XXVII

XXVIIWhen Ulenspiegel came back from Dudzeele, he saw Nele at the entrance to the town, leaning upagainst a barrier. She was eating a bunch of grapes, crunching them one by one, and was doubtless refreshed and rejoiced by the fruit, but allowed none of her pleasure to be seen. She appeared, on the contrary, to be angry, and plucked the grapes from off the bunch with a choleric air. She was so dolorous and showed a face so marred, so sad and so sweet, that Ulenspiegel was overcome with loving pity, and going up behind her, gave her a kiss on the nape of her neck.But she returned it with a great box on the ear.“I can’t fathom that!” exclaimed Ulenspiegel.She wept with heavy sobs.“Nele,” said he, “are you going to set up fountains at the entrance to the villages?”“Begone!” she said.“But I cannot be gone, if you weep like this, my dear.”“I am not your dear,” said Nele, “and I do not weep!”“No, you do not weep, but none the less water comes from your eyes.”“Will you go away?” said she.“No,” said he.She was holding her apron the while with her little trembling hands, and she was pulling the stuff jerkily and tears fell on it, wetting it.“Nele,” asked Ulenspiegel, “will it be fine presently?” And he looked on her, smiling lovingly.“Why do you ask me that?” said she.“Because, when it is fine, it does not weep,” replied Ulenspiegel.“Go,” said she, “go to your beautiful lady in thebrocade dress; you made her laugh well enough,” said she.Then sang Ulenspiegel:“When my darling’s tears I seeMy heart is torn atwain,’Tis honey when she laughs for me,When she weeps, a pearl.Always I love my dearest girl,And I’ll buy good wine for us,Good wine of Louvain,I’ll buy good wine for us to drink,When Nele smiles again.”“Low man!” said she, “you are still flouting me.”“Nele,” said Ulenspiegel, “a man I am, but not low, for our noble family, an aldermanish family, bears three silver quarts on a ground ofbruinbier. Nele, is it so that in Flanders when a man sows kisses he reaps boxes on the ear?”“I do not wish to speak to you,” said she.“Then why do you open your mouth to tell me so?”“I am angry,” said she.Ulenspiegel very lightly gave her a blow with his fist in the back, and said:“Kiss a mean thing, she’ll punch you; punch a mean thing and she’ll anoint you. Anoint me then, darling, since I have punched you.”Nele turned about. He opened his arms, she cast herself in them still weeping, and said:“You won’t go there again, Thyl, will you?”But he made her no answer, for he was too busy clasping her poor trembling fingers and wiping awaywith his lips the hot tears falling from Nele’s eyes like the big drops of a thunder shower.XXVIIIIn these days, the noble town of Ghent refused to pay her quota of the subsidy her son Charles the Emperor had asked of her. She could not, being void of money through the very doings of Charles. This was a great crime; he determined to go in his own person to chastise her.For more than any other is a son’s cudgel grievous to the back of a mother.François of the long nose, his foe, offered him free passage through the land of France. Charles accepted, and instead of being held a prisoner he was feasted and cherished imperially. ’Tis a sovereign concord between princes to help one another against the peoples.Charles stayed long at Valenciennes without making any show of anger. Ghent, his mother, lived free from fear, in the certain belief that the Emperor, her son, would pardon her for having acted as was her lawful right.Charles arrived beneath the city walls with four thousand horse. D’Alba was with him, so was the Prince of Orange. The common folk and the men of petty trades had wanted to prevent this filial entry, and to call out the eighty thousand men of the town and the flat country; the men of substance, the so-calledhoogh-poorters, opposed this, fearing the predominance of the lower orders. Ghent could in this way have made mincemeat of her son and his four thousand horse. But she loved him too well,and even the petty traders had resumed their trust in him.Charles also loved his mother, but for the money he held in his coffers from her, and the further moneys he meant to have from her.Having made himself master of the town, he set up military posts everywhere, and had Ghent patrolled by rounds night and day. Then he pronounced, with all pomp and ceremony, his sentence upon the town.The most eminent citizens must come before his throne, with ropes about their necks, and make full public confession of their misdeeds: Ghent was declared guilty of the most expensive crimes, which are: disloyalty, treaty-breaking, disobedience, sedition, rebellion, and treason. The Emperor declared all and sundry privileges, rights, franchises, customs, and usages void and abolished; stipulating and engaging the future, as though he were God, that thenceforward his successors on their entering into their seigniory would swear to observe nothing save only theCaroline Concessionof slavery granted by him to the town.He had the Abbey of Saint Bavon pulled down in order to rear on its site a fortress from which he could pierce his mother’s bosom with cannon shot.Like a good son eager to come into his inheritance, he confiscated all that belonged to Ghent, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war.Finding her over well defended, he knocked down the Red Tower, the Toad’s Hole Tower, the Braampoort, the Steenpoort, the Waalpoort, the Ketelpoort,and many others wrought and carven like jewels in stone.When strangers thereafter came to Ghent, they said to one another:“What is this flat, desolate town whose wonders and praises were sung so loudly?”And the folk of Ghent would make answer:“The Emperor Charles hath taken her precious girdle from the good town.”And so saying they were shamed and wroth. And from the ruins of the gates the Emperor had the bricks for his fortress.He would have Ghent poor, for thus neither by toil nor industry nor gold could she oppose his haughty plans; therefore he condemned her to pay the refused quota of the subsidy, four hundred thousand gold carolus, and besides this, one hundred and fifty thousand carolus down and six thousand every year in perpetuity. She had lent him money: he was to pay one hundred and fifty pounds interest yearly. He took possession by force of the deeds recording his debt and paying it in this way, he actually enriched himself.Many a time had Ghent given him love and succour, but he now smote her bosom with a dagger, seeking blood from it because he found not enough milk there.Then he looked upon Roelandt, the great bell, and hanged from the clapper the fellow who had sounded the alarm to call the city to defend her right. He had no mercy for Roelandt, his mother’s tongue, the tongue with which she spoke to Flanders: Roelandt, the proud bell, which saith of himself:Als men my slaet dan is’t brandt.Als men my luyt dan is’t storm in Vlaenderlandt.When they ring me there is fire.When they toll me there is storm in Flanders.Finding that his mother spoke too loud and free, he took away the bell. And the folk of the flat country say that Ghent died because her son had torn out her tongue with his iron pincers.XXIXOne of these days, which were bright fresh days of the springtime, when all the earth is full of love, Soetkin was talking by the open window, Claes humming some refrain, while Ulenspiegel had put a judge’s cap on the head of Titus Bibulus Schnouffius. The dog was working with his paws as though endeavouring to utter a judgment, but it was merely to get rid of his headgear.Suddenly Ulenspiegel shut the window, ran into the middle of the room, jumped on chairs and tables, his hands stretched up to the ceiling. Soetkin and Claes saw that all this energy was to catch a pretty little bird that was crying out with fear, its wings fluttering, cowering against a beam in a corner of the ceiling.Ulenspiegel was on the point of seizing it, when Claes said quickly:“What are you jumping for like that?”“To catch it,” answered Ulenspiegel, “and put it in a cage, and give it seed and make it sing for me.”Meanwhile the bird, crying shrilly with terror, was flying about the room and dashing its head against the windowpanes.Ulenspiegel did not cease jumping after it: Claes laid his hand weightily on the lad’s shoulder:“Catch it,” he said, “put it in a cage, make it sing for you, do, but I, too, will put you in a cage, shut in with stout iron bars, and I will make you sing as well. You like to run, you will not be able to run; you will be in the shade when you are cold, in the sun when you are hot. Then one Sunday we shall go out, forgetting to give you any food, and we shall only come back on the Thursday, and returning we shall find Thyl dead of hunger and stark and stiff.”Soetkin wept, Ulenspiegel sprang forward.“What are you going to do?” asked Claes.“I am opening the window for the bird,” he answered.And indeed, the bird, which was a goldfinch, went out of the window, uttered a cry of joy, shot up like an arrow in the air, then setting itself in an apple tree close by, it sleeked its wings with its beak, shook out its plumage, and becoming angry, hurled a thousand insults at Ulenspiegel in its bird speech.Then Claes said to him:“Son, never take liberty from man nor beast for liberty is the greatest boon in this world. Leave everyman to go in the sun when he is cold, in the shade when he is hot. And may God judge His Sacred Majesty who, having fettered freedom of belief in the land of Flanders, has now put Ghent, the noble town, in a cage of slavery.”XXXPhilip had married Marie of Portugal, whose possessions he added to the Spanish crown; he had by her ason, Don Carlos, the cruel madman. But he did not love his wife!The Queen was ill after the birth. She kept her bed and had with her her ladies in waiting, among whom was the Duchess of Alba.Philip often left her alone to go and see the burning of heretics, and all the lords and ladies of the court the same. Likewise also the Duchess of Alba, the Queen’s noble nurse.At this time the Official seized a Flemish sculptor, a Roman Catholic, because when a monk had refused to pay the price agreed for a wooden statue of Our Lady, he had struck the face of the statue with his chisel, saying he would rather destroy his work than sell it for a mean price.He was denounced by the monk as an iconoclast, tortured mercilessly, and condemned to be burned alive.In the torture they had burned the soles of his feet, and as he walked from prison to the stake, wearing thesan-benito, he kept crying out, “Cut off my feet, cut off my feet!”And Philip heard these cries from afar off, and he was pleased, but he did not laugh.Queen Marie’s ladies left her to go to the burning, and after them went the Duchess of Alba, who, hearing the Flemish sculptor’s cries, wished to see the spectacle, and left the Queen alone.Philip, his noble servitors, princes, counts, esquires, and ladies being present, the sculptor was fastened by a long chain to a stake planted in the middle of a burning circle made of trusses of straw and of faggots that would roast him to death slowly, if he wished to avoid the quick fire by hugging the stake.And all looked curiously on him as he sought, naked or all but naked as he was, to stiffen his will and courage against the heat of the fire.At the same time Queen Marie was athirst on her bed of childbirth. She saw half a melon on a dish. Dragging herself out of bed, she seized this melon and left nothing of it.Then by reason of the cold flesh of the melon, she fell into sweating and trembling, lay on the floor, and could not move hand or foot.“Ah,” she said, “I might grow warm if someone could carry me to my bed.”She heard then the poor sculptor crying:“Cut off my feet!”“Ah!” said Queen Marie, “is that a dog howling for my death?”At this moment the sculptor, seeing about him none but the faces of enemies and Spaniards, thought upon Flanders, the land of men, folded his arms, and dragging his long chain behind him he went straight to the straw and burning faggots and standing upright upon them with arms still folded:“Lo,” said he, “how the Flemish can die before Spanish butchers. Cut off their feet, not mine, but theirs, that they may run no more after murder! Long live Flanders! Flanders for ever and evermore!”And the ladies applauded, crying for mercy as they saw his proud face.And he died.Queen Marie shivered from head to foot, she wept, her teeth chattered with the cold of approaching death, and she said, stiffening her arms and legs:“Put me in my bed, that I may be warmed.”And she died.Thus, even according to the prediction of Katheline, the good witch, did Philip everywhere sow death, blood, and tears.XXXIBut Ulenspiegel and Nele loved with surpassing love.It was then in the end of April, with all the trees in flower; all the plants, bursting with sap, were awaiting May, which cometh on the earth with a peacock for companion, blossoming like a nosegay, and maketh the nightingales to sing among the trees.Often Ulenspiegel and Nele would wander down the roads alone together. Nele hung upon Ulenspiegel’s arm, and held to it with both hands. Ulenspiegel, taking pleasure in this play, often passed his arm about Nele’s waist, to hold her the better, he would tell her. And she was happy, though she did not speak a word.The wind rolled softly along the roads the perfumed breath of the meadows; far away the sea murmured to the sun, idle and at ease; Ulenspiegel was like a young devil, full of spunk and fire, and Nele like a little saint from Paradise, all shamefast at her delight.She leaned her head on Ulenspiegel’s shoulder, he took her hands, and as they went, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her darling mouth. But she did not speak.After some hours, they were hot and thirsty, thenthey drank milk at a peasant’s cottage, but they were not refreshed.And they sat down on the green turf beside a ditch. Nele was pale and white, and pensive; Ulenspiegel looked at her, alarmed.“You are sad?” she said.“Ay,” said he.“Why?” she asked.“I know not,” he said, “but theseapple treesand cherries all in blossom, this warm soft air, as it were, charged with thunder fire, these daisies opening and blushing upon the fields, the hawthorn there beside us in the hedgerows, all white.... Who shall tell me why I feel troubled and always ready to die or to sleep? And my heart beats so hard when I hear the birds awaking in the trees and see the swallows come back, then I long to go beyond the sun and the moon. And now I am cold, and now hot. Ah! Nele! I would fain no more be in this low world, or give a thousand lives to the one who would love me....”But she did not speak, and smiling happily, looked at Ulenspiegel.XXXIIOn the day of the Feast of the Dead, Ulenspiegel came away from Notre Dame with some vagabonds of his own age. Lamme Goedzak was lost among them, like a sheep in the midst of wolves.Lamme freely paid for drink for everyone, for his mother gave him three patards every Sunday and feast day.He went then with his comradesIn den roodenschildt, to the Red Shield, whose landlord Jan Van Liebeke served them with thedobbele knollaertof Courtrai.The drink heated their wits, and talking of prayers Ulenspiegel declared plumply that masses for the dead are good only for the priests.But there was a Judas in the band: he denounced Ulenspiegel as a heretic. In spite of Soetkin’s tears and Claes’s entreaties, Ulenspiegel was taken and cast into prison. There he remained in a cellar behind bars for a month and three days without seeing any one. The gaoler ate three quarters of his pittance. In the meanwhile, inquiries were made into his good and bad reputation. It was found merely that he was a sharp jester, flouting his neighbours continually, but never having missaid Monseigneur God, or Madame Virgin or messieurs the saints. And so the sentence was a light one, for he might have been branded in the face with a red-hot iron, and whipped till the blood came.In consideration of his youth, the judges condemned him merely to walk in his shirt behind the priests, bareheaded and barefooted, and a candle in his hand, in the first procession that should go out from the church.That was on Ascension Day.When the procession was returning, he must stand still under the porch of Notre Dame and there cry aloud:“Thanks to my Lord Jesu! Thanks to messieurs the priests! Their prayers are sweet to souls in purgatory, yea, refreshing; for every Ave is a bucket of water falling on their back, every Pater a cistern.”And the people hearkened most devoutly, not without laughing.At the Feast of Pentecost, he must again follow the procession; he was in his shirt, barefoot and bareheaded, candle in hand. Coming back, standing beneath the porch, and holding his candle very reverently, not without pulling a waggish face or two, he called in a loud clear voice:“If the prayers of Christian men are a great ease and solace to souls in purgatory, those of the dean of Notre Dame, that holy man perfect in the practice of all the virtues, assuage so well the torments of the fire that it is transformed to ices all at once. But the devil-tormentors have not so much as one crumb.”And the people once more hearkened devoutly, not without laughter, and the dean, well pleased, smiled ecclesiastically.Then Ulenspiegel was banished from the land of Flanders for three years, under condition of making pilgrimage to Rome and returning thence with absolution from the Pope.Claes must pay three florins for this sentence; but he gave still another to his son and furnished him with the habiliments of a pilgrim.Ulenspiegel was brokenhearted on the day of departing, when he embraced Claes and Soetkin, who was all in tears, the unhappy mother. They convoyed him a long long way on his road, in company of several townsfolk, both men and women.Claes, when they came back to their cottage, said to his wife:“Goodwife, it is exceeding harsh, for a few mad words, to condemn so young a lad to so heavy a penalty in this fashion.”“Thou art weeping, my husband,” said Soetkin.“Thou dost love him more than thou showest, for thou art breaking into man’s sobs, which be lion’s tears.”But he made no answer.Nele had gone to hide in the barn that none might see that she also wept for Ulenspiegel. A long way off she followed Soetkin and Claes and the townsfolk; when she saw her friend disappearing alone, she ran to him and leaping on his neck:“You will be finding many beautiful dames over there,” said she.“Beautiful,” replied Ulenspiegel, “I cannot tell; but fresh as you, no, for the sun has roasted them all.”Long they went their way together: Ulenspiegel was pensive and now and then would say:“I’ll make them pay their masses for the dead.”“What masses, and who will pay?” asked Nele.Ulenspiegel replied:“All the deans, curates, clerks, beadles, and other bigwigs high or low that feed us on windy trash. If I were a stout workman, they would have robbed me of the fruit of three years’ toil by making me go pilgrimaging. But it is poor Claes who pays. They shall repay me my three years an hundredfold, and I will chant them as well the mass for their dead money.”