fire.

And right curiously did they watch him, naked or almost naked as he
was, and trying to stiffen his resolution against the heat of the fire.

Meanwhile Queen Marie was stricken with a great thirst, lying there
alone on her bed of childbirth. And seeing the half of a melon on
a plate, she dragged herself out of bed, and took hold of the melon
and ate it all. But thereafter the cold substance of the melon made
her to sweat and to shiver, and she lay upon the floor unable to move.

"Alas!" she cried, "would that there were some one to carry me back
into bed that I might get warm again!"

Then it was that she heard the cry of the poor sculptor:

"Cut off my feet! Cut off my feet!"

"Ah!" said the Queen, "is that some dog or other baying at my death?"

It was at this very moment that the sculptor, seeing around him none
but the faces of Spaniards, his enemies, bethought him of Flanders,
the land of valorous men, and he crossed his arms on his breast,
and dragging the long chain behind him, walked straight towards
the outer circle of the straw and the flaming torches. And standing
upright there, still with his arms crossed:

"This," cried he, "this is how the men of Flanders can die in the
face of the tyrants of Spain. Cut off their feet--not mine--that
they may be able no more to run into the way of crime. Flanders for
ever! Flanders for ever!"

And the ladies clapped their hands, crying him mercy for the sake of
his proud look.

And he died.

And Queen Marie shook all over her body, and she cried out, her teeth
chattering together with the chill of approaching death. And her arms
and legs grew stiff, and she said:

"Put me back into my bed that I may be warmed."

So she died.

And thus it was, according to the prophecy of Katheline the good
sorceress, that Philip the King sowed everywhere he went the seeds
of death, and blood, and tears.






XXII


But Ulenspiegel and Nele loved each other, and their love was true.

It was now the end of April. All the trees were in bloom, and every
plant was swollen with sap, for May was near, the month of the peacock,
flowered like a bouquet, the month that sends the nightingales singing
aloud in the trees of all the earth.

Oftentimes would Nele and Ulenspiegel wander together along the
roads. Nele would lean on the arm of Ulenspiegel, and hang round him
with her two hands. Ulenspiegel loved this little game, and often
did he pass his arm about Nele's waist, to hold her the better,
as he said. And she was happy, but spake not a word.

Softly along the roads blew the wind, wafting the scent from the
fields; the sea boomed in the distance, rocking lazily in the sun;
Ulenspiegel seemed like some youthful devil, all pride; and Nele like
a little saint from Paradise, half shy of her happiness.

She leant her head against Ulenspiegel's shoulder, and her hand was in
his, and as they passed along he kissed her forehead, and her cheek,
and her sweet lips. But still she spake no word.

After some hours they grew hot and thirsty, and they drank milk at
the house of a peasant; and yet they were not refreshed. Then they
sat them down on the grass by the side of the ditch, and Nele seemed
pale and pensive, and Ulenspiegel looked at her, afraid that something
was amiss.

"You are unhappy?" said she.

"Yes," he admitted.

"But why?" she asked him.

"I know not," said he. "But these apple-trees and cherry-trees
all in flower, this air so warm that one would say it was charged
with lightning, these daisies that open their blushing petals to
the fields, and oh, the hawthorn, there, close by us in the hedge,
all white.... Will no one tell me why it is that I feel troubled,
and always ready to die or to go to sleep? And my heart beats so
strangely when I hear the birds awaken in the trees, and when I see
the swallows coming home! Then I am fain to go away beyond the sun and
beyond the moon. And sometimes I am cold, and then again I am hot. Ah,
Nele! would that I were no longer a creature of this low world! Verily
I would give my life a thousand times to her that would love me!"

Yet Nele spake not at all, but smiling at her ease sat looking at
Ulenspiegel.






XXIII


One Day of All Souls, Ulenspiegel went forth from Notre Dame with
certain other vagabonds of his own age. Among them was Lamme Goedzak,
who seemed strayed among them like a lamb in the midst of a herd of
wolves. Lamme treated them with drinks all round, for his mother, as
her custom was on Sundays and feast days, had given him three patards.

So he went with his companions to the tavern In dem Rooden Schildt--at
the sign of the Red Shield. Jan van Liebeke kept the house, and he
served them with dobbel knollaert from Courtrai.

They began to be warmed with the drink, and the talk turned on the
subject of prayer, and Ulenspiegel declared quite openly that, for
his part, he thought that Masses for the dead did nobody any good,
except the priests who said them.

Now in that company there was a Judas, who went and denounced
Ulenspiegel for a heretic. And in spite of the tears of Soetkin, and
the entreaties of Claes, Ulenspiegel was seized and taken prisoner. He
remained shut up in a cellar for the space of a month and three days
without seeing a soul. The jailor himself consumed three-quarters of
the ration that was given him for food.

During all this time the authorities were informing themselves as
to Ulenspiegel's reputation--whether it was good or whether it was
bad. They found that there was not much to be said against him except
that he was a lively sort of customer, always railing against his
neighbours. But they could not find that he had ever spoken evil of
Our Lord God, or of Madame the Virgin, nor yet of the Saints. On this
account the sentence passed on him was a light one, for he might easily
have been condemned to have his face branded with a hot iron and to
be flogged till the blood flowed. But in consideration of his youth,
the judges merely sentenced him to walk in his shirt behind the priests
barefoot and hatless, and holding a candle in his hand. And this he
was to do on the Feast of the Ascension, in the first procession that
left the church.

So it was done, and when the procession was on the point of turning
back, Ulenspiegel was made to stop beneath the porch of Notre Dame,
and there cry out aloud:

"Thanks be to our Lord Jesus! Thanks be to the reverend priests! Sweet
are their prayers unto the souls in purgatory; nay, they are filled
with every virtue of refreshment! For each Ave is even as a bucket
of water poured upon the backs of those who are being punished,
and every Pater is a tubful!"

And the people heard him with great devotion, and not without a smile.

On Whit-Sunday the same proceeding had to be gone through, and
Ulenspiegel followed again in the procession with nothing on but his
shirt, and with his head bare, and no shoes on his feet, and holding
a candle in his hand. On returning to the church he stood up in the
porch, holding the candle most reverently in his hand, and then in
a high, clear voice (yet not without sundry waggish grimaces) spake
as follows:

"If the prayers of all good Christians are very comforting to the souls
in purgatory, how much more so must be those of the Dean of Notre Dame,
a holy man and perfect in the performance of every virtue. Verily,
his prayers assuage the flames of fire in such wise that they are
transformed all of a sudden into ice. But yet be sure that not an
atom of it goes to refresh the devils that are in hell."

And again the people hearkened to what he said with great
devotion. But some of them smiled, and the Dean smiled too, in his
grim ecclesiastical way.

After that, Ulenspiegel was condemned to banishment from the land of
Flanders for the space of three years, on condition that he went to
Rome on pilgrimage and brought back with him the papal absolution. For
this sentence Claes had to pay three florins: but he gave an extra
florin to his son, and bought him a pilgrim's habit.

Ulenspiegel was heart-broken when he came to say good-bye to Claes
and Soetkin on the day of his departure. He embraced them both, and
his mother was all in tears; but she accompanied him far on his way,
and Claes went too, and many of the townsmen and townswomen.

When they were home again Claes said to his wife:

"Good wife, it is very hard that such a boy should be condemned to
this cruel punishment and all for a few silly words."

"Why, you are crying, my man!" said Soetkin. "Truly, you love him more
than you like to show. Yes, you are sobbing now with a man's sobs,
sobs that are like unto the tears of a lion."

But he answered her not.

As for Nele, she had gone to hide herself in the barn, so that none
might see that she also wept for Ulenspiegel. But she followed afar
after Soetkin and Claes and the other townsfolk: and when she saw
her lover disappearing in the distance, she ran after him and threw
herself on his neck.

"In Italy you will meet many beautiful ladies," she said.

"I do not know about their being beautiful," he replied, "but fresh
like thee--no. For they are all parched with the sun."

They walked a long way side by side, and Ulenspiegel seemed thoughtful,
muttering from time to time:

"I'll make 'em pay--I'll make 'em pay for their Masses for the dead!"

"What Masses are those you speak of?" Nele inquired. "And who is to
pay for them?"

Ulenspiegel answered:

"All the deans, cures, clerks, beadles and the rest, both superior
and inferior, who feed us with their trash. See now, if I had happened
to be a strong working man they would have robbed me of the value of
three years' labour by making me thus to go on this pilgrimage. But as
things are, it is the poor Claes who pays. Ah, but they shall give me
back my three years a hundredfold, and with their own money I myself
will sing for them their Masses for the dead!"

"Alas, Tyl!" said Nele, "be prudent, or they will have you burnt
alive."

"I am fireproof," answered Ulenspiegel.

And they parted from one another, she all in tears, he heart-broken
and angry.






XXIV


Once in the open country, Ulenspiegel shook himself like a dog, or
like a bird that has regained its liberty, and his heart was cheered
by the trees and fields and the bright sunshine.

When he had walked on thus for three days he came to the outskirts of
Brussels, and to the wealthy township of Uccle. And there, passing in
front of the inn with the sign of the Trumpet, his attention was drawn
to a most heavenly odour of fricassee. A little urchin who stood by
was also sniffing the delightful perfume of the sauce, and Ulenspiegel
asked him in whose honour it was that there rose to heaven such odour
of festal incense. The boy made answer that the Guild of the Jolly
Face was to meet at the inn that evening after vespers, to celebrate
the deliverance of the town by the women and girls of olden time.

Now in the distance Ulenspiegel saw a high pole with a popinjay on
the top of it, and the pole was set in the ground, and round it were
a company of women armed with bows and arrows. He asked the boy if
women were become archers nowadays?

The boy, still sniffing greedily the savour of the sauces, replied that
in the days of the Good Duke the very bows that were now being used
by those women had been the means of killing over a hundred brigands.

Ulenspiegel desired to know further concerning this matter, but the
boy said that he could tell no more, so hungry was he, unless forsooth
Ulenspiegel would give him a patard with which he might buy food and
drink. This Ulenspiegel did, for he felt sorry for him.

No sooner had the boy received the patard than he rushed into the
tavern like a fox to the hen-house, and presently reappeared in
triumph with half a sausage and a large loaf of bread.

And now Ulenspiegel was suddenly aware of a sweet sound of viols
and tabors, and soon he saw a number of women dancing together, and
among them a woman of great beauty with a chain of gold hanging round
her neck.

The boy, who had by this time assuaged his hunger and was grinning
with delight, informed Ulenspiegel that the beautiful woman was the
Queen of Archery, that her name was Mietje, and that she was wife to
Messire Renonckel, alderman of the parish. Then he asked Ulenspiegel
to give him six liards for a drink. Ulenspiegel gave him the money,
and when he had thus eaten and drunk his fill the urchin sat himself
down in the sun and fell to picking his teeth with his nails.

When the women archers noticed Ulenspiegel standing there in his
pilgrim's habit, they came and began to dance round him in a ring,
crying:

"Hail pilgrim, hail! Do you come from far away, you handsome pilgrim
boy?"

Ulenspiegel, thinking sadly of Nele, thus made answer:

"I come from Flanders, a lovely land and filled with lovesome girls."

"What crime have you committed?" asked the women, stopping in their
dance.

"I dare not confess it, so great it was," said he.

They asked him the reason why it was needful for him to journey thus
with a pilgrim's staff and wallet, and those scalloped oysters that
are the sign of the pilgrim.

"The reason is," he replied, not quite truthfully, "that I said that
Masses for the dead are advantageous to the priests."

"True, they bring many a sounding denier to the priests," they
answered; "but are they not also of advantage to the souls in
purgatory!"

"I have never been there," answered Ulenspiegel.

"Will you come dine with us?" said the prettiest of the archers.

"Willingly would I dine with you," said he, "and dine off you into
the bargain! You and all your companions in turn, for you are morsels
fit for a king, more delicate to swallow than any ortolan or thrush
or snipe!"

"Nay," they answered, "but we are not for sale."

"Then perhaps you will give?" he asked them.

"Yea, verily," they laughed, "a good box on the ear to such as are too
bold. And if needs were we would beat you now like a bundle of corn!"

"Thank you," he said, "I will go without the beating."

"Well then," they said, "come in to dinner."

So he followed them into the inn yard, glad for their fresh young
faces. And thereafter he saw the Brethren of the Jolly Face themselves,
who were now entering the yard with great ceremony, and by their
own jolly appearance living up most conspicuously to the name of
their Guild.

They scrutinized Ulenspiegel with some curiosity, till one of the women
informed them who he was--a pilgrim they had picked up on the road,
and whom, being a good red-face like unto their husbands and their
sweethearts, they had invited to share in the entertainment. The men
were agreeable to this proposal, and one of them addressed himself
to Ulenspiegel:

"Pilgrim on pilgrimage, what say you now to continuing your pilgrimage
across some sauce and fricassee?"

