XIV

XIVWhen he came home, riding upon his donkey, and provided with a bag full of patards his brother Josse had given him and a goodly tankard of pewter, there were in the cottage Sunday good cheer and daily feasts, for every day they had meat and beans to eat.Claes filled often the great pewter tankard withdobbel-cuytand emptied it as often.Ulenspiegel ate for three and paddled in the dishes like a sparrow in a heap of corn.“Look,” said Claes, “he’s eating the saltcellar, too!”Ulenspiegel answered:“When the saltcellar, as in our house, is made of a hollow piece of bread, it must be eaten now and then, lest the worms might come in it as it gets old.”“Why,” said Soetkin, “do you wipe your greasy hands on your breeches?”“So that I may never have my thighs wet,” replied Ulenspiegel.At this moment Claes drank a deep draught from his tankard. Ulenspiegel said to him:“Why have you so big a cup, I have only a poor little mug?”Claes answered:“Because I am your father and thebaesof this house.”Ulenspiegel retorted:“You have been drinking for forty years, I for nine only; your time to drink is passed, mine is come; it is therefore for me to have the tankard and for you to take the mug.”“Son,” said Claes, “he that would pour a hogshead into a keg would throw his beer into the gutter.”“You will then be wise to pour your keg into my hogshead, for I am bigger than your tankard,” replied Ulenspiegel.And Claes, delighted, gave him his tankard to drain. In this wise Ulenspiegel learned how to talk for his drink.XVSoetkin carried beneath her girdle the signs of renewed maternity; Katheline, too, was with child, but for fear dared not stir out of her house.When Soetkin went to see her:“Ah!” said she, lamenting, “what shall I do with the poor fruit of my womb? Must I strangle it? I would rather die. But if the constables take me, for having a child without being married, they will make me pay twenty florins, like a girl of loose life, and I shall be whipped on the marketplace.”Soetkin then said some soothing word to console her, and having left her, went home pondering. Then one day she said to Claes:“If instead of one child I had two, would you beat me, husband?”“I don’t know that,” replied Claes.“But,” said she, “if this second were not born of me, and like Katheline’s were the offspring of an unknown, of the devil, mayhap?”“Devils,” replied Claes, “engender fire, death, and foul smoke, but not children. I will hold as mine the child of Katheline.”“You would do this?” she said.“I have said,” replied Claes.Soetkin went to tell Katheline.Hearing it, the latter cried out, overjoyed.“He has spoken, good man, spoken for the sake of my poor body. He will be blessed by God, and blessed of the devil, if it is a devil,” she said, shuddering, “that hath made thee, poor babe that movest in my bosom.”Soetkin and Katheline brought into the world one a lad, the other a girl. Both were borne to baptism, as son and daughter of Claes. Soetkin’s son was named Hans, and did not live, Katheline’s daughter was named Nele and throve well.She drank the wine of life from four flagons, twoof Katheline and two of Soetkin. And the two women quarrelled softly which should give the babe to drink. But against her desire Katheline must needs allow her milk to dry up, so that none might ask whence it came without her having been a mother.When little Nele, her daughter, was weaned, she took her home and only let the child go to Soetkin’s when she had called her her mother.The neighbours said it was well done of Katheline, who was well to do, to feed the child of the Claes, who for the most part lived in poverty their toilsome life.XVIUlenspiegel found himself alone one morning at home, and for want of something better to do, he began to cut up one of his father’s shoes to make a little ship. Already he had planted the mainmast in the sole and bored the toe for the bowsprit, when at the half door he saw passing the bust of a horseman and the head of a horse.“Is any one within?” asked the horseman.“There are,” replied Ulenspiegel, “a man and a half and a horse’s head.”“How so?” asked the horseman.“Because I see here a whole man, which is me; the half of a man, which is your bust; and a horse’s head, which is that of your steed.”“Where are your father and your mother?” asked the man.“My father has gone to make bad worse,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and my mother is engaged in bringing us shame or loss.”“Explain,” said the horseman.Ulenspiegel answered:“My father at this moment is deepening the holes in his field so as to bring from bad to worse the huntsmen who trample down his corn. My mother has gone to borrow money: if she repays too little ’twill shame us, if too much ’twill be our loss.”The man asked then which way he should go.“Where the geese are,” replied Ulenspiegel.The man went away and came back just when Ulenspiegel was making an oared galley out of Claes’s other shoe.“You have misled me,” said he: “where the geese are is nothing but mud and marsh in which they are paddling.”Ulenspiegel answered to this:“I did not tell you to go where the geese paddle, but where they go.”“Show me, at any rate,” said the man, “a road that goes to Heyst.”“In Flanders, it is the travellers that go and not the roads,” said Ulenspiegel.XVIIOne day Soetkin said to Claes:“Husband, my heart is sad: it is now three days since Thyl left the house; dost thou not know where he is?”Claes replied ruefully:“He is where homeless dogs are, on some highway with a crew of other vagabonds of his own kidney. God was cruel to give us such a son. When he was born, I beheld in him the joy of our age, a tool morein the house; I looked to make a craftsman of him, and wicked fate makes him a thief and a drone.”“Be not so hard, husband,” said Soetkin, “our son being but nine years old is in the heyday of childish thoughtlessness and folly. Is it not so that like the trees, he must shed the young buds before the coming of the full leaves, which for the human tree are honour and virtue? He is full of tricks, I am not blind to them, but they will turn later to his advantage, if instead of employing them to ill ends, he applies them to some useful trade. He is prone to flout his neighbours; but later this will help him to hold his own in merry company. He laughs ever and always; but faces sour before they are ripe are an ill omen for the countenance to come. If he runs, ’tis that he must grow; if he does not work, it is for that he is not yet of an age to feel that work is duty, and if now and then he spends day and night away from home for half a week together, ’tis that he knows nothing of what grief he gives us, for he has a good heart, and he loves us.”Claes wagged his head and made no answer, and while he slept, Soetkin wept alone. And in the morning, thinking that her son was sick in a corner of some highway, she went out on the doorstep to see if he was not coming back; but she saw nothing, and she sate near the window, looking thence into the street. And many a time her heart danced in her bosom at the sound of the light foot of some lad; but when he passed, she saw it was not Ulenspiegel, and then she wept, poor dolorous mother.In the meanwhile, Ulenspiegel with his vagabond companions was at Bruges, at the Saturday fair.There might be seen cobblers and shoemakers in booths apart, tailors selling clothes,miesevangersfrom Antwerp, who catch tits with an owl at night; poultry sellers, dog stealers, vendors of catskins for gloves, waistcoats, and doublets, buyers of every kind and condition, burgesses and their womenfolk, menservants and maidservants, pantlers, butlers, and all together, sellers and buyers, crying up and crying down, vaunting and disparaging the wares.In one corner of the fair there was a fine canvas tent erected on four poles. At the door of the tent, a churl from the flat country of Alost, with two monks who were there to get something for themselves, was showing the curious devout, for a patard, a piece of the shoulder blade of Saint Mary of Egypt. Hoarsely he bawled out the saint’s merits, and omitted not from his song how, having no silver, she paid a young ferrymanin kind, so as not to sinagainstthe Holy Ghost by refusing the labourer his hire.And the two monks nodded their heads to show that what the churl said was true. By them was a woman fat and ruddy, lascivious as Astarte, violently inflating a wretched bagpipe, while a pretty young girl sang beside her like a nightingale; but no one listened to her. Above the entrance to the tent was hung on two poles, held by cords in the two handles, a bucket full of holy water that had been blessed in Rome, according to the fat woman, while the two monks waggled head to bear witness to her tale. Ulenspiegel, beholding the bucket, became pensive.To one of the poles supporting the tent was fasteneda donkey that was fed more upon hay than on oats: head down it was gazing at the earth, with no hope of seeing thistles spring up from it.“Comrades,” said Ulenspiegel, pointing with his finger at the fat woman, the two monks, and the ass, “since the masters sing so sweetly, we must make the donkey dance as well.”So saying, he went off to the next booth, bought six liards’ worth of pepper, pulled up the donkey’s tail and clapped the pepper underneath.The donkey, feeling the pepper at work, looked round under his tail to see whence proceeded this unwonted heat. Thinking he had a red-hot devil there, he would fain run away to escape him, began to bray and rear, and shook the tent pole with all his might. At the first shock, the tub between the two poles spilled all its holy water on the tent and on those who were within it. And presently collapsing, the tent covered with a moist mantle those who were hearkening to the history of Mary of Egypt. And from under the canvas Ulenspiegel and his companions heard a great noise of moaning and lamenting, for the devout who were there were wild with anger and exchanged furious thwacks and thumps with one another. The canvas rose and fell at the struggles of the combatants. Every time Ulenspiegel saw a roundness shape itself under the cloth, he stuck a needle into it. Then there were louder shrieks beneath the canvas and a more liberal distribution of thwackings.And he was transported, but more still seeing the donkey fleeing and dragging behind him tent, tub, and poles, while thebaesof the tent, his wife andhis daughter, hung desperately on to the baggage. The donkey, which could run no longer, lifted his head into the air and ceased not to sing, except in order to look beneath his tail to see if the fire there burning would not soon be extinguished.All this while the devout were going on with their battle; the monks, without giving them a thought, were picking up the money that had fallen from the collecting dishes, and Ulenspiegel was helping them, most devoutly, not without profiting.XVIIIWhilst the vagabond son of the coalman was growing up gay and frolicsome, in lean melancholy vegetated the dolorous scion of the sublime Emperor. Lords and ladies saw the pitiful little weakling dragging through the rooms and corridors of Valladolid his frail body and his tottering limbs that could scarce sustain the weight of his big head, covered with fair stiff hair.Ever seeking out the darkest corridors, there he would sit for hours thrusting out his legs in front of him. If a servant trod on him by accident, he had the man flogged, and took pleasure in hearing him cry out under the lashes, but he never laughed.The next day, going elsewhere to set the same trap, he would sit again in some corridor with his legs thrust out. The ladies, lords, and pages who might pass there going fast or slow would trip over him, fall down and hurt themselves. He took pleasure in this, also, but he never laughed.When one of them, having run into him, failed to fall, he would cry out as if he had been struck,and he was delighted to see their fear, but he never laughed.His Sacred Majesty was informed of his behaviour and gave orders to take no notice of the boy, saying that if he did not wish to have his legs trodden on, he ought not to put them in the way of people’s feet.This angered Philip, but he said nothing, and no one saw him after, except when on bright summer days he went to warm his shivering body in the sunshine in the courtyard.One day, coming back from the wars, Charles saw him steeped in melancholy in this fashion.“Son,” said he, “how different art thou from me! At thy age, I loved to climb among trees to hunt the squirrels; I had myself lowered by a rope down some steep cliff to take eaglets from the nest. At this play I might have left my bones behind me; they but became the harder for it. In the chase the wild things fled to their dens when they saw me coming with my good arquebus.”“Ah,” sighed the boy, “I have a pain in the belly, monseigneur my father.”“The wine of Paxaretos,” said Charles, “is a sovereign cure.”“I do not like wine; my head aches, monseigneur my father.”“Son,” said Charles, “thou must run and leap and romp as do other boys of thine own years.”“My legs are stiff, monseigneur my father.”“How,” said Charles, “how can they be otherwise if thou usest them no more than if they were legs of wood? I will have thee fastened on some nimble steed.”The boy wept.“Do not so,” said he, “I have a pain in my loins, monseigneur my father.”“But,” said Charles, “you have a pain everywhere then?”“I would not be ill at all if I were left in peace,” replied the child.“Dost thou think,” rejoined the Emperor, impatiently, “to pass thy royal life in brooding as do clerks? For them, if it must be, in order that they may soil their parchments with ink, from the silence, solitude, and retirement; for thee, son of the sword, there needs hot blood, the eye of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the strength of Hercules. Why dost thou make the holy sign? God’s blood! ’tis not for the lion’s cub to ape paternoster-mongering females.”“Hark, the Angelus, monseigneur my father,” replied the child.XIXThis year May and June were verily the months of flowers. Never did any see in Flanders hawthorn so fragrant, never in the gardens so many roses, such heaps of jasmine and honeysuckle. When the wind that blew up out of England drove the incense of this flowery land towards the east, every man, and specially in Antwerp, nose in air with delight, would say:“Do you smell the sweet wind that comes from Flanders?”In like wise the busy bees sucked the flowers’ honey, made wax, laid their eggs in hives too small to harbour their swarms. What music of labour under the blue sky that covered the rich earth with its dazzling tent!Men made hives out of rushes, of straw, of osiers,of plaited hay. Basketmakers, tubmakers, coopers were wearing out their tools over the work. As for the wood carvers, for a long time they had been unequal to the task.The swarms were of full thirty thousand bees and two thousand seven hundred drones. The honeycombs were so delicious that because of their rare quality, the dean of Damme sent eleven to the Emperor Charles, by way of thanks for having through his edicts restored the Holy Inquisition to all its full vigour. It was Philip that ate them, but they did him no good.Tramps, beggars, vagabonds, and all that ragtag and bobtail of idle rogues that parade their laziness about the roads, preferring to be hanged rather than to work, enticed by the taste of the honey, came to get their share of it. And they prowled about by night, in crowds.Claes had made hives to attract the swarming bees to them; some were full and others empty, awaiting the bees. Claes used to watch all night to guard this sugared wealth. When he was tired, he used to bid Ulenspiegel take his place. And the boy did so with a good will.Now one night Ulenspiegel, to avoid the cold air, had taken shelter in a hive, and, all huddled up, was looking through the openings, of which there were two, in the top of the hive.As he was on the point of falling asleep, he heard the little trees and bushes of the hedge crackling and heard the voices of two men whom he took to be robbers. He looked out through one of the openings in the hive, and saw that they both had long hair anda long beard, though the beard was the mark and sign of noble rank.They went from hive to hive, and came to his own, and picking it up, they said:“Let us take this one: it is the heaviest.”Then they carried it off, using their sticks to do it. Ulenspiegel took no pleasure in being thus carted in a hive. The night was clear and bright, and the thieves walked along without uttering a word. Every fifty paces they stopped, clean out of breath, to go on their way again presently. The one in front grumbled furiously at having so heavy a weight to bear, and the one behind whimpered melancholy-wise. For in this world there are two kinds of idle cowards, those who grow angry with work, and those that whine when there is work to be done.Ulenspiegel, having nothing else to do, pulled the hair of the robber who went in front, and the beard of the one behind, so that growing tired of this game, the angry one said to the snivelling one:“Stop pulling my hair, or I will give you such a wallop on the head with my fist that it will sink down into your chest and you will look through your ribs like a thief through the bars of his prison.”“I wouldn’t dare, my friend,” said the sniveller, “but it is you that are pulling me by the beard.”The angry one answered:“I don’t go hunting vermin in beggar fellows’ fur.”“Sir,” replied the sniveller, “do not make the hive jump about so much; my poor arms are nearly breaking in two.”“I’ll have them off altogether,” answered the angry fellow.Then, putting off his leathern gear he set the hive down on the ground, and leaped upon his comrade. And they fought with each other, the one cursing and swearing, the other crying for mercy.Ulenspiegel, hearing the blows pattering down, came out of the hive, dragged it with him as far as the nearest wood so as to find it there again, and went back to Claes’s house.And thus it is that in quarrellings sly folk find their advantage.XXWhen he was fifteen, Ulenspiegel erected a little tent at Damme upon four stakes, and he cried out that everyone might see within, represented in a handsome frame of hay, his present and future self.When there came a man of law, haughty and puffed up with his own importance, Ulenspiegel would thrust his head out of the frame, and mimicking the face of an old ape, he would say:“An old mug may decay, but never flourish; am I not your very mirror, good sir of the doctoral phiz?”If he had a stout soldier for client, Ulenspiegel would hide and show in the middle of the frame, instead of his face, a dishful of meat and bread, and say:“Battle will make hash of you; what will you give me for my prophecy, O soldier beloved of the big-mouthed sakers?”When an old man, wearing ingloriously his hoary head, would bring Ulenspiegel his wife, a young woman, the boy, hiding himself as he had done for the soldier, and showing in the frame a little tree, on whose brancheswere hung knife handles, caskets, combs, inkhorns, all made of horn, would call out:“Whence come all these fine nicknacks, Messire? Is it not from the hornbeam that groweth within the garden of old husbands? Who shall say now that cuckolds are folk useless in a commonweal?”And Ulenspiegel would display his young face in the frame alongside the tree.The old man, hearing him, would cough with masculine anger, but his dear wife would soothe him with her hand, and smiling, come up to Ulenspiegel.“And my mirror,” she would say, “wilt thou show it to me?”“Come closer,” Ulenspiegel would answer.She would obey, and he then, kissing her wherever he could:“Thy mirror,” he would say, “is stark youth with proud codpiece.”And the darling would go away also, but not without giving him florins one or two.To the fat, blear-eyed monk who would ask to see his present and future self, Ulenspiegel would answer:“Thou art a ham cupboard, and so thou shalt be a still room for cervoise ale; for salt calleth upon drinking, is not this true, great belly? Give me a patard for not having lied.”“My son,” the monk would reply, “we never carry money.”“’Tis then the money carries thee,” would Ulenspiegel answer, “for I know thou dost put it between two soles under thy feet. Give me thy sandal.”But the monk:“My son, ’tis the property of the Convent; I willnone the less take from it, if I must, two patards for thy trouble.”The monk gave them. Ulenspiegel received them graciously.Thus showed he their mirror to the folk of Damme, of Bruges, of Blankenberghe, nay, even as far away as Ostend.And instead of saying to them in his Flemish speech: “Ik ben u lieden Spiegel,” “I am your mirror,” he said to them, shortening it, “Ik ben ulen spiegel,” even as it is still said to-day in East and West Flanders.And from thence there came to him his surname of Ulenspiegel.XXIAs he grew up, he conceived a liking for wandering about through fairs and markets. If he saw there any one playing on the hautbois, the rebeck, or the bagpipes, he would, for a patard, have them teach him the way to make music on these instruments.He became above all skilled in playing on therommel-pot, an instrument made of a pot, a bladder, and a stout straw. This is how he arranged them: he damped the bladder and strained it over the pot, fastened with a string the middle of the bladder round the knot on the straw, which was touching the bottom of the pot, on the rim of which he then fixed the bladder stretched to bursting point. In the morning, the bladder, being dried, gave the sound of a tambourine when it was struck, and if the straw of the instrument was rubbed it hummed better than a viol. And Ulenspiegel, with his pot booming and sounding like a mastiff’s barking, went singing carols at house doorsin company with youngsters, one of whom carried the shining star made out of paper on Twelfth Night.If any master painter came to Damme to pourtray, on their knees on canvas, the companions of some Guild, Ulenspiegel, desiring to see how he wrought, would ask to be allowed to grind his colours, and for all salary would accept only a slice of bread, three liards, and a pint of ale.Applying himself to the grinding, he would study his master’s manner. When the master was away, he would try to paint like him, but put vermilion everywhere. He tried to paint Claes, Soetkin, Katheline, and Nele, as well as quart pots and sauce-pans. Claes prophesied to him, seeing his works, that if he would be bold and persevering, he might one day earn florins by the score, painting inscriptions on thespeel-wagen, which are pleasure carts in Flanders and in Zealand.He learned, too, from a master mason how to carve wood and stone, when the man came to make, in the choir of Notre Dame, a stall so constructed that when it was necessary the aged dean could sit down on it while still seeming to remain standing.It was Ulenspiegel who carved the first handle for the knife used by the Zealand folk. This handle he made in the shape of a cage. Within there was a loose death’s head; above it a dog in a lying posture. These emblems taken together signify “Blade faithful to the death.”And in this wise Ulenspiegel began to fulfil the prediction of Katheline, showing himself painter, sculptor, clown, noble, all at once and together, forfrom father to son the Claes bore for arms three quart pots argent on a field ofbruinbier.But Ulenspiegel was constant to no trade, and Claes told him if this game went on, he would turn him away from the cottage.XXIIThe Emperor being returned from war, asked why his son Philip had not come to greet him.The Infante’s archbishop-governor replied that he had not desired to do so, for, so he said, he cared for nothing but books and solitude.The Emperor enquired where he was at that moment.The governor answered that they must seek him in every place where it was dark. They did so.Having gone through a goodly number of chambers, they came at last to a kind of closet, unpaven, and lit by a skylight. There they saw stuck in the earth a post to which was fastened by the waist a pretty little tiny monkey, that had been sent to His Highness from the Indies to delight him with its youthful antics. At the foot of this stake faggots still red were smoking, and in the closet there was a foul stench of burnt hair.The little beast had suffered so much dying in this fire that its little body seemed to be not an animal that ever had life, but a fragment of some wrinkled twisted root, and in its mouth, open as though to cry out on death, bloody foam was visible, and the water of its tears made its face wet.“Who did this?” asked the Emperor.The governor did not dare to reply, and both men remained silent, sad, and wrathful.Suddenly in this silence there was heard a low little sound of a cough that came from a corner in the shadow behind them. His Majesty, turning about, received the Infante Philip, all clad in black and sucking a lemon.“Don Philip,” said he, “come and salute me.”The Infante, without budging, looked at him with his timid eyes in which there was no affection.“Is it thou,” asked the Emperor, “that hast burned this little beast in this fire?”The Infante hung his head.But the Emperor:“If thou wert cruel enough to do it, be brave enough to confess it.”The Infante made no answer.His Majesty plucked the lemon out of his hands and flung it on the ground, and he was about to beat his son melting away with fright, when the archbishop, stopping him, whispered in his ear:“His Highness will be a great burner of heretics one day.”The Emperor smiled, and the two men went away, leaving the Infante alone with his monkey.But there were others that were no monkeys and died in the flames.XXIIINovember had come, the month of hail in which coughing folk give themselves up wholehearted to the music of phlegm. In this month also the small boys descend in bands on the turnip fields, pilfering what they can from them, to the great rage of thepeasants, who vainly run after them with sticks and forks.Now one evening, as Ulenspiegel was coming back from a marauding foray, he heard close by, in a corner of the hedge, a sound of groaning. Stooping down, he saw a dog lying upon some stones.“Hey,” said he, “miserable beastie, what dost thou there so late?”Caressing the dog, he felt his back wet, thought that someone had tried to drown him, and took him up in his arms to warm him.Coming home he said:“I bring a wounded patient, what shall I do to him?”“Heal him,” said Claes in reply.Ulenspiegel set the dog down upon the table. Claes, Soetkin, and himself then saw by the light of the lamp a little red Luxembourg spaniel hurt on the back. Soetkin sponged the wounds, covered them with ointment, and bound them up with linen. Ulenspiegel took the little beast into his bed, though Soetkin wanted to have him in her own, fearing, as she said, lest Ulenspiegel, who tumbled about in bed like a devil in a holy water pot, should hurt the dog as he slept.But Ulenspiegel had his own way, and tended him so well that after six days the patient ran about like his fellows full of doggish tricks.And theschool-meesterchristened him Titus Bibulus Schnouffius: Titus in memory of a certain good Emperor of Rome, who took pains to gather in lost dogs; Bibulus because the dog lovedbruinbierwith the love of a true tosspot, and Schnouffius because sniff-sniffingeverywhere he was always thrusting his nose into rat-holes and mole holes.XXIVAt the end of the Rue Notre Dame there were two willows planted face to face on the edge of a deep pond.Ulenspiegel stretched a rope between the two willows and danced upon it one Sunday after vespers, so well that all the crowd of vagabonds applauded him with both hand and voice. Then he came down from his rope and held out to all the bystanders a bowl that was speedily filled with money, but he emptied it in Soetkin’s apron and kept only eleven liards for himself.The next Sunday he would fain dance again on his rope, but certain good-for-nought lads, being jealous of his nimbleness, had made a nick in the rope, so that after a few bounds the rope broke in sunder and Ulenspiegel tumbled into the water.Whilst he swam to reach the bank the little fellows that cut the rope shouted to him:“How is your limber health, Ulenspiegel? Are you going to the bottom of the pond to teach the carps to dance, dancer beyond price?”Ulenspiegel coming out from the water and shaking himself cried out to them, for they were making off from him for fear of his fists:“Be not afraid; come back next Sunday, I will show you tricks on the rope and you will have a share in the proceeds.”On Sunday, the lads had not sliced the cord, but were keeping watch round about it, for fear any one might touch it, for there was a great crowd of people.Ulenspiegel said to them:“Each of you give me one of your shoes, and I wager that however big or little they may be I will dance with every one of them.”“What do you pay if you lose?” they asked.“Forty quarts ofbruinbier,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and ye shall pay me three patards if I win the wager.”“Aye,” said they.And they each gave him a shoe. Ulenspiegel put them all in the apron he was wearing, and thus laden he danced upon the rope, though not without trouble.The cord slicers called out from below:“Thou saidst thou wouldst dance with every one of our shoes; put them on then and hold thy wager!”Ulenspiegel, all the while dancing, made reply:“I never said I would put on your shoes, but that I would dance with them. Now I am dancing and everything in my apron is dancing with me. Do ye not see it with your frog’s eyes all staring out of your heads? Pay me my three patards.”But they hooted at him, shouting that he must give them their shoes back.Ulenspiegel threw them at them one after the other into a heap. Therefrom arose a furious affray, for none of them could clearly distinguish his own shoe in the heap, or lay hold of it without a fight.Ulenspiegel then came down from the tree and watered the combatants, but not with fair water.XXVThe Infante, being fifteen years of age, went wandering, as his way was, through corridors, staircases, andchambers about the castle. But most of all he was seen prowling about the ladies’ apartments, in order to brawl with the pages who like himself were like cats in ambush in the corridors. Others planting themselves in the court, would be singing some tender ditty with their noses turned aloft.The Infante, hearing them, would show himself at a window, and so terrify the poor pages that beheld this pallid muzzle instead of the soft eyes of their fair ones.Among the court ladies there was a charming Flemish woman from Dudzeele hard by Damme, plump, a handsome ripe fruit and marvellously lovely, for she had green eyes and red crimped hair, shining like gold. Of a gay humour and ardent temperament, she never hid from any one her inclination for the lucky lord to whom she accorded the divine right of way of love over her goodly pleasaunce. There was one at this moment, handsome and high spirited, whom she loved. Every day at a certain hour she went to meet him, and this Philip discovered.Taking his seat upon a bench set close up against a window, he watched for her and when she was passing in front of him, her eye alight, her lips parted, amiable, fresh from the bath, and rustling about her all her array of yellow brocade, she caught sight of the Infante who said to her, without getting up from his seat:“Madame, could you not stay a moment?”Impatient as a filly held back in her career, at the moment when she is hurrying to the splendid stallion neighing in the meadow, she answered:“Highness, everyone here must obey your princely will.”“Sit down beside me,” said he.Then looking at her luxuriously, stonily, and warily, he said:“Repeat thePaterto me in Flemish; they have taught it to me, but I have forgotten it.”The poor lady then must begin to say aPaterand he must needs bid her say it slower.And in this way he forced the poor thing to say as many as tenPaters, she that thought the hour had come to go through other orisons.Then covering her with praises and flatteries, he spoke of her lovely hair, her bright colour, her shining eyes, but did not venture to say a word to her either of her plump shoulders or her smooth round breast or any other thing.When she thought she could get away and was already looking out into the court where her lord was waiting for her, he asked her if she knew truly what are the womanly virtues.As she made no answer for fear of saying the wrong thing, he spoke for her and preaching at her, he said:“The womanly virtues, these be chastity, watchfulness over honour, and sober living.”He counselled her also to array herself decently and to hide closely all that pertained to her.She made sign of assent with her head saying:That for His Hyperborean Highness she would much sooner cover herself with ten bearskins than with an ell of muslin.Having put him in ill humour with this retort, she fled away rejoicing.However, the fire of youth was lit up in the Infante’s bosom, but it was not that hot burning flame that incites strong souls to high deeds, but a dark, sinisterflame come out of hell where Satan had without doubt kindled it. And it shone in his gray eyes like the wintry moon upon a charnel-house, and it burned him cruelly.XXVIThe beautiful and sweet lady on a day left Valladolid to go to her Château of Dudzeele in Flanders.Passing through Damme attended by her fat seneschal, she saw sitting against the wall of a cottage a boy of fifteen blowing into a bagpipe. In front of him was a red dog that, not liking this music, howled in a melancholy fashion. The sun shone bright. Standing beside the lad there was a pretty girl laughing loudly at each fresh pitiful burst of howling from the dog.The beautiful dame and the fat seneschal, as they passed by the cottage, looked at Ulenspiegel blowing, Nele laughing, and Titus Bibulus Schnouffius howling.“Bad boy,” said the dame, addressing Ulenspiegel, “could you not cease from making that poor red beast howl in that way?”But Ulenspiegel, with his eyes on her, blew up his bagpipe more stoutly still. And Bibulus Schnouffius howled still more melancholily, and Nele laughed the more.The seneschal, growing angry, said to the dame, pointing to Ulenspiegel:“If I were to give this beggar’s spawn a dressing with my scabbard, he would stop making this impudent hubbub.”Ulenspiegel looked at the seneschal, called himJan Papzak, because of his belly, and continued toblow his bagpipe. The seneschal went up to him with a threatening fist, but Bibulus Schnouffius threw himself on the man and bit him in the leg, and the seneschal tumbled down in affright crying out:“Help!”The dame said to Ulenspiegel, smiling:“Could you not tell me, bagpiper, if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not been changed?”Ulenspiegel, without stopping his playing, nodded his head and looked still at the dame.“Why do you look so steadily at me?” she asked.But he, still playing, stretched his eyes wide as though rapt in an ecstasy of admiration.She said to him:“Are you not ashamed, young as you are, to stare at ladies so?”Ulenspiegel reddened slightly, went on blowing, and stared harder.“I asked you,” she went on, “if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not altered?”“It is not green now since you deprived it of the joy of carrying you,” replied Ulenspiegel.“Wilt thou guide me?” said the dame.But Ulenspiegel remained seated, still never taking his eyes from her. And she, seeing him so roguish, and knowing that it was a mere trick of youth, forgave him easily. He got up, and turned to go into his home.“Where are you going?” she asked.“To put on my best clothes,” he replied.“Go then,” said the dame.She sat down then on the bench beside the doorstep; the seneschal did the same. She would have talked to Nele, but Nele did not answer her, for she was jealous.Ulenspiegel came back carefully washed and clad in fustian. He looked well in his Sunday garb, the little man.“Art thou verily going with this beautiful lady?” Nele asked him.“I shall be back soon,” replied Ulenspiegel.“If I were to go instead of you?” said Nele.“Nay,” he said, “the roads are full of mire.”“Why,” said the dame, angry and jealous together, “why, little girl, do you want to keep him from coming with me?”Nele made her no answer, but big tears welled up from her eyes and she gazed on the dame in sadness and in anger.They started on their way, four all told, the dame sitting like a queen on her white hackney caparisoned with black velvet; the seneschal whose belly shook to his walking; Ulenspiegel holding the dame’s hackney by the bridle, and Bibulus Schnouffius walking alongside him, tail in air proudly.They rode and strode thus for some time, but Ulenspiegel was not at his ease; dumb as a fish he breathed in the fine odour of benjamin wafted from the dame, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at all her fine tags and rare jewels and furbelows, and also at her soft mien, her bright eyes, her bared bosom, and her hair that the sun made to shine like a golden cap.“Why,” said she, “why do you say so little, my little man?”He made no reply.“Your tongue is not so deep down in your shoes that you could not manage a message for me?”“Right,” said Ulenspiegel.“You must,” said the dame, “leave me here and go to Koolkercke, on the other way of the wind, and tell a gentleman clad particoloured in black and red, that he must not look for me to-day, but to come on Sunday at ten at night, into my castle by the postern.”“I will not go,” said Ulenspiegel.“Why not?” asked the dame.“I will not go, no!” said Ulenspiegel again.The dame said to him:“What is it then, little ruffled cock, that inspires thee with this fierce mind?”“I will not go!” said Ulenspiegel.“But if I gave thee a florin?”“No!” said he.“A ducat?”“No!”“A carolus?”“No,” said Ulenspiegel again. “And yet,” he added, sighing, “I should like it in my mother’s purse better than a mussel-shell.”The dame smiled, then cried out suddenly:“I have lost my fine rare purse, made of silken cloth and broidered with rich pearls! At Damme it was still hanging at my girdle.”Ulenspiegel budged not, but the seneschal came forward to the dame.“Madame,” he said, “send not this young thief to look for it, for you would never see it again.”“And who will go then?” asked the dame.“Myself,” he answered, “despite my great age.”And he went off.Noon struck, the heat was great, the solitude profound; Ulenspiegel said no word, but he doffed hisnew doublet that the dame might sit down in the shade beneath a lime, without fearing the cool of the grass. He remained standing close by her, sighing.She looked at him and felt pity rising up in her for this timid little fellow, and asked him if he was not weary with standing so on his tender young legs. He answered not a word, and as he let himself drop down beside her, she tried to catch him, and pulled him on to her bared bosom, where he remained with such good will that she would have thought herself guilty of the sin of cruelty if she had bidden him seek another pillow.However, the seneschal came back and said he had not found the purse.“I found it myself,” replied the dame, “when I dismounted from my horse, for it had unfastened its broochpin and got caught up on the stirrup. Now,” she said to Ulenspiegel, “take us the direct way to Dudzeele and tell me how thou art called.”“My patron,” he answered, “is Master Saint Thylbert, a name which signifies light of foot to run after good matters; my name is Claes and my to-name Ulenspiegel. If you would look at yourself in my mirror, you will see that there is not upon all this land of Flanders a flower of beauty so dazzling as your fragrant loveliness.”The dame blushed with pleasure and was in no wise wroth with Ulenspiegel.And Soetkin and Nele wept during this long absence.