“Alas, Thyl, be prudent: they will burn you alive,” replied Nele.“I am pure asbestos,” answered Ulenspiegel.And they parted, she all in tears, he brokenhearted, and in anger.XXXIIIPassing through Bruges on the Wednesday market, there he saw a woman led along by the executionerand his knaves, and a great crowd of other women around her crying and howling a thousand vile insults.Ulenspiegel, seeing the upper part of her dress equipped with pieces of red cloth, and seeing the stone of justice with its iron chains, at her neck, perceived that this was a woman who had sold for gain the fresh young bodies of her daughters. They told him her name was Barbe, she was the wife of Jason Darue, and would be brought in this costume from place to place until she came back to the great marketplace, where she would be set up on a scaffold already erected for her. Ulenspiegel followed her with the crowd of shouting people. Once back in the great marketplace she was set on the scaffold, bound to a stake, and the executioner laid before her a bundle of grass and a clod, signifying the pit of the grave.They told Ulenspiegel, too, that she had been whipped already in prison.As he was going away, he met Henri le Marischal, a swashbuckling rogue who had been hanged in the castle-ward of West Ypres and still showed the track of the cord around his neck. “He had been delivered,” he said, “while already hoisted into the air, by saying one only good prayer to Notre Dame of Hal, in such wise that, by a true miracle, the bailiffs and the judges having gone, the cords, already loosened, broke, he fell to earth, and was in this manner saved and sound.”But later Ulenspiegel learned that this rascal delivered from the rope was a counterfeit Henri Marischal, and that he was left to run about retailing his lie because he was bearer of a parchment signedby the dean of Notre Dame de Hal, who by reason of the tale of this Henri le Marischal saw flocking to his church and lavishly feeing him all those who smelled the gallows from near by or far off. And for a long time Our Lady of Hal was surnamed Our Lady of the Hanged.XXXIVAt this time the inquisitors and theologians for the second time made representation to the Emperor Charles:That the Church was going to ruin; that its authority was contemned; that if he had won so many glorious victories, he owed it to the prayers of Catholicism, which upheld the imperial power on its high throne.A Spanish Archbishop asked him to have six thousand heads cut off or the same number of bodies burned, in order to root the malignant Lutheran heresy out of the Low Countries. His Sacred Majesty deemed this insufficient.And so, everywhere the terrified Ulenspiegel went he saw nothing but heads on stakes, girls thrust into sacks and cast alive into the river; men stretched naked on the wheel and beaten with great blows of iron bars, women laid in shallow graves, with earth over them, and the executioner dancing on their breast to break it in. But the confessors of all, men and women, that had first repented, were richer by twelve sols a time.He saw at Louvain the executioners burn thirty Lutherans at once, and light the pile with gunpowder. At Limburg he saw a family, men and women, daughters and sons-in-law, walk to the scaffold singingpsalms. The man, who was old, cried out while he was a-burning.And Ulenspiegel, full of fear and grief, journeyed on over the poor earth.XXXVIn the fields, he shook himself like a bird or like a dog loosed from the lead, and his heart took comfort before the trees, the meadows, the clear sun.Having walked for three days, he came to the neighbourhood of Brussels, in the powerful commune of Uccle. Passing before the hostelry of the Trumpet, he was enticed by a celestial fragrance of fricassees. He asked a little tramp who, nose in air, was regaling himself with the odour of the sauces, in whose honour this festival incense arose to heaven. The other replied that the Brothers of the Good Red Nose were to assemble after vespers to celebrate the deliverance of the commune by the women and girls in olden time.Ulenspiegel, spying from far off a pole surmounted by a popinjay, and all around goodwives armed with bows, asked if women were becoming archers nowadays.The tramp, sniffing up the odour of the sauces, replied that in the days of the Good Duke those same bows, in the hands of the women of Uccle, had laid low more than a hundred brigands.Ulenspiegel, desiring to know more of this, the tramp told him that he would not say another word so hungry and so thirsty was he, unless he gave him a patard for food and drink. Ulenspiegel gave it him out of pity.As soon as the tramp had his patard, he went into the Trumpet Inn, like a fox into a henroost, and came out in triumph with half a sausage and a great hunch of bread.All at once Ulenspiegel heard a soft noise of tambourines and viols, and beheld a great troop of women dancing, and among them a comely matron with a gold chain about her neck.The tramp, who laughed for joy at having had something to eat, told Ulenspiegel that this handsome young woman was the Queen of the Archery, was called Mietje, the wife of Messire Renonckel, the sheriff of the commune. Then he asked Ulenspiegel for six liards for drink: Ulenspiegel gave them to him. Thus having eaten and drunken, the tramp sat down in the sun and picked his teeth and trimmed his nails.When the women archers caught sight of Ulenspiegel in his pilgrim’s array, they set to work dancing about him in a ring, saying:“Good morrow, handsome pilgrim; do you come from far away, youngling pilgrim?”Ulenspiegel replied:“I come from Flanders, a fine country rich in loving girls.”And he thought sadly of Nele.“What was your crime?” they asked him, desisting from their dancing.“I would not dare to confess it,” said he, “so great a one it was. But I have other things that are not small.”They smiled at that and asked why he must travel in this wise with staff and scrip and oyster shell.“Because,” said he, lying a little, “I said that masses for the dead are of advantage to the priests.”“They bring them in good coin,” replied they, “but they are of advantage to souls in purgatory.”“I wasn’t there,” rejoined Ulenspiegel.“Will you eat with us, pilgrim?” said the prettiest of the archers.“I will gladly eat with you,” said he, “and eat you, and all the others turn about, for you are titbits for a king, more delicious than ortolans or thrushes or woodcocks.”“God give you food,” said they, “this is game beyond price.”“Like all of you, dear ones,” he answered.“Aye, verily,” said they, “but we are not for sale.”“And for the giving?” he asked.“Ay,” said they, “of blows to the overbold. And if you need it, we will thrash you like a sheaf of corn.”“I abstain therefrom,” said he.“Come eat,” said they.He followed them into the court of the inn, happy to see these fresh faces about him. Suddenly he beheld entering the court with high ceremony, with banner and trumpet and flute and tambourine, the Brothers of the Good Red Nose, wearing in fatness the jolly name of their fellowship. As they looked curiously upon him, the women told them it was a pilgrim they had picked up by the way and that finding him a true Red Nose, and matching their husbands and betrotheds, they had been minded to make him share their feast.The men approved their tale, and one said:“Pilgrim on pilgrimage, wouldst thou pilgrimage through sauces and fricassees?”“I shall have seven-leagued boots for that,” said Ulenspiegel.As he was on the point of entering the hall of the feasting with them, he descried on the road to Paris twelve blind men trudging along. When they passed before him, complaining of hunger and of thirst, Ulenspiegel said to himself that they would sup that night like kings, at the charge of the dean of Uccle, in memory of the masses for the dead. He went to them and said:“Here be nine florins, come and eat. Do ye smell the good fragrance of the fricassees?”“Alas!” said they, “for the last half of a league, and no hope.”“You shall eat,” said Ulenspiegel, “now you have nine florins.” But he did not give them.“A blessing on thee,” said they.And guided by Ulenspiegel, they sat down around a small table, while the Brothers of the Good Red Nose sate at a great one with their goodwives and sweethearts.Speaking with full assurance of nine florins:“Host,” said the blind men, proudly, “give us to eat and drink of your best.”The host, who had heard a mention of the nine florins, believed them to be in their pouches, and asked what they wished to have.Then all of them, speaking at once, cried out:“Peas with bacon, a hotchpotch of beef, veal, mutton, and fowl.”—“Are sausages meant for dogs?”—“Who ever smelled the passing of black puddings and white,without seizing them by the collar? I used to see them, alas! when my poor eyes were candles to me.”—“Where are thekoekebakkenau beurreof Anderlecht? They sing in the pan, succulent and crisp, mother of quart draughts.”—“Who will bring under my nose ham and eggs or eggs and ham, those tender brothers and close friends in the mouth?”—“Where are ye, divinechoesels, swimming, proud viands that you are, in the midst of kidneys, of cockscombs, ofriz de veau, of oxtails, sheep’s trotters, and abundant onions, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, all in the stew and three quarts of white wine for sauce?”—“Who will bring you to me, divineandouilles, so good that ye say no word when ye are swallowed? Ye came ever straight fromLuy-leckerland, the rich country of the happy do-naughts, the lickers up of never-ending sauces. But where are ye, withered leaves of bygone autumns!”—“I want a leg of mutton with beans.”—“I want pigs’ plumes, their ears.”—“For me a rosary of ortolans, with woodcocks for thePaterson it and a fat capon for theCredo.”The host answered sedately:“You shall have an omelette of sixty eggs, and for guiding posts for you spoons, fifty black puddings, planted smoking hot on this mountain of nourishment, anddobbel petermanto wash all down with: that will be the river.”The water came into the mouths of the poor blind men and they said:“Serve us the mountain, the guideposts, and the river.”And the Brothers of the Good Red Nose and their goodwives already at table with Ulenspiegel said that this day was for the blind the day of invisible junketing,and that the poor men thus lost the half of their pleasure.When the omelette arrived, all decked with parsley and nasturtium, and borne by the host and four cooks, the blind men would fain have thrown themselves upon it and already were haggling in it, but the host served them separately, not without difficulty, to each his share in his own dish.The archer women were touched to see them eating and heaving sighs of content, for they were mightily hungered and swallowed down the black puddings like oysters. Thedobbel petermanflowed down into their bellies like cascades falling from mountain tops.When they had cleaned their dishes, they asked again forkoekebakken, for ortolans and fresh fricassees. The host only served them a great dish of bones of beef and veal and mutton swimming in a good sauce. He did not give each his portion.When they had dipped their bread and their hands up to the elbows in the sauce, and only brought up bones of every kind, even some ox jaw bones, everyone thought his neighbour had all the meat, and they beat each other’s faces furiously with the bones.The Brothers of the Good Red Nose, having laughed their fill, charitably conveyed part of their own feast into the poor fellows’ dish, and he who groped in the plate for a bone for a weapon would set his hand on a thrush, a chicken, a lark or two, while the goodwives, pulling their heads back, would pour Brussels wine down their throats in a flood, and when they groped about blindly to feel whence these streams of ambrosia were coming to them, they caughtnothing but a petticoat, and would fain have held it, but it would whisk away from them suddenly.And so they laughed, drank, ate, and sang. Some scenting out the pretty goodwives, ran all about the hall beside themselves, bewitched by love, but teasing girls would mislead them, and hiding behind a Good Red Nose would say “kiss me.” And they would, but instead of a woman, they kissed the bearded face of a man, and not without rebuffs.The Good Red Noses sang, the blind men, too. And the jolly goodwives smiled kindly seeing their glee.When these rich and sappy hours were over, thebaessaid to them:“You have eaten well and drunk well, I want seven florins.”Each one swore he had no purse, and accused his neighbour. Hence arose yet another fray in which they sought to strike one another with foot and fist and head, but they could not, and struck out wildly, for the Good Red Noses, seeing the play, kept man away from man. And blows hailed upon the empty air, save one that by ill chance fell upon the face of thebaes, who, in a rage, searched them all and found on them nothing but an old scapular, seven liards, three breeches buttons, and their paternosters.He wanted to fling them into the swinehouse and leave them there on bread and water until someone should pay what they owed for them.“Do you,” said Ulenspiegel, “want me to go surety for them?”“Ay,” replied thebaes, “if someone will be surety for you.”The Good Red Noses were about to do it, but Ulenspiegel stopped them, saying:“The dean will be surety, I am going to find him.”Thinking of the masses for the dead, he went to the deanery and told him how that thebaesof the Trumpet, being possessed of the devil, spoke of nothing but pigs and blind men, the pigs devouring the blind and the blind eating the pigs under divers unholy guises of roasts and fricassees. During these fits, said he, thebaesbroke everything in the house, and he begged the dean to come and deliver the poor man from this wicked fiend.The dean promised, but said he could not go immediately, for at that moment he was casting up the accounts of the chapter, and endeavouring to derive some profit out of them.Seeing him impatient, Ulenspiegel said he would come back with the wife of thebaesand that the dean could speak to her himself.“Come both of you,” said the dean.Ulenspiegel came back to thebaes, and said to him:“I have just seen the dean, he will stand surety for the blind men. While you keep guard over them, let the hostess come with me to the dean, he will repeat to her what I have just told you.”“Go, goodwife,” said thebaes.She went off with Ulenspiegel to the dean, who was still figuring to find his profit. When she came in with Ulenspiegel, he impatiently waved her away, saying:“Be easy, I shall come to your husband’s help in a day or two.”And Ulenspiegel, returning to the Trumpet, saidto himself, “He will pay seven florins, and that will be my first mass for the dead.”And he went on his way, and the blind men likewise.XXXVIFinding himself, on the morrow, upon a highway in the midst of a great crowd of folk, Ulenspiegel went with them, and soon knew that it was the day of the pilgrimage of Alsemberg.He saw poor old women marching backwards, barefooted, for a florin and for the expiation of the sins of certain great ladies. On the edge of the highway, to the sound of rebecks, viols, and bagpipes, more than one pilgrim was holding a frying feast and junketing ofbruinbier. And the smoke of delicious stews mounted towards heaven like a suave incense of food.But there were other pilgrims, low fellows, needy and starveling, who, paid by the Church, were walking backwards for six sols.A little man, completely bald, with staring eyes and a savage look, was skipping along backwards behind them reciting paternosters.Ulenspiegel, wishing to know why he was mimicking the crayfishes in this fashion, planting himself before him and smiling, jumped in step with him. The rebecks, fifes, viols, and bagpipes, and the groans of the pilgrims made the music for the dance.“Jan van den Duivel,” said Ulenspiegel, “is it that you may more certainly fall that you run in this wise?”The man made no answer and went on mumbling his paternosters.“Perhaps,” said Ulenspiegel, “you want to knowhow many trees there are along the road. But are you not counting the leaves also?”The man, who was reciting aCredo, signed to Ulenspiegel to hold his tongue.“Perhaps,” said the latter, still skipping before him and imitating him, “it is the result of some sudden madness that you should thus be going the contrary way to everybody else. But he who would have a wise answer from a madman is not wise himself. Is not this true, master of the peeled poll?”As the man still made no answer, Ulenspiegel went on skipping, but making so much noise with his boot-soles that the road reëchoed like a wooden box.“Maybe,” said Ulenspiegel, “you might be dumb, good sir?”“Ave Maria,” said the other, “gratia plena et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesu.”“Maybe you are deaf as well?” said Ulenspiegel. “We shall see that: they say deaf men hear neither praises nor insults. Let us see if the drums of your ears are skin or brass: thinkest thou, lantern without candle, simulacrum of a foot-goer, that thou dost resemble a man? That will be when men are made of rags. Where has such jaundiced visnomy been ever seen, that peeled head, save on the gallows field? Wast thou not hanged of yore?”And Ulenspiegel went on dancing, and the man, who was entering on the ways of wrath, was running backwards angrily still mumbling his paternosters.“Maybe,” said Ulenspiegel, “thou comprehendest but high Flemish, I will speak to thee in the low: if thou art no glutton, thou art a drunkard, if no drunkard, but a water bibber, thou art foully choked elsewhere; if not constipated, thou art jerry-go-nimble; if not alecher, a capon; if there be temperance, it was not that that filled the tun of thy belly, and if in the thousand million men that people the earth there were but one only cuckold, it would be thou.”At this word Ulenspiegel sat down upon his seat, legs in air, for the man had fetched him such a blow with his fist under the nose that he saw more than a hundred candles. Then cunningly falling upon him, despite the weight of his belly, he struck him everywhere, and blows rained like hail upon the thin frame of Ulenspiegel, whose cudgel fell to the ground.“Learn by this lesson,” said the man, “not to pester honest folk going on pilgrimage. For you may know that I go thus to Alsemberg according to custom to implore Madam Holy Mary to cause to miscarry a child my wife conceived when I was on my travels. To win so great a boon, a man must needs walk and dance backward from the twentieth step from his home to the foot of the church steps, without speaking. Alas! now I must begin all over again.”Ulenspiegel having picked up his cudgel said:“I shall help you, rascal, you who would have Our Lady serve to kill babes in their mothers’ womb.”And he fell to beating the wretched cuckold so cruelly that he left him for dead on the road.All this while there rose to heaven the groans of pilgrims, the sounds of fifes, viols, rebecks, and bagpipes, and, like a pure incense, the savour of frying.