"I shall have need of my seven-league boots," answered Ulenspiegel.

Now as he was following them into the festal hall, he noticed twelve
blind men coming along the Paris road. And as they passed they were
lamenting most piteously their hunger and thirst. But Ulenspiegel
said to himself that they should dine that night like kings, and all
at the expense of the Dean of Uccle himself, and in memory of the
Masses for the dead.

He accosted them, saying:

"Here are nine florins for you. Come in to dinner. Do you not smell
the good smell of fricassee?"

"Ah!" they cried, "for the last half-league, and without hope!"

"Now you can eat your fill," said Ulenspiegel, "for you have nine
florins."

But he had not really given them anything.

"The Lord bless you," they said. For being blind, each man believed his
neighbour had been given the money. And shown the way by Ulenspiegel,
they all sat down at a small table while the Brethren of the Jolly
Face took their seats at a long one, together with their wives and
their daughters.

Then, with the complete assurance that comes from the possession of
nine florins:

"Mine host," cried the blind men insolently, "give us now to eat and
to drink of your best."

The landlord, who had heard tell of the nine florins and thought that
they were safe in the blind men's purse, asked them what they would
like for their dinner.

Then they all began to talk at once at the top of their voices:

"Bacon and peas, hotchpotch of beef and veal, chicken and lamb! And
where are the sausages--were they made for the dogs, pray? And who
is he that has smelt out the black and white puddings in the passage
without collaring them for us? I used to be able to see them, alas,
in the days when my poor eyes were bright as candles! And where is the
buttered koekebakken of Anderlecht? Sizzling in the frying-pan, juicy
and crackling, enough to make a fish thirsty for drink! Ho there! But
who will bring me eggs and ham, or ham and eggs, twin friends of my
palate? And where are you, you choesels, that float in a heavenly mess
of meats and kidneys, coxcombs, sweetbreads, ox-tails, lamb's feet,
with many onions, pepper, cloves, nutmegs, all in a stew, and three
pints at least of best white wine for sauce? And who will bring you
to me divine, chitterlings, you that are so good that one does not
utter a word while you are being swallowed! And they come straight
from Luyleckerland, a land bursting with fatness and filled with happy
lazy folk, whose passion for good things to eat is never assuaged! And
where are you, dried leaves of autumns past? Now quick there! Bring
me a leg of mutton with broad beans. And for me, some pig's ears
grilled with bread-crumbs. And for me, a chaplet of ortolans. Verily
the snipe shall figure the Paters, and a fat capon the Credo."

Mine host answered quietly:

"I will bring you an omelette made with sixty eggs. And as sign-posts
to guide your spoons, I will plant fifty black puddings in the midst,
all smoking on a veritable mountain of good cheer; and from the top of
all some dobbel peterman shall flow down like a river on every side."

At this the mouths of the poor blind men began to water indeed,
and they said:

"Then serve us, pray, and that right quickly with the mountain,
the sign-posts, and the river!"

And the Brethren of the Jolly Face, who were now all seated at table
with their wives, remarked to Ulenspiegel that this should be called
the Day of the Invisible Feast; for that the blind men could not see
what they were eating, and thus, poor things, were deprived of half
their pleasure.

At last it came--the omelette all garnished with cress and parsley,
carried by mine host himself and four of his cooks--and the blind men
desired to fall to incontinently, and at once began to set their paws
upon it. But mine host was determined to serve each of them fairly,
and, however difficult it might be, to make sure that each trencher
had its just portion.

The women archers were filled with pity to see the blind men gobbling
and sighing with joy at what was set before them. For in truth they
were half starved, and they swallowed down the puddings as though they
had been oysters. And the dobbel peterman flowed into their stomachs
as if it had been a cataract falling down from some lofty mountain.

When at length they had cleared their trenchers, they demanded yet
further supplies of koekebakken, ortolans, and fricassees. Mine host,
however, only provided a great platter of beef and veal and mutton
bones, all swimming in a most goodly sauce. But he did not divide it
properly. So that when they had well dipped their bread in the sauce,
and eke their hands right up to the elbows, yet drew not out anything
but bones of cutlet of veal or mutton, each man fell straightway
to imagining that his neighbour had got hold of all the meat, and
they began to fight among themselves, hitting out most furiously one
against another with the bones.

The Brethren of the Jolly Face laughed heartily at this, but being
charitably disposed, each put a portion of his own dinner into the
blind men's platter. So now if one of the blind went searching for a
new bone with which to carry on the fight, he would put his hand belike
upon a thrush or chicken or a lark or two; and all the time the women,
holding their heads well backwards, kept pouring into the mouths
of the blind long draughts of Brussels wine, and when they reached
out with their hands to feel, as blind men will, whence came these
rivulets of ambrosia, they would catch oftentimes at a woman's skirt,
and try to hold it fast. But quickly the skirt would make its escape.

Thus they laughed and drank, ate and sang, enjoying themselves
hugely. Some of them, when they found that women were present, ran
through the hall all maddened with amorous desire. But the malicious
girls kept out of their way, hiding behind the Brethren of the Jolly
Face. And one of them would say: "Come, kiss me!" And when the blind
victim tried to do so he would find himself kissing not a girl at
all but the bearded face of a man, who would reward him with a cuff
on the cheek as like as not.

And the Brethren of the Jolly Face began to sing, and the blind men
sang also, and the merry women smiled with fond delight to see their
pleasure. But when the juicy hours were past, it was the turn of the
innkeeper, who came forward, saying:

"Now you have eaten your fill, my friends, and drunk your fill. You
owe me seven florins."

But each of the blind men swore that he had no purse, and asserted
that it was one of the others who carried it. Thereat arose a further
dispute, and they began to hit out at one another with feet and hands
and heads; but they mostly missed their mark, striking out at random,
while the Brethren of the Jolly Face, entering into the fun, took
care to keep them apart, so that their blows rained down upon the
empty air--all save one, which happened unfortunately to strike the
face of the innkeeper, who straightway fell into a rage and ransacked
all their pockets. But he found there nothing but an old scapular,
seven liards, three breeches-buttons, and a few rosaries.

At last he threatened to throw the whole lot of them into the
pig-trough, and leave them there with nothing but bread and water to
eat till they paid what they owed.

"Let me go surety for them," said Ulenspiegel.

"Certainly," answered the innkeeper, "if some one will also go surety
for you."

This the Brethren of the Jolly Face at once offered to do, but
Ulenspiegel refused them.

"No," he said, "the Dean of Uccle shall be my surety. I will go and
find him."

To be sure it was those Masses for the dead that he was thinking
of. And when he had found the Dean he told him a story of how the
innkeeper of the Trumpet Inn was possessed by the Devil, and how he
could talk of nothing but "pigs" and "blind men"--something or other
about pigs eating the blind, and the blind eating the pigs under
various infamous forms of roast meats and fricassees. While these
attacks were on, the innkeeper, so Ulenspiegel affirmed, would break
up all the furniture in the inn; and he begged the Dean to come and
deliver the poor man from the wicked devil that possessed him.

The Dean promised to do so, but he said he could not come at the moment
(for he was busy with the accounts of the Chapter, trying to make
something out of them for himself). Seeing that the Dean was growing
impatient, Ulenspiegel said that he would return and bring with him
the innkeeper's wife in order that the Dean might speak to her himself.

"Very well," said the Dean.

So Ulenspiegel came again to the innkeeper and said to him:

"I have just seen the Dean, and he is willing to go surety for the
blind men. Do you keep watch over them, and let your wife come with
me, and the Dean will repeat to her what I have just told you."

"Go, wife," said the innkeeper.

So the innkeeper's wife went with Ulenspiegel to the Dean, who was
still at his accounts and busy with the same problem. When, therefore,
he saw Ulenspiegel and the woman, he made an impatient gesture that
they should withdraw, saying at the same time:

"It is all right. I will come to the help of your husband in a day
or two."

And Ulenspiegel went back to the inn and said to himself:

"Seven florins shall he pay; seven florins. And that shall be the
first of my Masses for the dead!"

And Ulenspiegel departed from that place, and the blind men likewise.






XXV


Now in those days Katheline had effected a cure, by means of herbs,
on three sheep, an ox, and a pig, all belonging to a certain man
named Speelman. She also attempted to cure a cow, the property of one
Jan Beloen, but in this she was not successful. Jan Beloen promptly
accused her of being a witch, asserting that she had laid a charm
on the animal, inasmuch as all the time she was giving the herbs
she had caressed it and talked to it, in the Devil's own language,
as was evident--for what business has an honest Christian woman to
go talking with an animal...?

Jan Beloen added that he was a neighbour of Speelman's, the man whose
ox had been cured, together with three sheep and a pig as aforesaid,
and if Katheline had now killed his cow, it was doubtless at the
instigation of Speelman, who was jealous at seeing his, Beloen's,
land better and more profitably cultivated than his own. Pieter
Meulmeester, a man of good life and reputation, and Jan Beloen himself
both testified that Katheline was commonly reputed to be a witch by
the people of Damme, and that she had certainly killed the cow; and
on this testimony Katheline was arrested and condemned to be tortured
until she had confessed her crimes and malpractices.

She was cross-examined by a certain alderman who was notorious for
his ill-temper, for he was accustomed to drink brandy all the day
long. And he ordered her to be placed on the seat of torture in the
presence of himself and the members of the Town Council.

The torturer put her on the seat stark naked, and then shaved off her
hair, looking carefully to see that no charm was concealed anywhere
about her person. Finding none, he bound her with cords to the seat
of torture. And she said:

"It shames me to be naked before these men. O Mother Mary, let me die!"

The torturer then wrapped some damp cloths round her breast and body
and legs, and raising the bench upright he proceeded to pour great
quantities of hot water down her throat so that her stomach became
all swollen. Then he let the bench down again.

The alderman asked Katheline if she would now acknowledge her
crime. She made a sign in the negative. And the torturer poured more
hot water into her; but this Katheline brought all up again.

Then by the advice of the doctor she was released. But she did not
speak a word, only beat her breast as much as to say that the hot
water had burned her. When the torturer saw that she was recovered
from this first ordeal, he said to her:

"Confess that you are a witch, and that you laid a charm on the cow."

"I will confess no such thing," replied Katheline. "I am here in your
power. Nevertheless, I tell you that an animal can die of an illness,
just as a man can, and in spite of all the help of surgeons and of
doctors. And I swear by Our Lord Christ who was pleased to die upon
the Cross for our sins, that I wished to do no harm to this cow,
but simply to cure her by well-known remedies."

Thereat the alderman was angry and cried out:

"This devil's drab, she cannot go on lying for ever! Put her to the
second torture."

Then he drank a large glass of brandy.

The torturer meanwhile sat Katheline down on the lid of an oak coffin
which was placed on trestles. Now the coffin-lid was pointed like a
roof, and the edge of it was as sharp as a sword. A great fire was
burning in the fireplace, for it was the month of November. Katheline,
seated on the edge of the coffin-lid, had her feet shod in shoes of
new leather several sizes too small for her, and then she was placed
in front of the fire. When she began to feel the sharp wood of the
coffin-lid cutting into her flesh, and when her shoes began to shrink
under the heat of the fire, Katheline cried aloud:

"Oh, agony! Will no one give me a draught of black poison?"

"Put her nearer the fire," said the alderman.

Then he inquired of her:

"How often, pray, have you ridden on a broom to the Witches'
Sabbath? And how many times have you caused the corn to wither in
the ear, and the fruit on the tree, and the babe in the womb of
its mother? And turned most loving brothers into sworn enemies,
and sisters into rivals full of hatred?"

Katheline would have answered if she had been able. But she could
only move her arms, as if to say "No." But the alderman said:

"I see she will not speak till she has felt her witch's fat all
melting in the fire. Put her nearer."

Katheline cried out. But the alderman said:

"You had better ask Satan, your friend, to refresh you."

And now her shoes were beginning to smoke in the heat of the fire,
so that she made a gesture as if to try and take them off.

"Ask Satan to help you," said the alderman.

Ten o'clock struck. It was the madman's dinner hour. And he retired
with the torturer and the clerk of the court, leaving Katheline alone
in front of the fire in the place of torture.

An hour later they returned. Katheline was still sitting there stiff
and motionless. The clerk said:

"I think she is dead."

The alderman commanded the torturer to remove Katheline from the
coffin-lid, and to take off the shoes from her feet. This he could
not do, so that he was forced to cut them, and Katheline's feet were
exposed to view, all red and bleeding. The alderman, whose thoughts
were still with his dinner, gazed at her without a word. But after
a while she came to her senses, and fell upon the ground, nor was
she able to get up again in spite of many attempts. Then she said to
the alderman:

"Once you desired me for your wife. But now you shall have none of
me! Four times three is the sacred number, and my husband is the
thirteenth."