XIVWhen he came home, riding upon his donkey, and provided with a bag full of patards his brother Josse had given him and a goodly tankard of pewter, there were in the cottage Sunday good cheer and daily feasts, for every day they had meat and beans to eat.Claes filled often the great pewter tankard withdobbel-cuytand emptied it as often.Ulenspiegel ate for three and paddled in the dishes like a sparrow in a heap of corn.“Look,” said Claes, “he’s eating the saltcellar, too!”Ulenspiegel answered:“When the saltcellar, as in our house, is made of a hollow piece of bread, it must be eaten now and then, lest the worms might come in it as it gets old.”“Why,” said Soetkin, “do you wipe your greasy hands on your breeches?”“So that I may never have my thighs wet,” replied Ulenspiegel.At this moment Claes drank a deep draught from his tankard. Ulenspiegel said to him:“Why have you so big a cup, I have only a poor little mug?”Claes answered:“Because I am your father and thebaesof this house.”Ulenspiegel retorted:“You have been drinking for forty years, I for nine only; your time to drink is passed, mine is come; it is therefore for me to have the tankard and for you to take the mug.”“Son,” said Claes, “he that would pour a hogshead into a keg would throw his beer into the gutter.”“You will then be wise to pour your keg into my hogshead, for I am bigger than your tankard,” replied Ulenspiegel.And Claes, delighted, gave him his tankard to drain. In this wise Ulenspiegel learned how to talk for his drink.XVSoetkin carried beneath her girdle the signs of renewed maternity; Katheline, too, was with child, but for fear dared not stir out of her house.When Soetkin went to see her:“Ah!” said she, lamenting, “what shall I do with the poor fruit of my womb? Must I strangle it? I would rather die. But if the constables take me, for having a child without being married, they will make me pay twenty florins, like a girl of loose life, and I shall be whipped on the marketplace.”Soetkin then said some soothing word to console her, and having left her, went home pondering. Then one day she said to Claes:“If instead of one child I had two, would you beat me, husband?”“I don’t know that,” replied Claes.“But,” said she, “if this second were not born of me, and like Katheline’s were the offspring of an unknown, of the devil, mayhap?”“Devils,” replied Claes, “engender fire, death, and foul smoke, but not children. I will hold as mine the child of Katheline.”“You would do this?” she said.“I have said,” replied Claes.Soetkin went to tell Katheline.Hearing it, the latter cried out, overjoyed.“He has spoken, good man, spoken for the sake of my poor body. He will be blessed by God, and blessed of the devil, if it is a devil,” she said, shuddering, “that hath made thee, poor babe that movest in my bosom.”Soetkin and Katheline brought into the world one a lad, the other a girl. Both were borne to baptism, as son and daughter of Claes. Soetkin’s son was named Hans, and did not live, Katheline’s daughter was named Nele and throve well.She drank the wine of life from four flagons, twoof Katheline and two of Soetkin. And the two women quarrelled softly which should give the babe to drink. But against her desire Katheline must needs allow her milk to dry up, so that none might ask whence it came without her having been a mother.When little Nele, her daughter, was weaned, she took her home and only let the child go to Soetkin’s when she had called her her mother.The neighbours said it was well done of Katheline, who was well to do, to feed the child of the Claes, who for the most part lived in poverty their toilsome life.XVIUlenspiegel found himself alone one morning at home, and for want of something better to do, he began to cut up one of his father’s shoes to make a little ship. Already he had planted the mainmast in the sole and bored the toe for the bowsprit, when at the half door he saw passing the bust of a horseman and the head of a horse.“Is any one within?” asked the horseman.“There are,” replied Ulenspiegel, “a man and a half and a horse’s head.”“How so?” asked the horseman.“Because I see here a whole man, which is me; the half of a man, which is your bust; and a horse’s head, which is that of your steed.”“Where are your father and your mother?” asked the man.“My father has gone to make bad worse,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and my mother is engaged in bringing us shame or loss.”“Explain,” said the horseman.Ulenspiegel answered:“My father at this moment is deepening the holes in his field so as to bring from bad to worse the huntsmen who trample down his corn. My mother has gone to borrow money: if she repays too little ’twill shame us, if too much ’twill be our loss.”The man asked then which way he should go.“Where the geese are,” replied Ulenspiegel.The man went away and came back just when Ulenspiegel was making an oared galley out of Claes’s other shoe.“You have misled me,” said he: “where the geese are is nothing but mud and marsh in which they are paddling.”Ulenspiegel answered to this:“I did not tell you to go where the geese paddle, but where they go.”“Show me, at any rate,” said the man, “a road that goes to Heyst.”“In Flanders, it is the travellers that go and not the roads,” said Ulenspiegel.XVIIOne day Soetkin said to Claes:“Husband, my heart is sad: it is now three days since Thyl left the house; dost thou not know where he is?”Claes replied ruefully:“He is where homeless dogs are, on some highway with a crew of other vagabonds of his own kidney. God was cruel to give us such a son. When he was born, I beheld in him the joy of our age, a tool morein the house; I looked to make a craftsman of him, and wicked fate makes him a thief and a drone.”“Be not so hard, husband,” said Soetkin, “our son being but nine years old is in the heyday of childish thoughtlessness and folly. Is it not so that like the trees, he must shed the young buds before the coming of the full leaves, which for the human tree are honour and virtue? He is full of tricks, I am not blind to them, but they will turn later to his advantage, if instead of employing them to ill ends, he applies them to some useful trade. He is prone to flout his neighbours; but later this will help him to hold his own in merry company. He laughs ever and always; but faces sour before they are ripe are an ill omen for the countenance to come. If he runs, ’tis that he must grow; if he does not work, it is for that he is not yet of an age to feel that work is duty, and if now and then he spends day and night away from home for half a week together, ’tis that he knows nothing of what grief he gives us, for he has a good heart, and he loves us.”Claes wagged his head and made no answer, and while he slept, Soetkin wept alone. And in the morning, thinking that her son was sick in a corner of some highway, she went out on the doorstep to see if he was not coming back; but she saw nothing, and she sate near the window, looking thence into the street. And many a time her heart danced in her bosom at the sound of the light foot of some lad; but when he passed, she saw it was not Ulenspiegel, and then she wept, poor dolorous mother.In the meanwhile, Ulenspiegel with his vagabond companions was at Bruges, at the Saturday fair.There might be seen cobblers and shoemakers in booths apart, tailors selling clothes,miesevangersfrom Antwerp, who catch tits with an owl at night; poultry sellers, dog stealers, vendors of catskins for gloves, waistcoats, and doublets, buyers of every kind and condition, burgesses and their womenfolk, menservants and maidservants, pantlers, butlers, and all together, sellers and buyers, crying up and crying down, vaunting and disparaging the wares.In one corner of the fair there was a fine canvas tent erected on four poles. At the door of the tent, a churl from the flat country of Alost, with two monks who were there to get something for themselves, was showing the curious devout, for a patard, a piece of the shoulder blade of Saint Mary of Egypt. Hoarsely he bawled out the saint’s merits, and omitted not from his song how, having no silver, she paid a young ferrymanin kind, so as not to sinagainstthe Holy Ghost by refusing the labourer his hire.And the two monks nodded their heads to show that what the churl said was true. By them was a woman fat and ruddy, lascivious as Astarte, violently inflating a wretched bagpipe, while a pretty young girl sang beside her like a nightingale; but no one listened to her. Above the entrance to the tent was hung on two poles, held by cords in the two handles, a bucket full of holy water that had been blessed in Rome, according to the fat woman, while the two monks waggled head to bear witness to her tale. Ulenspiegel, beholding the bucket, became pensive.To one of the poles supporting the tent was fasteneda donkey that was fed more upon hay than on oats: head down it was gazing at the earth, with no hope of seeing thistles spring up from it.“Comrades,” said Ulenspiegel, pointing with his finger at the fat woman, the two monks, and the ass, “since the masters sing so sweetly, we must make the donkey dance as well.”So saying, he went off to the next booth, bought six liards’ worth of pepper, pulled up the donkey’s tail and clapped the pepper underneath.The donkey, feeling the pepper at work, looked round under his tail to see whence proceeded this unwonted heat. Thinking he had a red-hot devil there, he would fain run away to escape him, began to bray and rear, and shook the tent pole with all his might. At the first shock, the tub between the two poles spilled all its holy water on the tent and on those who were within it. And presently collapsing, the tent covered with a moist mantle those who were hearkening to the history of Mary of Egypt. And from under the canvas Ulenspiegel and his companions heard a great noise of moaning and lamenting, for the devout who were there were wild with anger and exchanged furious thwacks and thumps with one another. The canvas rose and fell at the struggles of the combatants. Every time Ulenspiegel saw a roundness shape itself under the cloth, he stuck a needle into it. Then there were louder shrieks beneath the canvas and a more liberal distribution of thwackings.And he was transported, but more still seeing the donkey fleeing and dragging behind him tent, tub, and poles, while thebaesof the tent, his wife andhis daughter, hung desperately on to the baggage. The donkey, which could run no longer, lifted his head into the air and ceased not to sing, except in order to look beneath his tail to see if the fire there burning would not soon be extinguished.All this while the devout were going on with their battle; the monks, without giving them a thought, were picking up the money that had fallen from the collecting dishes, and Ulenspiegel was helping them, most devoutly, not without profiting.XVIIIWhilst the vagabond son of the coalman was growing up gay and frolicsome, in lean melancholy vegetated the dolorous scion of the sublime Emperor. Lords and ladies saw the pitiful little weakling dragging through the rooms and corridors of Valladolid his frail body and his tottering limbs that could scarce sustain the weight of his big head, covered with fair stiff hair.Ever seeking out the darkest corridors, there he would sit for hours thrusting out his legs in front of him. If a servant trod on him by accident, he had the man flogged, and took pleasure in hearing him cry out under the lashes, but he never laughed.The next day, going elsewhere to set the same trap, he would sit again in some corridor with his legs thrust out. The ladies, lords, and pages who might pass there going fast or slow would trip over him, fall down and hurt themselves. He took pleasure in this, also, but he never laughed.When one of them, having run into him, failed to fall, he would cry out as if he had been struck,and he was delighted to see their fear, but he never laughed.His Sacred Majesty was informed of his behaviour and gave orders to take no notice of the boy, saying that if he did not wish to have his legs trodden on, he ought not to put them in the way of people’s feet.This angered Philip, but he said nothing, and no one saw him after, except when on bright summer days he went to warm his shivering body in the sunshine in the courtyard.One day, coming back from the wars, Charles saw him steeped in melancholy in this fashion.“Son,” said he, “how different art thou from me! At thy age, I loved to climb among trees to hunt the squirrels; I had myself lowered by a rope down some steep cliff to take eaglets from the nest. At this play I might have left my bones behind me; they but became the harder for it. In the chase the wild things fled to their dens when they saw me coming with my good arquebus.”“Ah,” sighed the boy, “I have a pain in the belly, monseigneur my father.”“The wine of Paxaretos,” said Charles, “is a sovereign cure.”“I do not like wine; my head aches, monseigneur my father.”“Son,” said Charles, “thou must run and leap and romp as do other boys of thine own years.”“My legs are stiff, monseigneur my father.”“How,” said Charles, “how can they be otherwise if thou usest them no more than if they were legs of wood? I will have thee fastened on some nimble steed.”The boy wept.“Do not so,” said he, “I have a pain in my loins, monseigneur my father.”“But,” said Charles, “you have a pain everywhere then?”“I would not be ill at all if I were left in peace,” replied the child.“Dost thou think,” rejoined the Emperor, impatiently, “to pass thy royal life in brooding as do clerks? For them, if it must be, in order that they may soil their parchments with ink, from the silence, solitude, and retirement; for thee, son of the sword, there needs hot blood, the eye of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the strength of Hercules. Why dost thou make the holy sign? God’s blood! ’tis not for the lion’s cub to ape paternoster-mongering females.”“Hark, the Angelus, monseigneur my father,” replied the child.XIXThis year May and June were verily the months of flowers. Never did any see in Flanders hawthorn so fragrant, never in the gardens so many roses, such heaps of jasmine and honeysuckle. When the wind that blew up out of England drove the incense of this flowery land towards the east, every man, and specially in Antwerp, nose in air with delight, would say:“Do you smell the sweet wind that comes from Flanders?”In like wise the busy bees sucked the flowers’ honey, made wax, laid their eggs in hives too small to harbour their swarms. What music of labour under the blue sky that covered the rich earth with its dazzling tent!Men made hives out of rushes, of straw, of osiers,of plaited hay. Basketmakers, tubmakers, coopers were wearing out their tools over the work. As for the wood carvers, for a long time they had been unequal to the task.The swarms were of full thirty thousand bees and two thousand seven hundred drones. The honeycombs were so delicious that because of their rare quality, the dean of Damme sent eleven to the Emperor Charles, by way of thanks for having through his edicts restored the Holy Inquisition to all its full vigour. It was Philip that ate them, but they did him no good.Tramps, beggars, vagabonds, and all that ragtag and bobtail of idle rogues that parade their laziness about the roads, preferring to be hanged rather than to work, enticed by the taste of the honey, came to get their share of it. And they prowled about by night, in crowds.Claes had made hives to attract the swarming bees to them; some were full and others empty, awaiting the bees. Claes used to watch all night to guard this sugared wealth. When he was tired, he used to bid Ulenspiegel take his place. And the boy did so with a good will.Now one night Ulenspiegel, to avoid the cold air, had taken shelter in a hive, and, all huddled up, was looking through the openings, of which there were two, in the top of the hive.As he was on the point of falling asleep, he heard the little trees and bushes of the hedge crackling and heard the voices of two men whom he took to be robbers. He looked out through one of the openings in the hive, and saw that they both had long hair anda long beard, though the beard was the mark and sign of noble rank.They went from hive to hive, and came to his own, and picking it up, they said:“Let us take this one: it is the heaviest.”Then they carried it off, using their sticks to do it. Ulenspiegel took no pleasure in being thus carted in a hive. The night was clear and bright, and the thieves walked along without uttering a word. Every fifty paces they stopped, clean out of breath, to go on their way again presently. The one in front grumbled furiously at having so heavy a weight to bear, and the one behind whimpered melancholy-wise. For in this world there are two kinds of idle cowards, those who grow angry with work, and those that whine when there is work to be done.Ulenspiegel, having nothing else to do, pulled the hair of the robber who went in front, and the beard of the one behind, so that growing tired of this game, the angry one said to the snivelling one:“Stop pulling my hair, or I will give you such a wallop on the head with my fist that it will sink down into your chest and you will look through your ribs like a thief through the bars of his prison.”“I wouldn’t dare, my friend,” said the sniveller, “but it is you that are pulling me by the beard.”The angry one answered:“I don’t go hunting vermin in beggar fellows’ fur.”“Sir,” replied the sniveller, “do not make the hive jump about so much; my poor arms are nearly breaking in two.”“I’ll have them off altogether,” answered the angry fellow.Then, putting off his leathern gear he set the hive down on the ground, and leaped upon his comrade. And they fought with each other, the one cursing and swearing, the other crying for mercy.Ulenspiegel, hearing the blows pattering down, came out of the hive, dragged it with him as far as the nearest wood so as to find it there again, and went back to Claes’s house.And thus it is that in quarrellings sly folk find their advantage.XXWhen he was fifteen, Ulenspiegel erected a little tent at Damme upon four stakes, and he cried out that everyone might see within, represented in a handsome frame of hay, his present and future self.When there came a man of law, haughty and puffed up with his own importance, Ulenspiegel would thrust his head out of the frame, and mimicking the face of an old ape, he would say:“An old mug may decay, but never flourish; am I not your very mirror, good sir of the doctoral phiz?”If he had a stout soldier for client, Ulenspiegel would hide and show in the middle of the frame, instead of his face, a dishful of meat and bread, and say:“Battle will make hash of you; what will you give me for my prophecy, O soldier beloved of the big-mouthed sakers?”When an old man, wearing ingloriously his hoary head, would bring Ulenspiegel his wife, a young woman, the boy, hiding himself as he had done for the soldier, and showing in the frame a little tree, on whose brancheswere hung knife handles, caskets, combs, inkhorns, all made of horn, would call out:“Whence come all these fine nicknacks, Messire? Is it not from the hornbeam that groweth within the garden of old husbands? Who shall say now that cuckolds are folk useless in a commonweal?”And Ulenspiegel would display his young face in the frame alongside the tree.The old man, hearing him, would cough with masculine anger, but his dear wife would soothe him with her hand, and smiling, come up to Ulenspiegel.“And my mirror,” she would say, “wilt thou show it to me?”“Come closer,” Ulenspiegel would answer.She would obey, and he then, kissing her wherever he could:“Thy mirror,” he would say, “is stark youth with proud codpiece.”And the darling would go away also, but not without giving him florins one or two.To the fat, blear-eyed monk who would ask to see his present and future self, Ulenspiegel would answer:“Thou art a ham cupboard, and so thou shalt be a still room for cervoise ale; for salt calleth upon drinking, is not this true, great belly? Give me a patard for not having lied.”“My son,” the monk would reply, “we never carry money.”“’Tis then the money carries thee,” would Ulenspiegel answer, “for I know thou dost put it between two soles under thy feet. Give me thy sandal.”But the monk:“My son, ’tis the property of the Convent; I willnone the less take from it, if I must, two patards for thy trouble.”The monk gave them. Ulenspiegel received them graciously.Thus showed he their mirror to the folk of Damme, of Bruges, of Blankenberghe, nay, even as far away as Ostend.And instead of saying to them in his Flemish speech: “Ik ben u lieden Spiegel,” “I am your mirror,” he said to them, shortening it, “Ik ben ulen spiegel,” even as it is still said to-day in East and West Flanders.And from thence there came to him his surname of Ulenspiegel.XXIAs he grew up, he conceived a liking for wandering about through fairs and markets. If he saw there any one playing on the hautbois, the rebeck, or the bagpipes, he would, for a patard, have them teach him the way to make music on these instruments.He became above all skilled in playing on therommel-pot, an instrument made of a pot, a bladder, and a stout straw. This is how he arranged them: he damped the bladder and strained it over the pot, fastened with a string the middle of the bladder round the knot on the straw, which was touching the bottom of the pot, on the rim of which he then fixed the bladder stretched to bursting point. In the morning, the bladder, being dried, gave the sound of a tambourine when it was struck, and if the straw of the instrument was rubbed it hummed better than a viol. And Ulenspiegel, with his pot booming and sounding like a mastiff’s barking, went singing carols at house doorsin company with youngsters, one of whom carried the shining star made out of paper on Twelfth Night.If any master painter came to Damme to pourtray, on their knees on canvas, the companions of some Guild, Ulenspiegel, desiring to see how he wrought, would ask to be allowed to grind his colours, and for all salary would accept only a slice of bread, three liards, and a pint of ale.Applying himself to the grinding, he would study his master’s manner. When the master was away, he would try to paint like him, but put vermilion everywhere. He tried to paint Claes, Soetkin, Katheline, and Nele, as well as quart pots and sauce-pans. Claes prophesied to him, seeing his works, that if he would be bold and persevering, he might one day earn florins by the score, painting inscriptions on thespeel-wagen, which are pleasure carts in Flanders and in Zealand.He learned, too, from a master mason how to carve wood and stone, when the man came to make, in the choir of Notre Dame, a stall so constructed that when it was necessary the aged dean could sit down on it while still seeming to remain standing.It was Ulenspiegel who carved the first handle for the knife used by the Zealand folk. This handle he made in the shape of a cage. Within there was a loose death’s head; above it a dog in a lying posture. These emblems taken together signify “Blade faithful to the death.”And in this wise Ulenspiegel began to fulfil the prediction of Katheline, showing himself painter, sculptor, clown, noble, all at once and together, forfrom father to son the Claes bore for arms three quart pots argent on a field ofbruinbier.But Ulenspiegel was constant to no trade, and Claes told him if this game went on, he would turn him away from the cottage.XXIIThe Emperor being returned from war, asked why his son Philip had not come to greet him.The Infante’s archbishop-governor replied that he had not desired to do so, for, so he said, he cared for nothing but books and solitude.The Emperor enquired where he was at that moment.The governor answered that they must seek him in every place where it was dark. They did so.Having gone through a goodly number of chambers, they came at last to a kind of closet, unpaven, and lit by a skylight. There they saw stuck in the earth a post to which was fastened by the waist a pretty little tiny monkey, that had been sent to His Highness from the Indies to delight him with its youthful antics. At the foot of this stake faggots still red were smoking, and in the closet there was a foul stench of burnt hair.The little beast had suffered so much dying in this fire that its little body seemed to be not an animal that ever had life, but a fragment of some wrinkled twisted root, and in its mouth, open as though to cry out on death, bloody foam was visible, and the water of its tears made its face wet.“Who did this?” asked the Emperor.The governor did not dare to reply, and both men remained silent, sad, and wrathful.Suddenly in this silence there was heard a low little sound of a cough that came from a corner in the shadow behind them. His Majesty, turning about, received the Infante Philip, all clad in black and sucking a lemon.“Don Philip,” said he, “come and salute me.”The Infante, without budging, looked at him with his timid eyes in which there was no affection.“Is it thou,” asked the Emperor, “that hast burned this little beast in this fire?”The Infante hung his head.But the Emperor:“If thou wert cruel enough to do it, be brave enough to confess it.”The Infante made no answer.His Majesty plucked the lemon out of his hands and flung it on the ground, and he was about to beat his son melting away with fright, when the archbishop, stopping him, whispered in his ear:“His Highness will be a great burner of heretics one day.”The Emperor smiled, and the two men went away, leaving the Infante alone with his monkey.But there were others that were no monkeys and died in the flames.XXIIINovember had come, the month of hail in which coughing folk give themselves up wholehearted to the music of phlegm. In this month also the small boys descend in bands on the turnip fields, pilfering what they can from them, to the great rage of thepeasants, who vainly run after them with sticks and forks.Now one evening, as Ulenspiegel was coming back from a marauding foray, he heard close by, in a corner of the hedge, a sound of groaning. Stooping down, he saw a dog lying upon some stones.“Hey,” said he, “miserable beastie, what dost thou there so late?”Caressing the dog, he felt his back wet, thought that someone had tried to drown him, and took him up in his arms to warm him.Coming home he said:“I bring a wounded patient, what shall I do to him?”“Heal him,” said Claes in reply.Ulenspiegel set the dog down upon the table. Claes, Soetkin, and himself then saw by the light of the lamp a little red Luxembourg spaniel hurt on the back. Soetkin sponged the wounds, covered them with ointment, and bound them up with linen. Ulenspiegel took the little beast into his bed, though Soetkin wanted to have him in her own, fearing, as she said, lest Ulenspiegel, who tumbled about in bed like a devil in a holy water pot, should hurt the dog as he slept.But Ulenspiegel had his own way, and tended him so well that after six days the patient ran about like his fellows full of doggish tricks.And theschool-meesterchristened him Titus Bibulus Schnouffius: Titus in memory of a certain good Emperor of Rome, who took pains to gather in lost dogs; Bibulus because the dog lovedbruinbierwith the love of a true tosspot, and Schnouffius because sniff-sniffingeverywhere he was always thrusting his nose into rat-holes and mole holes.XXIVAt the end of the Rue Notre Dame there were two willows planted face to face on the edge of a deep pond.Ulenspiegel stretched a rope between the two willows and danced upon it one Sunday after vespers, so well that all the crowd of vagabonds applauded him with both hand and voice. Then he came down from his rope and held out to all the bystanders a bowl that was speedily filled with money, but he emptied it in Soetkin’s apron and kept only eleven liards for himself.The next Sunday he would fain dance again on his rope, but certain good-for-nought lads, being jealous of his nimbleness, had made a nick in the rope, so that after a few bounds the rope broke in sunder and Ulenspiegel tumbled into the water.Whilst he swam to reach the bank the little fellows that cut the rope shouted to him:“How is your limber health, Ulenspiegel? Are you going to the bottom of the pond to teach the carps to dance, dancer beyond price?”Ulenspiegel coming out from the water and shaking himself cried out to them, for they were making off from him for fear of his fists:“Be not afraid; come back next Sunday, I will show you tricks on the rope and you will have a share in the proceeds.”On Sunday, the lads had not sliced the cord, but were keeping watch round about it, for fear any one might touch it, for there was a great crowd of people.Ulenspiegel said to them:“Each of you give me one of your shoes, and I wager that however big or little they may be I will dance with every one of them.”“What do you pay if you lose?” they asked.“Forty quarts ofbruinbier,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and ye shall pay me three patards if I win the wager.”“Aye,” said they.And they each gave him a shoe. Ulenspiegel put them all in the apron he was wearing, and thus laden he danced upon the rope, though not without trouble.The cord slicers called out from below:“Thou saidst thou wouldst dance with every one of our shoes; put them on then and hold thy wager!”Ulenspiegel, all the while dancing, made reply:“I never said I would put on your shoes, but that I would dance with them. Now I am dancing and everything in my apron is dancing with me. Do ye not see it with your frog’s eyes all staring out of your heads? Pay me my three patards.”But they hooted at him, shouting that he must give them their shoes back.Ulenspiegel threw them at them one after the other into a heap. Therefrom arose a furious affray, for none of them could clearly distinguish his own shoe in the heap, or lay hold of it without a fight.Ulenspiegel then came down from the tree and watered the combatants, but not with fair water.XXVThe Infante, being fifteen years of age, went wandering, as his way was, through corridors, staircases, andchambers about the castle. But most of all he was seen prowling about the ladies’ apartments, in order to brawl with the pages who like himself were like cats in ambush in the corridors. Others planting themselves in the court, would be singing some tender ditty with their noses turned aloft.The Infante, hearing them, would show himself at a window, and so terrify the poor pages that beheld this pallid muzzle instead of the soft eyes of their fair ones.Among the court ladies there was a charming Flemish woman from Dudzeele hard by Damme, plump, a handsome ripe fruit and marvellously lovely, for she had green eyes and red crimped hair, shining like gold. Of a gay humour and ardent temperament, she never hid from any one her inclination for the lucky lord to whom she accorded the divine right of way of love over her goodly pleasaunce. There was one at this moment, handsome and high spirited, whom she loved. Every day at a certain hour she went to meet him, and this Philip discovered.Taking his seat upon a bench set close up against a window, he watched for her and when she was passing in front of him, her eye alight, her lips parted, amiable, fresh from the bath, and rustling about her all her array of yellow brocade, she caught sight of the Infante who said to her, without getting up from his seat:“Madame, could you not stay a moment?”Impatient as a filly held back in her career, at the moment when she is hurrying to the splendid stallion neighing in the meadow, she answered:“Highness, everyone here must obey your princely will.”“Sit down beside me,” said he.Then looking at her luxuriously, stonily, and warily, he said:“Repeat thePaterto me in Flemish; they have taught it to me, but I have forgotten it.”The poor lady then must begin to say aPaterand he must needs bid her say it slower.And in this way he forced the poor thing to say as many as tenPaters, she that thought the hour had come to go through other orisons.Then covering her with praises and flatteries, he spoke of her lovely hair, her bright colour, her shining eyes, but did not venture to say a word to her either of her plump shoulders or her smooth round breast or any other thing.When she thought she could get away and was already looking out into the court where her lord was waiting for her, he asked her if she knew truly what are the womanly virtues.As she made no answer for fear of saying the wrong thing, he spoke for her and preaching at her, he said:“The womanly virtues, these be chastity, watchfulness over honour, and sober living.”He counselled her also to array herself decently and to hide closely all that pertained to her.She made sign of assent with her head saying:That for His Hyperborean Highness she would much sooner cover herself with ten bearskins than with an ell of muslin.Having put him in ill humour with this retort, she fled away rejoicing.However, the fire of youth was lit up in the Infante’s bosom, but it was not that hot burning flame that incites strong souls to high deeds, but a dark, sinisterflame come out of hell where Satan had without doubt kindled it. And it shone in his gray eyes like the wintry moon upon a charnel-house, and it burned him cruelly.XXVIThe beautiful and sweet lady on a day left Valladolid to go to her Château of Dudzeele in Flanders.Passing through Damme attended by her fat seneschal, she saw sitting against the wall of a cottage a boy of fifteen blowing into a bagpipe. In front of him was a red dog that, not liking this music, howled in a melancholy fashion. The sun shone bright. Standing beside the lad there was a pretty girl laughing loudly at each fresh pitiful burst of howling from the dog.The beautiful dame and the fat seneschal, as they passed by the cottage, looked at Ulenspiegel blowing, Nele laughing, and Titus Bibulus Schnouffius howling.“Bad boy,” said the dame, addressing Ulenspiegel, “could you not cease from making that poor red beast howl in that way?”But Ulenspiegel, with his eyes on her, blew up his bagpipe more stoutly still. And Bibulus Schnouffius howled still more melancholily, and Nele laughed the more.The seneschal, growing angry, said to the dame, pointing to Ulenspiegel:“If I were to give this beggar’s spawn a dressing with my scabbard, he would stop making this impudent hubbub.”Ulenspiegel looked at the seneschal, called himJan Papzak, because of his belly, and continued toblow his bagpipe. The seneschal went up to him with a threatening fist, but Bibulus Schnouffius threw himself on the man and bit him in the leg, and the seneschal tumbled down in affright crying out:“Help!”The dame said to Ulenspiegel, smiling:“Could you not tell me, bagpiper, if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not been changed?”Ulenspiegel, without stopping his playing, nodded his head and looked still at the dame.“Why do you look so steadily at me?” she asked.But he, still playing, stretched his eyes wide as though rapt in an ecstasy of admiration.She said to him:“Are you not ashamed, young as you are, to stare at ladies so?”Ulenspiegel reddened slightly, went on blowing, and stared harder.“I asked you,” she went on, “if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not altered?”“It is not green now since you deprived it of the joy of carrying you,” replied Ulenspiegel.“Wilt thou guide me?” said the dame.But Ulenspiegel remained seated, still never taking his eyes from her. And she, seeing him so roguish, and knowing that it was a mere trick of youth, forgave him easily. He got up, and turned to go into his home.“Where are you going?” she asked.“To put on my best clothes,” he replied.“Go then,” said the dame.She sat down then on the bench beside the doorstep; the seneschal did the same. She would have talked to Nele, but Nele did not answer her, for she was jealous.Ulenspiegel came back carefully washed and clad in fustian. He looked well in his Sunday garb, the little man.“Art thou verily going with this beautiful lady?” Nele asked him.“I shall be back soon,” replied Ulenspiegel.“If I were to go instead of you?” said Nele.“Nay,” he said, “the roads are full of mire.”“Why,” said the dame, angry and jealous together, “why, little girl, do you want to keep him from coming with me?”Nele made her no answer, but big tears welled up from her eyes and she gazed on the dame in sadness and in anger.They started on their way, four all told, the dame sitting like a queen on her white hackney caparisoned with black velvet; the seneschal whose belly shook to his walking; Ulenspiegel holding the dame’s hackney by the bridle, and Bibulus Schnouffius walking alongside him, tail in air proudly.They rode and strode thus for some time, but Ulenspiegel was not at his ease; dumb as a fish he breathed in the fine odour of benjamin wafted from the dame, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at all her fine tags and rare jewels and furbelows, and also at her soft mien, her bright eyes, her bared bosom, and her hair that the sun made to shine like a golden cap.“Why,” said she, “why do you say so little, my little man?”He made no reply.“Your tongue is not so deep down in your shoes that you could not manage a message for me?”“Right,” said Ulenspiegel.“You must,” said the dame, “leave me here and go to Koolkercke, on the other way of the wind, and tell a gentleman clad particoloured in black and red, that he must not look for me to-day, but to come on Sunday at ten at night, into my castle by the postern.”“I will not go,” said Ulenspiegel.“Why not?” asked the dame.“I will not go, no!” said Ulenspiegel again.The dame said to him:“What is it then, little ruffled cock, that inspires thee with this fierce mind?”“I will not go!” said Ulenspiegel.“But if I gave thee a florin?”“No!” said he.“A ducat?”“No!”“A carolus?”“No,” said Ulenspiegel again. “And yet,” he added, sighing, “I should like it in my mother’s purse better than a mussel-shell.”The dame smiled, then cried out suddenly:“I have lost my fine rare purse, made of silken cloth and broidered with rich pearls! At Damme it was still hanging at my girdle.”Ulenspiegel budged not, but the seneschal came forward to the dame.“Madame,” he said, “send not this young thief to look for it, for you would never see it again.”“And who will go then?” asked the dame.“Myself,” he answered, “despite my great age.”And he went off.Noon struck, the heat was great, the solitude profound; Ulenspiegel said no word, but he doffed hisnew doublet that the dame might sit down in the shade beneath a lime, without fearing the cool of the grass. He remained standing close by her, sighing.She looked at him and felt pity rising up in her for this timid little fellow, and asked him if he was not weary with standing so on his tender young legs. He answered not a word, and as he let himself drop down beside her, she tried to catch him, and pulled him on to her bared bosom, where he remained with such good will that she would have thought herself guilty of the sin of cruelty if she had bidden him seek another pillow.However, the seneschal came back and said he had not found the purse.“I found it myself,” replied the dame, “when I dismounted from my horse, for it had unfastened its broochpin and got caught up on the stirrup. Now,” she said to Ulenspiegel, “take us the direct way to Dudzeele and tell me how thou art called.”“My patron,” he answered, “is Master Saint Thylbert, a name which signifies light of foot to run after good matters; my name is Claes and my to-name Ulenspiegel. If you would look at yourself in my mirror, you will see that there is not upon all this land of Flanders a flower of beauty so dazzling as your fragrant loveliness.”The dame blushed with pleasure and was in no wise wroth with Ulenspiegel.And Soetkin and Nele wept during this long absence.