XXVIIWhen Ulenspiegel came back from Dudzeele, he saw Nele at the entrance to the town, leaning upagainst a barrier. She was eating a bunch of grapes, crunching them one by one, and was doubtless refreshed and rejoiced by the fruit, but allowed none of her pleasure to be seen. She appeared, on the contrary, to be angry, and plucked the grapes from off the bunch with a choleric air. She was so dolorous and showed a face so marred, so sad and so sweet, that Ulenspiegel was overcome with loving pity, and going up behind her, gave her a kiss on the nape of her neck.But she returned it with a great box on the ear.“I can’t fathom that!” exclaimed Ulenspiegel.She wept with heavy sobs.“Nele,” said he, “are you going to set up fountains at the entrance to the villages?”“Begone!” she said.“But I cannot be gone, if you weep like this, my dear.”“I am not your dear,” said Nele, “and I do not weep!”“No, you do not weep, but none the less water comes from your eyes.”“Will you go away?” said she.“No,” said he.She was holding her apron the while with her little trembling hands, and she was pulling the stuff jerkily and tears fell on it, wetting it.“Nele,” asked Ulenspiegel, “will it be fine presently?” And he looked on her, smiling lovingly.“Why do you ask me that?” said she.“Because, when it is fine, it does not weep,” replied Ulenspiegel.“Go,” said she, “go to your beautiful lady in thebrocade dress; you made her laugh well enough,” said she.Then sang Ulenspiegel:“When my darling’s tears I seeMy heart is torn atwain,’Tis honey when she laughs for me,When she weeps, a pearl.Always I love my dearest girl,And I’ll buy good wine for us,Good wine of Louvain,I’ll buy good wine for us to drink,When Nele smiles again.”“Low man!” said she, “you are still flouting me.”“Nele,” said Ulenspiegel, “a man I am, but not low, for our noble family, an aldermanish family, bears three silver quarts on a ground ofbruinbier. Nele, is it so that in Flanders when a man sows kisses he reaps boxes on the ear?”“I do not wish to speak to you,” said she.“Then why do you open your mouth to tell me so?”“I am angry,” said she.Ulenspiegel very lightly gave her a blow with his fist in the back, and said:“Kiss a mean thing, she’ll punch you; punch a mean thing and she’ll anoint you. Anoint me then, darling, since I have punched you.”Nele turned about. He opened his arms, she cast herself in them still weeping, and said:“You won’t go there again, Thyl, will you?”But he made her no answer, for he was too busy clasping her poor trembling fingers and wiping awaywith his lips the hot tears falling from Nele’s eyes like the big drops of a thunder shower.XXVIIIIn these days, the noble town of Ghent refused to pay her quota of the subsidy her son Charles the Emperor had asked of her. She could not, being void of money through the very doings of Charles. This was a great crime; he determined to go in his own person to chastise her.For more than any other is a son’s cudgel grievous to the back of a mother.François of the long nose, his foe, offered him free passage through the land of France. Charles accepted, and instead of being held a prisoner he was feasted and cherished imperially. ’Tis a sovereign concord between princes to help one another against the peoples.Charles stayed long at Valenciennes without making any show of anger. Ghent, his mother, lived free from fear, in the certain belief that the Emperor, her son, would pardon her for having acted as was her lawful right.Charles arrived beneath the city walls with four thousand horse. D’Alba was with him, so was the Prince of Orange. The common folk and the men of petty trades had wanted to prevent this filial entry, and to call out the eighty thousand men of the town and the flat country; the men of substance, the so-calledhoogh-poorters, opposed this, fearing the predominance of the lower orders. Ghent could in this way have made mincemeat of her son and his four thousand horse. But she loved him too well,and even the petty traders had resumed their trust in him.Charles also loved his mother, but for the money he held in his coffers from her, and the further moneys he meant to have from her.Having made himself master of the town, he set up military posts everywhere, and had Ghent patrolled by rounds night and day. Then he pronounced, with all pomp and ceremony, his sentence upon the town.The most eminent citizens must come before his throne, with ropes about their necks, and make full public confession of their misdeeds: Ghent was declared guilty of the most expensive crimes, which are: disloyalty, treaty-breaking, disobedience, sedition, rebellion, and treason. The Emperor declared all and sundry privileges, rights, franchises, customs, and usages void and abolished; stipulating and engaging the future, as though he were God, that thenceforward his successors on their entering into their seigniory would swear to observe nothing save only theCaroline Concessionof slavery granted by him to the town.He had the Abbey of Saint Bavon pulled down in order to rear on its site a fortress from which he could pierce his mother’s bosom with cannon shot.Like a good son eager to come into his inheritance, he confiscated all that belonged to Ghent, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war.Finding her over well defended, he knocked down the Red Tower, the Toad’s Hole Tower, the Braampoort, the Steenpoort, the Waalpoort, the Ketelpoort,and many others wrought and carven like jewels in stone.When strangers thereafter came to Ghent, they said to one another:“What is this flat, desolate town whose wonders and praises were sung so loudly?”And the folk of Ghent would make answer:“The Emperor Charles hath taken her precious girdle from the good town.”And so saying they were shamed and wroth. And from the ruins of the gates the Emperor had the bricks for his fortress.He would have Ghent poor, for thus neither by toil nor industry nor gold could she oppose his haughty plans; therefore he condemned her to pay the refused quota of the subsidy, four hundred thousand gold carolus, and besides this, one hundred and fifty thousand carolus down and six thousand every year in perpetuity. She had lent him money: he was to pay one hundred and fifty pounds interest yearly. He took possession by force of the deeds recording his debt and paying it in this way, he actually enriched himself.Many a time had Ghent given him love and succour, but he now smote her bosom with a dagger, seeking blood from it because he found not enough milk there.Then he looked upon Roelandt, the great bell, and hanged from the clapper the fellow who had sounded the alarm to call the city to defend her right. He had no mercy for Roelandt, his mother’s tongue, the tongue with which she spoke to Flanders: Roelandt, the proud bell, which saith of himself:Als men my slaet dan is’t brandt.Als men my luyt dan is’t storm in Vlaenderlandt.When they ring me there is fire.When they toll me there is storm in Flanders.Finding that his mother spoke too loud and free, he took away the bell. And the folk of the flat country say that Ghent died because her son had torn out her tongue with his iron pincers.XXIXOne of these days, which were bright fresh days of the springtime, when all the earth is full of love, Soetkin was talking by the open window, Claes humming some refrain, while Ulenspiegel had put a judge’s cap on the head of Titus Bibulus Schnouffius. The dog was working with his paws as though endeavouring to utter a judgment, but it was merely to get rid of his headgear.Suddenly Ulenspiegel shut the window, ran into the middle of the room, jumped on chairs and tables, his hands stretched up to the ceiling. Soetkin and Claes saw that all this energy was to catch a pretty little bird that was crying out with fear, its wings fluttering, cowering against a beam in a corner of the ceiling.Ulenspiegel was on the point of seizing it, when Claes said quickly:“What are you jumping for like that?”“To catch it,” answered Ulenspiegel, “and put it in a cage, and give it seed and make it sing for me.”Meanwhile the bird, crying shrilly with terror, was flying about the room and dashing its head against the windowpanes.Ulenspiegel did not cease jumping after it: Claes laid his hand weightily on the lad’s shoulder:“Catch it,” he said, “put it in a cage, make it sing for you, do, but I, too, will put you in a cage, shut in with stout iron bars, and I will make you sing as well. You like to run, you will not be able to run; you will be in the shade when you are cold, in the sun when you are hot. Then one Sunday we shall go out, forgetting to give you any food, and we shall only come back on the Thursday, and returning we shall find Thyl dead of hunger and stark and stiff.”Soetkin wept, Ulenspiegel sprang forward.“What are you going to do?” asked Claes.“I am opening the window for the bird,” he answered.And indeed, the bird, which was a goldfinch, went out of the window, uttered a cry of joy, shot up like an arrow in the air, then setting itself in an apple tree close by, it sleeked its wings with its beak, shook out its plumage, and becoming angry, hurled a thousand insults at Ulenspiegel in its bird speech.Then Claes said to him:“Son, never take liberty from man nor beast for liberty is the greatest boon in this world. Leave everyman to go in the sun when he is cold, in the shade when he is hot. And may God judge His Sacred Majesty who, having fettered freedom of belief in the land of Flanders, has now put Ghent, the noble town, in a cage of slavery.”XXXPhilip had married Marie of Portugal, whose possessions he added to the Spanish crown; he had by her ason, Don Carlos, the cruel madman. But he did not love his wife!The Queen was ill after the birth. She kept her bed and had with her her ladies in waiting, among whom was the Duchess of Alba.Philip often left her alone to go and see the burning of heretics, and all the lords and ladies of the court the same. Likewise also the Duchess of Alba, the Queen’s noble nurse.At this time the Official seized a Flemish sculptor, a Roman Catholic, because when a monk had refused to pay the price agreed for a wooden statue of Our Lady, he had struck the face of the statue with his chisel, saying he would rather destroy his work than sell it for a mean price.He was denounced by the monk as an iconoclast, tortured mercilessly, and condemned to be burned alive.In the torture they had burned the soles of his feet, and as he walked from prison to the stake, wearing thesan-benito, he kept crying out, “Cut off my feet, cut off my feet!”And Philip heard these cries from afar off, and he was pleased, but he did not laugh.Queen Marie’s ladies left her to go to the burning, and after them went the Duchess of Alba, who, hearing the Flemish sculptor’s cries, wished to see the spectacle, and left the Queen alone.Philip, his noble servitors, princes, counts, esquires, and ladies being present, the sculptor was fastened by a long chain to a stake planted in the middle of a burning circle made of trusses of straw and of faggots that would roast him to death slowly, if he wished to avoid the quick fire by hugging the stake.And all looked curiously on him as he sought, naked or all but naked as he was, to stiffen his will and courage against the heat of the fire.At the same time Queen Marie was athirst on her bed of childbirth. She saw half a melon on a dish. Dragging herself out of bed, she seized this melon and left nothing of it.Then by reason of the cold flesh of the melon, she fell into sweating and trembling, lay on the floor, and could not move hand or foot.“Ah,” she said, “I might grow warm if someone could carry me to my bed.”She heard then the poor sculptor crying:“Cut off my feet!”“Ah!” said Queen Marie, “is that a dog howling for my death?”At this moment the sculptor, seeing about him none but the faces of enemies and Spaniards, thought upon Flanders, the land of men, folded his arms, and dragging his long chain behind him he went straight to the straw and burning faggots and standing upright upon them with arms still folded:“Lo,” said he, “how the Flemish can die before Spanish butchers. Cut off their feet, not mine, but theirs, that they may run no more after murder! Long live Flanders! Flanders for ever and evermore!”And the ladies applauded, crying for mercy as they saw his proud face.And he died.Queen Marie shivered from head to foot, she wept, her teeth chattered with the cold of approaching death, and she said, stiffening her arms and legs:“Put me in my bed, that I may be warmed.”And she died.Thus, even according to the prediction of Katheline, the good witch, did Philip everywhere sow death, blood, and tears.XXXIBut Ulenspiegel and Nele loved with surpassing love.It was then in the end of April, with all the trees in flower; all the plants, bursting with sap, were awaiting May, which cometh on the earth with a peacock for companion, blossoming like a nosegay, and maketh the nightingales to sing among the trees.Often Ulenspiegel and Nele would wander down the roads alone together. Nele hung upon Ulenspiegel’s arm, and held to it with both hands. Ulenspiegel, taking pleasure in this play, often passed his arm about Nele’s waist, to hold her the better, he would tell her. And she was happy, though she did not speak a word.The wind rolled softly along the roads the perfumed breath of the meadows; far away the sea murmured to the sun, idle and at ease; Ulenspiegel was like a young devil, full of spunk and fire, and Nele like a little saint from Paradise, all shamefast at her delight.She leaned her head on Ulenspiegel’s shoulder, he took her hands, and as they went, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her darling mouth. But she did not speak.After some hours, they were hot and thirsty, thenthey drank milk at a peasant’s cottage, but they were not refreshed.And they sat down on the green turf beside a ditch. Nele was pale and white, and pensive; Ulenspiegel looked at her, alarmed.“You are sad?” she said.“Ay,” said he.“Why?” she asked.“I know not,” he said, “but theseapple treesand cherries all in blossom, this warm soft air, as it were, charged with thunder fire, these daisies opening and blushing upon the fields, the hawthorn there beside us in the hedgerows, all white.... Who shall tell me why I feel troubled and always ready to die or to sleep? And my heart beats so hard when I hear the birds awaking in the trees and see the swallows come back, then I long to go beyond the sun and the moon. And now I am cold, and now hot. Ah! Nele! I would fain no more be in this low world, or give a thousand lives to the one who would love me....”But she did not speak, and smiling happily, looked at Ulenspiegel.XXXIIOn the day of the Feast of the Dead, Ulenspiegel came away from Notre Dame with some vagabonds of his own age. Lamme Goedzak was lost among them, like a sheep in the midst of wolves.Lamme freely paid for drink for everyone, for his mother gave him three patards every Sunday and feast day.He went then with his comradesIn den roodenschildt, to the Red Shield, whose landlord Jan Van Liebeke served them with thedobbele knollaertof Courtrai.The drink heated their wits, and talking of prayers Ulenspiegel declared plumply that masses for the dead are good only for the priests.But there was a Judas in the band: he denounced Ulenspiegel as a heretic. In spite of Soetkin’s tears and Claes’s entreaties, Ulenspiegel was taken and cast into prison. There he remained in a cellar behind bars for a month and three days without seeing any one. The gaoler ate three quarters of his pittance. In the meanwhile, inquiries were made into his good and bad reputation. It was found merely that he was a sharp jester, flouting his neighbours continually, but never having missaid Monseigneur God, or Madame Virgin or messieurs the saints. And so the sentence was a light one, for he might have been branded in the face with a red-hot iron, and whipped till the blood came.In consideration of his youth, the judges condemned him merely to walk in his shirt behind the priests, bareheaded and barefooted, and a candle in his hand, in the first procession that should go out from the church.That was on Ascension Day.When the procession was returning, he must stand still under the porch of Notre Dame and there cry aloud:“Thanks to my Lord Jesu! Thanks to messieurs the priests! Their prayers are sweet to souls in purgatory, yea, refreshing; for every Ave is a bucket of water falling on their back, every Pater a cistern.”And the people hearkened most devoutly, not without laughing.At the Feast of Pentecost, he must again follow the procession; he was in his shirt, barefoot and bareheaded, candle in hand. Coming back, standing beneath the porch, and holding his candle very reverently, not without pulling a waggish face or two, he called in a loud clear voice:“If the prayers of Christian men are a great ease and solace to souls in purgatory, those of the dean of Notre Dame, that holy man perfect in the practice of all the virtues, assuage so well the torments of the fire that it is transformed to ices all at once. But the devil-tormentors have not so much as one crumb.”And the people once more hearkened devoutly, not without laughter, and the dean, well pleased, smiled ecclesiastically.Then Ulenspiegel was banished from the land of Flanders for three years, under condition of making pilgrimage to Rome and returning thence with absolution from the Pope.Claes must pay three florins for this sentence; but he gave still another to his son and furnished him with the habiliments of a pilgrim.Ulenspiegel was brokenhearted on the day of departing, when he embraced Claes and Soetkin, who was all in tears, the unhappy mother. They convoyed him a long long way on his road, in company of several townsfolk, both men and women.Claes, when they came back to their cottage, said to his wife:“Goodwife, it is exceeding harsh, for a few mad words, to condemn so young a lad to so heavy a penalty in this fashion.”“Thou art weeping, my husband,” said Soetkin.“Thou dost love him more than thou showest, for thou art breaking into man’s sobs, which be lion’s tears.”But he made no answer.Nele had gone to hide in the barn that none might see that she also wept for Ulenspiegel. A long way off she followed Soetkin and Claes and the townsfolk; when she saw her friend disappearing alone, she ran to him and leaping on his neck:“You will be finding many beautiful dames over there,” said she.“Beautiful,” replied Ulenspiegel, “I cannot tell; but fresh as you, no, for the sun has roasted them all.”Long they went their way together: Ulenspiegel was pensive and now and then would say:“I’ll make them pay their masses for the dead.”“What masses, and who will pay?” asked Nele.Ulenspiegel replied:“All the deans, curates, clerks, beadles, and other bigwigs high or low that feed us on windy trash. If I were a stout workman, they would have robbed me of the fruit of three years’ toil by making me go pilgrimaging. But it is poor Claes who pays. They shall repay me my three years an hundredfold, and I will chant them as well the mass for their dead money.”“Alas, Thyl, be prudent: they will burn you alive,” replied Nele.“I am pure asbestos,” answered Ulenspiegel.And they parted, she all in tears, he brokenhearted, and in anger.XXXIIIPassing through Bruges on the Wednesday market, there he saw a woman led along by the executionerand his knaves, and a great crowd of other women around her crying and howling a thousand vile insults.Ulenspiegel, seeing the upper part of her dress equipped with pieces of red cloth, and seeing the stone of justice with its iron chains, at her neck, perceived that this was a woman who had sold for gain the fresh young bodies of her daughters. They told him her name was Barbe, she was the wife of Jason Darue, and would be brought in this costume from place to place until she came back to the great marketplace, where she would be set up on a scaffold already erected for her. Ulenspiegel followed her with the crowd of shouting people. Once back in the great marketplace she was set on the scaffold, bound to a stake, and the executioner laid before her a bundle of grass and a clod, signifying the pit of the grave.They told Ulenspiegel, too, that she had been whipped already in prison.As he was going away, he met Henri le Marischal, a swashbuckling rogue who had been hanged in the castle-ward of West Ypres and still showed the track of the cord around his neck. “He had been delivered,” he said, “while already hoisted into the air, by saying one only good prayer to Notre Dame of Hal, in such wise that, by a true miracle, the bailiffs and the judges having gone, the cords, already loosened, broke, he fell to earth, and was in this manner saved and sound.”But later Ulenspiegel learned that this rascal delivered from the rope was a counterfeit Henri Marischal, and that he was left to run about retailing his lie because he was bearer of a parchment signedby the dean of Notre Dame de Hal, who by reason of the tale of this Henri le Marischal saw flocking to his church and lavishly feeing him all those who smelled the gallows from near by or far off. And for a long time Our Lady of Hal was surnamed Our Lady of the Hanged.XXXIVAt this time the inquisitors and theologians for the second time made representation to the Emperor Charles:That the Church was going to ruin; that its authority was contemned; that if he had won so many glorious victories, he owed it to the prayers of Catholicism, which upheld the imperial power on its high throne.A Spanish Archbishop asked him to have six thousand heads cut off or the same number of bodies burned, in order to root the malignant Lutheran heresy out of the Low Countries. His Sacred Majesty deemed this insufficient.And so, everywhere the terrified Ulenspiegel went he saw nothing but heads on stakes, girls thrust into sacks and cast alive into the river; men stretched naked on the wheel and beaten with great blows of iron bars, women laid in shallow graves, with earth over them, and the executioner dancing on their breast to break it in. But the confessors of all, men and women, that had first repented, were richer by twelve sols a time.He saw at Louvain the executioners burn thirty Lutherans at once, and light the pile with gunpowder. At Limburg he saw a family, men and women, daughters and sons-in-law, walk to the scaffold singingpsalms. The man, who was old, cried out while he was a-burning.And Ulenspiegel, full of fear and grief, journeyed on over the poor earth.XXXVIn the fields, he shook himself like a bird or like a dog loosed from the lead, and his heart took comfort before the trees, the meadows, the clear sun.Having walked for three days, he came to the neighbourhood of Brussels, in the powerful commune of Uccle. Passing before the hostelry of the Trumpet, he was enticed by a celestial fragrance of fricassees. He asked a little tramp who, nose in air, was regaling himself with the odour of the sauces, in whose honour this festival incense arose to heaven. The other replied that the Brothers of the Good Red Nose were to assemble after vespers to celebrate the deliverance of the commune by the women and girls in olden time.Ulenspiegel, spying from far off a pole surmounted by a popinjay, and all around goodwives armed with bows, asked if women were becoming archers nowadays.The tramp, sniffing up the odour of the sauces, replied that in the days of the Good Duke those same bows, in the hands of the women of Uccle, had laid low more than a hundred brigands.Ulenspiegel, desiring to know more of this, the tramp told him that he would not say another word so hungry and so thirsty was he, unless he gave him a patard for food and drink. Ulenspiegel gave it him out of pity.As soon as the tramp had his patard, he went into the Trumpet Inn, like a fox into a henroost, and came out in triumph with half a sausage and a great hunch of bread.All at once Ulenspiegel heard a soft noise of tambourines and viols, and beheld a great troop of women dancing, and among them a comely matron with a gold chain about her neck.The tramp, who laughed for joy at having had something to eat, told Ulenspiegel that this handsome young woman was the Queen of the Archery, was called Mietje, the wife of Messire Renonckel, the sheriff of the commune. Then he asked Ulenspiegel for six liards for drink: Ulenspiegel gave them to him. Thus having eaten and drunken, the tramp sat down in the sun and picked his teeth and trimmed his nails.When the women archers caught sight of Ulenspiegel in his pilgrim’s array, they set to work dancing about him in a ring, saying:“Good morrow, handsome pilgrim; do you come from far away, youngling pilgrim?”Ulenspiegel replied:“I come from Flanders, a fine country rich in loving girls.”And he thought sadly of Nele.“What was your crime?” they asked him, desisting from their dancing.“I would not dare to confess it,” said he, “so great a one it was. But I have other things that are not small.”They smiled at that and asked why he must travel in this wise with staff and scrip and oyster shell.“Because,” said he, lying a little, “I said that masses for the dead are of advantage to the priests.”“They bring them in good coin,” replied they, “but they are of advantage to souls in purgatory.”“I wasn’t there,” rejoined Ulenspiegel.“Will you eat with us, pilgrim?” said the prettiest of the archers.“I will gladly eat with you,” said he, “and eat you, and all the others turn about, for you are titbits for a king, more delicious than ortolans or thrushes or woodcocks.”“God give you food,” said they, “this is game beyond price.”“Like all of you, dear ones,” he answered.“Aye, verily,” said they, “but we are not for sale.”“And for the giving?” he asked.“Ay,” said they, “of blows to the overbold. And if you need it, we will thrash you like a sheaf of corn.”“I abstain therefrom,” said he.“Come eat,” said they.He followed them into the court of the inn, happy to see these fresh faces about him. Suddenly he beheld entering the court with high ceremony, with banner and trumpet and flute and tambourine, the Brothers of the Good Red Nose, wearing in fatness the jolly name of their fellowship. As they looked curiously upon him, the women told them it was a pilgrim they had picked up by the way and that finding him a true Red Nose, and matching their husbands and betrotheds, they had been minded to make him share their feast.The men approved their tale, and one said:“Pilgrim on pilgrimage, wouldst thou pilgrimage through sauces and fricassees?”“I shall have seven-leagued boots for that,” said Ulenspiegel.As he was on the point of entering the hall of the feasting with them, he descried on the road to Paris twelve blind men trudging along. When they passed before him, complaining of hunger and of thirst, Ulenspiegel said to himself that they would sup that night like kings, at the charge of the dean of Uccle, in memory of the masses for the dead. He went to them and said:“Here be nine florins, come and eat. Do ye smell the good fragrance of the fricassees?”“Alas!” said they, “for the last half of a league, and no hope.”“You shall eat,” said Ulenspiegel, “now you have nine florins.” But he did not give them.“A blessing on thee,” said they.And guided by Ulenspiegel, they sat down around a small table, while the Brothers of the Good Red Nose sate at a great one with their goodwives and sweethearts.Speaking with full assurance of nine florins:“Host,” said the blind men, proudly, “give us to eat and drink of your best.”The host, who had heard a mention of the nine florins, believed them to be in their pouches, and asked what they wished to have.Then all of them, speaking at once, cried out:“Peas with bacon, a hotchpotch of beef, veal, mutton, and fowl.”—“Are sausages meant for dogs?”—“Who ever smelled the passing of black puddings and white,without seizing them by the collar? I used to see them, alas! when my poor eyes were candles to me.”—“Where are thekoekebakkenau beurreof Anderlecht? They sing in the pan, succulent and crisp, mother of quart draughts.”—“Who will bring under my nose ham and eggs or eggs and ham, those tender brothers and close friends in the mouth?”—“Where are ye, divinechoesels, swimming, proud viands that you are, in the midst of kidneys, of cockscombs, ofriz de veau, of oxtails, sheep’s trotters, and abundant onions, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, all in the stew and three quarts of white wine for sauce?”—“Who will bring you to me, divineandouilles, so good that ye say no word when ye are swallowed? Ye came ever straight fromLuy-leckerland, the rich country of the happy do-naughts, the lickers up of never-ending sauces. But where are ye, withered leaves of bygone autumns!”—“I want a leg of mutton with beans.”—“I want pigs’ plumes, their ears.”—“For me a rosary of ortolans, with woodcocks for thePaterson it and a fat capon for theCredo.”The host answered sedately:“You shall have an omelette of sixty eggs, and for guiding posts for you spoons, fifty black puddings, planted smoking hot on this mountain of nourishment, anddobbel petermanto wash all down with: that will be the river.”The water came into the mouths of the poor blind men and they said:“Serve us the mountain, the guideposts, and the river.”And the Brothers of the Good Red Nose and their goodwives already at table with Ulenspiegel said that this day was for the blind the day of invisible junketing,and that the poor men thus lost the half of their pleasure.When the omelette arrived, all decked with parsley and nasturtium, and borne by the host and four cooks, the blind men would fain have thrown themselves upon it and already were haggling in it, but the host served them separately, not without difficulty, to each his share in his own dish.The archer women were touched to see them eating and heaving sighs of content, for they were mightily hungered and swallowed down the black puddings like oysters. Thedobbel petermanflowed down into their bellies like cascades falling from mountain tops.When they had cleaned their dishes, they asked again forkoekebakken, for ortolans and fresh fricassees. The host only served them a great dish of bones of beef and veal and mutton swimming in a good sauce. He did not give each his portion.When they had dipped their bread and their hands up to the elbows in the sauce, and only brought up bones of every kind, even some ox jaw bones, everyone thought his neighbour had all the meat, and they beat each other’s faces furiously with the bones.The Brothers of the Good Red Nose, having laughed their fill, charitably conveyed part of their own feast into the poor fellows’ dish, and he who groped in the plate for a bone for a weapon would set his hand on a thrush, a chicken, a lark or two, while the goodwives, pulling their heads back, would pour Brussels wine down their throats in a flood, and when they groped about blindly to feel whence these streams of ambrosia were coming to them, they caughtnothing but a petticoat, and would fain have held it, but it would whisk away from them suddenly.And so they laughed, drank, ate, and sang. Some scenting out the pretty goodwives, ran all about the hall beside themselves, bewitched by love, but teasing girls would mislead them, and hiding behind a Good Red Nose would say “kiss me.” And they would, but instead of a woman, they kissed the bearded face of a man, and not without rebuffs.The Good Red Noses sang, the blind men, too. And the jolly goodwives smiled kindly seeing their glee.When these rich and sappy hours were over, thebaessaid to them:“You have eaten well and drunk well, I want seven florins.”Each one swore he had no purse, and accused his neighbour. Hence arose yet another fray in which they sought to strike one another with foot and fist and head, but they could not, and struck out wildly, for the Good Red Noses, seeing the play, kept man away from man. And blows hailed upon the empty air, save one that by ill chance fell upon the face of thebaes, who, in a rage, searched them all and found on them nothing but an old scapular, seven liards, three breeches buttons, and their paternosters.He wanted to fling them into the swinehouse and leave them there on bread and water until someone should pay what they owed for them.“Do you,” said Ulenspiegel, “want me to go surety for them?”“Ay,” replied thebaes, “if someone will be surety for you.”The Good Red Noses were about to do it, but Ulenspiegel stopped them, saying:“The dean will be surety, I am going to find him.”Thinking of the masses for the dead, he went to the deanery and told him how that thebaesof the Trumpet, being possessed of the devil, spoke of nothing but pigs and blind men, the pigs devouring the blind and the blind eating the pigs under divers unholy guises of roasts and fricassees. During these fits, said he, thebaesbroke everything in the house, and he begged the dean to come and deliver the poor man from this wicked fiend.The dean promised, but said he could not go immediately, for at that moment he was casting up the accounts of the chapter, and endeavouring to derive some profit out of them.Seeing him impatient, Ulenspiegel said he would come back with the wife of thebaesand that the dean could speak to her himself.“Come both of you,” said the dean.Ulenspiegel came back to thebaes, and said to him:“I have just seen the dean, he will stand surety for the blind men. While you keep guard over them, let the hostess come with me to the dean, he will repeat to her what I have just told you.”“Go, goodwife,” said thebaes.She went off with Ulenspiegel to the dean, who was still figuring to find his profit. When she came in with Ulenspiegel, he impatiently waved her away, saying:“Be easy, I shall come to your husband’s help in a day or two.”And Ulenspiegel, returning to the Trumpet, saidto himself, “He will pay seven florins, and that will be my first mass for the dead.”And he went on his way, and the blind men likewise.XXXVIFinding himself, on the morrow, upon a highway in the midst of a great crowd of folk, Ulenspiegel went with them, and soon knew that it was the day of the pilgrimage of Alsemberg.He saw poor old women marching backwards, barefooted, for a florin and for the expiation of the sins of certain great ladies. On the edge of the highway, to the sound of rebecks, viols, and bagpipes, more than one pilgrim was holding a frying feast and junketing ofbruinbier. And the smoke of delicious stews mounted towards heaven like a suave incense of food.But there were other pilgrims, low fellows, needy and starveling, who, paid by the Church, were walking backwards for six sols.A little man, completely bald, with staring eyes and a savage look, was skipping along backwards behind them reciting paternosters.Ulenspiegel, wishing to know why he was mimicking the crayfishes in this fashion, planting himself before him and smiling, jumped in step with him. The rebecks, fifes, viols, and bagpipes, and the groans of the pilgrims made the music for the dance.“Jan van den Duivel,” said Ulenspiegel, “is it that you may more certainly fall that you run in this wise?”The man made no answer and went on mumbling his paternosters.“Perhaps,” said Ulenspiegel, “you want to knowhow many trees there are along the road. But are you not counting the leaves also?”The man, who was reciting aCredo, signed to Ulenspiegel to hold his tongue.“Perhaps,” said the latter, still skipping before him and imitating him, “it is the result of some sudden madness that you should thus be going the contrary way to everybody else. But he who would have a wise answer from a madman is not wise himself. Is not this true, master of the peeled poll?”As the man still made no answer, Ulenspiegel went on skipping, but making so much noise with his boot-soles that the road reëchoed like a wooden box.“Maybe,” said Ulenspiegel, “you might be dumb, good sir?”“Ave Maria,” said the other, “gratia plena et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesu.”“Maybe you are deaf as well?” said Ulenspiegel. “We shall see that: they say deaf men hear neither praises nor insults. Let us see if the drums of your ears are skin or brass: thinkest thou, lantern without candle, simulacrum of a foot-goer, that thou dost resemble a man? That will be when men are made of rags. Where has such jaundiced visnomy been ever seen, that peeled head, save on the gallows field? Wast thou not hanged of yore?”And Ulenspiegel went on dancing, and the man, who was entering on the ways of wrath, was running backwards angrily still mumbling his paternosters.“Maybe,” said Ulenspiegel, “thou comprehendest but high Flemish, I will speak to thee in the low: if thou art no glutton, thou art a drunkard, if no drunkard, but a water bibber, thou art foully choked elsewhere; if not constipated, thou art jerry-go-nimble; if not alecher, a capon; if there be temperance, it was not that that filled the tun of thy belly, and if in the thousand million men that people the earth there were but one only cuckold, it would be thou.”At this word Ulenspiegel sat down upon his seat, legs in air, for the man had fetched him such a blow with his fist under the nose that he saw more than a hundred candles. Then cunningly falling upon him, despite the weight of his belly, he struck him everywhere, and blows rained like hail upon the thin frame of Ulenspiegel, whose cudgel fell to the ground.“Learn by this lesson,” said the man, “not to pester honest folk going on pilgrimage. For you may know that I go thus to Alsemberg according to custom to implore Madam Holy Mary to cause to miscarry a child my wife conceived when I was on my travels. To win so great a boon, a man must needs walk and dance backward from the twentieth step from his home to the foot of the church steps, without speaking. Alas! now I must begin all over again.”Ulenspiegel having picked up his cudgel said:“I shall help you, rascal, you who would have Our Lady serve to kill babes in their mothers’ womb.”And he fell to beating the wretched cuckold so cruelly that he left him for dead on the road.All this while there rose to heaven the groans of pilgrims, the sounds of fifes, viols, rebecks, and bagpipes, and, like a pure incense, the savour of frying.