The alderman was going to answer her, but she forestalled him:

"Be silent. His hearing is more delicate than that of the archangel
in heaven who counts the heart-beats of the just. Why are you so
late? Four times three is the sacred number. He killeth those who
hold me in desire."

The alderman said:

"It seems she welcomes the devil to her bed!"

"The pains of the torture have turned her brain," said the clerk.

So Katheline was taken back into prison. And three days later there
was a meeting of the aldermen in the Council Hall; and after some
deliberation Katheline was condemned to suffer the ordeal by fire.

She was taken to the grand market of Damme by the torturer and his
assistants. There she was made to mount the scaffold. In the square
were assembled the provost, the herald, and the judges. The herald
sounded his trumpet thrice, then turned towards the crowd and made
the following announcement:

"The Council of Damme," he cried, "having taken pity upon the woman
Katheline, have decreed that punishment shall not be exacted to the
full extremity of the rigour of our laws. Nevertheless, in witness
that she is a sorceress, her hair shall be burned, she shall pay
a fine of twenty carolus d'or, and she shall be banished from the
territory of Damme for the space of three years, under penalty of
losing one of her limbs."

And at this rough gentleness the people broke into applause.

Then the torturer tied Katheline to the stake, placed on her shorn
scalp a wig of tow, and held it in the fire. And the tow burned for
a long time, and Katheline cried aloud and wept.

Then they released her, and she was put in a cart and taken away
outside the territory of Damme. She could not walk at all, because
of her feet that were burned.






XXVI


Ulenspiegel, meanwhile, had arrived in his wanderings at the
fish-market at Liege. There he descried a tall young fellow carrying
under his arm a net filled with all sorts of poultry, and another net
also which he was rapidly filling with haddock, trout, eels, and pike.

Ulenspiegel recognized him as none other than his old friend Lamme
Goedzak.

"What are you doing here, Lamme?" he said.

"You must know," Lamme answered, "that many people have lately
emigrated from Flanders to this gentle land of Liege. As for me,
I follow my loves. And you?"

"I am on the look-out for a master to serve for my daily bread,"
said Ulenspiegel.

"Bread is a dry sort of nourishment," said Lamme. "You would do better
to try a chaplet of ortolans with a thrush for the Credo."

"You have plenty of money?" Ulenspiegel inquired.

Lamme Goedzak made answer:

"I have lost my father and mother, and that young sister of mine that
used to beat me so. I shall inherit all their property, and now I am
living with a one-eyed servant who is very learned in the noble art
of making fricassees."

"Would you like me to carry your fish and your poultry for
you?" suggested Ulenspiegel.

"Yes," said Lamme.

And together they began to wander through the market. All at once
Lamme said to his companion:

"You are mad. Do you know why?"

"No," said Ulenspiegel.

"Because you go carrying fish and poultry in your hand instead of in
your stomach."

"You are right, Lamme," said Ulenspiegel; "but since I have lacked
bread, ortolans will not even look at me."

"You shall eat your fill of them," said Lamme, "and serve me too,
if my cook takes a fancy to you."

While they were walking along, Lamme pointed out to Ulenspiegel a
beautiful young girl, who was walking through the market. She wore a
silk dress and gazed at Lamme with sweet and gentle eyes. An old man,
her father, walked just behind, carrying two nets, one filled with
fish, the other with game.

"See that girl?" said Lamme, pointing at her. "I am going to marry
her."

"Oh!" said Ulenspiegel, "I know her. She is a Flemish maid from
Zotteghem. She lives in the rue Vinave-d'Isle, and the neighbours say
that she lets her mother sweep the road in front of the house in her
stead, while her own father irons her underclothing."

To this Lamme made no answer, but exclaimed delightedly:

"She looked at me just now!"

By this time they were come to Lamme's lodging, near the
Pont-des-Arches. They knocked at the door, and a one-eyed servant
opened to them. Ulenspiegel saw that she was old, scraggy, lank,
and fierce of aspect.

Lamme addressed her as La Sanginne, and inquired if she would take
Ulenspiegel to help in the kitchen.

"I will give him a trial," she said.

"Then take him," said Lamme, "and let him also make trial of the
delights of your kitchen."

La Sanginne put three black puddings on the table, a pint of ale,
and a large loaf of bread. Ulenspiegel set to with a will, and Lamme
began to nibble at one of the puddings.

"Know you," Lamme asked presently, "where it is that our souls abide?"

"No, Lamme," said Ulenspiegel.

"In our stomachs," Lamme told him, "so they can keep them excavated
continually, and for ever renew in our bodies the impulse for
life. And who are the best companions for a man? I'll tell you. The
best companions for a man are all good and jolly things to eat,
and wine from the Meuse to crown all!"

"True," said Ulenspiegel. "A pudding is good company to a solitary
soul."

"He's still hungry," said Lamme to La Sanginne. "Give him some
more." And the woman served him with a second portion of pudding--white
this time.

While Ulenspiegel went on eating, Lamme grew thoughtful.

"When I die," said he, "my stomach will die with me, and down there
in purgatory they will leave me to fast, and I shall have to carry
my poor belly about with me, all empty and limp."

"I like the black ones best," said Ulenspiegel.

"You have eaten six already," said La Sanginne, "and you won't have
any more."

"You may be sure," said Lamme, "that you will be well treated here,
and you will have just the same to eat as I do."

"I shall remember this promise of yours," said Ulenspiegel. But
seeing that what his friend had told him was the truth, Ulenspiegel
was well content, and the puddings that he had swallowed gave him
such courage that on that very day he polished the kettles and the
pots and the pans till they shone like the sun. And he lived happily
in that house, frequenting willingly the kitchen and the wine-cellar,
and leaving the loft to the cats.

One day La Sanginne had two poulets to roast, and she asked Ulenspiegel
to turn the spit while she went to market for some herbs for a
seasoning. The two poulets being well roasted, Ulenspiegel took
one of them and ate it. When La Sanginne returned from the market
she remarked:

"There were two poulets, but now I can only see one."

"Just open your other eye," answered Ulenspiegel, "and you will see
the two of them all right!"

But she was angry, and went to Lamme Goedzak to tell him what had
happened. Lamme came down into the kitchen and said to Ulenspiegel:

"Why do you make fun of my serving-maid? There were certainly two
poulets."

"There were," said Ulenspiegel, "but when I came you told me that I
was to eat and drink just as much as you. There were two poulets. Very
well. I have eaten one, and you will eat the other. My pleasure is
over. Yours is still to come. Are you not happier than I?"

"Yes," said Lamme smiling, "but just you do what La Sanginne tells you,
and you'll find your work halved."

"I will be careful to do as you say," said Ulenspiegel.

So every time that La Sanginne told him to do anything he did but
the half of it. If she asked him to go and draw two pails of water
he would only bring back one; and if she told him to go and fill a
pot of ale at the cask, he would pour the half of it down his throat
on the way--and so on and so on.

At last La Sanginne grew tired of these goings on, and she told Lamme
that either this good-for-nothing fellow must leave the house or she
must leave herself.

Lamme descended on Ulenspiegel and told him:

"You'll have to go, my son, notwithstanding that you have looked so
much better in health since you have been here. Listen to that cock
crowing. And it's two o'clock of the afternoon! That means rain. I am
sorry to have to put you out of doors in bad weather. But there, my
son, you know that La Sanginne is the guardian angel of my life, with
her lovely fricassees. If she were to leave me I might die a speedy
death. I cannot risk it. Go then, my boy, and God be with you, and here
are three florins and this string of saveloys to liven your journey."

And Ulenspiegel departed, crestfallen and with many regrets for Lamme
and his kitchen.






XXVII


There was a rumour abroad that the Emperor Charles was going to annul
the right of the monks to inherit the estates of those who happened to
die in their convents, a thing which was very displeasing to the Pope.

One day when Ulenspiegel was come to fish from the banks of the
river Meuse, he was thinking to himself that by the above action the
Emperor would stand to profit both ways, since he would inherit the
said estates, while the family of the deceased would inherit nothing
at all. Pondering these thoughts, he carefully baited his hook, and
then sat down by the river-side. And he began to nibble at a piece of
stale brown bread, regretting the while that he had no good Romagna
wine wherewith to wash it down. Still, he thought, one cannot always
have everything just as one would like. And all the time he kept on
throwing little pieces of his bread into the water, saying to himself
that no man deserves a meal who will not share it with his neighbours.

Now it was that a gudgeon came upon the scene, attracted in the first
place by the odour of bread-crumbs; and he licked up the bread with his
lips and opened his mouth for more, thinking no doubt in his innocence
that the bread would fall into his gullet of itself. But while gazing
thus in the air the gudgeon was suddenly swallowed up by a treacherous
pike who had hurled himself upon him like a flash of lightning.

Now the pike played a similar trick upon a carp who was catching flies
on the top of the water without any fear of danger. And after this
good meal the pike stayed motionless below the surface of the water,
disdainful of the smaller fry, who, indeed, were only too glad to swim
away from him of their own accord and as fast as ever they could. But
while the pike was taking his ease in this manner, a second pike came
up; and he was a hungry pike, and his mouth was open wide, for as yet
he had not breakfasted. With a bound the new arrival threw himself
upon his brother, and a furious combat ensued. They lashed at one
another with their fins, the water was red with their blood. The pike
that had eaten defended himself but feebly against the assaults of the
hungry one; nevertheless, backing a little, he took courage again and
threw himself like a bullet against his adversary. The latter awaited
this new attack with open jaws, which did not close until more than
half of his assailant's head had disappeared between them. Now they
tried to free themselves, but could not because of the hooked teeth
of the one that had become embedded in the flesh of the other. And
so they battled against each other in despair. Nor did they notice,
interlocked as they were, the strong fish-hook at the end of a silken
cord, which rose towards them from the depths of the water. In another
moment it had embedded itself in the body of the pike that had dined,
and the two struggling fish found themselves drawn out of the water
and laid together on the grass without the least deference.

As he killed them Ulenspiegel said:

"Ha ha, my little pikes, I will call you the Pope and the Emperor,
that prey ever one upon the other; but I, forsooth, am the Common
Man that shall catch you on his hook, in God's good time, and make
an end of your battles!"






XXVIII


In the meantime Nele was taking care of Katheline, who was still
out of her mind and who called continually upon Hanske, her ice-cold
lover. But sometimes Nele would leave her mother safely guarded in the
house of some kindly neighbour, and herself would wander far and wide
and all alone, even unto Antwerp, searching ever, among the ships on
the river, or along the dusty roads, for Ulenspiegel.

And at home, also, in the house of Claes, it was evil days. Claes
worked sadly on his land alone, for there was not enough work for
two. And Soetkin stayed in the cottage by herself, cooking the beans
which formed their daily fare in a hundred different ways, so that
she might have something to enliven her husband's appetite. And she
sang and laughed all the time, so that he might not be grieved by
seeing her unhappy.

One day a man on horseback drew up in front of the cottage. He was
dressed all in black, he was very thin, and very sad of countenance.

"Is any one within?" he asked.

"God bless your sadness," answered Soetkin, "but am I a phantom,
that seeing me here you must yet inquire if there is any one within?"

"Where is your father?" asked the horseman.

"If my father's name is Claes, he is over there," Soetkin told
him. "You will find him sowing corn."

The horseman departed in the direction in which she had pointed,
and Soetkin also went her way ruefully, for this was the sixth time
that she had had to go to the baker's to buy bread with no money to
pay for it.

On returning empty-handed to the cottage, Soetkin was amazed to see
Claes coming down the road triumphantly seated on the horse of the man
in black. He looked very proud of himself, and the man in black walked
by his side holding the horse's bridle. Hanging at his side, Claes
held a leathern bag which appeared to be full of things. Dismounting
from the horse, Claes embraced his companion, gave him a playful pat
upon the back, and then, shaking the bag, cried out in a loud voice:

"Long life to Josse, my brother, the good hermit of Meyborg! May
God keep him in joy and fatness, in happiness and health! Our Josse,
patron of plenty, and of all abundance, and rich soups!"

And so saying he took up the sack and deposited it upon the table. But
Soetkin said sadly:

"My good man, we shall not eat this day. The baker has refused to
give me any bread."

"Bread?" cried Claes, opening the sack and letting a river of golden
coins roll out on the table. "Bread? Here is bread and butter, meat,
wine, beer! Here are hams, marrow-bones, pasties, ortolans, fatted
poulets, castrelins, all just as you might find them in the houses of
the rich! Bread indeed! Here are casks of beer and kegs of wine! Mad
must be the baker who will refuse to give us bread. Verily we will
deal at his shop no more!"

"But, my good man!" said Soetkin amazed.

"Nay, listen," said Claes, "and make the most of your good fortune. For
these are the facts. Katheline, it seems, has lately been to Meyborg
in Germany, and Nele with her, on a visit to my eldest brother Josse,
who dwells there as a hermit. Nele told my brother how that we were
living in poverty, notwithstanding that we work so hard. And now,
if we are to believe this good messenger"--and here Claes pointed
to the black horseman--"Josse has left the holy Roman religion and
abandoned himself to the heresy of Luther."