XIVWhen he came home, riding upon his donkey, and provided with a bag full of patards his brother Josse had given him and a goodly tankard of pewter, there were in the cottage Sunday good cheer and daily feasts, for every day they had meat and beans to eat.Claes filled often the great pewter tankard withdobbel-cuytand emptied it as often.Ulenspiegel ate for three and paddled in the dishes like a sparrow in a heap of corn.“Look,” said Claes, “he’s eating the saltcellar, too!”Ulenspiegel answered:“When the saltcellar, as in our house, is made of a hollow piece of bread, it must be eaten now and then, lest the worms might come in it as it gets old.”“Why,” said Soetkin, “do you wipe your greasy hands on your breeches?”“So that I may never have my thighs wet,” replied Ulenspiegel.At this moment Claes drank a deep draught from his tankard. Ulenspiegel said to him:“Why have you so big a cup, I have only a poor little mug?”Claes answered:“Because I am your father and thebaesof this house.”Ulenspiegel retorted:“You have been drinking for forty years, I for nine only; your time to drink is passed, mine is come; it is therefore for me to have the tankard and for you to take the mug.”“Son,” said Claes, “he that would pour a hogshead into a keg would throw his beer into the gutter.”“You will then be wise to pour your keg into my hogshead, for I am bigger than your tankard,” replied Ulenspiegel.And Claes, delighted, gave him his tankard to drain. In this wise Ulenspiegel learned how to talk for his drink.