XXVIIWhen Ulenspiegel came back from Dudzeele, he saw Nele at the entrance to the town, leaning upagainst a barrier. She was eating a bunch of grapes, crunching them one by one, and was doubtless refreshed and rejoiced by the fruit, but allowed none of her pleasure to be seen. She appeared, on the contrary, to be angry, and plucked the grapes from off the bunch with a choleric air. She was so dolorous and showed a face so marred, so sad and so sweet, that Ulenspiegel was overcome with loving pity, and going up behind her, gave her a kiss on the nape of her neck.But she returned it with a great box on the ear.“I can’t fathom that!” exclaimed Ulenspiegel.She wept with heavy sobs.“Nele,” said he, “are you going to set up fountains at the entrance to the villages?”“Begone!” she said.“But I cannot be gone, if you weep like this, my dear.”“I am not your dear,” said Nele, “and I do not weep!”“No, you do not weep, but none the less water comes from your eyes.”“Will you go away?” said she.“No,” said he.She was holding her apron the while with her little trembling hands, and she was pulling the stuff jerkily and tears fell on it, wetting it.“Nele,” asked Ulenspiegel, “will it be fine presently?” And he looked on her, smiling lovingly.“Why do you ask me that?” said she.“Because, when it is fine, it does not weep,” replied Ulenspiegel.“Go,” said she, “go to your beautiful lady in thebrocade dress; you made her laugh well enough,” said she.Then sang Ulenspiegel:“When my darling’s tears I seeMy heart is torn atwain,’Tis honey when she laughs for me,When she weeps, a pearl.Always I love my dearest girl,And I’ll buy good wine for us,Good wine of Louvain,I’ll buy good wine for us to drink,When Nele smiles again.”“Low man!” said she, “you are still flouting me.”“Nele,” said Ulenspiegel, “a man I am, but not low, for our noble family, an aldermanish family, bears three silver quarts on a ground ofbruinbier. Nele, is it so that in Flanders when a man sows kisses he reaps boxes on the ear?”“I do not wish to speak to you,” said she.“Then why do you open your mouth to tell me so?”“I am angry,” said she.Ulenspiegel very lightly gave her a blow with his fist in the back, and said:“Kiss a mean thing, she’ll punch you; punch a mean thing and she’ll anoint you. Anoint me then, darling, since I have punched you.”Nele turned about. He opened his arms, she cast herself in them still weeping, and said:“You won’t go there again, Thyl, will you?”But he made her no answer, for he was too busy clasping her poor trembling fingers and wiping awaywith his lips the hot tears falling from Nele’s eyes like the big drops of a thunder shower.