The man in black made answer:

"It is they that are heretics, they who follow the cult of the Scarlet
Woman. For the Pope is a cheat and a trader in holy things."

"Oh!" cried Soetkin, "speak not so loud, sir. You will have us burned
alive, all three."

"Well," continued Claes, "it appears that Josse has made known to this
good messenger that inasmuch as he is going to fight in the army of
Frederic of Saxony, and is bringing him fifty armed men fully equipped,
he has no need of much money to leave it to the hands of some wretch
of a landsknecht, now that he himself is going to the war. Therefore,
says he, take it to my brother Claes, and render to him, with my
blessing, these seven hundred florins. Tell him to live virtuously,
and to ponder the salvation of his soul."

"Yea, verily," said the horseman, "now is the time. For God will
reward every man according to his works, and every man according to
his merit."

"Good sir," said Claes, "it is not forbidden, I trust, to rejoice
in the meantime at this good news? Deign, then, to stay with us,
and we will celebrate our fortune with a nice dinner of tripe,
well boiled, and a knuckle of that ham which I saw just now at the
pork-butcher's. Of a truth, it looked so plump and tasty that my
teeth almost shot out of my mouth to close thereon."

"Alas!" said the stranger, "the foolish make merry while the eye of
the Lord is yet upon them."

"Come now, messenger," said Claes, "will you eat and drink with us
or will you not?"

The man answered: "It will be time enough for the faithful to think
about such earthly joys when mighty Babylon has fallen."

Seeing Claes and Soetkin cross themselves, he made as though to leave
them. But Claes said to him:

"Since you persist in leaving us without accepting of our hospitality,
will you at least give to my brother the kiss of peace on my behalf,
and look after him well at the wars."

"That will I," said the man.

And he departed from them, while Soetkin went to make her preparations
for celebrating their good fortune.

Now it was quickly noised abroad through the town that Claes that was
once so poor had now become rich through the generosity of his brother
Josse. And the Dean of Damme was heard to say that it was Katheline no
doubt who had laid a charm on Josse, and he said this because Claes,
although he had received a large sum of money from his brother,
had given not so much as a single vestment to Notre Dame. But Claes
and Soetkin were happy again, Claes working in the fields or looking
after his business of charcoal-burning, while Soetkin attended to her
home right valiantly. Yet still was she sorrowful at heart, scanning
ever with her eyes the open road if perchance she might see her son
Ulenspiegel returning back to her. And thus it was these three lived
on and experienced the happiness which comes from God while waiting
for that which was going to come to them from men.






XXIX


The Emperor Charles had received a letter from England, from Philip,
who was now married to the Queen of that country.


    "Sir and Father," the letter ran,--"It is matter of sore
    displeasure to me that I should have to live in a country like
    this where the accursed heretics swarm like fleas and worms and
    locusts. Fire and sword are needed to remove them from the trunk
    of that tree of life which is our Holy Mother the Church. And,
    as if this were not trouble enough, I have also to put up with
    being regarded not as a King but merely as the husband of the
    Queen; for in very truth apart from her I am destitute of all
    authority. And the English make mock of me, spreading broadcast
    the most shameful pamphlets which assert that I am being bribed
    by the Pope to afflict their country with every kind of impious
    burning and persecution. Nor can I discover who it is that writes
    these pamphlets, nor yet who prints them. And when I try to raise
    from the people some necessary contribution (for in their malice
    and wickedness they often leave me without any money at all),
    they answer by advising me, in coarse lampoons, to ask of Satan
    in whose pay I am. Parliament makes excuses for fear of my sting,
    but I can get nothing out of them. And meanwhile the walls of
    London are covered with the grossest pictures representing me
    as a parricide who is ready to strike down your Majesty for the
    sake of my inheritance. But well you know, my Lord and Father,
    that notwithstanding all the hopes of a legitimate ambition,
    I most certainly desire that your Majesty may enjoy yet long and
    glorious years of rule. Furthermore, there are circulating through
    the city certain engravings on copper which show me torturing
    animals and laughing the while. But well you know, Sire, that if
    ever it has happened to me to taste this profane pleasure, I have
    surely never laughed thereat. But they try to make out that this
    innocent sport is a sort of crime, despite the fact that animals
    have no souls, and although it is assuredly permitted to all men,
    especially if they be of Royal birth, to make use of brute beasts
    even unto death for purposes of honest recreation. But in this
    land of England the people are so fond of animals that they treat
    their animals better than their own servants. The stables and
    dog-kennels are kept like palaces, and I have known great lords
    who pass the night on the same litter with their horse. To crown
    all, my noble Wife and Queen is barren, and these people have the
    outrageous effrontery to declare that I am to blame and not she,
    who is in other respects a most jealous and intractable woman,
    and amorous to excess. Sir and Father, I pray daily that the Lord
    God may have me in his grace, and I live in hopes that another
    throne may be given me, even though it be with the Turk, what
    time I still await that other glorious throne to which I shall
    be one day called by the honour of being the son of your very
    Glorious and Victorious Majesty.


    (Signed) Phle."


To this letter the Emperor made reply in the following terms:


    "Sir and Son,--You have bitter enemies, I do not dispute it; but
    you must try to endure them without vexation in anticipation of
    the yet more brilliant crown that shall be yours hereafter. I have
    already made it widely known that I am determined to retire from
    my lordship over the Low Countries and other of my dominions,
    for I am growing old and gouty, and I know that I shall not
    long be able to withstand King Henry the Second of France, for
    Fortune ever favours the young. You should remember also that
    so long as you are master of England, you will be as a thorn in
    the side of our enemy France. Truly I suffered a nasty defeat at
    Metz, and lost there near forty thousand men. I was compelled
    to retreat before the King of Saxony. If God does not soon see
    fit by a stroke of His good and divine will to re-establish me
    in the force and vigour of my prime, I am inclined, Sir and Son,
    to quit my kingdoms altogether and to leave them to you.

    "Have patience therefore, and do your duty meanwhile against the
    heretics, sparing none of them, man, woman, girl, or child, for
    I am credibly informed that Madame your Queen has been minded to
    treat them mercifully, and this is a great grief to me.


    "Your affectionate father,

    "(Signed) Charles."






XXX


Ulenspiegel had been long upon the road. His feet were bleeding,
but in the district of the bishopric of Mayence he met a wagon full
of pilgrims who invited him to join them, and they carried him with
them to Rome.

When they arrived at the city Ulenspiegel got down from the wagon,
and straightway noticed a charming-looking woman standing at the door
of an inn. She smiled when she saw him looking at her.

Taking this kindly humour of hers for a good omen:

"Hostess," says he, "will you give asile, pray, to a poor pilgrim on
pilgrimage who has carried his full time and is about to be delivered
of his sins?"

"We give asile to all such as pay us for it," said the woman.

I have a hundred ducats in my purse," said Ulenspiegel (who, in fact,
had no more than one), "and I would dearly like to spend the first
of them in your pleasant company and over a bottle of old Roman wine."

"Wine is not dear in these holy parts," she answered. "Come in and
drink your fill. It will only cost you a soldo."

And they twain drank together for so long, and emptied so many bottles
of wine and all to the tune of such pleasant conversation, that the
hostess was constrained to order her servant to serve the customers in
her place, while she and Ulenspiegel retired into a room at the back of
the inn, a marble chamber, cool as a winter's day, where, leaning her
head on her new friend's shoulder, she demanded of him who he might be.

And Ulenspiegel answered her:

"I am Lord of Geeland, Count of Gavergeeten, Baron of Tuchtendeel. I
was born at Damme, in Flanders, and I hold there for my estate five
and twenty acres of moonlight."

"What land is that whence you come?" the hostess asked him, drinking
from Ulenspiegel's tankard.

"It is a misty land," he told her, "a land of illusion, where are sown
the seeds of false hopes and of castles in the air. But you, sweet
hostess mine, were born in no such land of moonlight, you with your
amber skin and your eyes that shine like pearls. For bright is the
sunshine that has coloured that browned gold of your hair, and it is
Lady Venus herself who, without a single pang of jealousy, has formed
your soft shoulders, and your prancing breasts, your rounded arms,
your delicate sweet hands. Say, shall we sup together this night?"

"Fine pilgrim that you are from Flanders," says she, "say, why are
you come hither?"

"To have a talk with the Pope," said Ulenspiegel.

"Heavens!" she cried, clasping her hands together, "and that is
something that even myself, a native of the country, have never been
able to do!"

"Yet shall I," said Ulenspiegel.

"But know you where the Pope lives, what he is like, what are his
habits and his ways of life?"

"I heard all about him on the way," answered Ulenspiegel. "His name
is Julius III. Wanton he is, and gay and dissolute, a good talker,
that never falters for a clever repartee. I have also heard that
he has taken an extraordinary fancy to a little dirty beggar of a
man--a dark fellow and a rude who used to wander about with a monkey
asking for alms. He came to the Pope, and the Pope, it seems, has
made a Cardinal of him, and now gets quite ill if a single day passes
without their meeting."

"Have some more to drink," said the landlady, "and do not speak
so loud."

"I have also heard," continued Ulenspiegel, "that one day he swore
like a soldier, Al dispetto di Dio, potta di Dio, and all because they
did not bring him the cold peacock that he had ordered to be kept for
his supper. And he excused himself, saying, 'If my Master was angered
over an apple, I, who am the vicar of God, can certainly swear an
oath about a pheasant!' You see, my pet, I know the Pope very well,
and understand just what sort of a man he is!"

"Oh dear," she said, "pray be careful and do not tell this to any
one else. But still, and in spite of all you tell me, I maintain that
you will not get to see him."

"I shall," said Ulenspiegel.

"I will wager you a hundred florins."

"They are mine!" said Ulenspiegel.

The very next day, tired as he was, he ran through all the city and
found out that the Pope was to say Mass that morning at the Church of
St. John Lateran. Thither Ulenspiegel repaired, and took up a position
as prominently in the Pope's view as he could. And every time that
the Pope elevated chalice or Host, Ulenspiegel turned his back to the
altar. Now one of the cardinals was officiating with the Pope, swarthy
of countenance he was, malicious and corpulent; and on his shoulder
he carried a monkey. He reported Ulenspiegel's behaviour to the Pope,
who straightway after Mass sent four terrible-looking soldiers (such
as one finds in those warlike lands) to seize the pilgrim.

"What religion do you profess?" the Pope asked him.

"Most Holy Father," answered Ulenspiegel, "my religion is the same
as my landlady's."

The Pope had the woman fetched.

"What is your religion?" he asked her.

"The same as your Holiness's," she told him.

"That also is mine," said Ulenspiegel.

The Pope asked him why he turned his back upon the Holy Sacrament.

"I felt myself unworthy to look upon it face to face," he answered.

"You are a pilgrim?" said the Pope.

"Yes," answered Ulenspiegel, "and I am come from Flanders to beg
remission of my sins."

The Pope absolved and blessed him, and Ulenspiegel departed in the
company of his landlady, who paid over to him his hundred florins. And
with this good store of money he departed from Rome and set out to
return again to the land of Flanders.

But he had to pay seven ducats for the certificate of his pardon,
all scribed upon parchment.






XXXI


In those days there came to Damme two brothers of the Premonstratensian
Order, sellers of indulgences. And over their monastic robes they
wore beautiful jackets bordered with lace.

When it was fine they stood outside the porch of the church, and under
the porch when it was wet, and there they stuck up their tariff;
and this was the scale of charges: for six liards a hundred years'
indulgence, for one patard two hundred years, three hundred years
for half a sovereign, four hundred years for seven florins, and
so on according to the price--indulgences plenary or semi-plenary,
and pardons for all the most terrible crimes.

And they gave to their patrons, in exchange for payment, little
parchment certificates on which were written out the number of years
of indulgence, and below was the following inscription:


        Who wants not to be
        Stewed, roasted, fricasseed,
        Burning in hell for evermore,
        Indulgences let him buy.
        Pardon and forgiveness,
        For a little money,
        God will return to him.


And the eager purchasers came thronging round the monks. One of whom
never left off addressing his audience. This brother had a blooming
countenance, and displayed three chins at least, and a portentous
belly, all without the least embarrassment.