XIV

When he came home, riding upon his donkey, and provided with a bag full of patards his brother Josse had given him and a goodly tankard of pewter, there were in the cottage Sunday good cheer and daily feasts, for every day they had meat and beans to eat.Claes filled often the great pewter tankard withdobbel-cuytand emptied it as often.Ulenspiegel ate for three and paddled in the dishes like a sparrow in a heap of corn.“Look,” said Claes, “he’s eating the saltcellar, too!”Ulenspiegel answered:“When the saltcellar, as in our house, is made of a hollow piece of bread, it must be eaten now and then, lest the worms might come in it as it gets old.”“Why,” said Soetkin, “do you wipe your greasy hands on your breeches?”“So that I may never have my thighs wet,” replied Ulenspiegel.At this moment Claes drank a deep draught from his tankard. Ulenspiegel said to him:“Why have you so big a cup, I have only a poor little mug?”Claes answered:“Because I am your father and thebaesof this house.”Ulenspiegel retorted:“You have been drinking for forty years, I for nine only; your time to drink is passed, mine is come; it is therefore for me to have the tankard and for you to take the mug.”“Son,” said Claes, “he that would pour a hogshead into a keg would throw his beer into the gutter.”“You will then be wise to pour your keg into my hogshead, for I am bigger than your tankard,” replied Ulenspiegel.And Claes, delighted, gave him his tankard to drain. In this wise Ulenspiegel learned how to talk for his drink.

When he came home, riding upon his donkey, and provided with a bag full of patards his brother Josse had given him and a goodly tankard of pewter, there were in the cottage Sunday good cheer and daily feasts, for every day they had meat and beans to eat.

Claes filled often the great pewter tankard withdobbel-cuytand emptied it as often.

Ulenspiegel ate for three and paddled in the dishes like a sparrow in a heap of corn.

“Look,” said Claes, “he’s eating the saltcellar, too!”

Ulenspiegel answered:

“When the saltcellar, as in our house, is made of a hollow piece of bread, it must be eaten now and then, lest the worms might come in it as it gets old.”

“Why,” said Soetkin, “do you wipe your greasy hands on your breeches?”

“So that I may never have my thighs wet,” replied Ulenspiegel.

At this moment Claes drank a deep draught from his tankard. Ulenspiegel said to him:

“Why have you so big a cup, I have only a poor little mug?”

Claes answered:

“Because I am your father and thebaesof this house.”

Ulenspiegel retorted:

“You have been drinking for forty years, I for nine only; your time to drink is passed, mine is come; it is therefore for me to have the tankard and for you to take the mug.”

“Son,” said Claes, “he that would pour a hogshead into a keg would throw his beer into the gutter.”

“You will then be wise to pour your keg into my hogshead, for I am bigger than your tankard,” replied Ulenspiegel.

And Claes, delighted, gave him his tankard to drain. In this wise Ulenspiegel learned how to talk for his drink.

XVSoetkin carried beneath her girdle the signs of renewed maternity; Katheline, too, was with child, but for fear dared not stir out of her house.When Soetkin went to see her:“Ah!” said she, lamenting, “what shall I do with the poor fruit of my womb? Must I strangle it? I would rather die. But if the constables take me, for having a child without being married, they will make me pay twenty florins, like a girl of loose life, and I shall be whipped on the marketplace.”Soetkin then said some soothing word to console her, and having left her, went home pondering. Then one day she said to Claes:“If instead of one child I had two, would you beat me, husband?”“I don’t know that,” replied Claes.“But,” said she, “if this second were not born of me, and like Katheline’s were the offspring of an unknown, of the devil, mayhap?”“Devils,” replied Claes, “engender fire, death, and foul smoke, but not children. I will hold as mine the child of Katheline.”“You would do this?” she said.“I have said,” replied Claes.Soetkin went to tell Katheline.Hearing it, the latter cried out, overjoyed.“He has spoken, good man, spoken for the sake of my poor body. He will be blessed by God, and blessed of the devil, if it is a devil,” she said, shuddering, “that hath made thee, poor babe that movest in my bosom.”Soetkin and Katheline brought into the world one a lad, the other a girl. Both were borne to baptism, as son and daughter of Claes. Soetkin’s son was named Hans, and did not live, Katheline’s daughter was named Nele and throve well.She drank the wine of life from four flagons, twoof Katheline and two of Soetkin. And the two women quarrelled softly which should give the babe to drink. But against her desire Katheline must needs allow her milk to dry up, so that none might ask whence it came without her having been a mother.When little Nele, her daughter, was weaned, she took her home and only let the child go to Soetkin’s when she had called her her mother.The neighbours said it was well done of Katheline, who was well to do, to feed the child of the Claes, who for the most part lived in poverty their toilsome life.

XV

Soetkin carried beneath her girdle the signs of renewed maternity; Katheline, too, was with child, but for fear dared not stir out of her house.When Soetkin went to see her:“Ah!” said she, lamenting, “what shall I do with the poor fruit of my womb? Must I strangle it? I would rather die. But if the constables take me, for having a child without being married, they will make me pay twenty florins, like a girl of loose life, and I shall be whipped on the marketplace.”Soetkin then said some soothing word to console her, and having left her, went home pondering. Then one day she said to Claes:“If instead of one child I had two, would you beat me, husband?”“I don’t know that,” replied Claes.“But,” said she, “if this second were not born of me, and like Katheline’s were the offspring of an unknown, of the devil, mayhap?”“Devils,” replied Claes, “engender fire, death, and foul smoke, but not children. I will hold as mine the child of Katheline.”“You would do this?” she said.“I have said,” replied Claes.Soetkin went to tell Katheline.Hearing it, the latter cried out, overjoyed.“He has spoken, good man, spoken for the sake of my poor body. He will be blessed by God, and blessed of the devil, if it is a devil,” she said, shuddering, “that hath made thee, poor babe that movest in my bosom.”Soetkin and Katheline brought into the world one a lad, the other a girl. Both were borne to baptism, as son and daughter of Claes. Soetkin’s son was named Hans, and did not live, Katheline’s daughter was named Nele and throve well.She drank the wine of life from four flagons, twoof Katheline and two of Soetkin. And the two women quarrelled softly which should give the babe to drink. But against her desire Katheline must needs allow her milk to dry up, so that none might ask whence it came without her having been a mother.When little Nele, her daughter, was weaned, she took her home and only let the child go to Soetkin’s when she had called her her mother.The neighbours said it was well done of Katheline, who was well to do, to feed the child of the Claes, who for the most part lived in poverty their toilsome life.

Soetkin carried beneath her girdle the signs of renewed maternity; Katheline, too, was with child, but for fear dared not stir out of her house.

When Soetkin went to see her:

“Ah!” said she, lamenting, “what shall I do with the poor fruit of my womb? Must I strangle it? I would rather die. But if the constables take me, for having a child without being married, they will make me pay twenty florins, like a girl of loose life, and I shall be whipped on the marketplace.”

Soetkin then said some soothing word to console her, and having left her, went home pondering. Then one day she said to Claes:

“If instead of one child I had two, would you beat me, husband?”

“I don’t know that,” replied Claes.

“But,” said she, “if this second were not born of me, and like Katheline’s were the offspring of an unknown, of the devil, mayhap?”

“Devils,” replied Claes, “engender fire, death, and foul smoke, but not children. I will hold as mine the child of Katheline.”

“You would do this?” she said.

“I have said,” replied Claes.

Soetkin went to tell Katheline.

Hearing it, the latter cried out, overjoyed.

“He has spoken, good man, spoken for the sake of my poor body. He will be blessed by God, and blessed of the devil, if it is a devil,” she said, shuddering, “that hath made thee, poor babe that movest in my bosom.”

Soetkin and Katheline brought into the world one a lad, the other a girl. Both were borne to baptism, as son and daughter of Claes. Soetkin’s son was named Hans, and did not live, Katheline’s daughter was named Nele and throve well.

She drank the wine of life from four flagons, twoof Katheline and two of Soetkin. And the two women quarrelled softly which should give the babe to drink. But against her desire Katheline must needs allow her milk to dry up, so that none might ask whence it came without her having been a mother.

When little Nele, her daughter, was weaned, she took her home and only let the child go to Soetkin’s when she had called her her mother.

The neighbours said it was well done of Katheline, who was well to do, to feed the child of the Claes, who for the most part lived in poverty their toilsome life.

XVIUlenspiegel found himself alone one morning at home, and for want of something better to do, he began to cut up one of his father’s shoes to make a little ship. Already he had planted the mainmast in the sole and bored the toe for the bowsprit, when at the half door he saw passing the bust of a horseman and the head of a horse.“Is any one within?” asked the horseman.“There are,” replied Ulenspiegel, “a man and a half and a horse’s head.”“How so?” asked the horseman.“Because I see here a whole man, which is me; the half of a man, which is your bust; and a horse’s head, which is that of your steed.”“Where are your father and your mother?” asked the man.“My father has gone to make bad worse,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and my mother is engaged in bringing us shame or loss.”“Explain,” said the horseman.Ulenspiegel answered:“My father at this moment is deepening the holes in his field so as to bring from bad to worse the huntsmen who trample down his corn. My mother has gone to borrow money: if she repays too little ’twill shame us, if too much ’twill be our loss.”The man asked then which way he should go.“Where the geese are,” replied Ulenspiegel.The man went away and came back just when Ulenspiegel was making an oared galley out of Claes’s other shoe.“You have misled me,” said he: “where the geese are is nothing but mud and marsh in which they are paddling.”Ulenspiegel answered to this:“I did not tell you to go where the geese paddle, but where they go.”“Show me, at any rate,” said the man, “a road that goes to Heyst.”“In Flanders, it is the travellers that go and not the roads,” said Ulenspiegel.

XVI

Ulenspiegel found himself alone one morning at home, and for want of something better to do, he began to cut up one of his father’s shoes to make a little ship. Already he had planted the mainmast in the sole and bored the toe for the bowsprit, when at the half door he saw passing the bust of a horseman and the head of a horse.“Is any one within?” asked the horseman.“There are,” replied Ulenspiegel, “a man and a half and a horse’s head.”“How so?” asked the horseman.“Because I see here a whole man, which is me; the half of a man, which is your bust; and a horse’s head, which is that of your steed.”“Where are your father and your mother?” asked the man.“My father has gone to make bad worse,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and my mother is engaged in bringing us shame or loss.”“Explain,” said the horseman.Ulenspiegel answered:“My father at this moment is deepening the holes in his field so as to bring from bad to worse the huntsmen who trample down his corn. My mother has gone to borrow money: if she repays too little ’twill shame us, if too much ’twill be our loss.”The man asked then which way he should go.“Where the geese are,” replied Ulenspiegel.The man went away and came back just when Ulenspiegel was making an oared galley out of Claes’s other shoe.“You have misled me,” said he: “where the geese are is nothing but mud and marsh in which they are paddling.”Ulenspiegel answered to this:“I did not tell you to go where the geese paddle, but where they go.”“Show me, at any rate,” said the man, “a road that goes to Heyst.”“In Flanders, it is the travellers that go and not the roads,” said Ulenspiegel.

Ulenspiegel found himself alone one morning at home, and for want of something better to do, he began to cut up one of his father’s shoes to make a little ship. Already he had planted the mainmast in the sole and bored the toe for the bowsprit, when at the half door he saw passing the bust of a horseman and the head of a horse.

“Is any one within?” asked the horseman.

“There are,” replied Ulenspiegel, “a man and a half and a horse’s head.”

“How so?” asked the horseman.

“Because I see here a whole man, which is me; the half of a man, which is your bust; and a horse’s head, which is that of your steed.”

“Where are your father and your mother?” asked the man.

“My father has gone to make bad worse,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and my mother is engaged in bringing us shame or loss.”

“Explain,” said the horseman.

Ulenspiegel answered:

“My father at this moment is deepening the holes in his field so as to bring from bad to worse the huntsmen who trample down his corn. My mother has gone to borrow money: if she repays too little ’twill shame us, if too much ’twill be our loss.”

The man asked then which way he should go.

“Where the geese are,” replied Ulenspiegel.

The man went away and came back just when Ulenspiegel was making an oared galley out of Claes’s other shoe.

“You have misled me,” said he: “where the geese are is nothing but mud and marsh in which they are paddling.”

Ulenspiegel answered to this:

“I did not tell you to go where the geese paddle, but where they go.”

“Show me, at any rate,” said the man, “a road that goes to Heyst.”

“In Flanders, it is the travellers that go and not the roads,” said Ulenspiegel.

XVIIOne day Soetkin said to Claes:“Husband, my heart is sad: it is now three days since Thyl left the house; dost thou not know where he is?”Claes replied ruefully:“He is where homeless dogs are, on some highway with a crew of other vagabonds of his own kidney. God was cruel to give us such a son. When he was born, I beheld in him the joy of our age, a tool morein the house; I looked to make a craftsman of him, and wicked fate makes him a thief and a drone.”“Be not so hard, husband,” said Soetkin, “our son being but nine years old is in the heyday of childish thoughtlessness and folly. Is it not so that like the trees, he must shed the young buds before the coming of the full leaves, which for the human tree are honour and virtue? He is full of tricks, I am not blind to them, but they will turn later to his advantage, if instead of employing them to ill ends, he applies them to some useful trade. He is prone to flout his neighbours; but later this will help him to hold his own in merry company. He laughs ever and always; but faces sour before they are ripe are an ill omen for the countenance to come. If he runs, ’tis that he must grow; if he does not work, it is for that he is not yet of an age to feel that work is duty, and if now and then he spends day and night away from home for half a week together, ’tis that he knows nothing of what grief he gives us, for he has a good heart, and he loves us.”Claes wagged his head and made no answer, and while he slept, Soetkin wept alone. And in the morning, thinking that her son was sick in a corner of some highway, she went out on the doorstep to see if he was not coming back; but she saw nothing, and she sate near the window, looking thence into the street. And many a time her heart danced in her bosom at the sound of the light foot of some lad; but when he passed, she saw it was not Ulenspiegel, and then she wept, poor dolorous mother.In the meanwhile, Ulenspiegel with his vagabond companions was at Bruges, at the Saturday fair.There might be seen cobblers and shoemakers in booths apart, tailors selling clothes,miesevangersfrom Antwerp, who catch tits with an owl at night; poultry sellers, dog stealers, vendors of catskins for gloves, waistcoats, and doublets, buyers of every kind and condition, burgesses and their womenfolk, menservants and maidservants, pantlers, butlers, and all together, sellers and buyers, crying up and crying down, vaunting and disparaging the wares.In one corner of the fair there was a fine canvas tent erected on four poles. At the door of the tent, a churl from the flat country of Alost, with two monks who were there to get something for themselves, was showing the curious devout, for a patard, a piece of the shoulder blade of Saint Mary of Egypt. Hoarsely he bawled out the saint’s merits, and omitted not from his song how, having no silver, she paid a young ferrymanin kind, so as not to sinagainstthe Holy Ghost by refusing the labourer his hire.And the two monks nodded their heads to show that what the churl said was true. By them was a woman fat and ruddy, lascivious as Astarte, violently inflating a wretched bagpipe, while a pretty young girl sang beside her like a nightingale; but no one listened to her. Above the entrance to the tent was hung on two poles, held by cords in the two handles, a bucket full of holy water that had been blessed in Rome, according to the fat woman, while the two monks waggled head to bear witness to her tale. Ulenspiegel, beholding the bucket, became pensive.To one of the poles supporting the tent was fasteneda donkey that was fed more upon hay than on oats: head down it was gazing at the earth, with no hope of seeing thistles spring up from it.“Comrades,” said Ulenspiegel, pointing with his finger at the fat woman, the two monks, and the ass, “since the masters sing so sweetly, we must make the donkey dance as well.”So saying, he went off to the next booth, bought six liards’ worth of pepper, pulled up the donkey’s tail and clapped the pepper underneath.The donkey, feeling the pepper at work, looked round under his tail to see whence proceeded this unwonted heat. Thinking he had a red-hot devil there, he would fain run away to escape him, began to bray and rear, and shook the tent pole with all his might. At the first shock, the tub between the two poles spilled all its holy water on the tent and on those who were within it. And presently collapsing, the tent covered with a moist mantle those who were hearkening to the history of Mary of Egypt. And from under the canvas Ulenspiegel and his companions heard a great noise of moaning and lamenting, for the devout who were there were wild with anger and exchanged furious thwacks and thumps with one another. The canvas rose and fell at the struggles of the combatants. Every time Ulenspiegel saw a roundness shape itself under the cloth, he stuck a needle into it. Then there were louder shrieks beneath the canvas and a more liberal distribution of thwackings.And he was transported, but more still seeing the donkey fleeing and dragging behind him tent, tub, and poles, while thebaesof the tent, his wife andhis daughter, hung desperately on to the baggage. The donkey, which could run no longer, lifted his head into the air and ceased not to sing, except in order to look beneath his tail to see if the fire there burning would not soon be extinguished.All this while the devout were going on with their battle; the monks, without giving them a thought, were picking up the money that had fallen from the collecting dishes, and Ulenspiegel was helping them, most devoutly, not without profiting.