XXVII

When Ulenspiegel came back from Dudzeele, he saw Nele at the entrance to the town, leaning upagainst a barrier. She was eating a bunch of grapes, crunching them one by one, and was doubtless refreshed and rejoiced by the fruit, but allowed none of her pleasure to be seen. She appeared, on the contrary, to be angry, and plucked the grapes from off the bunch with a choleric air. She was so dolorous and showed a face so marred, so sad and so sweet, that Ulenspiegel was overcome with loving pity, and going up behind her, gave her a kiss on the nape of her neck.But she returned it with a great box on the ear.“I can’t fathom that!” exclaimed Ulenspiegel.She wept with heavy sobs.“Nele,” said he, “are you going to set up fountains at the entrance to the villages?”“Begone!” she said.“But I cannot be gone, if you weep like this, my dear.”“I am not your dear,” said Nele, “and I do not weep!”“No, you do not weep, but none the less water comes from your eyes.”“Will you go away?” said she.“No,” said he.She was holding her apron the while with her little trembling hands, and she was pulling the stuff jerkily and tears fell on it, wetting it.“Nele,” asked Ulenspiegel, “will it be fine presently?” And he looked on her, smiling lovingly.“Why do you ask me that?” said she.“Because, when it is fine, it does not weep,” replied Ulenspiegel.“Go,” said she, “go to your beautiful lady in thebrocade dress; you made her laugh well enough,” said she.Then sang Ulenspiegel:“When my darling’s tears I seeMy heart is torn atwain,’Tis honey when she laughs for me,When she weeps, a pearl.Always I love my dearest girl,And I’ll buy good wine for us,Good wine of Louvain,I’ll buy good wine for us to drink,When Nele smiles again.”“Low man!” said she, “you are still flouting me.”“Nele,” said Ulenspiegel, “a man I am, but not low, for our noble family, an aldermanish family, bears three silver quarts on a ground ofbruinbier. Nele, is it so that in Flanders when a man sows kisses he reaps boxes on the ear?”“I do not wish to speak to you,” said she.“Then why do you open your mouth to tell me so?”“I am angry,” said she.Ulenspiegel very lightly gave her a blow with his fist in the back, and said:“Kiss a mean thing, she’ll punch you; punch a mean thing and she’ll anoint you. Anoint me then, darling, since I have punched you.”Nele turned about. He opened his arms, she cast herself in them still weeping, and said:“You won’t go there again, Thyl, will you?”But he made her no answer, for he was too busy clasping her poor trembling fingers and wiping awaywith his lips the hot tears falling from Nele’s eyes like the big drops of a thunder shower.

When Ulenspiegel came back from Dudzeele, he saw Nele at the entrance to the town, leaning upagainst a barrier. She was eating a bunch of grapes, crunching them one by one, and was doubtless refreshed and rejoiced by the fruit, but allowed none of her pleasure to be seen. She appeared, on the contrary, to be angry, and plucked the grapes from off the bunch with a choleric air. She was so dolorous and showed a face so marred, so sad and so sweet, that Ulenspiegel was overcome with loving pity, and going up behind her, gave her a kiss on the nape of her neck.

But she returned it with a great box on the ear.

“I can’t fathom that!” exclaimed Ulenspiegel.

She wept with heavy sobs.

“Nele,” said he, “are you going to set up fountains at the entrance to the villages?”

“Begone!” she said.

“But I cannot be gone, if you weep like this, my dear.”

“I am not your dear,” said Nele, “and I do not weep!”

“No, you do not weep, but none the less water comes from your eyes.”

“Will you go away?” said she.

“No,” said he.

She was holding her apron the while with her little trembling hands, and she was pulling the stuff jerkily and tears fell on it, wetting it.

“Nele,” asked Ulenspiegel, “will it be fine presently?” And he looked on her, smiling lovingly.

“Why do you ask me that?” said she.

“Because, when it is fine, it does not weep,” replied Ulenspiegel.

“Go,” said she, “go to your beautiful lady in thebrocade dress; you made her laugh well enough,” said she.

Then sang Ulenspiegel:

“When my darling’s tears I seeMy heart is torn atwain,’Tis honey when she laughs for me,When she weeps, a pearl.Always I love my dearest girl,And I’ll buy good wine for us,Good wine of Louvain,I’ll buy good wine for us to drink,When Nele smiles again.”

“When my darling’s tears I see

My heart is torn atwain,

’Tis honey when she laughs for me,

When she weeps, a pearl.

Always I love my dearest girl,

And I’ll buy good wine for us,

Good wine of Louvain,

I’ll buy good wine for us to drink,

When Nele smiles again.”

“Low man!” said she, “you are still flouting me.”

“Nele,” said Ulenspiegel, “a man I am, but not low, for our noble family, an aldermanish family, bears three silver quarts on a ground ofbruinbier. Nele, is it so that in Flanders when a man sows kisses he reaps boxes on the ear?”

“I do not wish to speak to you,” said she.

“Then why do you open your mouth to tell me so?”

“I am angry,” said she.

Ulenspiegel very lightly gave her a blow with his fist in the back, and said:

“Kiss a mean thing, she’ll punch you; punch a mean thing and she’ll anoint you. Anoint me then, darling, since I have punched you.”

Nele turned about. He opened his arms, she cast herself in them still weeping, and said:

“You won’t go there again, Thyl, will you?”

But he made her no answer, for he was too busy clasping her poor trembling fingers and wiping awaywith his lips the hot tears falling from Nele’s eyes like the big drops of a thunder shower.