"Unhappy ones!" he cried, fixing with his eye now one, now another
of the crowd. "Unhappy ones! Let me show you a picture. Behold! You
are in hell! The fire burns you most cruelly. You are boiling in
that cauldron full of oil wherein are prepared the olie-koekjes of
Astarte. You are nothing better than a sausage on the frying-pan
of Lucifer, or a leg of mutton on the spit of Guilguiroth, biggest
of all the devils. And first they cut you up in little pieces. Ah,
woe is me! Behold this sinner who despised indulgences! Behold this
plate of daintiness! 'Tis he! 'Tis he! His wicked body thus reduced
by damnation. And for sauce, brimstone and pitch and tar! Thus are
those poor sinners eaten alive to be born again continually to their
pain! And here in all reality is the place of tears and of grinding
of teeth. Have mercy, God of mercy! For now, poor damned one, you are
in hell, and you suffer unspeakable woes. And yet if any there were
to subscribe a denier for you, straightway one of your hands would
find relief; and let but some other give a half a denier and your two
hands would be freed entirely from the pain of the fire. But as for
the remainder of your body, let some one only give a florin, and there
falls the dew of indulgence over all! O freshness of delight! And now
for ten days, a hundred days, a thousand years maybe, according as one
pays, no more roast meat, no more olie-koekjes, no more fricassees
for you! And even if it is not for yourself, is there no one else,
there in the secret depths of the fire, no one else for whom you
would wish to gain relief--one of your parents perhaps, a dear wife,
or some lovely girl with whom you have committed wilful sin?"

And as he spoke these words, the monk jogged the elbow of his brother
that stood by holding in his hands a silver bowl. And that brother,
lowering his eyes at this signal, shook the bowl unctuously, as if
inviting contributions.

Whereat the preacher continued in this wise: "Or perhaps you have
a son or a daughter, maybe, in the midst of this terrible fire,
or some beloved little child? Hark, how they cry aloud, and weep,
and call to you by name. Can you remain deaf to their pitiful
voices? You cannot. Even a heart of ice must melt, though it cost
you a carolus! And behold, at the very sound of the carolus as it
strikes this vile metal" (and here his comrade shook the plate again),
"a space opens out in the midst of the fire, and the tormented soul
ascends to some volcano mouth where it meets the air, the fresh,
free air! Where are the pains of the fire now? For the sea is close
at hand, and straight into the sea the soul plunges. She swims on her
back, on her stomach, floats upon the waves, dives beneath them. Oh,
listen how she sings aloud in her joy! See how she rolls about in
the water! The very angels gaze down upon her from heaven and are
glad. Eagerly they await her coming; but not yet, not yet has she
had her fill of the sea. If she might only turn into a fish! She
knoweth not how there are prepared for her up aloft sweet baths,
perfumed and scented, with fine bits of sugar-candy floating therein,
all white and fresh like bits of ice. Now a shark appears. She
fears it not at all, but clambers upon its back, and sits there all
unnoticed, hoping he will take her with him down into the depths of
the sea. And now she goes to greet the little water-angels that feed
on waterzoey from coral cauldrons, and on freshest oysters from plates
of mother-of-pearl. And she is welcomed and feted and made much of,
but still the angels in heaven beckon her on high, till at last,
refreshed and happy, you may see her rise aloft, singing like a lark,
up to the highest heaven where God sits in glory on his throne. There
she finds again all her earthly friends and loved ones (save only
those, forsooth, that in this life have spoken ill of indulgences
and of our Holy Mother Church and who burn now for their sin upon the
floor of hell. And so for ever and for ever and for ever to all ages,
in an all-consuming eternity). But that other soul, now dear to God,
refreshes herself in soft baths and crunches sugar-candy. Buy then, my
brothers, buy your indulgences. We sell them for crusats, for florins,
or for English sovereigns. Even copper coin is not refused. Buy then,
buy! This is the Holy Mart! And we have indulgences adapted to the
poor man's purse as well as to the rich man's. Only, I am sorry to
say, my brothers, no credit is allowed. For to buy without paying
cash is a crime most grievous in the eyes of Our Lord."

Hereupon the monk who had kept silent shook his platter, and the
florins, crusats, patards, sols, and deniers fell into it as thick
as hail.

Claes, feeling himself rich, paid a florin for an indulgence of ten
thousand years; and the monks delivered to him a piece of parchment
in exchange.

At last, seeing that there was no one left in Damme but the miserly
folk who would not buy indulgences at any price, the two monks left
the village and proceeded on their way to Heyst.






XXXII


In those days the country round Liege was in a disturbed and dangerous
state by reason of the heresy hunts, and Lamme Goedzak came again
to live in Damme. He was married now, and his wife followed him
willingly because the people of Liege, who had a mocking nature,
used to make fun of her husband's meekness.

Lamme often visited Claes, who, since coming into his fortune,
was always to be found at the tavern of the Blauwe Torre, and
had even appropriated one of the tables for himself and his boon
companions. This table was next to the one where sat the Dean of the
Fishmongers, Josse Grypstuiver by name, drinking sparingly from his
half-pint tankard. For he was a miser, a stingy fellow who thought the
world of himself, and lived for the most part on smoked herrings, and
thought more of money than of the safety of his own soul. Now Claes
carried in his pocket that piece of parchment whereon was inscribed
the tale of his ten-thousand-year indulgence.

One evening Claes was drinking at the Blauwe Torre in the company
of Lamme Goedzak, Jan van Roosebeke, and Matthys van Assche, Josse
Grypstuiver also being present. Claes had been imbibing freely, and
Jan Roosebeke was remonstrating with him, saying that it was sin to
drink so much. But Claes replied that a pint too much meant nothing
more serious than an extra half-day in purgatory.

"Besides," said he, "I have a ten-thousand-year indulgence in my
pocket! Is there any one here that would like a hundred years of
them, I wonder, so that he may indulge his stomach without fear of
the consequences?"

Every one shouted at once:

"How much are you selling them at?"

"For a pint of beer," Claes answered, "I will give you one hundred
days, but for a muske conyn you shall have a hundred and fifty!"

Some of the revellers gave Claes a pint of beer, others a piece of ham,
and for each and all Claes cut off a little strip of his parchment. It
was not Claes, forsooth, who consumed the price of his indulgences,
but Lamme Goedzak; and he gorged himself so that he began to swell
visibly; and all the time Claes went on distributing his merchandise
up and down the tavern.

The man Grypstuiver turned a sour face towards him, and asked if he
had an indulgence for ten days.

"No," said Claes, "that's too small a piece to cut."

Every one laughed, and Grypstuiver ate his anger as best he could. Then
Claes went home, followed by Lamme, walking as if his legs were made
of wool.






XXXIII


Towards the end of the third year of her banishment, Katheline returned
to her home in Damme. And continually she cried aloud in her madness:
"Fire, fire! My head is on fire! My soul is knocking, make a hole,
she wants to get out!" And if ever she saw an ox or a sheep she would
run from it as if in terror. And she would sit on the bench at the back
of her cottage, under the lime-trees, wagging her head and staring at
the people of Damme as they passed by. But she did not recognize them,
and they called her "The mad-woman."

Meanwhile Ulenspiegel went wandering along the roads and pathways of
the world, and one day he met a donkey on the highway, harnessed with
leather and studs of brass, and its head ornamented with tassels and
plumes of scarlet wool....

Some old women were standing round the donkey in a circle, all talking
at once and telling each other how that no one could tame the donkey
for that he was a terrible animal and had belonged to the Baron
of Raix, who was a magician and had been burned alive for having
sacrificed eight children to the devil. "And he ran away so fast,"
said the old women, "that none could catch him. And without a doubt
he is under the protection of Satan. For a while ago he seemed tired,
resting by the wayside, and the village constables came to seize
him. But he suddenly kicked out with his hind legs and brayed in such
fearful fashion that they durst not to go near him. And that was no
bray of an ass, but the bray of the devil himself. So the constables
left him to browse among the thistles, and passed no sentence upon
him, nor did they burn him alive for a sorcerer as they should have
done. Verily these men have no courage."

Notwithstanding this brave talk, the donkey had only to prick up his
ears or flick his sides with his tail, to send the women running away
from him with cries of terror. Then back they would come, chattering
and jabbering, but ever ready to be off again if the donkey showed
the least sign of movement. Ulenspiegel could not help laughing at
the sight,

"Ah!" said he, "talk and curiosity! They flow like an everlasting river
from the mouths of women--and especially old women, for with the young
the flow is less continuous by reason of their amorous occupations."

Then, considering the donkey:

"This sorcerer-beast," said he to himself, "is a sprightly ass without
a doubt, and a good goer. What if I were to take him for my own,
to ride, or maybe sell him?"

Without another word Ulenspiegel went and got a feed of oats, and
returning, offered them to the donkey. But while he was eating of those
viands Ulenspiegel jumped nimbly upon his back, and taking the reins,
turned him first to the north, then to the east, and lastly to the
west. Then, when he had gone from them a little way, he raised his
hand as if in blessing on those aged dames. But they, almost fainting
with fear, fell upon their knees before him. And that evening when
they met together again, the tale was told of how an angel with a
felt hat trimmed with a pheasant's feather had come and blessed them,
and had taken off the magician's donkey by special favour of God.

And Ulenspiegel, astride of his ass, went his way through the green
fields, where the horse pranced about at liberty, where the cows and
heifers grazed at their ease or lay resting in the sunshine. And he
called the ass Jef.

At last Jef came to a stop, and began, as happy as could be, to
make his dinner off the thistles which grew in that place in great
abundance. But anon he shivered all over, and flicked his sides with
his tail in the hope of ridding himself of the greedy horse-flies who,
like himself, were trying to get their dinner, not off the thistles,
but off his own flesh.

Ulenspiegel, who himself began to feel the pangs of hunger, grew
very melancholy.

"Happy indeed would you be, friend donkey, with your good dinner of
fine thistles if there was no one to disturb you in your pleasures,
and to remind you that you also are mortal, born, that is to say,
to the endurance of all kinds of villainies."

Thus did Ulenspiegel address his steed, and thus continued:

"For even as you have this gadfly of yours to worry you, so also
hath His Holiness the Pope a gadfly of his own, even master Martin
Luther; and His Sacred Majesty the Emperor, hath he not my Lord of
France for his tormentor--Francis, first of that name, the King with
the very long nose and a sword that is longer still? And forsooth,
donkey mine, it is certainly permitted that I also, poor little man
wandering all alone, may have my gadfly too.

"Alas! Woe is me! All my pockets have holes in them, and by the said
apertures do all my fine ducats and florins and daelders ramble away,
flying like a crowd of mice before the mouth of the cat that would
devour them. I wonder why it is that money will have nothing to do
with me--me that am so fond of money? Verily Fortune is no woman,
whatever they may say, for she loves none but greedy misers that shut
her up in their coffers, tie her up in sacks, close her down under
twenty keys and never let her show herself at the window by so much
as the little tip of her gilded nose! This, then, is the gadfly that
preys upon me and makes me itch, and tickles me without ever so much
as raising a laugh. But there, you are not listening to me at all,
friend donkey! And you think of nothing but your food. You gobbling
gobbler, your long ears are deaf to the cry of an empty stomach! But
you shall listen to me. I insist!"

And he belaboured the ass as hard as he could, till the brute began
to bray.

"Come, come, now that you have given us a song!" cried Ulenspiegel. But
the donkey would not advance by more than a single step, and seemed
determined to go on eating thistles until he had consumed all that
grew by the roadside. And of these there was an abundance.

When Ulenspiegel saw what was happening he dismounted and cut off a
bunch of thistles; then, mounting the ass again, he placed the bunch
of thistles just in front of the animal's nose. And in this way,
leading the donkey by the nose, he arrived before long in the land
of the Landgrave of Hesse.

"Friend donkey," he said as they went along, "you, verily, go running
after a bunch of thistles, the meagre fare with which I have provided
you; but you leave behind the lovely road that is filled with all
kinds of most delicate herbs. And thus do all men, scenting out,
some of them, the bouquet called Fame which Fortune puts under their
nose, others the bouquet of Gain, and yet others the bouquet that is
called Love. But at the end of the journey they discover, like you,
that they have been pursuing things that are of little account,
and that they have left behind all that is worth anything--health,
and work, repose, happiness, and home."

In such discourse with his donkey Ulenspiegel came at last to the
palace of the Landgrave.

There two Captains of Artillery were playing dice upon the steps of
the palace, and one of them, a red-haired man of gigantic stature,
soon noticed Ulenspiegel as he approached modestly upon his ass,
gazing down upon them and their game.

"What do you want," said the Captain, "you, fellow, with your starved
pilgrim's face?"

"I am extremely hungry," answered Ulenspiegel, "and if I am a pilgrim,
it is against my will."

"And you are hungry," replied the Captain, "go, eat the next gallows
cord you come to, for such cords are prepared for vagabonds like you."

"Sir Captain," answered Ulenspiegel, "only give me the fine golden
cord you wear on your hat, and I will go straightway and hang myself
by the teeth from that fat ham which I see hanging over there at
the cook-shop."

The Captain asked him where he came from. Ulenspiegel told him,
"From Flanders."

"What do you want?"

"To show His Highness the Landgrave one of my pictures. For I am
a painter."

"If it is a painter that you are," said the Captain, "and from
Flanders, come in, and I will lead you to my master."

When he had been brought before the Landgrave, Ulenspiegel saluted
thrice and again.