XVII

One day Soetkin said to Claes:“Husband, my heart is sad: it is now three days since Thyl left the house; dost thou not know where he is?”Claes replied ruefully:“He is where homeless dogs are, on some highway with a crew of other vagabonds of his own kidney. God was cruel to give us such a son. When he was born, I beheld in him the joy of our age, a tool morein the house; I looked to make a craftsman of him, and wicked fate makes him a thief and a drone.”“Be not so hard, husband,” said Soetkin, “our son being but nine years old is in the heyday of childish thoughtlessness and folly. Is it not so that like the trees, he must shed the young buds before the coming of the full leaves, which for the human tree are honour and virtue? He is full of tricks, I am not blind to them, but they will turn later to his advantage, if instead of employing them to ill ends, he applies them to some useful trade. He is prone to flout his neighbours; but later this will help him to hold his own in merry company. He laughs ever and always; but faces sour before they are ripe are an ill omen for the countenance to come. If he runs, ’tis that he must grow; if he does not work, it is for that he is not yet of an age to feel that work is duty, and if now and then he spends day and night away from home for half a week together, ’tis that he knows nothing of what grief he gives us, for he has a good heart, and he loves us.”Claes wagged his head and made no answer, and while he slept, Soetkin wept alone. And in the morning, thinking that her son was sick in a corner of some highway, she went out on the doorstep to see if he was not coming back; but she saw nothing, and she sate near the window, looking thence into the street. And many a time her heart danced in her bosom at the sound of the light foot of some lad; but when he passed, she saw it was not Ulenspiegel, and then she wept, poor dolorous mother.In the meanwhile, Ulenspiegel with his vagabond companions was at Bruges, at the Saturday fair.There might be seen cobblers and shoemakers in booths apart, tailors selling clothes,miesevangersfrom Antwerp, who catch tits with an owl at night; poultry sellers, dog stealers, vendors of catskins for gloves, waistcoats, and doublets, buyers of every kind and condition, burgesses and their womenfolk, menservants and maidservants, pantlers, butlers, and all together, sellers and buyers, crying up and crying down, vaunting and disparaging the wares.In one corner of the fair there was a fine canvas tent erected on four poles. At the door of the tent, a churl from the flat country of Alost, with two monks who were there to get something for themselves, was showing the curious devout, for a patard, a piece of the shoulder blade of Saint Mary of Egypt. Hoarsely he bawled out the saint’s merits, and omitted not from his song how, having no silver, she paid a young ferrymanin kind, so as not to sinagainstthe Holy Ghost by refusing the labourer his hire.And the two monks nodded their heads to show that what the churl said was true. By them was a woman fat and ruddy, lascivious as Astarte, violently inflating a wretched bagpipe, while a pretty young girl sang beside her like a nightingale; but no one listened to her. Above the entrance to the tent was hung on two poles, held by cords in the two handles, a bucket full of holy water that had been blessed in Rome, according to the fat woman, while the two monks waggled head to bear witness to her tale. Ulenspiegel, beholding the bucket, became pensive.To one of the poles supporting the tent was fasteneda donkey that was fed more upon hay than on oats: head down it was gazing at the earth, with no hope of seeing thistles spring up from it.“Comrades,” said Ulenspiegel, pointing with his finger at the fat woman, the two monks, and the ass, “since the masters sing so sweetly, we must make the donkey dance as well.”So saying, he went off to the next booth, bought six liards’ worth of pepper, pulled up the donkey’s tail and clapped the pepper underneath.The donkey, feeling the pepper at work, looked round under his tail to see whence proceeded this unwonted heat. Thinking he had a red-hot devil there, he would fain run away to escape him, began to bray and rear, and shook the tent pole with all his might. At the first shock, the tub between the two poles spilled all its holy water on the tent and on those who were within it. And presently collapsing, the tent covered with a moist mantle those who were hearkening to the history of Mary of Egypt. And from under the canvas Ulenspiegel and his companions heard a great noise of moaning and lamenting, for the devout who were there were wild with anger and exchanged furious thwacks and thumps with one another. The canvas rose and fell at the struggles of the combatants. Every time Ulenspiegel saw a roundness shape itself under the cloth, he stuck a needle into it. Then there were louder shrieks beneath the canvas and a more liberal distribution of thwackings.And he was transported, but more still seeing the donkey fleeing and dragging behind him tent, tub, and poles, while thebaesof the tent, his wife andhis daughter, hung desperately on to the baggage. The donkey, which could run no longer, lifted his head into the air and ceased not to sing, except in order to look beneath his tail to see if the fire there burning would not soon be extinguished.All this while the devout were going on with their battle; the monks, without giving them a thought, were picking up the money that had fallen from the collecting dishes, and Ulenspiegel was helping them, most devoutly, not without profiting.

One day Soetkin said to Claes:

“Husband, my heart is sad: it is now three days since Thyl left the house; dost thou not know where he is?”

Claes replied ruefully:

“He is where homeless dogs are, on some highway with a crew of other vagabonds of his own kidney. God was cruel to give us such a son. When he was born, I beheld in him the joy of our age, a tool morein the house; I looked to make a craftsman of him, and wicked fate makes him a thief and a drone.”

“Be not so hard, husband,” said Soetkin, “our son being but nine years old is in the heyday of childish thoughtlessness and folly. Is it not so that like the trees, he must shed the young buds before the coming of the full leaves, which for the human tree are honour and virtue? He is full of tricks, I am not blind to them, but they will turn later to his advantage, if instead of employing them to ill ends, he applies them to some useful trade. He is prone to flout his neighbours; but later this will help him to hold his own in merry company. He laughs ever and always; but faces sour before they are ripe are an ill omen for the countenance to come. If he runs, ’tis that he must grow; if he does not work, it is for that he is not yet of an age to feel that work is duty, and if now and then he spends day and night away from home for half a week together, ’tis that he knows nothing of what grief he gives us, for he has a good heart, and he loves us.”

Claes wagged his head and made no answer, and while he slept, Soetkin wept alone. And in the morning, thinking that her son was sick in a corner of some highway, she went out on the doorstep to see if he was not coming back; but she saw nothing, and she sate near the window, looking thence into the street. And many a time her heart danced in her bosom at the sound of the light foot of some lad; but when he passed, she saw it was not Ulenspiegel, and then she wept, poor dolorous mother.

In the meanwhile, Ulenspiegel with his vagabond companions was at Bruges, at the Saturday fair.

There might be seen cobblers and shoemakers in booths apart, tailors selling clothes,miesevangersfrom Antwerp, who catch tits with an owl at night; poultry sellers, dog stealers, vendors of catskins for gloves, waistcoats, and doublets, buyers of every kind and condition, burgesses and their womenfolk, menservants and maidservants, pantlers, butlers, and all together, sellers and buyers, crying up and crying down, vaunting and disparaging the wares.

In one corner of the fair there was a fine canvas tent erected on four poles. At the door of the tent, a churl from the flat country of Alost, with two monks who were there to get something for themselves, was showing the curious devout, for a patard, a piece of the shoulder blade of Saint Mary of Egypt. Hoarsely he bawled out the saint’s merits, and omitted not from his song how, having no silver, she paid a young ferrymanin kind, so as not to sinagainstthe Holy Ghost by refusing the labourer his hire.

And the two monks nodded their heads to show that what the churl said was true. By them was a woman fat and ruddy, lascivious as Astarte, violently inflating a wretched bagpipe, while a pretty young girl sang beside her like a nightingale; but no one listened to her. Above the entrance to the tent was hung on two poles, held by cords in the two handles, a bucket full of holy water that had been blessed in Rome, according to the fat woman, while the two monks waggled head to bear witness to her tale. Ulenspiegel, beholding the bucket, became pensive.

To one of the poles supporting the tent was fasteneda donkey that was fed more upon hay than on oats: head down it was gazing at the earth, with no hope of seeing thistles spring up from it.

“Comrades,” said Ulenspiegel, pointing with his finger at the fat woman, the two monks, and the ass, “since the masters sing so sweetly, we must make the donkey dance as well.”

So saying, he went off to the next booth, bought six liards’ worth of pepper, pulled up the donkey’s tail and clapped the pepper underneath.

The donkey, feeling the pepper at work, looked round under his tail to see whence proceeded this unwonted heat. Thinking he had a red-hot devil there, he would fain run away to escape him, began to bray and rear, and shook the tent pole with all his might. At the first shock, the tub between the two poles spilled all its holy water on the tent and on those who were within it. And presently collapsing, the tent covered with a moist mantle those who were hearkening to the history of Mary of Egypt. And from under the canvas Ulenspiegel and his companions heard a great noise of moaning and lamenting, for the devout who were there were wild with anger and exchanged furious thwacks and thumps with one another. The canvas rose and fell at the struggles of the combatants. Every time Ulenspiegel saw a roundness shape itself under the cloth, he stuck a needle into it. Then there were louder shrieks beneath the canvas and a more liberal distribution of thwackings.

And he was transported, but more still seeing the donkey fleeing and dragging behind him tent, tub, and poles, while thebaesof the tent, his wife andhis daughter, hung desperately on to the baggage. The donkey, which could run no longer, lifted his head into the air and ceased not to sing, except in order to look beneath his tail to see if the fire there burning would not soon be extinguished.

All this while the devout were going on with their battle; the monks, without giving them a thought, were picking up the money that had fallen from the collecting dishes, and Ulenspiegel was helping them, most devoutly, not without profiting.

XVIIIWhilst the vagabond son of the coalman was growing up gay and frolicsome, in lean melancholy vegetated the dolorous scion of the sublime Emperor. Lords and ladies saw the pitiful little weakling dragging through the rooms and corridors of Valladolid his frail body and his tottering limbs that could scarce sustain the weight of his big head, covered with fair stiff hair.Ever seeking out the darkest corridors, there he would sit for hours thrusting out his legs in front of him. If a servant trod on him by accident, he had the man flogged, and took pleasure in hearing him cry out under the lashes, but he never laughed.The next day, going elsewhere to set the same trap, he would sit again in some corridor with his legs thrust out. The ladies, lords, and pages who might pass there going fast or slow would trip over him, fall down and hurt themselves. He took pleasure in this, also, but he never laughed.When one of them, having run into him, failed to fall, he would cry out as if he had been struck,and he was delighted to see their fear, but he never laughed.His Sacred Majesty was informed of his behaviour and gave orders to take no notice of the boy, saying that if he did not wish to have his legs trodden on, he ought not to put them in the way of people’s feet.This angered Philip, but he said nothing, and no one saw him after, except when on bright summer days he went to warm his shivering body in the sunshine in the courtyard.One day, coming back from the wars, Charles saw him steeped in melancholy in this fashion.“Son,” said he, “how different art thou from me! At thy age, I loved to climb among trees to hunt the squirrels; I had myself lowered by a rope down some steep cliff to take eaglets from the nest. At this play I might have left my bones behind me; they but became the harder for it. In the chase the wild things fled to their dens when they saw me coming with my good arquebus.”“Ah,” sighed the boy, “I have a pain in the belly, monseigneur my father.”“The wine of Paxaretos,” said Charles, “is a sovereign cure.”“I do not like wine; my head aches, monseigneur my father.”“Son,” said Charles, “thou must run and leap and romp as do other boys of thine own years.”“My legs are stiff, monseigneur my father.”“How,” said Charles, “how can they be otherwise if thou usest them no more than if they were legs of wood? I will have thee fastened on some nimble steed.”The boy wept.“Do not so,” said he, “I have a pain in my loins, monseigneur my father.”“But,” said Charles, “you have a pain everywhere then?”“I would not be ill at all if I were left in peace,” replied the child.“Dost thou think,” rejoined the Emperor, impatiently, “to pass thy royal life in brooding as do clerks? For them, if it must be, in order that they may soil their parchments with ink, from the silence, solitude, and retirement; for thee, son of the sword, there needs hot blood, the eye of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the strength of Hercules. Why dost thou make the holy sign? God’s blood! ’tis not for the lion’s cub to ape paternoster-mongering females.”“Hark, the Angelus, monseigneur my father,” replied the child.

XVIII

Whilst the vagabond son of the coalman was growing up gay and frolicsome, in lean melancholy vegetated the dolorous scion of the sublime Emperor. Lords and ladies saw the pitiful little weakling dragging through the rooms and corridors of Valladolid his frail body and his tottering limbs that could scarce sustain the weight of his big head, covered with fair stiff hair.Ever seeking out the darkest corridors, there he would sit for hours thrusting out his legs in front of him. If a servant trod on him by accident, he had the man flogged, and took pleasure in hearing him cry out under the lashes, but he never laughed.The next day, going elsewhere to set the same trap, he would sit again in some corridor with his legs thrust out. The ladies, lords, and pages who might pass there going fast or slow would trip over him, fall down and hurt themselves. He took pleasure in this, also, but he never laughed.When one of them, having run into him, failed to fall, he would cry out as if he had been struck,and he was delighted to see their fear, but he never laughed.His Sacred Majesty was informed of his behaviour and gave orders to take no notice of the boy, saying that if he did not wish to have his legs trodden on, he ought not to put them in the way of people’s feet.This angered Philip, but he said nothing, and no one saw him after, except when on bright summer days he went to warm his shivering body in the sunshine in the courtyard.One day, coming back from the wars, Charles saw him steeped in melancholy in this fashion.“Son,” said he, “how different art thou from me! At thy age, I loved to climb among trees to hunt the squirrels; I had myself lowered by a rope down some steep cliff to take eaglets from the nest. At this play I might have left my bones behind me; they but became the harder for it. In the chase the wild things fled to their dens when they saw me coming with my good arquebus.”“Ah,” sighed the boy, “I have a pain in the belly, monseigneur my father.”“The wine of Paxaretos,” said Charles, “is a sovereign cure.”“I do not like wine; my head aches, monseigneur my father.”“Son,” said Charles, “thou must run and leap and romp as do other boys of thine own years.”“My legs are stiff, monseigneur my father.”“How,” said Charles, “how can they be otherwise if thou usest them no more than if they were legs of wood? I will have thee fastened on some nimble steed.”The boy wept.“Do not so,” said he, “I have a pain in my loins, monseigneur my father.”“But,” said Charles, “you have a pain everywhere then?”“I would not be ill at all if I were left in peace,” replied the child.“Dost thou think,” rejoined the Emperor, impatiently, “to pass thy royal life in brooding as do clerks? For them, if it must be, in order that they may soil their parchments with ink, from the silence, solitude, and retirement; for thee, son of the sword, there needs hot blood, the eye of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the strength of Hercules. Why dost thou make the holy sign? God’s blood! ’tis not for the lion’s cub to ape paternoster-mongering females.”“Hark, the Angelus, monseigneur my father,” replied the child.

Whilst the vagabond son of the coalman was growing up gay and frolicsome, in lean melancholy vegetated the dolorous scion of the sublime Emperor. Lords and ladies saw the pitiful little weakling dragging through the rooms and corridors of Valladolid his frail body and his tottering limbs that could scarce sustain the weight of his big head, covered with fair stiff hair.

Ever seeking out the darkest corridors, there he would sit for hours thrusting out his legs in front of him. If a servant trod on him by accident, he had the man flogged, and took pleasure in hearing him cry out under the lashes, but he never laughed.

The next day, going elsewhere to set the same trap, he would sit again in some corridor with his legs thrust out. The ladies, lords, and pages who might pass there going fast or slow would trip over him, fall down and hurt themselves. He took pleasure in this, also, but he never laughed.

When one of them, having run into him, failed to fall, he would cry out as if he had been struck,and he was delighted to see their fear, but he never laughed.

His Sacred Majesty was informed of his behaviour and gave orders to take no notice of the boy, saying that if he did not wish to have his legs trodden on, he ought not to put them in the way of people’s feet.

This angered Philip, but he said nothing, and no one saw him after, except when on bright summer days he went to warm his shivering body in the sunshine in the courtyard.

One day, coming back from the wars, Charles saw him steeped in melancholy in this fashion.

“Son,” said he, “how different art thou from me! At thy age, I loved to climb among trees to hunt the squirrels; I had myself lowered by a rope down some steep cliff to take eaglets from the nest. At this play I might have left my bones behind me; they but became the harder for it. In the chase the wild things fled to their dens when they saw me coming with my good arquebus.”

“Ah,” sighed the boy, “I have a pain in the belly, monseigneur my father.”

“The wine of Paxaretos,” said Charles, “is a sovereign cure.”

“I do not like wine; my head aches, monseigneur my father.”

“Son,” said Charles, “thou must run and leap and romp as do other boys of thine own years.”

“My legs are stiff, monseigneur my father.”

“How,” said Charles, “how can they be otherwise if thou usest them no more than if they were legs of wood? I will have thee fastened on some nimble steed.”

The boy wept.

“Do not so,” said he, “I have a pain in my loins, monseigneur my father.”

“But,” said Charles, “you have a pain everywhere then?”

“I would not be ill at all if I were left in peace,” replied the child.

“Dost thou think,” rejoined the Emperor, impatiently, “to pass thy royal life in brooding as do clerks? For them, if it must be, in order that they may soil their parchments with ink, from the silence, solitude, and retirement; for thee, son of the sword, there needs hot blood, the eye of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the strength of Hercules. Why dost thou make the holy sign? God’s blood! ’tis not for the lion’s cub to ape paternoster-mongering females.”

“Hark, the Angelus, monseigneur my father,” replied the child.

XIXThis year May and June were verily the months of flowers. Never did any see in Flanders hawthorn so fragrant, never in the gardens so many roses, such heaps of jasmine and honeysuckle. When the wind that blew up out of England drove the incense of this flowery land towards the east, every man, and specially in Antwerp, nose in air with delight, would say:“Do you smell the sweet wind that comes from Flanders?”In like wise the busy bees sucked the flowers’ honey, made wax, laid their eggs in hives too small to harbour their swarms. What music of labour under the blue sky that covered the rich earth with its dazzling tent!Men made hives out of rushes, of straw, of osiers,of plaited hay. Basketmakers, tubmakers, coopers were wearing out their tools over the work. As for the wood carvers, for a long time they had been unequal to the task.The swarms were of full thirty thousand bees and two thousand seven hundred drones. The honeycombs were so delicious that because of their rare quality, the dean of Damme sent eleven to the Emperor Charles, by way of thanks for having through his edicts restored the Holy Inquisition to all its full vigour. It was Philip that ate them, but they did him no good.Tramps, beggars, vagabonds, and all that ragtag and bobtail of idle rogues that parade their laziness about the roads, preferring to be hanged rather than to work, enticed by the taste of the honey, came to get their share of it. And they prowled about by night, in crowds.Claes had made hives to attract the swarming bees to them; some were full and others empty, awaiting the bees. Claes used to watch all night to guard this sugared wealth. When he was tired, he used to bid Ulenspiegel take his place. And the boy did so with a good will.Now one night Ulenspiegel, to avoid the cold air, had taken shelter in a hive, and, all huddled up, was looking through the openings, of which there were two, in the top of the hive.As he was on the point of falling asleep, he heard the little trees and bushes of the hedge crackling and heard the voices of two men whom he took to be robbers. He looked out through one of the openings in the hive, and saw that they both had long hair anda long beard, though the beard was the mark and sign of noble rank.They went from hive to hive, and came to his own, and picking it up, they said:“Let us take this one: it is the heaviest.”Then they carried it off, using their sticks to do it. Ulenspiegel took no pleasure in being thus carted in a hive. The night was clear and bright, and the thieves walked along without uttering a word. Every fifty paces they stopped, clean out of breath, to go on their way again presently. The one in front grumbled furiously at having so heavy a weight to bear, and the one behind whimpered melancholy-wise. For in this world there are two kinds of idle cowards, those who grow angry with work, and those that whine when there is work to be done.Ulenspiegel, having nothing else to do, pulled the hair of the robber who went in front, and the beard of the one behind, so that growing tired of this game, the angry one said to the snivelling one:“Stop pulling my hair, or I will give you such a wallop on the head with my fist that it will sink down into your chest and you will look through your ribs like a thief through the bars of his prison.”“I wouldn’t dare, my friend,” said the sniveller, “but it is you that are pulling me by the beard.”The angry one answered:“I don’t go hunting vermin in beggar fellows’ fur.”“Sir,” replied the sniveller, “do not make the hive jump about so much; my poor arms are nearly breaking in two.”“I’ll have them off altogether,” answered the angry fellow.Then, putting off his leathern gear he set the hive down on the ground, and leaped upon his comrade. And they fought with each other, the one cursing and swearing, the other crying for mercy.Ulenspiegel, hearing the blows pattering down, came out of the hive, dragged it with him as far as the nearest wood so as to find it there again, and went back to Claes’s house.And thus it is that in quarrellings sly folk find their advantage.