XXVIIIIn these days, the noble town of Ghent refused to pay her quota of the subsidy her son Charles the Emperor had asked of her. She could not, being void of money through the very doings of Charles. This was a great crime; he determined to go in his own person to chastise her.For more than any other is a son’s cudgel grievous to the back of a mother.François of the long nose, his foe, offered him free passage through the land of France. Charles accepted, and instead of being held a prisoner he was feasted and cherished imperially. ’Tis a sovereign concord between princes to help one another against the peoples.Charles stayed long at Valenciennes without making any show of anger. Ghent, his mother, lived free from fear, in the certain belief that the Emperor, her son, would pardon her for having acted as was her lawful right.Charles arrived beneath the city walls with four thousand horse. D’Alba was with him, so was the Prince of Orange. The common folk and the men of petty trades had wanted to prevent this filial entry, and to call out the eighty thousand men of the town and the flat country; the men of substance, the so-calledhoogh-poorters, opposed this, fearing the predominance of the lower orders. Ghent could in this way have made mincemeat of her son and his four thousand horse. But she loved him too well,and even the petty traders had resumed their trust in him.Charles also loved his mother, but for the money he held in his coffers from her, and the further moneys he meant to have from her.Having made himself master of the town, he set up military posts everywhere, and had Ghent patrolled by rounds night and day. Then he pronounced, with all pomp and ceremony, his sentence upon the town.The most eminent citizens must come before his throne, with ropes about their necks, and make full public confession of their misdeeds: Ghent was declared guilty of the most expensive crimes, which are: disloyalty, treaty-breaking, disobedience, sedition, rebellion, and treason. The Emperor declared all and sundry privileges, rights, franchises, customs, and usages void and abolished; stipulating and engaging the future, as though he were God, that thenceforward his successors on their entering into their seigniory would swear to observe nothing save only theCaroline Concessionof slavery granted by him to the town.He had the Abbey of Saint Bavon pulled down in order to rear on its site a fortress from which he could pierce his mother’s bosom with cannon shot.Like a good son eager to come into his inheritance, he confiscated all that belonged to Ghent, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war.Finding her over well defended, he knocked down the Red Tower, the Toad’s Hole Tower, the Braampoort, the Steenpoort, the Waalpoort, the Ketelpoort,and many others wrought and carven like jewels in stone.When strangers thereafter came to Ghent, they said to one another:“What is this flat, desolate town whose wonders and praises were sung so loudly?”And the folk of Ghent would make answer:“The Emperor Charles hath taken her precious girdle from the good town.”And so saying they were shamed and wroth. And from the ruins of the gates the Emperor had the bricks for his fortress.He would have Ghent poor, for thus neither by toil nor industry nor gold could she oppose his haughty plans; therefore he condemned her to pay the refused quota of the subsidy, four hundred thousand gold carolus, and besides this, one hundred and fifty thousand carolus down and six thousand every year in perpetuity. She had lent him money: he was to pay one hundred and fifty pounds interest yearly. He took possession by force of the deeds recording his debt and paying it in this way, he actually enriched himself.Many a time had Ghent given him love and succour, but he now smote her bosom with a dagger, seeking blood from it because he found not enough milk there.Then he looked upon Roelandt, the great bell, and hanged from the clapper the fellow who had sounded the alarm to call the city to defend her right. He had no mercy for Roelandt, his mother’s tongue, the tongue with which she spoke to Flanders: Roelandt, the proud bell, which saith of himself:Als men my slaet dan is’t brandt.Als men my luyt dan is’t storm in Vlaenderlandt.When they ring me there is fire.When they toll me there is storm in Flanders.Finding that his mother spoke too loud and free, he took away the bell. And the folk of the flat country say that Ghent died because her son had torn out her tongue with his iron pincers.

XXVIII

In these days, the noble town of Ghent refused to pay her quota of the subsidy her son Charles the Emperor had asked of her. She could not, being void of money through the very doings of Charles. This was a great crime; he determined to go in his own person to chastise her.For more than any other is a son’s cudgel grievous to the back of a mother.François of the long nose, his foe, offered him free passage through the land of France. Charles accepted, and instead of being held a prisoner he was feasted and cherished imperially. ’Tis a sovereign concord between princes to help one another against the peoples.Charles stayed long at Valenciennes without making any show of anger. Ghent, his mother, lived free from fear, in the certain belief that the Emperor, her son, would pardon her for having acted as was her lawful right.Charles arrived beneath the city walls with four thousand horse. D’Alba was with him, so was the Prince of Orange. The common folk and the men of petty trades had wanted to prevent this filial entry, and to call out the eighty thousand men of the town and the flat country; the men of substance, the so-calledhoogh-poorters, opposed this, fearing the predominance of the lower orders. Ghent could in this way have made mincemeat of her son and his four thousand horse. But she loved him too well,and even the petty traders had resumed their trust in him.Charles also loved his mother, but for the money he held in his coffers from her, and the further moneys he meant to have from her.Having made himself master of the town, he set up military posts everywhere, and had Ghent patrolled by rounds night and day. Then he pronounced, with all pomp and ceremony, his sentence upon the town.The most eminent citizens must come before his throne, with ropes about their necks, and make full public confession of their misdeeds: Ghent was declared guilty of the most expensive crimes, which are: disloyalty, treaty-breaking, disobedience, sedition, rebellion, and treason. The Emperor declared all and sundry privileges, rights, franchises, customs, and usages void and abolished; stipulating and engaging the future, as though he were God, that thenceforward his successors on their entering into their seigniory would swear to observe nothing save only theCaroline Concessionof slavery granted by him to the town.He had the Abbey of Saint Bavon pulled down in order to rear on its site a fortress from which he could pierce his mother’s bosom with cannon shot.Like a good son eager to come into his inheritance, he confiscated all that belonged to Ghent, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war.Finding her over well defended, he knocked down the Red Tower, the Toad’s Hole Tower, the Braampoort, the Steenpoort, the Waalpoort, the Ketelpoort,and many others wrought and carven like jewels in stone.When strangers thereafter came to Ghent, they said to one another:“What is this flat, desolate town whose wonders and praises were sung so loudly?”And the folk of Ghent would make answer:“The Emperor Charles hath taken her precious girdle from the good town.”And so saying they were shamed and wroth. And from the ruins of the gates the Emperor had the bricks for his fortress.He would have Ghent poor, for thus neither by toil nor industry nor gold could she oppose his haughty plans; therefore he condemned her to pay the refused quota of the subsidy, four hundred thousand gold carolus, and besides this, one hundred and fifty thousand carolus down and six thousand every year in perpetuity. She had lent him money: he was to pay one hundred and fifty pounds interest yearly. He took possession by force of the deeds recording his debt and paying it in this way, he actually enriched himself.Many a time had Ghent given him love and succour, but he now smote her bosom with a dagger, seeking blood from it because he found not enough milk there.Then he looked upon Roelandt, the great bell, and hanged from the clapper the fellow who had sounded the alarm to call the city to defend her right. He had no mercy for Roelandt, his mother’s tongue, the tongue with which she spoke to Flanders: Roelandt, the proud bell, which saith of himself:Als men my slaet dan is’t brandt.Als men my luyt dan is’t storm in Vlaenderlandt.When they ring me there is fire.When they toll me there is storm in Flanders.Finding that his mother spoke too loud and free, he took away the bell. And the folk of the flat country say that Ghent died because her son had torn out her tongue with his iron pincers.

In these days, the noble town of Ghent refused to pay her quota of the subsidy her son Charles the Emperor had asked of her. She could not, being void of money through the very doings of Charles. This was a great crime; he determined to go in his own person to chastise her.

For more than any other is a son’s cudgel grievous to the back of a mother.

François of the long nose, his foe, offered him free passage through the land of France. Charles accepted, and instead of being held a prisoner he was feasted and cherished imperially. ’Tis a sovereign concord between princes to help one another against the peoples.

Charles stayed long at Valenciennes without making any show of anger. Ghent, his mother, lived free from fear, in the certain belief that the Emperor, her son, would pardon her for having acted as was her lawful right.

Charles arrived beneath the city walls with four thousand horse. D’Alba was with him, so was the Prince of Orange. The common folk and the men of petty trades had wanted to prevent this filial entry, and to call out the eighty thousand men of the town and the flat country; the men of substance, the so-calledhoogh-poorters, opposed this, fearing the predominance of the lower orders. Ghent could in this way have made mincemeat of her son and his four thousand horse. But she loved him too well,and even the petty traders had resumed their trust in him.

Charles also loved his mother, but for the money he held in his coffers from her, and the further moneys he meant to have from her.

Having made himself master of the town, he set up military posts everywhere, and had Ghent patrolled by rounds night and day. Then he pronounced, with all pomp and ceremony, his sentence upon the town.

The most eminent citizens must come before his throne, with ropes about their necks, and make full public confession of their misdeeds: Ghent was declared guilty of the most expensive crimes, which are: disloyalty, treaty-breaking, disobedience, sedition, rebellion, and treason. The Emperor declared all and sundry privileges, rights, franchises, customs, and usages void and abolished; stipulating and engaging the future, as though he were God, that thenceforward his successors on their entering into their seigniory would swear to observe nothing save only theCaroline Concessionof slavery granted by him to the town.

He had the Abbey of Saint Bavon pulled down in order to rear on its site a fortress from which he could pierce his mother’s bosom with cannon shot.

Like a good son eager to come into his inheritance, he confiscated all that belonged to Ghent, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war.

Finding her over well defended, he knocked down the Red Tower, the Toad’s Hole Tower, the Braampoort, the Steenpoort, the Waalpoort, the Ketelpoort,and many others wrought and carven like jewels in stone.

When strangers thereafter came to Ghent, they said to one another:

“What is this flat, desolate town whose wonders and praises were sung so loudly?”

And the folk of Ghent would make answer:

“The Emperor Charles hath taken her precious girdle from the good town.”

And so saying they were shamed and wroth. And from the ruins of the gates the Emperor had the bricks for his fortress.

He would have Ghent poor, for thus neither by toil nor industry nor gold could she oppose his haughty plans; therefore he condemned her to pay the refused quota of the subsidy, four hundred thousand gold carolus, and besides this, one hundred and fifty thousand carolus down and six thousand every year in perpetuity. She had lent him money: he was to pay one hundred and fifty pounds interest yearly. He took possession by force of the deeds recording his debt and paying it in this way, he actually enriched himself.

Many a time had Ghent given him love and succour, but he now smote her bosom with a dagger, seeking blood from it because he found not enough milk there.

Then he looked upon Roelandt, the great bell, and hanged from the clapper the fellow who had sounded the alarm to call the city to defend her right. He had no mercy for Roelandt, his mother’s tongue, the tongue with which she spoke to Flanders: Roelandt, the proud bell, which saith of himself:

Als men my slaet dan is’t brandt.Als men my luyt dan is’t storm in Vlaenderlandt.When they ring me there is fire.When they toll me there is storm in Flanders.

Als men my slaet dan is’t brandt.Als men my luyt dan is’t storm in Vlaenderlandt.

Als men my slaet dan is’t brandt.

Als men my luyt dan is’t storm in Vlaenderlandt.

When they ring me there is fire.When they toll me there is storm in Flanders.

When they ring me there is fire.

When they toll me there is storm in Flanders.

Finding that his mother spoke too loud and free, he took away the bell. And the folk of the flat country say that Ghent died because her son had torn out her tongue with his iron pincers.

XXIXOne of these days, which were bright fresh days of the springtime, when all the earth is full of love, Soetkin was talking by the open window, Claes humming some refrain, while Ulenspiegel had put a judge’s cap on the head of Titus Bibulus Schnouffius. The dog was working with his paws as though endeavouring to utter a judgment, but it was merely to get rid of his headgear.Suddenly Ulenspiegel shut the window, ran into the middle of the room, jumped on chairs and tables, his hands stretched up to the ceiling. Soetkin and Claes saw that all this energy was to catch a pretty little bird that was crying out with fear, its wings fluttering, cowering against a beam in a corner of the ceiling.Ulenspiegel was on the point of seizing it, when Claes said quickly:“What are you jumping for like that?”“To catch it,” answered Ulenspiegel, “and put it in a cage, and give it seed and make it sing for me.”Meanwhile the bird, crying shrilly with terror, was flying about the room and dashing its head against the windowpanes.Ulenspiegel did not cease jumping after it: Claes laid his hand weightily on the lad’s shoulder:“Catch it,” he said, “put it in a cage, make it sing for you, do, but I, too, will put you in a cage, shut in with stout iron bars, and I will make you sing as well. You like to run, you will not be able to run; you will be in the shade when you are cold, in the sun when you are hot. Then one Sunday we shall go out, forgetting to give you any food, and we shall only come back on the Thursday, and returning we shall find Thyl dead of hunger and stark and stiff.”Soetkin wept, Ulenspiegel sprang forward.“What are you going to do?” asked Claes.“I am opening the window for the bird,” he answered.And indeed, the bird, which was a goldfinch, went out of the window, uttered a cry of joy, shot up like an arrow in the air, then setting itself in an apple tree close by, it sleeked its wings with its beak, shook out its plumage, and becoming angry, hurled a thousand insults at Ulenspiegel in its bird speech.Then Claes said to him:“Son, never take liberty from man nor beast for liberty is the greatest boon in this world. Leave everyman to go in the sun when he is cold, in the shade when he is hot. And may God judge His Sacred Majesty who, having fettered freedom of belief in the land of Flanders, has now put Ghent, the noble town, in a cage of slavery.”

XXIX

One of these days, which were bright fresh days of the springtime, when all the earth is full of love, Soetkin was talking by the open window, Claes humming some refrain, while Ulenspiegel had put a judge’s cap on the head of Titus Bibulus Schnouffius. The dog was working with his paws as though endeavouring to utter a judgment, but it was merely to get rid of his headgear.Suddenly Ulenspiegel shut the window, ran into the middle of the room, jumped on chairs and tables, his hands stretched up to the ceiling. Soetkin and Claes saw that all this energy was to catch a pretty little bird that was crying out with fear, its wings fluttering, cowering against a beam in a corner of the ceiling.Ulenspiegel was on the point of seizing it, when Claes said quickly:“What are you jumping for like that?”“To catch it,” answered Ulenspiegel, “and put it in a cage, and give it seed and make it sing for me.”Meanwhile the bird, crying shrilly with terror, was flying about the room and dashing its head against the windowpanes.Ulenspiegel did not cease jumping after it: Claes laid his hand weightily on the lad’s shoulder:“Catch it,” he said, “put it in a cage, make it sing for you, do, but I, too, will put you in a cage, shut in with stout iron bars, and I will make you sing as well. You like to run, you will not be able to run; you will be in the shade when you are cold, in the sun when you are hot. Then one Sunday we shall go out, forgetting to give you any food, and we shall only come back on the Thursday, and returning we shall find Thyl dead of hunger and stark and stiff.”Soetkin wept, Ulenspiegel sprang forward.“What are you going to do?” asked Claes.“I am opening the window for the bird,” he answered.And indeed, the bird, which was a goldfinch, went out of the window, uttered a cry of joy, shot up like an arrow in the air, then setting itself in an apple tree close by, it sleeked its wings with its beak, shook out its plumage, and becoming angry, hurled a thousand insults at Ulenspiegel in its bird speech.Then Claes said to him:“Son, never take liberty from man nor beast for liberty is the greatest boon in this world. Leave everyman to go in the sun when he is cold, in the shade when he is hot. And may God judge His Sacred Majesty who, having fettered freedom of belief in the land of Flanders, has now put Ghent, the noble town, in a cage of slavery.”

One of these days, which were bright fresh days of the springtime, when all the earth is full of love, Soetkin was talking by the open window, Claes humming some refrain, while Ulenspiegel had put a judge’s cap on the head of Titus Bibulus Schnouffius. The dog was working with his paws as though endeavouring to utter a judgment, but it was merely to get rid of his headgear.

Suddenly Ulenspiegel shut the window, ran into the middle of the room, jumped on chairs and tables, his hands stretched up to the ceiling. Soetkin and Claes saw that all this energy was to catch a pretty little bird that was crying out with fear, its wings fluttering, cowering against a beam in a corner of the ceiling.

Ulenspiegel was on the point of seizing it, when Claes said quickly:

“What are you jumping for like that?”

“To catch it,” answered Ulenspiegel, “and put it in a cage, and give it seed and make it sing for me.”

Meanwhile the bird, crying shrilly with terror, was flying about the room and dashing its head against the windowpanes.

Ulenspiegel did not cease jumping after it: Claes laid his hand weightily on the lad’s shoulder:

“Catch it,” he said, “put it in a cage, make it sing for you, do, but I, too, will put you in a cage, shut in with stout iron bars, and I will make you sing as well. You like to run, you will not be able to run; you will be in the shade when you are cold, in the sun when you are hot. Then one Sunday we shall go out, forgetting to give you any food, and we shall only come back on the Thursday, and returning we shall find Thyl dead of hunger and stark and stiff.”