"May your Highness deign," said he, "to excuse my presumption in
daring to come and lay before these noble feet a picture I have made
for your Highness, wherein I have had the honour to portray Our Lady
the Virgin in her royal attire."

And then after a moment's pause:

"It may be that my picture may please your Highness," he continued,
"and in that case I am sufficiently presumptuous to hope that I
might aspire even unto this fine chair of velvet, where sat in his
lifetime the painter that is lately deceased and ever to be regretted
by your Magnanimity."

Now the picture which Ulenspiegel showed him was very beautiful,
and when the Landgrave had inspected it, he told Ulenspiegel to sit
down upon the chair, for that he would certainly make him his Court
Painter. And the Landgrave kissed him on both cheeks, most joyously,
and Ulenspiegel sat down on the chair.

"Of a truth you are a very talkative fellow," said the Landgrave,
looking him up and down.

"May it please your Lordship," answered Ulenspiegel, "Jef--my
donkey--has dined most excellently well on thistles, but as for me
I have seen nothing but misery these three days past, and have had
nothing to nourish me but the mists of expectation."

"You shall soon have some better fare than that," answered the
Landgrave. "But where is this donkey of yours?"

"I left him on the Grande Place," Ulenspiegel said, "opposite the
palace; and I should be most obliged if he could be given lodging
for the night--some straw and a little fodder."

The Landgrave immediately gave instructions to one of his pages that
Ulenspiegel's donkey should be treated even as his own.

The hour for supper soon arrived, and the meal was like a wedding
festival. Hot meats smoked in the dishes, wine flowed like water,
while Ulenspiegel and the Landgrave grew both as red as burning
coals. Ulenspiegel also became very merry, but His Highness was
somewhat pensive even in his cups.

"Our painter," said he suddenly, "will have to paint our portrait. For
it is a great satisfaction to a mortal prince to bequeath to his
descendants the memory of his countenance."

"Sir Landgrave," answered Ulenspiegel, "your will is my
pleasure. Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling sorry at the thought
that if your Lordship is painted by himself he will feel lonely,
perhaps, all there in solitary state through the ages to come. Surely
he should be accompanied by his noble wife, Madame the Landgravine,
by her lords and ladies, and by his captains and most warlike officers
of State. In the midst of these, my Lord and his Lady will shine like
twin suns surrounded by lanterns."

"Well, painter mine, and how much shall I have to pay you for this
mighty work?"

"One hundred florins, either now or later, just as you will."

"Here they are, in advance," said the Landgrave.

"Most compassionate master," said Ulenspiegel as he took the money,
"you have filled my lamp with oil, and now it shall burn bright in
your honour."

On the next day Ulenspiegel asked the Landgrave to let him see those
persons who were to have the honour of being painted. And first there
came before him the Duke of Lueneburg, commander of the infantry of the
Landgrave. He was a stout man who carried with difficulty his great
paunch swollen with food. He went up to Ulenspiegel and whispered in
his ear:

"When you paint my portrait see that you take off half my fat at
least. Else will I order my soldiers to have you hung."

The Duke passed on. And next there came a noble lady with a hump on
her back and a bosom as flat as a sword-blade.

"Sir painter," said she, "unless you remove the hump on my back and
give me a couple of others in the place where they should be, verily
I will have you drawn and quartered as if you were a prisoner."

The lady went away, and now there appeared a young maid of honour,
fair, fresh, and comely, only that she lacked three teeth under her
upper lip.

"Sir painter," said she, "if you do not paint me smiling and showing
through my parted lips a perfect set of teeth, I'll have you chopped
up into small pieces at the hands of my gallant. There he is, look
at him."

And she pointed to that Captain of Artillery who a while ago had been
playing dice on the palace steps. And she went her way.

The procession continued, until at last Ulenspiegel was left alone
with the Landgrave.

The Landgrave said to him:

"My friend, let me warn you that if your painting has the misfortune
to be inaccurate or false to all these various physiognomies by so
much as a single feature, I will have your throat cut as if you were
a chicken."

"If I am to have my head cut off," thought Ulenspiegel, "if I am to be
drawn and quartered, chopped up into small pieces, and finally hung,
I should do better to paint no portrait at all. I must consider what
is best to be done."

"And where is the hall," he asked the Landgrave, "which I am to adorn
with all these likenesses!"

"Follow me," said the Landgrave. And he brought him to a large room
with great bare walls.

"This is the hall," he said.

"I should be very grateful," said Ulenspiegel, "if some curtains could
be hung right along the walls, so that my paintings may be protected
from the flies and the dust."

"Certainly," said the Landgrave.

When the curtains had been hung as directed, Ulenspiegel asked if
he might have three apprentices to help him with the mixing of his
colours.

This was done, and for thirty days Ulenspiegel and the apprentices
spent the whole of their time feasting and carousing together, with
every extravagance of meat and drink. And the Landgrave looked on at
it all. But at last on the thirty-first day he came and thrust his
nose in at the door of the chamber where Ulenspiegel had begged him
not to enter.

"Well, Tyl," he said, "and where are the portraits?"

"They are not finished," answered Ulenspiegel.

"When shall I be able to see them?"

"Not just yet," said Ulenspiegel.

On the six-and-thirtieth day the Landgrave again thrust his nose
inside the door.

"Well, Tyl," he inquired, "how now?"

"Ah, Sir Landgrave," said Ulenspiegel, "the portraits are getting on."

On the sixtieth day the Landgrave grew very angry, and coming right
into the room:

"Show me the pictures at once!" he cried.

"I will do so," answered Ulenspiegel, "but pray have the kindness
not to draw the curtain until you have summoned hither the lords and
captains and ladies of your court."

"Very well," said the Landgrave, and at his command the aforesaid
notabilities appeared. Ulenspiegel took up his stand in front of the
curtain, which was still carefully drawn.

"My Lord Landgrave," he said, "and you, Madame the Landgravine,
and you my Lord of Lueneburg, and you others, fine ladies and valiant
captains, know that behind this curtain have I portrayed to the best
of my abilities your faces, every one warlike or gentle as the case may
be. It will be quite easy for each one of you to recognize himself. And
that you are anxious to see yourselves is only natural. But I pray
you have patience and suffer me to speak a word or two before the
curtain is drawn. Know this, fair ladies and valiant captains; all you
that are of noble blood shall behold my paintings and rejoice. But
if there be among you any that is of low or humble birth, such an
one will see nothing but a blank wall. So there! And now, have the
goodness to open wide your noble eyes."

And so saying, Ulenspiegel drew the curtain.

"Remember," said he again, "only they of noble birth can see my
pictures, whether they be lords or ladies." And again, presently:
"He of low birth is blind to my pictures But he who clearly sees,
that man is a nobleman without a doubt."

At that every one present opened wide his eyes, pretending--you may
be sure--to see, and feigning to recognize the various faces and
pointing themselves out to one another, though in reality they beheld
nothing at all but a bare wall. And for this they were each and all
secretly ashamed.

Suddenly the court jester, who was standing by, jumped three feet in
the air and jaggled his bells.

"Take me for a villain," he cried, "a most villainous villain, but
I verily will affirm and assert and say with trumpets and fanfares
that there I see a wall, a blank, white wall, and nothing but a wall,
so help me God and his saints!"

Ulenspiegel said:

"When fools 'gin talking, time for wise men to be walking."

And he was about to leave the palace when the Landgrave stopped him.

"Fool in your folly," said he, "you make boast that you go through the
world praising what is good and fair and making mock of foolery, and
you have dared to make open game of so many and so high-born ladies,
and of their yet more noble lords, bringing ridicule on the pride
of their nobility! Of a truth I tell you that the day will come when
you will hang for your free speech."

"If the cord is of gold," said Ulenspiegel, "it will break with dread
at my approach."

"Stay," said the Landgrave. "Here is the first bit of your rope,"
and he gave him fifteen florins.

"All thanks to you," said Ulenspiegel, "and I promise you that every
tavern on the road shall have a thread of it, a thread of that gold
which makes Croesuses of all those rascally tavern-keepers."

And off he went on his donkey, holding his head up high in air,
with the plume in his cap wagging joyously in the breeze.






XXXIV


Now was the season of yellowing leaves, and the winds of autumn
were beginning to blow. Sometimes for an hour or two it seemed that
Katheline was come into her right mind again, and at such times
Claes would say that the merciful spirit of God had come to visit
her. Then it was that she had power to throw a charm upon Nele, by
signs and incantations, so that the girl was able to see whatever was
happening all over the world, in the public squares of the cities,
or on the highways, or in the houses themselves.

To-day Katheline was in one of these moods of right-mindedness, and
she was eating olie-koekje with Claes, Soetkin, and Nele. Claes said:

"This is the day of His Majesty the Emperor's abdication. Nele,
my dear, do you think you could see as far as Brussels in Brabant?"

"If Katheline wishes me to," said Nele.

Thereupon Katheline caused her to sit down on a bench, and making
sundry passes with her hands, she muttered her incantations, which
soon sent the girl off into a trance.

Then Katheline said to her:

"Make your way into the little house which is called the Park House,
and is the favourite residence of the Emperor Charles the Fifth."

Whereupon Nele began to speak, in a low voice, as though she were
half suffocated.

"I am standing in a small room painted green. There is a man in the
room. He is about fifty-four years of age, and he has a bald head and
a protruding chin with a white beard growing upon it. His grey eyes
have a wicked, crafty look, filled with cruelty and false kindness. And
this is the man they call 'His Most Sacred Majesty.' He suffers from
a catarrh and always keeps coughing. Beside him is another, a young
man with an ugly face like that of a hydrocephalous monkey. I saw him
once at Antwerp. He is King Philip. At the present moment he is being
rebuked by His Sacred Majesty for having slept out last night away from
home. Doubtless, says His Majesty, he was at some brothel in company
of a trollop of the town. His hair, it seems, smells of the tavern,
no place, that, for a King to seek his pleasures in, he who may have
his choice of all the sweetest bodies in the world, of skin like
satin fresh from perfumed baths, and of hands of high-born ladies,
very amorous. Such as these, says His Majesty, are more fit for him,
surely, than some half-mad wench that is come, scarcely washed, from
the arms of a drunken soldier. For there is not one among all the
ladies, the most noble, the most beautiful, whether virgin, wife,
or widow, that would resist King Philip! And they would be proud to
give him of their love--not by a greasy glimmer of stinking tallow,
but by the light of scented tapers made of finest wax.

"The King replies that he will obey His Sacred Majesty in all
things. Whereupon His Sacred Majesty has a fit of coughing and
drinks some draughts of hippocras. After which he addresses his son,
sorrowfully, in these words:

"'You must know, my son, that very soon I am to give to the world the
mighty spectacle of the abdication of my throne in the favour of you,
my son. And I shall speak before a great crowd of people, coughing
and hiccuping as I am--for all my life I have eaten too heartily. And
very hard-hearted must you be if you shed no tears when you hear what
I shall have to say.

"'I shall shed many tears,' answers King Philip.

"And now His Sacred Majesty is speaking to his valet, a man named
Dubois.

"'Bring me some sugar dipped in Madeira,' he cries. 'I have the
hiccups. Pray heaven they do not attack me when I am making my
speech before all those people. Oh, that goose I had last night
for dinner! Will it never pass? I think I had better take a glass
of Orleans wine? No, it is too harsh. Or perhaps if I ate some
anchovies? No, they are oily. Dubois, there, give me some Roman wine!'

"Dubois does as he is told, then dresses his master in a robe of
crimson velvet, wraps a golden cloak about him, girds on his sword,
places the globe and sceptre in his hands, and on his head the
crown. Thus arrayed, His Sacred Majesty goes forth from the Park
House, riding on a little mule and followed by King Philip and many
notables. Presently they arrive at a large building called the Palace,
and they come to a room wherein is a tall thin man, most richly
dressed. He is the Prince of Orange, William, surnamed the Silent.

"'Do I look well, Cousin William?' His Sacred Majesty inquires.

"But the man makes no answer, till at length His Sacred Majesty speaks
again, half mused, half angry.

"'Still silent, cousin? Still without a word?--even when you have
the chance of telling the truth to a grey-beard! Come now, shall I
abdicate or stay upon my throne, O silent one?'

"'Most Sacred Majesty,' replies the thin man, 'at the approach of
winter even the strongest oaks let fall their leaves.'

"Three o'clock strikes.

"'Lend me your shoulder, silent one, that I may lean upon it.'

"And, so saying, His Most Sacred Majesty leads the way into a great
room wherein is a canopy, and under the canopy a dais covered with
a carpet of crimson silk. On the dais are three chairs. His Sacred
Majesty seats himself on the mid-most one, which is more ornamented
than the others and surmounted by the imperial crown. King Philip takes
the second chair, and the third is occupied by a woman, who is no doubt
the Queen. On either side are long benches covered with tapestry, and
sitting upon them are men dressed in red robes and wearing round their
necks the image of a golden sheep. Behind stand various personages who
would seem to be princes and lords. Opposite these, and at the bottom
of the dais, there is a row of bare benches which are occupied by men
dressed in plain cloth. I hear it said that these men are clothed and
seated so modestly because it is themselves that have to pay all the
costs. At the entrance of His Sacred Majesty these people all stand
up, but when he has sat down he makes a sign and they sit also.