XIX

This year May and June were verily the months of flowers. Never did any see in Flanders hawthorn so fragrant, never in the gardens so many roses, such heaps of jasmine and honeysuckle. When the wind that blew up out of England drove the incense of this flowery land towards the east, every man, and specially in Antwerp, nose in air with delight, would say:“Do you smell the sweet wind that comes from Flanders?”In like wise the busy bees sucked the flowers’ honey, made wax, laid their eggs in hives too small to harbour their swarms. What music of labour under the blue sky that covered the rich earth with its dazzling tent!Men made hives out of rushes, of straw, of osiers,of plaited hay. Basketmakers, tubmakers, coopers were wearing out their tools over the work. As for the wood carvers, for a long time they had been unequal to the task.The swarms were of full thirty thousand bees and two thousand seven hundred drones. The honeycombs were so delicious that because of their rare quality, the dean of Damme sent eleven to the Emperor Charles, by way of thanks for having through his edicts restored the Holy Inquisition to all its full vigour. It was Philip that ate them, but they did him no good.Tramps, beggars, vagabonds, and all that ragtag and bobtail of idle rogues that parade their laziness about the roads, preferring to be hanged rather than to work, enticed by the taste of the honey, came to get their share of it. And they prowled about by night, in crowds.Claes had made hives to attract the swarming bees to them; some were full and others empty, awaiting the bees. Claes used to watch all night to guard this sugared wealth. When he was tired, he used to bid Ulenspiegel take his place. And the boy did so with a good will.Now one night Ulenspiegel, to avoid the cold air, had taken shelter in a hive, and, all huddled up, was looking through the openings, of which there were two, in the top of the hive.As he was on the point of falling asleep, he heard the little trees and bushes of the hedge crackling and heard the voices of two men whom he took to be robbers. He looked out through one of the openings in the hive, and saw that they both had long hair anda long beard, though the beard was the mark and sign of noble rank.They went from hive to hive, and came to his own, and picking it up, they said:“Let us take this one: it is the heaviest.”Then they carried it off, using their sticks to do it. Ulenspiegel took no pleasure in being thus carted in a hive. The night was clear and bright, and the thieves walked along without uttering a word. Every fifty paces they stopped, clean out of breath, to go on their way again presently. The one in front grumbled furiously at having so heavy a weight to bear, and the one behind whimpered melancholy-wise. For in this world there are two kinds of idle cowards, those who grow angry with work, and those that whine when there is work to be done.Ulenspiegel, having nothing else to do, pulled the hair of the robber who went in front, and the beard of the one behind, so that growing tired of this game, the angry one said to the snivelling one:“Stop pulling my hair, or I will give you such a wallop on the head with my fist that it will sink down into your chest and you will look through your ribs like a thief through the bars of his prison.”“I wouldn’t dare, my friend,” said the sniveller, “but it is you that are pulling me by the beard.”The angry one answered:“I don’t go hunting vermin in beggar fellows’ fur.”“Sir,” replied the sniveller, “do not make the hive jump about so much; my poor arms are nearly breaking in two.”“I’ll have them off altogether,” answered the angry fellow.Then, putting off his leathern gear he set the hive down on the ground, and leaped upon his comrade. And they fought with each other, the one cursing and swearing, the other crying for mercy.Ulenspiegel, hearing the blows pattering down, came out of the hive, dragged it with him as far as the nearest wood so as to find it there again, and went back to Claes’s house.And thus it is that in quarrellings sly folk find their advantage.

This year May and June were verily the months of flowers. Never did any see in Flanders hawthorn so fragrant, never in the gardens so many roses, such heaps of jasmine and honeysuckle. When the wind that blew up out of England drove the incense of this flowery land towards the east, every man, and specially in Antwerp, nose in air with delight, would say:

“Do you smell the sweet wind that comes from Flanders?”

In like wise the busy bees sucked the flowers’ honey, made wax, laid their eggs in hives too small to harbour their swarms. What music of labour under the blue sky that covered the rich earth with its dazzling tent!

Men made hives out of rushes, of straw, of osiers,of plaited hay. Basketmakers, tubmakers, coopers were wearing out their tools over the work. As for the wood carvers, for a long time they had been unequal to the task.

The swarms were of full thirty thousand bees and two thousand seven hundred drones. The honeycombs were so delicious that because of their rare quality, the dean of Damme sent eleven to the Emperor Charles, by way of thanks for having through his edicts restored the Holy Inquisition to all its full vigour. It was Philip that ate them, but they did him no good.

Tramps, beggars, vagabonds, and all that ragtag and bobtail of idle rogues that parade their laziness about the roads, preferring to be hanged rather than to work, enticed by the taste of the honey, came to get their share of it. And they prowled about by night, in crowds.

Claes had made hives to attract the swarming bees to them; some were full and others empty, awaiting the bees. Claes used to watch all night to guard this sugared wealth. When he was tired, he used to bid Ulenspiegel take his place. And the boy did so with a good will.

Now one night Ulenspiegel, to avoid the cold air, had taken shelter in a hive, and, all huddled up, was looking through the openings, of which there were two, in the top of the hive.

As he was on the point of falling asleep, he heard the little trees and bushes of the hedge crackling and heard the voices of two men whom he took to be robbers. He looked out through one of the openings in the hive, and saw that they both had long hair anda long beard, though the beard was the mark and sign of noble rank.

They went from hive to hive, and came to his own, and picking it up, they said:

“Let us take this one: it is the heaviest.”

Then they carried it off, using their sticks to do it. Ulenspiegel took no pleasure in being thus carted in a hive. The night was clear and bright, and the thieves walked along without uttering a word. Every fifty paces they stopped, clean out of breath, to go on their way again presently. The one in front grumbled furiously at having so heavy a weight to bear, and the one behind whimpered melancholy-wise. For in this world there are two kinds of idle cowards, those who grow angry with work, and those that whine when there is work to be done.

Ulenspiegel, having nothing else to do, pulled the hair of the robber who went in front, and the beard of the one behind, so that growing tired of this game, the angry one said to the snivelling one:

“Stop pulling my hair, or I will give you such a wallop on the head with my fist that it will sink down into your chest and you will look through your ribs like a thief through the bars of his prison.”

“I wouldn’t dare, my friend,” said the sniveller, “but it is you that are pulling me by the beard.”

The angry one answered:

“I don’t go hunting vermin in beggar fellows’ fur.”

“Sir,” replied the sniveller, “do not make the hive jump about so much; my poor arms are nearly breaking in two.”

“I’ll have them off altogether,” answered the angry fellow.

Then, putting off his leathern gear he set the hive down on the ground, and leaped upon his comrade. And they fought with each other, the one cursing and swearing, the other crying for mercy.

Ulenspiegel, hearing the blows pattering down, came out of the hive, dragged it with him as far as the nearest wood so as to find it there again, and went back to Claes’s house.

And thus it is that in quarrellings sly folk find their advantage.

XXWhen he was fifteen, Ulenspiegel erected a little tent at Damme upon four stakes, and he cried out that everyone might see within, represented in a handsome frame of hay, his present and future self.When there came a man of law, haughty and puffed up with his own importance, Ulenspiegel would thrust his head out of the frame, and mimicking the face of an old ape, he would say:“An old mug may decay, but never flourish; am I not your very mirror, good sir of the doctoral phiz?”If he had a stout soldier for client, Ulenspiegel would hide and show in the middle of the frame, instead of his face, a dishful of meat and bread, and say:“Battle will make hash of you; what will you give me for my prophecy, O soldier beloved of the big-mouthed sakers?”When an old man, wearing ingloriously his hoary head, would bring Ulenspiegel his wife, a young woman, the boy, hiding himself as he had done for the soldier, and showing in the frame a little tree, on whose brancheswere hung knife handles, caskets, combs, inkhorns, all made of horn, would call out:“Whence come all these fine nicknacks, Messire? Is it not from the hornbeam that groweth within the garden of old husbands? Who shall say now that cuckolds are folk useless in a commonweal?”And Ulenspiegel would display his young face in the frame alongside the tree.The old man, hearing him, would cough with masculine anger, but his dear wife would soothe him with her hand, and smiling, come up to Ulenspiegel.“And my mirror,” she would say, “wilt thou show it to me?”“Come closer,” Ulenspiegel would answer.She would obey, and he then, kissing her wherever he could:“Thy mirror,” he would say, “is stark youth with proud codpiece.”And the darling would go away also, but not without giving him florins one or two.To the fat, blear-eyed monk who would ask to see his present and future self, Ulenspiegel would answer:“Thou art a ham cupboard, and so thou shalt be a still room for cervoise ale; for salt calleth upon drinking, is not this true, great belly? Give me a patard for not having lied.”“My son,” the monk would reply, “we never carry money.”“’Tis then the money carries thee,” would Ulenspiegel answer, “for I know thou dost put it between two soles under thy feet. Give me thy sandal.”But the monk:“My son, ’tis the property of the Convent; I willnone the less take from it, if I must, two patards for thy trouble.”The monk gave them. Ulenspiegel received them graciously.Thus showed he their mirror to the folk of Damme, of Bruges, of Blankenberghe, nay, even as far away as Ostend.And instead of saying to them in his Flemish speech: “Ik ben u lieden Spiegel,” “I am your mirror,” he said to them, shortening it, “Ik ben ulen spiegel,” even as it is still said to-day in East and West Flanders.And from thence there came to him his surname of Ulenspiegel.

XX

When he was fifteen, Ulenspiegel erected a little tent at Damme upon four stakes, and he cried out that everyone might see within, represented in a handsome frame of hay, his present and future self.When there came a man of law, haughty and puffed up with his own importance, Ulenspiegel would thrust his head out of the frame, and mimicking the face of an old ape, he would say:“An old mug may decay, but never flourish; am I not your very mirror, good sir of the doctoral phiz?”If he had a stout soldier for client, Ulenspiegel would hide and show in the middle of the frame, instead of his face, a dishful of meat and bread, and say:“Battle will make hash of you; what will you give me for my prophecy, O soldier beloved of the big-mouthed sakers?”When an old man, wearing ingloriously his hoary head, would bring Ulenspiegel his wife, a young woman, the boy, hiding himself as he had done for the soldier, and showing in the frame a little tree, on whose brancheswere hung knife handles, caskets, combs, inkhorns, all made of horn, would call out:“Whence come all these fine nicknacks, Messire? Is it not from the hornbeam that groweth within the garden of old husbands? Who shall say now that cuckolds are folk useless in a commonweal?”And Ulenspiegel would display his young face in the frame alongside the tree.The old man, hearing him, would cough with masculine anger, but his dear wife would soothe him with her hand, and smiling, come up to Ulenspiegel.“And my mirror,” she would say, “wilt thou show it to me?”“Come closer,” Ulenspiegel would answer.She would obey, and he then, kissing her wherever he could:“Thy mirror,” he would say, “is stark youth with proud codpiece.”And the darling would go away also, but not without giving him florins one or two.To the fat, blear-eyed monk who would ask to see his present and future self, Ulenspiegel would answer:“Thou art a ham cupboard, and so thou shalt be a still room for cervoise ale; for salt calleth upon drinking, is not this true, great belly? Give me a patard for not having lied.”“My son,” the monk would reply, “we never carry money.”“’Tis then the money carries thee,” would Ulenspiegel answer, “for I know thou dost put it between two soles under thy feet. Give me thy sandal.”But the monk:“My son, ’tis the property of the Convent; I willnone the less take from it, if I must, two patards for thy trouble.”The monk gave them. Ulenspiegel received them graciously.Thus showed he their mirror to the folk of Damme, of Bruges, of Blankenberghe, nay, even as far away as Ostend.And instead of saying to them in his Flemish speech: “Ik ben u lieden Spiegel,” “I am your mirror,” he said to them, shortening it, “Ik ben ulen spiegel,” even as it is still said to-day in East and West Flanders.And from thence there came to him his surname of Ulenspiegel.

When he was fifteen, Ulenspiegel erected a little tent at Damme upon four stakes, and he cried out that everyone might see within, represented in a handsome frame of hay, his present and future self.

When there came a man of law, haughty and puffed up with his own importance, Ulenspiegel would thrust his head out of the frame, and mimicking the face of an old ape, he would say:

“An old mug may decay, but never flourish; am I not your very mirror, good sir of the doctoral phiz?”

If he had a stout soldier for client, Ulenspiegel would hide and show in the middle of the frame, instead of his face, a dishful of meat and bread, and say:

“Battle will make hash of you; what will you give me for my prophecy, O soldier beloved of the big-mouthed sakers?”

When an old man, wearing ingloriously his hoary head, would bring Ulenspiegel his wife, a young woman, the boy, hiding himself as he had done for the soldier, and showing in the frame a little tree, on whose brancheswere hung knife handles, caskets, combs, inkhorns, all made of horn, would call out:

“Whence come all these fine nicknacks, Messire? Is it not from the hornbeam that groweth within the garden of old husbands? Who shall say now that cuckolds are folk useless in a commonweal?”

And Ulenspiegel would display his young face in the frame alongside the tree.

The old man, hearing him, would cough with masculine anger, but his dear wife would soothe him with her hand, and smiling, come up to Ulenspiegel.

“And my mirror,” she would say, “wilt thou show it to me?”

“Come closer,” Ulenspiegel would answer.

She would obey, and he then, kissing her wherever he could:

“Thy mirror,” he would say, “is stark youth with proud codpiece.”

And the darling would go away also, but not without giving him florins one or two.

To the fat, blear-eyed monk who would ask to see his present and future self, Ulenspiegel would answer:

“Thou art a ham cupboard, and so thou shalt be a still room for cervoise ale; for salt calleth upon drinking, is not this true, great belly? Give me a patard for not having lied.”

“My son,” the monk would reply, “we never carry money.”

“’Tis then the money carries thee,” would Ulenspiegel answer, “for I know thou dost put it between two soles under thy feet. Give me thy sandal.”

But the monk:

“My son, ’tis the property of the Convent; I willnone the less take from it, if I must, two patards for thy trouble.”

The monk gave them. Ulenspiegel received them graciously.

Thus showed he their mirror to the folk of Damme, of Bruges, of Blankenberghe, nay, even as far away as Ostend.

And instead of saying to them in his Flemish speech: “Ik ben u lieden Spiegel,” “I am your mirror,” he said to them, shortening it, “Ik ben ulen spiegel,” even as it is still said to-day in East and West Flanders.

And from thence there came to him his surname of Ulenspiegel.

XXIAs he grew up, he conceived a liking for wandering about through fairs and markets. If he saw there any one playing on the hautbois, the rebeck, or the bagpipes, he would, for a patard, have them teach him the way to make music on these instruments.He became above all skilled in playing on therommel-pot, an instrument made of a pot, a bladder, and a stout straw. This is how he arranged them: he damped the bladder and strained it over the pot, fastened with a string the middle of the bladder round the knot on the straw, which was touching the bottom of the pot, on the rim of which he then fixed the bladder stretched to bursting point. In the morning, the bladder, being dried, gave the sound of a tambourine when it was struck, and if the straw of the instrument was rubbed it hummed better than a viol. And Ulenspiegel, with his pot booming and sounding like a mastiff’s barking, went singing carols at house doorsin company with youngsters, one of whom carried the shining star made out of paper on Twelfth Night.If any master painter came to Damme to pourtray, on their knees on canvas, the companions of some Guild, Ulenspiegel, desiring to see how he wrought, would ask to be allowed to grind his colours, and for all salary would accept only a slice of bread, three liards, and a pint of ale.Applying himself to the grinding, he would study his master’s manner. When the master was away, he would try to paint like him, but put vermilion everywhere. He tried to paint Claes, Soetkin, Katheline, and Nele, as well as quart pots and sauce-pans. Claes prophesied to him, seeing his works, that if he would be bold and persevering, he might one day earn florins by the score, painting inscriptions on thespeel-wagen, which are pleasure carts in Flanders and in Zealand.He learned, too, from a master mason how to carve wood and stone, when the man came to make, in the choir of Notre Dame, a stall so constructed that when it was necessary the aged dean could sit down on it while still seeming to remain standing.It was Ulenspiegel who carved the first handle for the knife used by the Zealand folk. This handle he made in the shape of a cage. Within there was a loose death’s head; above it a dog in a lying posture. These emblems taken together signify “Blade faithful to the death.”And in this wise Ulenspiegel began to fulfil the prediction of Katheline, showing himself painter, sculptor, clown, noble, all at once and together, forfrom father to son the Claes bore for arms three quart pots argent on a field ofbruinbier.But Ulenspiegel was constant to no trade, and Claes told him if this game went on, he would turn him away from the cottage.

XXI

As he grew up, he conceived a liking for wandering about through fairs and markets. If he saw there any one playing on the hautbois, the rebeck, or the bagpipes, he would, for a patard, have them teach him the way to make music on these instruments.He became above all skilled in playing on therommel-pot, an instrument made of a pot, a bladder, and a stout straw. This is how he arranged them: he damped the bladder and strained it over the pot, fastened with a string the middle of the bladder round the knot on the straw, which was touching the bottom of the pot, on the rim of which he then fixed the bladder stretched to bursting point. In the morning, the bladder, being dried, gave the sound of a tambourine when it was struck, and if the straw of the instrument was rubbed it hummed better than a viol. And Ulenspiegel, with his pot booming and sounding like a mastiff’s barking, went singing carols at house doorsin company with youngsters, one of whom carried the shining star made out of paper on Twelfth Night.If any master painter came to Damme to pourtray, on their knees on canvas, the companions of some Guild, Ulenspiegel, desiring to see how he wrought, would ask to be allowed to grind his colours, and for all salary would accept only a slice of bread, three liards, and a pint of ale.Applying himself to the grinding, he would study his master’s manner. When the master was away, he would try to paint like him, but put vermilion everywhere. He tried to paint Claes, Soetkin, Katheline, and Nele, as well as quart pots and sauce-pans. Claes prophesied to him, seeing his works, that if he would be bold and persevering, he might one day earn florins by the score, painting inscriptions on thespeel-wagen, which are pleasure carts in Flanders and in Zealand.He learned, too, from a master mason how to carve wood and stone, when the man came to make, in the choir of Notre Dame, a stall so constructed that when it was necessary the aged dean could sit down on it while still seeming to remain standing.It was Ulenspiegel who carved the first handle for the knife used by the Zealand folk. This handle he made in the shape of a cage. Within there was a loose death’s head; above it a dog in a lying posture. These emblems taken together signify “Blade faithful to the death.”And in this wise Ulenspiegel began to fulfil the prediction of Katheline, showing himself painter, sculptor, clown, noble, all at once and together, forfrom father to son the Claes bore for arms three quart pots argent on a field ofbruinbier.But Ulenspiegel was constant to no trade, and Claes told him if this game went on, he would turn him away from the cottage.

As he grew up, he conceived a liking for wandering about through fairs and markets. If he saw there any one playing on the hautbois, the rebeck, or the bagpipes, he would, for a patard, have them teach him the way to make music on these instruments.

He became above all skilled in playing on therommel-pot, an instrument made of a pot, a bladder, and a stout straw. This is how he arranged them: he damped the bladder and strained it over the pot, fastened with a string the middle of the bladder round the knot on the straw, which was touching the bottom of the pot, on the rim of which he then fixed the bladder stretched to bursting point. In the morning, the bladder, being dried, gave the sound of a tambourine when it was struck, and if the straw of the instrument was rubbed it hummed better than a viol. And Ulenspiegel, with his pot booming and sounding like a mastiff’s barking, went singing carols at house doorsin company with youngsters, one of whom carried the shining star made out of paper on Twelfth Night.

If any master painter came to Damme to pourtray, on their knees on canvas, the companions of some Guild, Ulenspiegel, desiring to see how he wrought, would ask to be allowed to grind his colours, and for all salary would accept only a slice of bread, three liards, and a pint of ale.

Applying himself to the grinding, he would study his master’s manner. When the master was away, he would try to paint like him, but put vermilion everywhere. He tried to paint Claes, Soetkin, Katheline, and Nele, as well as quart pots and sauce-pans. Claes prophesied to him, seeing his works, that if he would be bold and persevering, he might one day earn florins by the score, painting inscriptions on thespeel-wagen, which are pleasure carts in Flanders and in Zealand.

He learned, too, from a master mason how to carve wood and stone, when the man came to make, in the choir of Notre Dame, a stall so constructed that when it was necessary the aged dean could sit down on it while still seeming to remain standing.

It was Ulenspiegel who carved the first handle for the knife used by the Zealand folk. This handle he made in the shape of a cage. Within there was a loose death’s head; above it a dog in a lying posture. These emblems taken together signify “Blade faithful to the death.”