Soetkin wept, Ulenspiegel sprang forward.

“What are you going to do?” asked Claes.

“I am opening the window for the bird,” he answered.

And indeed, the bird, which was a goldfinch, went out of the window, uttered a cry of joy, shot up like an arrow in the air, then setting itself in an apple tree close by, it sleeked its wings with its beak, shook out its plumage, and becoming angry, hurled a thousand insults at Ulenspiegel in its bird speech.

Then Claes said to him:

“Son, never take liberty from man nor beast for liberty is the greatest boon in this world. Leave everyman to go in the sun when he is cold, in the shade when he is hot. And may God judge His Sacred Majesty who, having fettered freedom of belief in the land of Flanders, has now put Ghent, the noble town, in a cage of slavery.”

XXXPhilip had married Marie of Portugal, whose possessions he added to the Spanish crown; he had by her ason, Don Carlos, the cruel madman. But he did not love his wife!The Queen was ill after the birth. She kept her bed and had with her her ladies in waiting, among whom was the Duchess of Alba.Philip often left her alone to go and see the burning of heretics, and all the lords and ladies of the court the same. Likewise also the Duchess of Alba, the Queen’s noble nurse.At this time the Official seized a Flemish sculptor, a Roman Catholic, because when a monk had refused to pay the price agreed for a wooden statue of Our Lady, he had struck the face of the statue with his chisel, saying he would rather destroy his work than sell it for a mean price.He was denounced by the monk as an iconoclast, tortured mercilessly, and condemned to be burned alive.In the torture they had burned the soles of his feet, and as he walked from prison to the stake, wearing thesan-benito, he kept crying out, “Cut off my feet, cut off my feet!”And Philip heard these cries from afar off, and he was pleased, but he did not laugh.Queen Marie’s ladies left her to go to the burning, and after them went the Duchess of Alba, who, hearing the Flemish sculptor’s cries, wished to see the spectacle, and left the Queen alone.Philip, his noble servitors, princes, counts, esquires, and ladies being present, the sculptor was fastened by a long chain to a stake planted in the middle of a burning circle made of trusses of straw and of faggots that would roast him to death slowly, if he wished to avoid the quick fire by hugging the stake.And all looked curiously on him as he sought, naked or all but naked as he was, to stiffen his will and courage against the heat of the fire.At the same time Queen Marie was athirst on her bed of childbirth. She saw half a melon on a dish. Dragging herself out of bed, she seized this melon and left nothing of it.Then by reason of the cold flesh of the melon, she fell into sweating and trembling, lay on the floor, and could not move hand or foot.“Ah,” she said, “I might grow warm if someone could carry me to my bed.”She heard then the poor sculptor crying:“Cut off my feet!”“Ah!” said Queen Marie, “is that a dog howling for my death?”At this moment the sculptor, seeing about him none but the faces of enemies and Spaniards, thought upon Flanders, the land of men, folded his arms, and dragging his long chain behind him he went straight to the straw and burning faggots and standing upright upon them with arms still folded:“Lo,” said he, “how the Flemish can die before Spanish butchers. Cut off their feet, not mine, but theirs, that they may run no more after murder! Long live Flanders! Flanders for ever and evermore!”And the ladies applauded, crying for mercy as they saw his proud face.And he died.Queen Marie shivered from head to foot, she wept, her teeth chattered with the cold of approaching death, and she said, stiffening her arms and legs:“Put me in my bed, that I may be warmed.”And she died.Thus, even according to the prediction of Katheline, the good witch, did Philip everywhere sow death, blood, and tears.

XXX

Philip had married Marie of Portugal, whose possessions he added to the Spanish crown; he had by her ason, Don Carlos, the cruel madman. But he did not love his wife!The Queen was ill after the birth. She kept her bed and had with her her ladies in waiting, among whom was the Duchess of Alba.Philip often left her alone to go and see the burning of heretics, and all the lords and ladies of the court the same. Likewise also the Duchess of Alba, the Queen’s noble nurse.At this time the Official seized a Flemish sculptor, a Roman Catholic, because when a monk had refused to pay the price agreed for a wooden statue of Our Lady, he had struck the face of the statue with his chisel, saying he would rather destroy his work than sell it for a mean price.He was denounced by the monk as an iconoclast, tortured mercilessly, and condemned to be burned alive.In the torture they had burned the soles of his feet, and as he walked from prison to the stake, wearing thesan-benito, he kept crying out, “Cut off my feet, cut off my feet!”And Philip heard these cries from afar off, and he was pleased, but he did not laugh.Queen Marie’s ladies left her to go to the burning, and after them went the Duchess of Alba, who, hearing the Flemish sculptor’s cries, wished to see the spectacle, and left the Queen alone.Philip, his noble servitors, princes, counts, esquires, and ladies being present, the sculptor was fastened by a long chain to a stake planted in the middle of a burning circle made of trusses of straw and of faggots that would roast him to death slowly, if he wished to avoid the quick fire by hugging the stake.And all looked curiously on him as he sought, naked or all but naked as he was, to stiffen his will and courage against the heat of the fire.At the same time Queen Marie was athirst on her bed of childbirth. She saw half a melon on a dish. Dragging herself out of bed, she seized this melon and left nothing of it.Then by reason of the cold flesh of the melon, she fell into sweating and trembling, lay on the floor, and could not move hand or foot.“Ah,” she said, “I might grow warm if someone could carry me to my bed.”She heard then the poor sculptor crying:“Cut off my feet!”“Ah!” said Queen Marie, “is that a dog howling for my death?”At this moment the sculptor, seeing about him none but the faces of enemies and Spaniards, thought upon Flanders, the land of men, folded his arms, and dragging his long chain behind him he went straight to the straw and burning faggots and standing upright upon them with arms still folded:“Lo,” said he, “how the Flemish can die before Spanish butchers. Cut off their feet, not mine, but theirs, that they may run no more after murder! Long live Flanders! Flanders for ever and evermore!”And the ladies applauded, crying for mercy as they saw his proud face.And he died.Queen Marie shivered from head to foot, she wept, her teeth chattered with the cold of approaching death, and she said, stiffening her arms and legs:“Put me in my bed, that I may be warmed.”And she died.Thus, even according to the prediction of Katheline, the good witch, did Philip everywhere sow death, blood, and tears.

Philip had married Marie of Portugal, whose possessions he added to the Spanish crown; he had by her ason, Don Carlos, the cruel madman. But he did not love his wife!

The Queen was ill after the birth. She kept her bed and had with her her ladies in waiting, among whom was the Duchess of Alba.

Philip often left her alone to go and see the burning of heretics, and all the lords and ladies of the court the same. Likewise also the Duchess of Alba, the Queen’s noble nurse.

At this time the Official seized a Flemish sculptor, a Roman Catholic, because when a monk had refused to pay the price agreed for a wooden statue of Our Lady, he had struck the face of the statue with his chisel, saying he would rather destroy his work than sell it for a mean price.

He was denounced by the monk as an iconoclast, tortured mercilessly, and condemned to be burned alive.

In the torture they had burned the soles of his feet, and as he walked from prison to the stake, wearing thesan-benito, he kept crying out, “Cut off my feet, cut off my feet!”

And Philip heard these cries from afar off, and he was pleased, but he did not laugh.

Queen Marie’s ladies left her to go to the burning, and after them went the Duchess of Alba, who, hearing the Flemish sculptor’s cries, wished to see the spectacle, and left the Queen alone.

Philip, his noble servitors, princes, counts, esquires, and ladies being present, the sculptor was fastened by a long chain to a stake planted in the middle of a burning circle made of trusses of straw and of faggots that would roast him to death slowly, if he wished to avoid the quick fire by hugging the stake.

And all looked curiously on him as he sought, naked or all but naked as he was, to stiffen his will and courage against the heat of the fire.

At the same time Queen Marie was athirst on her bed of childbirth. She saw half a melon on a dish. Dragging herself out of bed, she seized this melon and left nothing of it.

Then by reason of the cold flesh of the melon, she fell into sweating and trembling, lay on the floor, and could not move hand or foot.

“Ah,” she said, “I might grow warm if someone could carry me to my bed.”

She heard then the poor sculptor crying:

“Cut off my feet!”

“Ah!” said Queen Marie, “is that a dog howling for my death?”

At this moment the sculptor, seeing about him none but the faces of enemies and Spaniards, thought upon Flanders, the land of men, folded his arms, and dragging his long chain behind him he went straight to the straw and burning faggots and standing upright upon them with arms still folded:

“Lo,” said he, “how the Flemish can die before Spanish butchers. Cut off their feet, not mine, but theirs, that they may run no more after murder! Long live Flanders! Flanders for ever and evermore!”

And the ladies applauded, crying for mercy as they saw his proud face.

And he died.

Queen Marie shivered from head to foot, she wept, her teeth chattered with the cold of approaching death, and she said, stiffening her arms and legs:

“Put me in my bed, that I may be warmed.”

And she died.

Thus, even according to the prediction of Katheline, the good witch, did Philip everywhere sow death, blood, and tears.

XXXIBut Ulenspiegel and Nele loved with surpassing love.It was then in the end of April, with all the trees in flower; all the plants, bursting with sap, were awaiting May, which cometh on the earth with a peacock for companion, blossoming like a nosegay, and maketh the nightingales to sing among the trees.Often Ulenspiegel and Nele would wander down the roads alone together. Nele hung upon Ulenspiegel’s arm, and held to it with both hands. Ulenspiegel, taking pleasure in this play, often passed his arm about Nele’s waist, to hold her the better, he would tell her. And she was happy, though she did not speak a word.The wind rolled softly along the roads the perfumed breath of the meadows; far away the sea murmured to the sun, idle and at ease; Ulenspiegel was like a young devil, full of spunk and fire, and Nele like a little saint from Paradise, all shamefast at her delight.She leaned her head on Ulenspiegel’s shoulder, he took her hands, and as they went, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her darling mouth. But she did not speak.After some hours, they were hot and thirsty, thenthey drank milk at a peasant’s cottage, but they were not refreshed.And they sat down on the green turf beside a ditch. Nele was pale and white, and pensive; Ulenspiegel looked at her, alarmed.“You are sad?” she said.“Ay,” said he.“Why?” she asked.“I know not,” he said, “but theseapple treesand cherries all in blossom, this warm soft air, as it were, charged with thunder fire, these daisies opening and blushing upon the fields, the hawthorn there beside us in the hedgerows, all white.... Who shall tell me why I feel troubled and always ready to die or to sleep? And my heart beats so hard when I hear the birds awaking in the trees and see the swallows come back, then I long to go beyond the sun and the moon. And now I am cold, and now hot. Ah! Nele! I would fain no more be in this low world, or give a thousand lives to the one who would love me....”But she did not speak, and smiling happily, looked at Ulenspiegel.

XXXI

But Ulenspiegel and Nele loved with surpassing love.It was then in the end of April, with all the trees in flower; all the plants, bursting with sap, were awaiting May, which cometh on the earth with a peacock for companion, blossoming like a nosegay, and maketh the nightingales to sing among the trees.Often Ulenspiegel and Nele would wander down the roads alone together. Nele hung upon Ulenspiegel’s arm, and held to it with both hands. Ulenspiegel, taking pleasure in this play, often passed his arm about Nele’s waist, to hold her the better, he would tell her. And she was happy, though she did not speak a word.The wind rolled softly along the roads the perfumed breath of the meadows; far away the sea murmured to the sun, idle and at ease; Ulenspiegel was like a young devil, full of spunk and fire, and Nele like a little saint from Paradise, all shamefast at her delight.She leaned her head on Ulenspiegel’s shoulder, he took her hands, and as they went, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her darling mouth. But she did not speak.After some hours, they were hot and thirsty, thenthey drank milk at a peasant’s cottage, but they were not refreshed.And they sat down on the green turf beside a ditch. Nele was pale and white, and pensive; Ulenspiegel looked at her, alarmed.“You are sad?” she said.“Ay,” said he.“Why?” she asked.“I know not,” he said, “but theseapple treesand cherries all in blossom, this warm soft air, as it were, charged with thunder fire, these daisies opening and blushing upon the fields, the hawthorn there beside us in the hedgerows, all white.... Who shall tell me why I feel troubled and always ready to die or to sleep? And my heart beats so hard when I hear the birds awaking in the trees and see the swallows come back, then I long to go beyond the sun and the moon. And now I am cold, and now hot. Ah! Nele! I would fain no more be in this low world, or give a thousand lives to the one who would love me....”But she did not speak, and smiling happily, looked at Ulenspiegel.

But Ulenspiegel and Nele loved with surpassing love.

It was then in the end of April, with all the trees in flower; all the plants, bursting with sap, were awaiting May, which cometh on the earth with a peacock for companion, blossoming like a nosegay, and maketh the nightingales to sing among the trees.

Often Ulenspiegel and Nele would wander down the roads alone together. Nele hung upon Ulenspiegel’s arm, and held to it with both hands. Ulenspiegel, taking pleasure in this play, often passed his arm about Nele’s waist, to hold her the better, he would tell her. And she was happy, though she did not speak a word.

The wind rolled softly along the roads the perfumed breath of the meadows; far away the sea murmured to the sun, idle and at ease; Ulenspiegel was like a young devil, full of spunk and fire, and Nele like a little saint from Paradise, all shamefast at her delight.

She leaned her head on Ulenspiegel’s shoulder, he took her hands, and as they went, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her darling mouth. But she did not speak.

After some hours, they were hot and thirsty, thenthey drank milk at a peasant’s cottage, but they were not refreshed.

And they sat down on the green turf beside a ditch. Nele was pale and white, and pensive; Ulenspiegel looked at her, alarmed.

“You are sad?” she said.

“Ay,” said he.

“Why?” she asked.

“I know not,” he said, “but theseapple treesand cherries all in blossom, this warm soft air, as it were, charged with thunder fire, these daisies opening and blushing upon the fields, the hawthorn there beside us in the hedgerows, all white.... Who shall tell me why I feel troubled and always ready to die or to sleep? And my heart beats so hard when I hear the birds awaking in the trees and see the swallows come back, then I long to go beyond the sun and the moon. And now I am cold, and now hot. Ah! Nele! I would fain no more be in this low world, or give a thousand lives to the one who would love me....”

But she did not speak, and smiling happily, looked at Ulenspiegel.