"Now a very aged man is talking of his gout interminably. After which
the woman, who seems to be a Queen, presents a roll of parchment to
His Majesty. His Sacred Majesty reads what is written thereon in a low
voice, coughing all the time, and then he begins to speak for himself.

"'Many and long are the journeys that I have made through Spain and
Italy and the Netherlands, through England and through Africa, all for
God's glory, for the renown of my arms, and the good of my peoples.'

"And so on, and so on, till at last he comes to tell of his growing
weakness and fatigue, and of his determination to relinquish the
crown of Spain, together with the counties, duchies, and marquisates
of all those countries, and of his desire to hand them over to his
son. Thereafter he begins to weep, and every one weeps with him, and
King Philip gets up from his chair and falls upon his knees before
his father.

"'Most Sacred Majesty,' he cries, 'am I indeed to receive this crown
from your hands while yet you are so strong to wear it?'

"Then His Majesty whispers into his son's ear that he should speak
some kindly words to those men who are seated upon the tapestried
chairs. Whereupon King Philip turns towards them, and without rising
addresses them in a sharp tone of voice.

"'I understand French fairly well,' he says, 'but not well enough to
be able to talk to any one in that language. But the Bishop of Arras,
Monsieur Grandvelle, he will say something to you on my behalf.'

"'That is not the way to speak to them, my son,' says His Sacred
Majesty.

"And in truth the whole assembly begins to murmur, seeing the
young King so proud and unbending. The woman, she who is the Queen,
then makes an oration, and is followed by an aged professor, who,
on sitting down, receives a wave of the hand from His Sacred Majesty
by way of thanks. These ceremonies and harangues being finished, His
Sacred Majesty makes a declaration to the effect that his subjects
are released from their oath of fidelity, signs the deeds drawn up
to ratify his abdication, and then, rising from his throne, places
his son upon it in his stead. Every one in the hall weeps. Then they
return again to the Park House.

"Once more His Sacred Majesty and his son Philip are alone together in
the green chamber. As soon as the doors are shut His Sacred Majesty
goes off into a peal of laughter, and begins talking to King Philip,
who keeps quite solemn all the time.

"'Did you notice,' says the Emperor, laughing and hiccuping at the
same time, 'how little was needed to move these good people to tears?
Heavens, how they wept! You would have thought it was the deluge!
That fat Maes who made the long speech, why, he cried like a calf!
Even you appeared to be affected--but not quite sufficiently,
perhaps. Really there is no doubt that these are the best of all the
entertainments which one can provide for the populace. For just as we
nobles are wont to cherish most those mistresses who cost us most,
so also it is with the people. The more we make them pay the more
they love us. That is why I have tolerated the reformed religion
in Germany while punishing it severely in the Low Countries. If,
however, the German princes had been Catholics I would have made
myself a Lutheran so that I might confiscate their property. Verily
they all believe in the integrity of my zeal for the Roman faith,
and when I leave them they are full of regrets. Yet for heresy there
have perished at my hands fifty thousand of their bravest men and of
their tenderest maidens, in the Netherlands alone. But still they
grieve at my departure. And without making any count of what has
been got from confiscations, I have raised in taxes more than the
wealth of all the Indies or Peru; yet they are sorry to lose me.
And I have torn up the Peace of Cadzant, brought the city of Ghent
under subjection, suppressed every one who might be dangerous to
me, put down all liberties, freedoms, and privileges, and placed
them under the authority of the royal officers; but yet do these
good people think they are still free inasmuch as I allow them to
shoot with the crossbow, and to carry in procession the banners of
their guilds. Willingly do they submit themselves to the hand of
their master, finding happiness in a cage, and singing his praises
while he is with them, and weeping when he departs. My son, be you
to them even as I have been, kindly in words but harsh in deed. Lick
that which you have no need to bite, and never leave off swearing
to maintain liberties, freedoms, and privileges, however little you
may scruple to destroy those liberties if they show signs of becoming
dangerous. For such things as these are like iron if handled timidly,
but brittle as glass if grappled with a strong hand. Therefore you
should root out all heresy, not because it differs from the Roman
religion, but because, if allowed to flourish, it would mean the end
of our rule in all the Netherlands. For they that attack the Pope
with his three crowns would finish by denying the authority of the
temporal princes who wear but one. So, then, you should follow my
example, and regard all claims to freedom of conscience as crimes
of high treason to be punished by immediate confiscation. Hereby
you will inherit great riches, as I also have done all my life long;
and when you come to die or to abdicate, everybody will say, 'Ah me,
the good and noble prince!' and many are the tears that will be shed!'

"And now I hear no more," said Nele, "for His Sacred Majesty has laid
him down to sleep. And King Philip, that proud and haughty prince,
stands gazing at him with loveless eyes."

And when she had thus spoken, Nele was awakened from her trance by
Katheline. And Claes gazed thoughtfully into the fire as it flamed
and lit up all the chimney.






XXXV


It was the month of April. The weather had been mild, but now there
was come a sharp frost and a sky grey and overcast as it were the
sky of All Souls' Day. The third year of Ulenspiegel's banishment had
long since passed, and Nele was waiting day after day for the return
of her lover.

"Alas!" she cried, "there will be snow on the pear-trees, and snow
upon the flowering jasmines, and on all the poor plants that have
bloomed in confidence of the mildness and the warmth of an early
spring. Already from the sky little snowflakes are falling on the
roads. And on my poor heart as well the snow is falling.

"Where, oh where are the bright rays of sunshine that should be playing
now on our happy spring-time faces--and upon red roofs that were used
to grow the redder for that warmth, and on window-panes that flashed
as they caught that sunny brightness? Where indeed are those flaming
beams that kindled earth to life again, and the sky, and the birds,
and the insects? Alas! For day and night am I chilled by sorrow and
long waiting. Oh where, where are you, my lover Ulenspiegel?"






XXXVI


That Sunday there was held at Bruges the Procession of the Holy
Blood. Claes told his wife that she and Nele ought to go and see the
procession, and that if they did so, it was not impossible they might
find Ulenspiegel in the city. As for himself, he would stay behind
and look after the cottage and be ready to welcome their pilgrim if
he should return.

So the two women went off together. Claes remained at home and sat
himself down on the doorstep and gazed into the deserted village
street. All was quiet as the grave, except now and again for the
crystal sound of the bell of some village church, or, rising and
falling with every little gust of wind from Bruges, the far-off music
of the carillon and the sound of the guns and fireworks that were
being let off in honour of the Holy Blood. But in spite of all these
sounds of joy, Claes was filled with sadness, scanning the grey mist
that hung over the fields for a sight of his son, and trying to hear
his footfall in the jolly rustling of leaves and gay concert of birds
as they sang among the trees. Suddenly he noticed a man coming down
towards him on the road from Maldeghem. It was a man tall of stature,
but it was not Ulenspiegel. And presently Claes saw him come to a stand
beside a field of carrots, and bend down to eat of the vegetables as
if he were starving for food.

"There's a hungry man sure," said Claes to himself.

But after a while the man continued his walk, and passed out of view;
to reappear a little later at the corner of the rue Heron. Claes
recognized him at once as the messenger who had brought the seven
hundred ducats from his brother Josse. He went to meet him, and
asked him in.

"Blessed are they that are kind to the wandering traveller," said
the man, and readily accepted the proffered invitation.

Now on the window-ledge of the cottage window lay some bread-crumbs
which Soetkin kept ready for the birds of the neighbourhood, who had
learnt to come there during the winter for their food. The man took
these crumbs and ate them.

"You must be hungry and thirsty," said Claes.

"Eight days ago was I robbed by thieves," the man replied, "and since
then I have had nothing to eat but the carrots I have found in the
fields and roots in the forest."

"Well then," said Claes, "I am thinking it is time you had a good round
meal." And so saying he opened the bread-pan. "Look," he continued,
"here is a dishful of peas, and here are eggs, puddings, hams,
sausages from Ghent, waterzoey, a hotchpotch of fish. And down below
in the cellar there slumbers our good wine from Louvain, made after
the manner of Burgundy wine, all clear and red as rubies. Only the
glasses are wanting now to rouse it from its sleep. And to crown all,
let us put a faggot to the fire. Already I can hear the pudding singing
in the grill! And that's a song of right good cheer, my friend!"

Claes kept turning the puddings, and as he did so he inquired of the
stranger whether he had seen his son, Ulenspiegel.

"No," was the answer.

"Then perhaps you bring me news of my brother?" Claes said, as he
placed the puddings, now well grilled, upon the table, together with
a ham omelette, some cheese, and two big tankards of gleaming Louvain
wine, both red and white.

The man said:

"Your brother Josse has been done to death upon the rack at Sippenaken
near to Aix. And all because he was a heretic, and bore arms against
the Emperor."

Claes was like one mad, and he shook all over, for his wrath was great.

"Wicked brutes!" he cried. "O Josse! My poor Josse!"

Then the stranger spoke again, but in a voice that held no sweetness.

"Not in this world, my friend, is to be found just cause either for
joy or for sorrow." And he fell to his food. But after a while he
spoke again.

"You must know that I was able to be of some assistance to your brother
while he was in prison, by pretending that I was one of his relatives,
a peasant from Nieswieler. I am now come hither in obedience to his
command that if I was not killed for the Faith like him, I should go
to you, and charge you in his name to live in the faith and peace of
our Saviour, practising all works of mercy, and educating your son in
secret in the law of Christ. 'That money,' he said, 'which I gave to
my brother was money taken from the poor and ignorant. Let Claes make
use of it in rearing Tyl in the knowledge of God and of His word.'"

And when he had thus spoken, the messenger gave Claes the kiss of
peace. And Claes made moan and lamentation, saying:

"Dead upon the rack! Alas! My poor Josse!" And his grief was so
great that he could not put it from him. Nevertheless, when he saw
that the messenger was consumed with thirst and held out his glass
for more wine, Claes poured out again. But he himself ate and drank
without pleasure.

Now Soetkin and Nele remained away for seven days; and all this time
the messenger stayed beneath the roof of Claes, and every night they
heard Katheline howling in her cottage over the way:

"Fire! Fire! Make a hole! My soul wants to get out!"

And Claes went to her, comforting her with gentle words, and afterwards
returned to his own house.

At the end of the seven days the messenger departed. Claes offered
him money, but he would only accept two caroluses with which to feed
himself and find lodging on his way back home.






XXXVII


When Nele and Soetkin returned from Bruges, they found Claes in the
kitchen, sitting on the floor like a tailor, sewing buttons on an
old pair of breeches. Titus Bibulus Schnouffius barked his welcome;
Claes smiled, and Nele smiled in answer. But Soetkin did not take her
eyes from the road, gazing continually in hopes to see her beloved
Ulenspiegel.

All of a sudden she broke silence. "Look," she cried, "here is the
Provost-Marshal. He is coming along the road with four sergeants of
the peace. They cannot be wanting any one from here, surely! And yet
there are two of them turning off by the cottage!"

Claes looked up from his work.

"And the other two have stopped at the front," Soetkin said.

Then Claes got up.

"Who can they want to arrest in this road?" his wife continued,
and then: "O Christ! They are coming in here."

"Look to the money!" cried Claes. "The caroluses are hidden away behind
the fireplace." And with these words he ran out of the kitchen into
the garden. Nele understood what he meant, and saw that he was going
to try and make his escape over the hedge. But the sergeants seized
him by the collar, and now he was hitting out at them in a hopeless
endeavour to break free.

"He is innocent!" Nele cried aloud amid her tears. "He is innocent! Do
not hurt him. It is Claes, my father! O Ulenspiegel, where are
you? Where are you? If you were only here you would kill them both!"

And she threw herself on one of the sergeants and tore at his face with
her nails. Then she cried out again: "They will kill him!" and fell
down upon the grass in the garden, and rolled there in her despair.

Katheline, hearing the noise, had come out from her cottage, and stood
up straight and immovable, gazing at the piteous scene. Then she spoke,
wagging her head:

"Fire! Fire! Make a hole! My soul wants to get out!"

Soetkin meanwhile, who had seen nothing of all this, was talking to
the sergeants who had entered the cottage.

"Kind sirs," she began, "what is it that you are looking for in our
poor dwelling? If it is my son you want, he is far away. Do you feel
equal to a long journey?"

And she felt quite pleased at the way she was handling the matter. But
it was at this very moment that Nele began to cry aloud for help,
and when Soetkin had made her way into the garden, it was to see
her husband seized by the collar and fighting on the pathway near
the hedge.