And in this wise Ulenspiegel began to fulfil the prediction of Katheline, showing himself painter, sculptor, clown, noble, all at once and together, forfrom father to son the Claes bore for arms three quart pots argent on a field ofbruinbier.

But Ulenspiegel was constant to no trade, and Claes told him if this game went on, he would turn him away from the cottage.

XXIIThe Emperor being returned from war, asked why his son Philip had not come to greet him.The Infante’s archbishop-governor replied that he had not desired to do so, for, so he said, he cared for nothing but books and solitude.The Emperor enquired where he was at that moment.The governor answered that they must seek him in every place where it was dark. They did so.Having gone through a goodly number of chambers, they came at last to a kind of closet, unpaven, and lit by a skylight. There they saw stuck in the earth a post to which was fastened by the waist a pretty little tiny monkey, that had been sent to His Highness from the Indies to delight him with its youthful antics. At the foot of this stake faggots still red were smoking, and in the closet there was a foul stench of burnt hair.The little beast had suffered so much dying in this fire that its little body seemed to be not an animal that ever had life, but a fragment of some wrinkled twisted root, and in its mouth, open as though to cry out on death, bloody foam was visible, and the water of its tears made its face wet.“Who did this?” asked the Emperor.The governor did not dare to reply, and both men remained silent, sad, and wrathful.Suddenly in this silence there was heard a low little sound of a cough that came from a corner in the shadow behind them. His Majesty, turning about, received the Infante Philip, all clad in black and sucking a lemon.“Don Philip,” said he, “come and salute me.”The Infante, without budging, looked at him with his timid eyes in which there was no affection.“Is it thou,” asked the Emperor, “that hast burned this little beast in this fire?”The Infante hung his head.But the Emperor:“If thou wert cruel enough to do it, be brave enough to confess it.”The Infante made no answer.His Majesty plucked the lemon out of his hands and flung it on the ground, and he was about to beat his son melting away with fright, when the archbishop, stopping him, whispered in his ear:“His Highness will be a great burner of heretics one day.”The Emperor smiled, and the two men went away, leaving the Infante alone with his monkey.But there were others that were no monkeys and died in the flames.

XXII

The Emperor being returned from war, asked why his son Philip had not come to greet him.The Infante’s archbishop-governor replied that he had not desired to do so, for, so he said, he cared for nothing but books and solitude.The Emperor enquired where he was at that moment.The governor answered that they must seek him in every place where it was dark. They did so.Having gone through a goodly number of chambers, they came at last to a kind of closet, unpaven, and lit by a skylight. There they saw stuck in the earth a post to which was fastened by the waist a pretty little tiny monkey, that had been sent to His Highness from the Indies to delight him with its youthful antics. At the foot of this stake faggots still red were smoking, and in the closet there was a foul stench of burnt hair.The little beast had suffered so much dying in this fire that its little body seemed to be not an animal that ever had life, but a fragment of some wrinkled twisted root, and in its mouth, open as though to cry out on death, bloody foam was visible, and the water of its tears made its face wet.“Who did this?” asked the Emperor.The governor did not dare to reply, and both men remained silent, sad, and wrathful.Suddenly in this silence there was heard a low little sound of a cough that came from a corner in the shadow behind them. His Majesty, turning about, received the Infante Philip, all clad in black and sucking a lemon.“Don Philip,” said he, “come and salute me.”The Infante, without budging, looked at him with his timid eyes in which there was no affection.“Is it thou,” asked the Emperor, “that hast burned this little beast in this fire?”The Infante hung his head.But the Emperor:“If thou wert cruel enough to do it, be brave enough to confess it.”The Infante made no answer.His Majesty plucked the lemon out of his hands and flung it on the ground, and he was about to beat his son melting away with fright, when the archbishop, stopping him, whispered in his ear:“His Highness will be a great burner of heretics one day.”The Emperor smiled, and the two men went away, leaving the Infante alone with his monkey.But there were others that were no monkeys and died in the flames.

The Emperor being returned from war, asked why his son Philip had not come to greet him.

The Infante’s archbishop-governor replied that he had not desired to do so, for, so he said, he cared for nothing but books and solitude.

The Emperor enquired where he was at that moment.

The governor answered that they must seek him in every place where it was dark. They did so.

Having gone through a goodly number of chambers, they came at last to a kind of closet, unpaven, and lit by a skylight. There they saw stuck in the earth a post to which was fastened by the waist a pretty little tiny monkey, that had been sent to His Highness from the Indies to delight him with its youthful antics. At the foot of this stake faggots still red were smoking, and in the closet there was a foul stench of burnt hair.

The little beast had suffered so much dying in this fire that its little body seemed to be not an animal that ever had life, but a fragment of some wrinkled twisted root, and in its mouth, open as though to cry out on death, bloody foam was visible, and the water of its tears made its face wet.

“Who did this?” asked the Emperor.

The governor did not dare to reply, and both men remained silent, sad, and wrathful.

Suddenly in this silence there was heard a low little sound of a cough that came from a corner in the shadow behind them. His Majesty, turning about, received the Infante Philip, all clad in black and sucking a lemon.

“Don Philip,” said he, “come and salute me.”

The Infante, without budging, looked at him with his timid eyes in which there was no affection.

“Is it thou,” asked the Emperor, “that hast burned this little beast in this fire?”

The Infante hung his head.

But the Emperor:

“If thou wert cruel enough to do it, be brave enough to confess it.”

The Infante made no answer.

His Majesty plucked the lemon out of his hands and flung it on the ground, and he was about to beat his son melting away with fright, when the archbishop, stopping him, whispered in his ear:

“His Highness will be a great burner of heretics one day.”

The Emperor smiled, and the two men went away, leaving the Infante alone with his monkey.

But there were others that were no monkeys and died in the flames.

XXIIINovember had come, the month of hail in which coughing folk give themselves up wholehearted to the music of phlegm. In this month also the small boys descend in bands on the turnip fields, pilfering what they can from them, to the great rage of thepeasants, who vainly run after them with sticks and forks.Now one evening, as Ulenspiegel was coming back from a marauding foray, he heard close by, in a corner of the hedge, a sound of groaning. Stooping down, he saw a dog lying upon some stones.“Hey,” said he, “miserable beastie, what dost thou there so late?”Caressing the dog, he felt his back wet, thought that someone had tried to drown him, and took him up in his arms to warm him.Coming home he said:“I bring a wounded patient, what shall I do to him?”“Heal him,” said Claes in reply.Ulenspiegel set the dog down upon the table. Claes, Soetkin, and himself then saw by the light of the lamp a little red Luxembourg spaniel hurt on the back. Soetkin sponged the wounds, covered them with ointment, and bound them up with linen. Ulenspiegel took the little beast into his bed, though Soetkin wanted to have him in her own, fearing, as she said, lest Ulenspiegel, who tumbled about in bed like a devil in a holy water pot, should hurt the dog as he slept.But Ulenspiegel had his own way, and tended him so well that after six days the patient ran about like his fellows full of doggish tricks.And theschool-meesterchristened him Titus Bibulus Schnouffius: Titus in memory of a certain good Emperor of Rome, who took pains to gather in lost dogs; Bibulus because the dog lovedbruinbierwith the love of a true tosspot, and Schnouffius because sniff-sniffingeverywhere he was always thrusting his nose into rat-holes and mole holes.

XXIII

November had come, the month of hail in which coughing folk give themselves up wholehearted to the music of phlegm. In this month also the small boys descend in bands on the turnip fields, pilfering what they can from them, to the great rage of thepeasants, who vainly run after them with sticks and forks.Now one evening, as Ulenspiegel was coming back from a marauding foray, he heard close by, in a corner of the hedge, a sound of groaning. Stooping down, he saw a dog lying upon some stones.“Hey,” said he, “miserable beastie, what dost thou there so late?”Caressing the dog, he felt his back wet, thought that someone had tried to drown him, and took him up in his arms to warm him.Coming home he said:“I bring a wounded patient, what shall I do to him?”“Heal him,” said Claes in reply.Ulenspiegel set the dog down upon the table. Claes, Soetkin, and himself then saw by the light of the lamp a little red Luxembourg spaniel hurt on the back. Soetkin sponged the wounds, covered them with ointment, and bound them up with linen. Ulenspiegel took the little beast into his bed, though Soetkin wanted to have him in her own, fearing, as she said, lest Ulenspiegel, who tumbled about in bed like a devil in a holy water pot, should hurt the dog as he slept.But Ulenspiegel had his own way, and tended him so well that after six days the patient ran about like his fellows full of doggish tricks.And theschool-meesterchristened him Titus Bibulus Schnouffius: Titus in memory of a certain good Emperor of Rome, who took pains to gather in lost dogs; Bibulus because the dog lovedbruinbierwith the love of a true tosspot, and Schnouffius because sniff-sniffingeverywhere he was always thrusting his nose into rat-holes and mole holes.

November had come, the month of hail in which coughing folk give themselves up wholehearted to the music of phlegm. In this month also the small boys descend in bands on the turnip fields, pilfering what they can from them, to the great rage of thepeasants, who vainly run after them with sticks and forks.

Now one evening, as Ulenspiegel was coming back from a marauding foray, he heard close by, in a corner of the hedge, a sound of groaning. Stooping down, he saw a dog lying upon some stones.

“Hey,” said he, “miserable beastie, what dost thou there so late?”

Caressing the dog, he felt his back wet, thought that someone had tried to drown him, and took him up in his arms to warm him.

Coming home he said:

“I bring a wounded patient, what shall I do to him?”

“Heal him,” said Claes in reply.

Ulenspiegel set the dog down upon the table. Claes, Soetkin, and himself then saw by the light of the lamp a little red Luxembourg spaniel hurt on the back. Soetkin sponged the wounds, covered them with ointment, and bound them up with linen. Ulenspiegel took the little beast into his bed, though Soetkin wanted to have him in her own, fearing, as she said, lest Ulenspiegel, who tumbled about in bed like a devil in a holy water pot, should hurt the dog as he slept.

But Ulenspiegel had his own way, and tended him so well that after six days the patient ran about like his fellows full of doggish tricks.

And theschool-meesterchristened him Titus Bibulus Schnouffius: Titus in memory of a certain good Emperor of Rome, who took pains to gather in lost dogs; Bibulus because the dog lovedbruinbierwith the love of a true tosspot, and Schnouffius because sniff-sniffingeverywhere he was always thrusting his nose into rat-holes and mole holes.

XXIVAt the end of the Rue Notre Dame there were two willows planted face to face on the edge of a deep pond.Ulenspiegel stretched a rope between the two willows and danced upon it one Sunday after vespers, so well that all the crowd of vagabonds applauded him with both hand and voice. Then he came down from his rope and held out to all the bystanders a bowl that was speedily filled with money, but he emptied it in Soetkin’s apron and kept only eleven liards for himself.The next Sunday he would fain dance again on his rope, but certain good-for-nought lads, being jealous of his nimbleness, had made a nick in the rope, so that after a few bounds the rope broke in sunder and Ulenspiegel tumbled into the water.Whilst he swam to reach the bank the little fellows that cut the rope shouted to him:“How is your limber health, Ulenspiegel? Are you going to the bottom of the pond to teach the carps to dance, dancer beyond price?”Ulenspiegel coming out from the water and shaking himself cried out to them, for they were making off from him for fear of his fists:“Be not afraid; come back next Sunday, I will show you tricks on the rope and you will have a share in the proceeds.”On Sunday, the lads had not sliced the cord, but were keeping watch round about it, for fear any one might touch it, for there was a great crowd of people.Ulenspiegel said to them:“Each of you give me one of your shoes, and I wager that however big or little they may be I will dance with every one of them.”“What do you pay if you lose?” they asked.“Forty quarts ofbruinbier,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and ye shall pay me three patards if I win the wager.”“Aye,” said they.And they each gave him a shoe. Ulenspiegel put them all in the apron he was wearing, and thus laden he danced upon the rope, though not without trouble.The cord slicers called out from below:“Thou saidst thou wouldst dance with every one of our shoes; put them on then and hold thy wager!”Ulenspiegel, all the while dancing, made reply:“I never said I would put on your shoes, but that I would dance with them. Now I am dancing and everything in my apron is dancing with me. Do ye not see it with your frog’s eyes all staring out of your heads? Pay me my three patards.”But they hooted at him, shouting that he must give them their shoes back.Ulenspiegel threw them at them one after the other into a heap. Therefrom arose a furious affray, for none of them could clearly distinguish his own shoe in the heap, or lay hold of it without a fight.Ulenspiegel then came down from the tree and watered the combatants, but not with fair water.

XXIV

At the end of the Rue Notre Dame there were two willows planted face to face on the edge of a deep pond.Ulenspiegel stretched a rope between the two willows and danced upon it one Sunday after vespers, so well that all the crowd of vagabonds applauded him with both hand and voice. Then he came down from his rope and held out to all the bystanders a bowl that was speedily filled with money, but he emptied it in Soetkin’s apron and kept only eleven liards for himself.The next Sunday he would fain dance again on his rope, but certain good-for-nought lads, being jealous of his nimbleness, had made a nick in the rope, so that after a few bounds the rope broke in sunder and Ulenspiegel tumbled into the water.Whilst he swam to reach the bank the little fellows that cut the rope shouted to him:“How is your limber health, Ulenspiegel? Are you going to the bottom of the pond to teach the carps to dance, dancer beyond price?”Ulenspiegel coming out from the water and shaking himself cried out to them, for they were making off from him for fear of his fists:“Be not afraid; come back next Sunday, I will show you tricks on the rope and you will have a share in the proceeds.”On Sunday, the lads had not sliced the cord, but were keeping watch round about it, for fear any one might touch it, for there was a great crowd of people.Ulenspiegel said to them:“Each of you give me one of your shoes, and I wager that however big or little they may be I will dance with every one of them.”“What do you pay if you lose?” they asked.“Forty quarts ofbruinbier,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and ye shall pay me three patards if I win the wager.”“Aye,” said they.And they each gave him a shoe. Ulenspiegel put them all in the apron he was wearing, and thus laden he danced upon the rope, though not without trouble.The cord slicers called out from below:“Thou saidst thou wouldst dance with every one of our shoes; put them on then and hold thy wager!”Ulenspiegel, all the while dancing, made reply:“I never said I would put on your shoes, but that I would dance with them. Now I am dancing and everything in my apron is dancing with me. Do ye not see it with your frog’s eyes all staring out of your heads? Pay me my three patards.”But they hooted at him, shouting that he must give them their shoes back.Ulenspiegel threw them at them one after the other into a heap. Therefrom arose a furious affray, for none of them could clearly distinguish his own shoe in the heap, or lay hold of it without a fight.Ulenspiegel then came down from the tree and watered the combatants, but not with fair water.

At the end of the Rue Notre Dame there were two willows planted face to face on the edge of a deep pond.

Ulenspiegel stretched a rope between the two willows and danced upon it one Sunday after vespers, so well that all the crowd of vagabonds applauded him with both hand and voice. Then he came down from his rope and held out to all the bystanders a bowl that was speedily filled with money, but he emptied it in Soetkin’s apron and kept only eleven liards for himself.

The next Sunday he would fain dance again on his rope, but certain good-for-nought lads, being jealous of his nimbleness, had made a nick in the rope, so that after a few bounds the rope broke in sunder and Ulenspiegel tumbled into the water.

Whilst he swam to reach the bank the little fellows that cut the rope shouted to him:

“How is your limber health, Ulenspiegel? Are you going to the bottom of the pond to teach the carps to dance, dancer beyond price?”

Ulenspiegel coming out from the water and shaking himself cried out to them, for they were making off from him for fear of his fists:

“Be not afraid; come back next Sunday, I will show you tricks on the rope and you will have a share in the proceeds.”

On Sunday, the lads had not sliced the cord, but were keeping watch round about it, for fear any one might touch it, for there was a great crowd of people.

Ulenspiegel said to them:

“Each of you give me one of your shoes, and I wager that however big or little they may be I will dance with every one of them.”

“What do you pay if you lose?” they asked.

“Forty quarts ofbruinbier,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and ye shall pay me three patards if I win the wager.”

“Aye,” said they.

And they each gave him a shoe. Ulenspiegel put them all in the apron he was wearing, and thus laden he danced upon the rope, though not without trouble.

The cord slicers called out from below:

“Thou saidst thou wouldst dance with every one of our shoes; put them on then and hold thy wager!”

Ulenspiegel, all the while dancing, made reply:

“I never said I would put on your shoes, but that I would dance with them. Now I am dancing and everything in my apron is dancing with me. Do ye not see it with your frog’s eyes all staring out of your heads? Pay me my three patards.”

But they hooted at him, shouting that he must give them their shoes back.

Ulenspiegel threw them at them one after the other into a heap. Therefrom arose a furious affray, for none of them could clearly distinguish his own shoe in the heap, or lay hold of it without a fight.

Ulenspiegel then came down from the tree and watered the combatants, but not with fair water.

XXVThe Infante, being fifteen years of age, went wandering, as his way was, through corridors, staircases, andchambers about the castle. But most of all he was seen prowling about the ladies’ apartments, in order to brawl with the pages who like himself were like cats in ambush in the corridors. Others planting themselves in the court, would be singing some tender ditty with their noses turned aloft.The Infante, hearing them, would show himself at a window, and so terrify the poor pages that beheld this pallid muzzle instead of the soft eyes of their fair ones.Among the court ladies there was a charming Flemish woman from Dudzeele hard by Damme, plump, a handsome ripe fruit and marvellously lovely, for she had green eyes and red crimped hair, shining like gold. Of a gay humour and ardent temperament, she never hid from any one her inclination for the lucky lord to whom she accorded the divine right of way of love over her goodly pleasaunce. There was one at this moment, handsome and high spirited, whom she loved. Every day at a certain hour she went to meet him, and this Philip discovered.Taking his seat upon a bench set close up against a window, he watched for her and when she was passing in front of him, her eye alight, her lips parted, amiable, fresh from the bath, and rustling about her all her array of yellow brocade, she caught sight of the Infante who said to her, without getting up from his seat:“Madame, could you not stay a moment?”Impatient as a filly held back in her career, at the moment when she is hurrying to the splendid stallion neighing in the meadow, she answered:“Highness, everyone here must obey your princely will.”“Sit down beside me,” said he.Then looking at her luxuriously, stonily, and warily, he said:“Repeat thePaterto me in Flemish; they have taught it to me, but I have forgotten it.”The poor lady then must begin to say aPaterand he must needs bid her say it slower.And in this way he forced the poor thing to say as many as tenPaters, she that thought the hour had come to go through other orisons.Then covering her with praises and flatteries, he spoke of her lovely hair, her bright colour, her shining eyes, but did not venture to say a word to her either of her plump shoulders or her smooth round breast or any other thing.When she thought she could get away and was already looking out into the court where her lord was waiting for her, he asked her if she knew truly what are the womanly virtues.As she made no answer for fear of saying the wrong thing, he spoke for her and preaching at her, he said:“The womanly virtues, these be chastity, watchfulness over honour, and sober living.”He counselled her also to array herself decently and to hide closely all that pertained to her.She made sign of assent with her head saying:That for His Hyperborean Highness she would much sooner cover herself with ten bearskins than with an ell of muslin.Having put him in ill humour with this retort, she fled away rejoicing.However, the fire of youth was lit up in the Infante’s bosom, but it was not that hot burning flame that incites strong souls to high deeds, but a dark, sinisterflame come out of hell where Satan had without doubt kindled it. And it shone in his gray eyes like the wintry moon upon a charnel-house, and it burned him cruelly.

XXV

The Infante, being fifteen years of age, went wandering, as his way was, through corridors, staircases, andchambers about the castle. But most of all he was seen prowling about the ladies’ apartments, in order to brawl with the pages who like himself were like cats in ambush in the corridors. Others planting themselves in the court, would be singing some tender ditty with their noses turned aloft.The Infante, hearing them, would show himself at a window, and so terrify the poor pages that beheld this pallid muzzle instead of the soft eyes of their fair ones.Among the court ladies there was a charming Flemish woman from Dudzeele hard by Damme, plump, a handsome ripe fruit and marvellously lovely, for she had green eyes and red crimped hair, shining like gold. Of a gay humour and ardent temperament, she never hid from any one her inclination for the lucky lord to whom she accorded the divine right of way of love over her goodly pleasaunce. There was one at this moment, handsome and high spirited, whom she loved. Every day at a certain hour she went to meet him, and this Philip discovered.Taking his seat upon a bench set close up against a window, he watched for her and when she was passing in front of him, her eye alight, her lips parted, amiable, fresh from the bath, and rustling about her all her array of yellow brocade, she caught sight of the Infante who said to her, without getting up from his seat:“Madame, could you not stay a moment?”Impatient as a filly held back in her career, at the moment when she is hurrying to the splendid stallion neighing in the meadow, she answered:“Highness, everyone here must obey your princely will.”“Sit down beside me,” said he.Then looking at her luxuriously, stonily, and warily, he said:“Repeat thePaterto me in Flemish; they have taught it to me, but I have forgotten it.”The poor lady then must begin to say aPaterand he must needs bid her say it slower.And in this way he forced the poor thing to say as many as tenPaters, she that thought the hour had come to go through other orisons.Then covering her with praises and flatteries, he spoke of her lovely hair, her bright colour, her shining eyes, but did not venture to say a word to her either of her plump shoulders or her smooth round breast or any other thing.When she thought she could get away and was already looking out into the court where her lord was waiting for her, he asked her if she knew truly what are the womanly virtues.As she made no answer for fear of saying the wrong thing, he spoke for her and preaching at her, he said:“The womanly virtues, these be chastity, watchfulness over honour, and sober living.”He counselled her also to array herself decently and to hide closely all that pertained to her.She made sign of assent with her head saying:That for His Hyperborean Highness she would much sooner cover herself with ten bearskins than with an ell of muslin.Having put him in ill humour with this retort, she fled away rejoicing.However, the fire of youth was lit up in the Infante’s bosom, but it was not that hot burning flame that incites strong souls to high deeds, but a dark, sinisterflame come out of hell where Satan had without doubt kindled it. And it shone in his gray eyes like the wintry moon upon a charnel-house, and it burned him cruelly.