"Hit hard and kill them!" she cried, and then: "O Ulenspiegel, where
are you?"

And she was about to go to the assistance of her man when one of
the sergeants caught hold of her, not indeed without some danger
to himself. And Claes was fighting and hitting out so forcibly that
he would certainly have escaped had not the two sergeants with whom
Soetkin had been talking come out to aid their fellows in the nick of
time. So at last they were able to tie the hands of Claes together,
and to carry him back to the kitchen, whither Nele and Soetkin had
already come, crying and sobbing.

"Sir Provost," Soetkin said, "what crime has he committed that you
are binding my poor husband thus with cords?"

"He is a heretic," said one of the sergeants.

"Heretic!" cried Soetkin, looking towards her husband. "You a
heretic! These devils are lying!"

Claes answered:

"I resign myself into God's keeping."

And they took him away. Nele and Soetkin followed behind, in tears,
believing that they also would be summoned before the judge. They
were joined by many of their friends and neighbours, but when these
heard that it was on a charge of heresy that Claes was walking thus in
chains, fear came upon them and they returned incontinently to their
houses, closing their doors behind them. Only a few young girls had
the courage to approach Claes and say to him:

"Whither are you going to, Charcoal-burner, in these bonds!"

"I go unto the grace of God, my girls," he answered them.

So they took him away to the town gaol, and Nele and Soetkin sat
themselves down upon the threshold. And towards evening Soetkin
besought Nele to leave her and to go and see if Ulenspiegel had
perchance returned.






XXXVIII


The news spread quickly through the neighbourhood that a man had
been taken prisoner on a charge of heresy, and that the inquisitor
Titelman, Dean of Renaix, surnamed the Inquisitor without Pity,
had been appointed judge. Now at this time Ulenspiegel was living
at Koolkerke, in the intimate favour of a farmer's widow, a sweet
and gentle person who refused him nothing of what was hers to give.
He was very happy there, petted and made much of, until one day a
treacherous rival, an alderman of the village, lay in wait for him
early in the morning when he was coming out of the tavern, and would
have beaten him with a wooden club. But Ulenspiegel, thinking to cool
his rival's anger, threw him into a duck-pond that was full of water,
and the alderman scrambled out as best he could, green as a toad and
dripping like a sponge.

As a result of this mighty deed Ulenspiegel found it convenient to
depart from Koolkerke, and off he went to Damme as fast as his legs
would carry him, fearing the vengeance of the alderman.

The night fell cold, and Ulenspiegel ran quickly. For he was longing
to be home again, and already he saw in imagination Nele sewing by the
fire, Soetkin getting ready the supper, Claes binding up his sticks,
and Schnouffius gnawing at a bone.

A tramping pedlar met him on the road and asked him whither he was
off to so fast and at that time of night.

"To my home in Damme," Ulenspiegel told him.

The tramp said:

"That town is no longer safe. They are arresting the Reformers there."
And he passed on.

Presently Ulenspiegel arrived at the inn of the Roode Schildt and
went in for a glass of dobbel kuyt. The innkeeper said to him:

"Are you not the son of Claes?"

"I am," said Ulenspiegel.

"Make haste then," said the innkeeper, "for the hour of evil fortune
has sounded for your father."

Ulenspiegel asked him what he meant by these words, and the innkeeper
told him that he would know soon enough. So Ulenspiegel left the inn
and continued on his way, running apace.

When he arrived at the outskirts of Damme, the dogs that stood by the
doorways came running round his legs, jumping up at him, yelping and
barking. Hearing this noise, the women also came out of their houses,
and when they saw who it was they all began talking at once.

"Whence come you?" they cried. "And have you any news of your
father? And do you know where your mother is? Is she in prison
too? Alas! Heaven send they do not bring him to the stake!"

Ulenspiegel ran on faster than ever. He met Nele.

"Tyl," she said, "you must not go home. They have set guards in our
house in the name of His Majesty."

Ulenspiegel stopped running.

"Nele," he said, "is it true that Claes, my father, is in prison?"

"It is true," Nele said, "and Soetkin sits weeping at the gaol door."

Then the heart of the prodigal son swelled with grief, and he said:
"I must go to them."

"No," said Nele. "First you must do what Claes told me, just before
he was taken away. 'Look to the money,' he said, 'it is hidden at the
back of the grate. You must make sure of that first of everything,
for it is the inheritance of poor Soetkin.'"

But Ulenspiegel would not hear aught and ran on quickly to the
gaol. There he found Soetkin sitting at the gate. She embraced him
with many tears, and they cried on one another's neck.

Knowing that they were there, the populace began to crowd in front of
the prison. Then the sergeants arrived and told Soetkin and Ulenspiegel
that they were to go away at once. So mother and son returned to Nele's
cottage, which was next door to their own, and was being guarded by
one of the foot-soldiers who had been sent for from Bruges in case
there might be trouble during the trial and execution of Claes. For
it was well known that the people of Damme loved him exceedingly.

The soldier was sitting on the pavement in front of the door,
draining the last drops of brandy from a flask. Finding it was all
gone he threw the flask away and was amusing himself by dislodging
the stones on the path with the point of his dagger.

Soetkin went in to Katheline, crying most bitterly.

But Katheline said: "Fire! Fire! Make a hole! My soul wants to
get out!" And she kept wagging her head.






XXXIX


Borgstorm, the great bell of Damme, had summoned the judges to
judgment. It was four o'clock, and now they were collected together
at the Vierschare, around the Tree of Justice.

Claes was brought before them. Seated upon the dais was the high
bailiff of Damme, and by his side, opposite Claes, the mayor, the
alderman, and the clerk of the court.

The populace ran together at the sound of the bell. A great crowd
they were, and many of them were saying that the judges were there
to do--not justice--but merely the will of His Imperial Majesty....

After certain preliminaries, the high bailiff began to make
proclamation of the acts and deeds for which Claes had been summoned
before that tribunal.

"The informer," he said, "had been staying by chance at Damme, not
wishing to spend all his money at Bruges in feasting and festivity as
is too often the case during these sacred occasions. On a time, then,
when he was taking the air soberly on his own doorstep, he saw a man
walking towards him along the rue Heron. This man Claes also saw,
and went up to him and greeted him. The stranger, who was dressed
all in black, entered the house of Claes, leaving the door into the
street half open. Curious to find out who the man was, the informer
went into the vestibule, and heard Claes talking to the stranger in the
kitchen. The talk was all about a certain Josse, the brother of Claes,
who it seems had been made prisoner among the army of the Reformers,
and had suffered the punishment of being broken alive on the wheel
of torture, not far from Aix. The stranger said that he had brought
Claes a sum of money which his brother had desired to leave him, which
money having been gained from the ignorant and poverty-stricken, it
behoved Claes to spend it in bringing up his own son in the Reformed
Faith. He also urged Claes to quit the bosom of our Holy Mother
Church, and spake also many other impious words to which the only
reply vouchsafed by Claes was this: 'The cruel brutes! Alas, my poor
Josse!' So did the prisoner blaspheme against our Holy Father the Pope
and against His Royal Majesty, accusing them of cruelty in that they
rightly had punished heresy as a crime of treason against God and
man. When the stranger had finished the meal that Claes put before
him, our agent heard Claes cry out again: 'Alas, poor Josse! May God
keep thee in his glory! How cruel they were to thee!' And thus did he
accuse God himself of impiety by this suggestion that He could receive
a heretic into His heaven. Nor did Claes ever cease to cry aloud:
'Alas! Alas! My poor Josse!' The stranger then, launching out into
a frenzy, like a preacher beginning his sermon, fell to revile most
shamefully our Holy Mother the Church. 'She will fall,' he shouted,
'she will fall, the mighty Babylon, the whore of Rome, and she will
become the abode of demons, and the haunt of every bird accursed.' And
Claes meanwhile continued the same old cry: 'Cruel brutes! Alas, poor
Josse!' And the stranger went on in the same way as he had begun,
saying: 'Verily an angel shall appear that shall take a stone that
is great as a millstone, and shall cast it into the sea, crying:
"Thus shall it be done to Babylon the mighty, and she shall be no
more seen."' Whereupon, 'Sir,' says Claes, 'your mouth is full of
bitterness; but tell me, when cometh that kingdom in which they
that are gentle of heart shall be able to dwell in peace upon the
earth?' 'Never,' answered the stranger, 'while yet my Lord Antichrist
rules, that is the Pope, who is to-day the enemy to all truth.' 'Ah,'
said Claes, 'you speak with little respect of the Holy Father. But
he, surely, is ignorant of the cruel punishments which are meted out
to poor Reformers.' 'Not at all,' answered the stranger, 'and far
from it, for it is he who initiates the decrees and causes them to
be put into force by the Emperor, now by the King. The latter enjoys
all the benefits of confiscation, inherits the property of the dead,
and finds it easy to bring charges of heresy against those who have
any wealth.' Claes said: 'Indeed I know that such things are freely
spoken of in the land of Flanders, and one may well believe them, for
the flesh of man is weak, even though the flesh be royal flesh. O my
poor Josse!' And by this did Claes give to understand that heretics
are punished because of a vile desire on the part of His Majesty for
filthy lucre. The stranger wished to argue the matter further, but
Claes said: 'Please, sir, do not let us continue this conversation,
for if it were overheard I might easily find myself involved in some
awkward inquiry.' Then Claes got up to go to the cellar, whence he
presently returned with a pot of beer. 'I am going to shut the door,'
said he, and after that the informer heard nothing more, for he had
to make his way out of the house as quickly as he could. Not till
it was night was the door again opened, and then the stranger came
forth. But he soon returned, knocking at the door and calling to Claes:
'It is very cold, and I know not where I am to lodge this night. Give
me shelter, pray. No one has seen me. The town is deserted.' Claes
welcomed him in, lit a lantern, and last of all he was seen to be
leading the heretic up the staircase into a little attic room with
a window that looked out on to the country."

At this Claes cried out: "And who could have reported all this but
you, you wicked fishmonger! I saw you on Sunday, standing at your
door, as straight as a post, gazing up, like the hypocrite you are,
at the swallows in their flight!"

And as he spoke, he pointed with his finger at Josse Grypstuiver,
the Dean of the Fishmongers, who showed his ugly phiz in the crowd
of people. And the fishmonger gave an evil smile when he saw Claes
betraying himself in this way. And the people in the crowd, men,
women, and maids, looked one at the other and said: "Poor good man,
his words will be the death of him without a doubt."

But the clerk continued his depositions.

"Claes and the heretic stayed talking together for a long time that
night, and so for six other nights, during which time the stranger was
seen to make many gestures of menace or of benediction, and to lift up
his hands to heaven as do his fellow-heretics. And Claes appeared to
approve of what he said. And there is no doubt that throughout these
days and nights they were speaking together opprobriously of the Mass,
of the confessional, of indulgences, and of the Royal Majesty...."

"No one heard it," said Claes, "and I cannot be accused in this way
without any evidence."

The clerk answered:

"There is something else that was overheard. The evening that the
stranger left your roof, seven days after he had first come to you,
you went with him as far as the end of Katheline's field. There he
asked you what you had done with the wicked idols"--here the bailiff
crossed himself--"of Madame the Virgin, and of St. Nicholas and
St. Martin. You replied that you had broken them all up and thrown
them into the well. They were, in fact, found in the well last night,
and the pieces are now in the torture-chamber."

At these words Claes appeared to be quite overcome. The bailiff
asked if he had nothing to answer. Claes made a sign with his head
in the negative.

The bailiff asked him if he would not recant the accursed thoughts
which had led him to break the images, and the impious delusion
whereby he had spoken such evil words against Pope and Emperor,
who were both divine personages.

Claes replied that his body was the Emperor's, but that his soul was
Christ's, whose law he desired to obey. The bailiff asked him if this
law were the same as that of Holy Mother Church. Claes answered:

"The law of Christ is written in the Holy Gospel."

When ordered to answer the question as to whether the Pope is the
representative of God on earth, he answered, "No."

When asked if he believed that it was forbidden to adore images of Our
Lady and of the saints, he replied that such was idolatry. Questioned
as to whether the practice of auricular confession was a good and
salutary thing, he answered: "Christ said, confess your sins one
to another."

He spoke out bravely, though at the same time it was evident that he
was ill at ease and in his heart afraid.

At length, eight o'clock having sounded and evening coming on,
the members of the tribunal retired, deferring their judgment until
the morrow.






XL


The next day the great bell, Borgstorm, clanged out its summons
to the judges of the tribunal. When they were all assembled at the
Vierschare, seated upon the four benches that were set around the
lime-tree, Claes was cross-examined afresh, and asked if he was
willing to recant his errors.

But Claes lifted his hand towards heaven:

"The Lord Christ beholdeth me from on high," he said, "and when my son
Ulenspiegel was born I also gazed upon His Sun. Where is Ulenspiegel
now? Where is he now, the

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