The Infante, being fifteen years of age, went wandering, as his way was, through corridors, staircases, andchambers about the castle. But most of all he was seen prowling about the ladies’ apartments, in order to brawl with the pages who like himself were like cats in ambush in the corridors. Others planting themselves in the court, would be singing some tender ditty with their noses turned aloft.

The Infante, hearing them, would show himself at a window, and so terrify the poor pages that beheld this pallid muzzle instead of the soft eyes of their fair ones.

Among the court ladies there was a charming Flemish woman from Dudzeele hard by Damme, plump, a handsome ripe fruit and marvellously lovely, for she had green eyes and red crimped hair, shining like gold. Of a gay humour and ardent temperament, she never hid from any one her inclination for the lucky lord to whom she accorded the divine right of way of love over her goodly pleasaunce. There was one at this moment, handsome and high spirited, whom she loved. Every day at a certain hour she went to meet him, and this Philip discovered.

Taking his seat upon a bench set close up against a window, he watched for her and when she was passing in front of him, her eye alight, her lips parted, amiable, fresh from the bath, and rustling about her all her array of yellow brocade, she caught sight of the Infante who said to her, without getting up from his seat:

“Madame, could you not stay a moment?”

Impatient as a filly held back in her career, at the moment when she is hurrying to the splendid stallion neighing in the meadow, she answered:

“Highness, everyone here must obey your princely will.”

“Sit down beside me,” said he.

Then looking at her luxuriously, stonily, and warily, he said:

“Repeat thePaterto me in Flemish; they have taught it to me, but I have forgotten it.”

The poor lady then must begin to say aPaterand he must needs bid her say it slower.

And in this way he forced the poor thing to say as many as tenPaters, she that thought the hour had come to go through other orisons.

Then covering her with praises and flatteries, he spoke of her lovely hair, her bright colour, her shining eyes, but did not venture to say a word to her either of her plump shoulders or her smooth round breast or any other thing.

When she thought she could get away and was already looking out into the court where her lord was waiting for her, he asked her if she knew truly what are the womanly virtues.

As she made no answer for fear of saying the wrong thing, he spoke for her and preaching at her, he said:

“The womanly virtues, these be chastity, watchfulness over honour, and sober living.”

He counselled her also to array herself decently and to hide closely all that pertained to her.

She made sign of assent with her head saying:

That for His Hyperborean Highness she would much sooner cover herself with ten bearskins than with an ell of muslin.

Having put him in ill humour with this retort, she fled away rejoicing.

However, the fire of youth was lit up in the Infante’s bosom, but it was not that hot burning flame that incites strong souls to high deeds, but a dark, sinisterflame come out of hell where Satan had without doubt kindled it. And it shone in his gray eyes like the wintry moon upon a charnel-house, and it burned him cruelly.

XXVIThe beautiful and sweet lady on a day left Valladolid to go to her Château of Dudzeele in Flanders.Passing through Damme attended by her fat seneschal, she saw sitting against the wall of a cottage a boy of fifteen blowing into a bagpipe. In front of him was a red dog that, not liking this music, howled in a melancholy fashion. The sun shone bright. Standing beside the lad there was a pretty girl laughing loudly at each fresh pitiful burst of howling from the dog.The beautiful dame and the fat seneschal, as they passed by the cottage, looked at Ulenspiegel blowing, Nele laughing, and Titus Bibulus Schnouffius howling.“Bad boy,” said the dame, addressing Ulenspiegel, “could you not cease from making that poor red beast howl in that way?”But Ulenspiegel, with his eyes on her, blew up his bagpipe more stoutly still. And Bibulus Schnouffius howled still more melancholily, and Nele laughed the more.The seneschal, growing angry, said to the dame, pointing to Ulenspiegel:“If I were to give this beggar’s spawn a dressing with my scabbard, he would stop making this impudent hubbub.”Ulenspiegel looked at the seneschal, called himJan Papzak, because of his belly, and continued toblow his bagpipe. The seneschal went up to him with a threatening fist, but Bibulus Schnouffius threw himself on the man and bit him in the leg, and the seneschal tumbled down in affright crying out:“Help!”The dame said to Ulenspiegel, smiling:“Could you not tell me, bagpiper, if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not been changed?”Ulenspiegel, without stopping his playing, nodded his head and looked still at the dame.“Why do you look so steadily at me?” she asked.But he, still playing, stretched his eyes wide as though rapt in an ecstasy of admiration.She said to him:“Are you not ashamed, young as you are, to stare at ladies so?”Ulenspiegel reddened slightly, went on blowing, and stared harder.“I asked you,” she went on, “if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not altered?”“It is not green now since you deprived it of the joy of carrying you,” replied Ulenspiegel.“Wilt thou guide me?” said the dame.But Ulenspiegel remained seated, still never taking his eyes from her. And she, seeing him so roguish, and knowing that it was a mere trick of youth, forgave him easily. He got up, and turned to go into his home.“Where are you going?” she asked.“To put on my best clothes,” he replied.“Go then,” said the dame.She sat down then on the bench beside the doorstep; the seneschal did the same. She would have talked to Nele, but Nele did not answer her, for she was jealous.Ulenspiegel came back carefully washed and clad in fustian. He looked well in his Sunday garb, the little man.“Art thou verily going with this beautiful lady?” Nele asked him.“I shall be back soon,” replied Ulenspiegel.“If I were to go instead of you?” said Nele.“Nay,” he said, “the roads are full of mire.”“Why,” said the dame, angry and jealous together, “why, little girl, do you want to keep him from coming with me?”Nele made her no answer, but big tears welled up from her eyes and she gazed on the dame in sadness and in anger.They started on their way, four all told, the dame sitting like a queen on her white hackney caparisoned with black velvet; the seneschal whose belly shook to his walking; Ulenspiegel holding the dame’s hackney by the bridle, and Bibulus Schnouffius walking alongside him, tail in air proudly.They rode and strode thus for some time, but Ulenspiegel was not at his ease; dumb as a fish he breathed in the fine odour of benjamin wafted from the dame, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at all her fine tags and rare jewels and furbelows, and also at her soft mien, her bright eyes, her bared bosom, and her hair that the sun made to shine like a golden cap.“Why,” said she, “why do you say so little, my little man?”He made no reply.“Your tongue is not so deep down in your shoes that you could not manage a message for me?”“Right,” said Ulenspiegel.“You must,” said the dame, “leave me here and go to Koolkercke, on the other way of the wind, and tell a gentleman clad particoloured in black and red, that he must not look for me to-day, but to come on Sunday at ten at night, into my castle by the postern.”“I will not go,” said Ulenspiegel.“Why not?” asked the dame.“I will not go, no!” said Ulenspiegel again.The dame said to him:“What is it then, little ruffled cock, that inspires thee with this fierce mind?”“I will not go!” said Ulenspiegel.“But if I gave thee a florin?”“No!” said he.“A ducat?”“No!”“A carolus?”“No,” said Ulenspiegel again. “And yet,” he added, sighing, “I should like it in my mother’s purse better than a mussel-shell.”The dame smiled, then cried out suddenly:“I have lost my fine rare purse, made of silken cloth and broidered with rich pearls! At Damme it was still hanging at my girdle.”Ulenspiegel budged not, but the seneschal came forward to the dame.“Madame,” he said, “send not this young thief to look for it, for you would never see it again.”“And who will go then?” asked the dame.“Myself,” he answered, “despite my great age.”And he went off.Noon struck, the heat was great, the solitude profound; Ulenspiegel said no word, but he doffed hisnew doublet that the dame might sit down in the shade beneath a lime, without fearing the cool of the grass. He remained standing close by her, sighing.She looked at him and felt pity rising up in her for this timid little fellow, and asked him if he was not weary with standing so on his tender young legs. He answered not a word, and as he let himself drop down beside her, she tried to catch him, and pulled him on to her bared bosom, where he remained with such good will that she would have thought herself guilty of the sin of cruelty if she had bidden him seek another pillow.However, the seneschal came back and said he had not found the purse.“I found it myself,” replied the dame, “when I dismounted from my horse, for it had unfastened its broochpin and got caught up on the stirrup. Now,” she said to Ulenspiegel, “take us the direct way to Dudzeele and tell me how thou art called.”“My patron,” he answered, “is Master Saint Thylbert, a name which signifies light of foot to run after good matters; my name is Claes and my to-name Ulenspiegel. If you would look at yourself in my mirror, you will see that there is not upon all this land of Flanders a flower of beauty so dazzling as your fragrant loveliness.”The dame blushed with pleasure and was in no wise wroth with Ulenspiegel.And Soetkin and Nele wept during this long absence.

XXVI

The beautiful and sweet lady on a day left Valladolid to go to her Château of Dudzeele in Flanders.Passing through Damme attended by her fat seneschal, she saw sitting against the wall of a cottage a boy of fifteen blowing into a bagpipe. In front of him was a red dog that, not liking this music, howled in a melancholy fashion. The sun shone bright. Standing beside the lad there was a pretty girl laughing loudly at each fresh pitiful burst of howling from the dog.The beautiful dame and the fat seneschal, as they passed by the cottage, looked at Ulenspiegel blowing, Nele laughing, and Titus Bibulus Schnouffius howling.“Bad boy,” said the dame, addressing Ulenspiegel, “could you not cease from making that poor red beast howl in that way?”But Ulenspiegel, with his eyes on her, blew up his bagpipe more stoutly still. And Bibulus Schnouffius howled still more melancholily, and Nele laughed the more.The seneschal, growing angry, said to the dame, pointing to Ulenspiegel:“If I were to give this beggar’s spawn a dressing with my scabbard, he would stop making this impudent hubbub.”Ulenspiegel looked at the seneschal, called himJan Papzak, because of his belly, and continued toblow his bagpipe. The seneschal went up to him with a threatening fist, but Bibulus Schnouffius threw himself on the man and bit him in the leg, and the seneschal tumbled down in affright crying out:“Help!”The dame said to Ulenspiegel, smiling:“Could you not tell me, bagpiper, if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not been changed?”Ulenspiegel, without stopping his playing, nodded his head and looked still at the dame.“Why do you look so steadily at me?” she asked.But he, still playing, stretched his eyes wide as though rapt in an ecstasy of admiration.She said to him:“Are you not ashamed, young as you are, to stare at ladies so?”Ulenspiegel reddened slightly, went on blowing, and stared harder.“I asked you,” she went on, “if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not altered?”“It is not green now since you deprived it of the joy of carrying you,” replied Ulenspiegel.“Wilt thou guide me?” said the dame.But Ulenspiegel remained seated, still never taking his eyes from her. And she, seeing him so roguish, and knowing that it was a mere trick of youth, forgave him easily. He got up, and turned to go into his home.“Where are you going?” she asked.“To put on my best clothes,” he replied.“Go then,” said the dame.She sat down then on the bench beside the doorstep; the seneschal did the same. She would have talked to Nele, but Nele did not answer her, for she was jealous.Ulenspiegel came back carefully washed and clad in fustian. He looked well in his Sunday garb, the little man.“Art thou verily going with this beautiful lady?” Nele asked him.“I shall be back soon,” replied Ulenspiegel.“If I were to go instead of you?” said Nele.“Nay,” he said, “the roads are full of mire.”“Why,” said the dame, angry and jealous together, “why, little girl, do you want to keep him from coming with me?”Nele made her no answer, but big tears welled up from her eyes and she gazed on the dame in sadness and in anger.They started on their way, four all told, the dame sitting like a queen on her white hackney caparisoned with black velvet; the seneschal whose belly shook to his walking; Ulenspiegel holding the dame’s hackney by the bridle, and Bibulus Schnouffius walking alongside him, tail in air proudly.They rode and strode thus for some time, but Ulenspiegel was not at his ease; dumb as a fish he breathed in the fine odour of benjamin wafted from the dame, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at all her fine tags and rare jewels and furbelows, and also at her soft mien, her bright eyes, her bared bosom, and her hair that the sun made to shine like a golden cap.“Why,” said she, “why do you say so little, my little man?”He made no reply.“Your tongue is not so deep down in your shoes that you could not manage a message for me?”“Right,” said Ulenspiegel.“You must,” said the dame, “leave me here and go to Koolkercke, on the other way of the wind, and tell a gentleman clad particoloured in black and red, that he must not look for me to-day, but to come on Sunday at ten at night, into my castle by the postern.”“I will not go,” said Ulenspiegel.“Why not?” asked the dame.“I will not go, no!” said Ulenspiegel again.The dame said to him:“What is it then, little ruffled cock, that inspires thee with this fierce mind?”“I will not go!” said Ulenspiegel.“But if I gave thee a florin?”“No!” said he.“A ducat?”“No!”“A carolus?”“No,” said Ulenspiegel again. “And yet,” he added, sighing, “I should like it in my mother’s purse better than a mussel-shell.”The dame smiled, then cried out suddenly:“I have lost my fine rare purse, made of silken cloth and broidered with rich pearls! At Damme it was still hanging at my girdle.”Ulenspiegel budged not, but the seneschal came forward to the dame.“Madame,” he said, “send not this young thief to look for it, for you would never see it again.”“And who will go then?” asked the dame.“Myself,” he answered, “despite my great age.”And he went off.Noon struck, the heat was great, the solitude profound; Ulenspiegel said no word, but he doffed hisnew doublet that the dame might sit down in the shade beneath a lime, without fearing the cool of the grass. He remained standing close by her, sighing.She looked at him and felt pity rising up in her for this timid little fellow, and asked him if he was not weary with standing so on his tender young legs. He answered not a word, and as he let himself drop down beside her, she tried to catch him, and pulled him on to her bared bosom, where he remained with such good will that she would have thought herself guilty of the sin of cruelty if she had bidden him seek another pillow.However, the seneschal came back and said he had not found the purse.“I found it myself,” replied the dame, “when I dismounted from my horse, for it had unfastened its broochpin and got caught up on the stirrup. Now,” she said to Ulenspiegel, “take us the direct way to Dudzeele and tell me how thou art called.”“My patron,” he answered, “is Master Saint Thylbert, a name which signifies light of foot to run after good matters; my name is Claes and my to-name Ulenspiegel. If you would look at yourself in my mirror, you will see that there is not upon all this land of Flanders a flower of beauty so dazzling as your fragrant loveliness.”The dame blushed with pleasure and was in no wise wroth with Ulenspiegel.And Soetkin and Nele wept during this long absence.

The beautiful and sweet lady on a day left Valladolid to go to her Château of Dudzeele in Flanders.

Passing through Damme attended by her fat seneschal, she saw sitting against the wall of a cottage a boy of fifteen blowing into a bagpipe. In front of him was a red dog that, not liking this music, howled in a melancholy fashion. The sun shone bright. Standing beside the lad there was a pretty girl laughing loudly at each fresh pitiful burst of howling from the dog.

The beautiful dame and the fat seneschal, as they passed by the cottage, looked at Ulenspiegel blowing, Nele laughing, and Titus Bibulus Schnouffius howling.

“Bad boy,” said the dame, addressing Ulenspiegel, “could you not cease from making that poor red beast howl in that way?”

But Ulenspiegel, with his eyes on her, blew up his bagpipe more stoutly still. And Bibulus Schnouffius howled still more melancholily, and Nele laughed the more.

The seneschal, growing angry, said to the dame, pointing to Ulenspiegel:

“If I were to give this beggar’s spawn a dressing with my scabbard, he would stop making this impudent hubbub.”

Ulenspiegel looked at the seneschal, called himJan Papzak, because of his belly, and continued toblow his bagpipe. The seneschal went up to him with a threatening fist, but Bibulus Schnouffius threw himself on the man and bit him in the leg, and the seneschal tumbled down in affright crying out:

“Help!”

The dame said to Ulenspiegel, smiling:

“Could you not tell me, bagpiper, if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not been changed?”

Ulenspiegel, without stopping his playing, nodded his head and looked still at the dame.

“Why do you look so steadily at me?” she asked.

But he, still playing, stretched his eyes wide as though rapt in an ecstasy of admiration.

She said to him:

“Are you not ashamed, young as you are, to stare at ladies so?”

Ulenspiegel reddened slightly, went on blowing, and stared harder.

“I asked you,” she went on, “if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not altered?”

“It is not green now since you deprived it of the joy of carrying you,” replied Ulenspiegel.

“Wilt thou guide me?” said the dame.

But Ulenspiegel remained seated, still never taking his eyes from her. And she, seeing him so roguish, and knowing that it was a mere trick of youth, forgave him easily. He got up, and turned to go into his home.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To put on my best clothes,” he replied.

“Go then,” said the dame.

She sat down then on the bench beside the doorstep; the seneschal did the same. She would have talked to Nele, but Nele did not answer her, for she was jealous.

Ulenspiegel came back carefully washed and clad in fustian. He looked well in his Sunday garb, the little man.

“Art thou verily going with this beautiful lady?” Nele asked him.

“I shall be back soon,” replied Ulenspiegel.

“If I were to go instead of you?” said Nele.

“Nay,” he said, “the roads are full of mire.”

“Why,” said the dame, angry and jealous together, “why, little girl, do you want to keep him from coming with me?”

Nele made her no answer, but big tears welled up from her eyes and she gazed on the dame in sadness and in anger.

They started on their way, four all told, the dame sitting like a queen on her white hackney caparisoned with black velvet; the seneschal whose belly shook to his walking; Ulenspiegel holding the dame’s hackney by the bridle, and Bibulus Schnouffius walking alongside him, tail in air proudly.

They rode and strode thus for some time, but Ulenspiegel was not at his ease; dumb as a fish he breathed in the fine odour of benjamin wafted from the dame, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at all her fine tags and rare jewels and furbelows, and also at her soft mien, her bright eyes, her bared bosom, and her hair that the sun made to shine like a golden cap.

“Why,” said she, “why do you say so little, my little man?”

He made no reply.

“Your tongue is not so deep down in your shoes that you could not manage a message for me?”

“Right,” said Ulenspiegel.

“You must,” said the dame, “leave me here and go to Koolkercke, on the other way of the wind, and tell a gentleman clad particoloured in black and red, that he must not look for me to-day, but to come on Sunday at ten at night, into my castle by the postern.”

“I will not go,” said Ulenspiegel.

“Why not?” asked the dame.

“I will not go, no!” said Ulenspiegel again.

The dame said to him:

“What is it then, little ruffled cock, that inspires thee with this fierce mind?”

“I will not go!” said Ulenspiegel.

“But if I gave thee a florin?”

“No!” said he.

“A ducat?”

“No!”

“A carolus?”

“No,” said Ulenspiegel again. “And yet,” he added, sighing, “I should like it in my mother’s purse better than a mussel-shell.”

The dame smiled, then cried out suddenly:

“I have lost my fine rare purse, made of silken cloth and broidered with rich pearls! At Damme it was still hanging at my girdle.”

Ulenspiegel budged not, but the seneschal came forward to the dame.

“Madame,” he said, “send not this young thief to look for it, for you would never see it again.”

“And who will go then?” asked the dame.

“Myself,” he answered, “despite my great age.”

And he went off.

Noon struck, the heat was great, the solitude profound; Ulenspiegel said no word, but he doffed hisnew doublet that the dame might sit down in the shade beneath a lime, without fearing the cool of the grass. He remained standing close by her, sighing.

She looked at him and felt pity rising up in her for this timid little fellow, and asked him if he was not weary with standing so on his tender young legs. He answered not a word, and as he let himself drop down beside her, she tried to catch him, and pulled him on to her bared bosom, where he remained with such good will that she would have thought herself guilty of the sin of cruelty if she had bidden him seek another pillow.

However, the seneschal came back and said he had not found the purse.

“I found it myself,” replied the dame, “when I dismounted from my horse, for it had unfastened its broochpin and got caught up on the stirrup. Now,” she said to Ulenspiegel, “take us the direct way to Dudzeele and tell me how thou art called.”

“My patron,” he answered, “is Master Saint Thylbert, a name which signifies light of foot to run after good matters; my name is Claes and my to-name Ulenspiegel. If you would look at yourself in my mirror, you will see that there is not upon all this land of Flanders a flower of beauty so dazzling as your fragrant loveliness.”

The dame blushed with pleasure and was in no wise wroth with Ulenspiegel.

And Soetkin and Nele wept during this long absence.

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