XXXIIOn the day of the Feast of the Dead, Ulenspiegel came away from Notre Dame with some vagabonds of his own age. Lamme Goedzak was lost among them, like a sheep in the midst of wolves.Lamme freely paid for drink for everyone, for his mother gave him three patards every Sunday and feast day.He went then with his comradesIn den roodenschildt, to the Red Shield, whose landlord Jan Van Liebeke served them with thedobbele knollaertof Courtrai.The drink heated their wits, and talking of prayers Ulenspiegel declared plumply that masses for the dead are good only for the priests.But there was a Judas in the band: he denounced Ulenspiegel as a heretic. In spite of Soetkin’s tears and Claes’s entreaties, Ulenspiegel was taken and cast into prison. There he remained in a cellar behind bars for a month and three days without seeing any one. The gaoler ate three quarters of his pittance. In the meanwhile, inquiries were made into his good and bad reputation. It was found merely that he was a sharp jester, flouting his neighbours continually, but never having missaid Monseigneur God, or Madame Virgin or messieurs the saints. And so the sentence was a light one, for he might have been branded in the face with a red-hot iron, and whipped till the blood came.In consideration of his youth, the judges condemned him merely to walk in his shirt behind the priests, bareheaded and barefooted, and a candle in his hand, in the first procession that should go out from the church.That was on Ascension Day.When the procession was returning, he must stand still under the porch of Notre Dame and there cry aloud:“Thanks to my Lord Jesu! Thanks to messieurs the priests! Their prayers are sweet to souls in purgatory, yea, refreshing; for every Ave is a bucket of water falling on their back, every Pater a cistern.”And the people hearkened most devoutly, not without laughing.At the Feast of Pentecost, he must again follow the procession; he was in his shirt, barefoot and bareheaded, candle in hand. Coming back, standing beneath the porch, and holding his candle very reverently, not without pulling a waggish face or two, he called in a loud clear voice:“If the prayers of Christian men are a great ease and solace to souls in purgatory, those of the dean of Notre Dame, that holy man perfect in the practice of all the virtues, assuage so well the torments of the fire that it is transformed to ices all at once. But the devil-tormentors have not so much as one crumb.”And the people once more hearkened devoutly, not without laughter, and the dean, well pleased, smiled ecclesiastically.Then Ulenspiegel was banished from the land of Flanders for three years, under condition of making pilgrimage to Rome and returning thence with absolution from the Pope.Claes must pay three florins for this sentence; but he gave still another to his son and furnished him with the habiliments of a pilgrim.Ulenspiegel was brokenhearted on the day of departing, when he embraced Claes and Soetkin, who was all in tears, the unhappy mother. They convoyed him a long long way on his road, in company of several townsfolk, both men and women.Claes, when they came back to their cottage, said to his wife:“Goodwife, it is exceeding harsh, for a few mad words, to condemn so young a lad to so heavy a penalty in this fashion.”“Thou art weeping, my husband,” said Soetkin.“Thou dost love him more than thou showest, for thou art breaking into man’s sobs, which be lion’s tears.”But he made no answer.Nele had gone to hide in the barn that none might see that she also wept for Ulenspiegel. A long way off she followed Soetkin and Claes and the townsfolk; when she saw her friend disappearing alone, she ran to him and leaping on his neck:“You will be finding many beautiful dames over there,” said she.“Beautiful,” replied Ulenspiegel, “I cannot tell; but fresh as you, no, for the sun has roasted them all.”Long they went their way together: Ulenspiegel was pensive and now and then would say:“I’ll make them pay their masses for the dead.”“What masses, and who will pay?” asked Nele.Ulenspiegel replied:“All the deans, curates, clerks, beadles, and other bigwigs high or low that feed us on windy trash. If I were a stout workman, they would have robbed me of the fruit of three years’ toil by making me go pilgrimaging. But it is poor Claes who pays. They shall repay me my three years an hundredfold, and I will chant them as well the mass for their dead money.”“Alas, Thyl, be prudent: they will burn you alive,” replied Nele.“I am pure asbestos,” answered Ulenspiegel.And they parted, she all in tears, he brokenhearted, and in anger.

XXXII

On the day of the Feast of the Dead, Ulenspiegel came away from Notre Dame with some vagabonds of his own age. Lamme Goedzak was lost among them, like a sheep in the midst of wolves.Lamme freely paid for drink for everyone, for his mother gave him three patards every Sunday and feast day.He went then with his comradesIn den roodenschildt, to the Red Shield, whose landlord Jan Van Liebeke served them with thedobbele knollaertof Courtrai.The drink heated their wits, and talking of prayers Ulenspiegel declared plumply that masses for the dead are good only for the priests.But there was a Judas in the band: he denounced Ulenspiegel as a heretic. In spite of Soetkin’s tears and Claes’s entreaties, Ulenspiegel was taken and cast into prison. There he remained in a cellar behind bars for a month and three days without seeing any one. The gaoler ate three quarters of his pittance. In the meanwhile, inquiries were made into his good and bad reputation. It was found merely that he was a sharp jester, flouting his neighbours continually, but never having missaid Monseigneur God, or Madame Virgin or messieurs the saints. And so the sentence was a light one, for he might have been branded in the face with a red-hot iron, and whipped till the blood came.In consideration of his youth, the judges condemned him merely to walk in his shirt behind the priests, bareheaded and barefooted, and a candle in his hand, in the first procession that should go out from the church.That was on Ascension Day.When the procession was returning, he must stand still under the porch of Notre Dame and there cry aloud:“Thanks to my Lord Jesu! Thanks to messieurs the priests! Their prayers are sweet to souls in purgatory, yea, refreshing; for every Ave is a bucket of water falling on their back, every Pater a cistern.”And the people hearkened most devoutly, not without laughing.At the Feast of Pentecost, he must again follow the procession; he was in his shirt, barefoot and bareheaded, candle in hand. Coming back, standing beneath the porch, and holding his candle very reverently, not without pulling a waggish face or two, he called in a loud clear voice:“If the prayers of Christian men are a great ease and solace to souls in purgatory, those of the dean of Notre Dame, that holy man perfect in the practice of all the virtues, assuage so well the torments of the fire that it is transformed to ices all at once. But the devil-tormentors have not so much as one crumb.”And the people once more hearkened devoutly, not without laughter, and the dean, well pleased, smiled ecclesiastically.Then Ulenspiegel was banished from the land of Flanders for three years, under condition of making pilgrimage to Rome and returning thence with absolution from the Pope.Claes must pay three florins for this sentence; but he gave still another to his son and furnished him with the habiliments of a pilgrim.Ulenspiegel was brokenhearted on the day of departing, when he embraced Claes and Soetkin, who was all in tears, the unhappy mother. They convoyed him a long long way on his road, in company of several townsfolk, both men and women.Claes, when they came back to their cottage, said to his wife:“Goodwife, it is exceeding harsh, for a few mad words, to condemn so young a lad to so heavy a penalty in this fashion.”“Thou art weeping, my husband,” said Soetkin.“Thou dost love him more than thou showest, for thou art breaking into man’s sobs, which be lion’s tears.”But he made no answer.Nele had gone to hide in the barn that none might see that she also wept for Ulenspiegel. A long way off she followed Soetkin and Claes and the townsfolk; when she saw her friend disappearing alone, she ran to him and leaping on his neck:“You will be finding many beautiful dames over there,” said she.“Beautiful,” replied Ulenspiegel, “I cannot tell; but fresh as you, no, for the sun has roasted them all.”Long they went their way together: Ulenspiegel was pensive and now and then would say:“I’ll make them pay their masses for the dead.”“What masses, and who will pay?” asked Nele.Ulenspiegel replied:“All the deans, curates, clerks, beadles, and other bigwigs high or low that feed us on windy trash. If I were a stout workman, they would have robbed me of the fruit of three years’ toil by making me go pilgrimaging. But it is poor Claes who pays. They shall repay me my three years an hundredfold, and I will chant them as well the mass for their dead money.”“Alas, Thyl, be prudent: they will burn you alive,” replied Nele.“I am pure asbestos,” answered Ulenspiegel.And they parted, she all in tears, he brokenhearted, and in anger.

On the day of the Feast of the Dead, Ulenspiegel came away from Notre Dame with some vagabonds of his own age. Lamme Goedzak was lost among them, like a sheep in the midst of wolves.

Lamme freely paid for drink for everyone, for his mother gave him three patards every Sunday and feast day.

He went then with his comradesIn den roodenschildt, to the Red Shield, whose landlord Jan Van Liebeke served them with thedobbele knollaertof Courtrai.

The drink heated their wits, and talking of prayers Ulenspiegel declared plumply that masses for the dead are good only for the priests.

But there was a Judas in the band: he denounced Ulenspiegel as a heretic. In spite of Soetkin’s tears and Claes’s entreaties, Ulenspiegel was taken and cast into prison. There he remained in a cellar behind bars for a month and three days without seeing any one. The gaoler ate three quarters of his pittance. In the meanwhile, inquiries were made into his good and bad reputation. It was found merely that he was a sharp jester, flouting his neighbours continually, but never having missaid Monseigneur God, or Madame Virgin or messieurs the saints. And so the sentence was a light one, for he might have been branded in the face with a red-hot iron, and whipped till the blood came.

In consideration of his youth, the judges condemned him merely to walk in his shirt behind the priests, bareheaded and barefooted, and a candle in his hand, in the first procession that should go out from the church.

That was on Ascension Day.

When the procession was returning, he must stand still under the porch of Notre Dame and there cry aloud:

“Thanks to my Lord Jesu! Thanks to messieurs the priests! Their prayers are sweet to souls in purgatory, yea, refreshing; for every Ave is a bucket of water falling on their back, every Pater a cistern.”

And the people hearkened most devoutly, not without laughing.

At the Feast of Pentecost, he must again follow the procession; he was in his shirt, barefoot and bareheaded, candle in hand. Coming back, standing beneath the porch, and holding his candle very reverently, not without pulling a waggish face or two, he called in a loud clear voice:

“If the prayers of Christian men are a great ease and solace to souls in purgatory, those of the dean of Notre Dame, that holy man perfect in the practice of all the virtues, assuage so well the torments of the fire that it is transformed to ices all at once. But the devil-tormentors have not so much as one crumb.”

And the people once more hearkened devoutly, not without laughter, and the dean, well pleased, smiled ecclesiastically.

Then Ulenspiegel was banished from the land of Flanders for three years, under condition of making pilgrimage to Rome and returning thence with absolution from the Pope.

Claes must pay three florins for this sentence; but he gave still another to his son and furnished him with the habiliments of a pilgrim.

Ulenspiegel was brokenhearted on the day of departing, when he embraced Claes and Soetkin, who was all in tears, the unhappy mother. They convoyed him a long long way on his road, in company of several townsfolk, both men and women.

Claes, when they came back to their cottage, said to his wife:

“Goodwife, it is exceeding harsh, for a few mad words, to condemn so young a lad to so heavy a penalty in this fashion.”

“Thou art weeping, my husband,” said Soetkin.“Thou dost love him more than thou showest, for thou art breaking into man’s sobs, which be lion’s tears.”

But he made no answer.

Nele had gone to hide in the barn that none might see that she also wept for Ulenspiegel. A long way off she followed Soetkin and Claes and the townsfolk; when she saw her friend disappearing alone, she ran to him and leaping on his neck:

“You will be finding many beautiful dames over there,” said she.

“Beautiful,” replied Ulenspiegel, “I cannot tell; but fresh as you, no, for the sun has roasted them all.”

Long they went their way together: Ulenspiegel was pensive and now and then would say:

“I’ll make them pay their masses for the dead.”

“What masses, and who will pay?” asked Nele.

Ulenspiegel replied:

“All the deans, curates, clerks, beadles, and other bigwigs high or low that feed us on windy trash. If I were a stout workman, they would have robbed me of the fruit of three years’ toil by making me go pilgrimaging. But it is poor Claes who pays. They shall repay me my three years an hundredfold, and I will chant them as well the mass for their dead money.”

“Alas, Thyl, be prudent: they will burn you alive,” replied Nele.

“I am pure asbestos,” answered Ulenspiegel.

And they parted, she all in tears, he brokenhearted, and in anger.

XXXIIIPassing through Bruges on the Wednesday market, there he saw a woman led along by the executionerand his knaves, and a great crowd of other women around her crying and howling a thousand vile insults.Ulenspiegel, seeing the upper part of her dress equipped with pieces of red cloth, and seeing the stone of justice with its iron chains, at her neck, perceived that this was a woman who had sold for gain the fresh young bodies of her daughters. They told him her name was Barbe, she was the wife of Jason Darue, and would be brought in this costume from place to place until she came back to the great marketplace, where she would be set up on a scaffold already erected for her. Ulenspiegel followed her with the crowd of shouting people. Once back in the great marketplace she was set on the scaffold, bound to a stake, and the executioner laid before her a bundle of grass and a clod, signifying the pit of the grave.They told Ulenspiegel, too, that she had been whipped already in prison.As he was going away, he met Henri le Marischal, a swashbuckling rogue who had been hanged in the castle-ward of West Ypres and still showed the track of the cord around his neck. “He had been delivered,” he said, “while already hoisted into the air, by saying one only good prayer to Notre Dame of Hal, in such wise that, by a true miracle, the bailiffs and the judges having gone, the cords, already loosened, broke, he fell to earth, and was in this manner saved and sound.”But later Ulenspiegel learned that this rascal delivered from the rope was a counterfeit Henri Marischal, and that he was left to run about retailing his lie because he was bearer of a parchment signedby the dean of Notre Dame de Hal, who by reason of the tale of this Henri le Marischal saw flocking to his church and lavishly feeing him all those who smelled the gallows from near by or far off. And for a long time Our Lady of Hal was surnamed Our Lady of the Hanged.

XXXIII

Passing through Bruges on the Wednesday market, there he saw a woman led along by the executionerand his knaves, and a great crowd of other women around her crying and howling a thousand vile insults.Ulenspiegel, seeing the upper part of her dress equipped with pieces of red cloth, and seeing the stone of justice with its iron chains, at her neck, perceived that this was a woman who had sold for gain the fresh young bodies of her daughters. They told him her name was Barbe, she was the wife of Jason Darue, and would be brought in this costume from place to place until she came back to the great marketplace, where she would be set up on a scaffold already erected for her. Ulenspiegel followed her with the crowd of shouting people. Once back in the great marketplace she was set on the scaffold, bound to a stake, and the executioner laid before her a bundle of grass and a clod, signifying the pit of the grave.They told Ulenspiegel, too, that she had been whipped already in prison.As he was going away, he met Henri le Marischal, a swashbuckling rogue who had been hanged in the castle-ward of West Ypres and still showed the track of the cord around his neck. “He had been delivered,” he said, “while already hoisted into the air, by saying one only good prayer to Notre Dame of Hal, in such wise that, by a true miracle, the bailiffs and the judges having gone, the cords, already loosened, broke, he fell to earth, and was in this manner saved and sound.”But later Ulenspiegel learned that this rascal delivered from the rope was a counterfeit Henri Marischal, and that he was left to run about retailing his lie because he was bearer of a parchment signedby the dean of Notre Dame de Hal, who by reason of the tale of this Henri le Marischal saw flocking to his church and lavishly feeing him all those who smelled the gallows from near by or far off. And for a long time Our Lady of Hal was surnamed Our Lady of the Hanged.

Passing through Bruges on the Wednesday market, there he saw a woman led along by the executionerand his knaves, and a great crowd of other women around her crying and howling a thousand vile insults.

Ulenspiegel, seeing the upper part of her dress equipped with pieces of red cloth, and seeing the stone of justice with its iron chains, at her neck, perceived that this was a woman who had sold for gain the fresh young bodies of her daughters. They told him her name was Barbe, she was the wife of Jason Darue, and would be brought in this costume from place to place until she came back to the great marketplace, where she would be set up on a scaffold already erected for her. Ulenspiegel followed her with the crowd of shouting people. Once back in the great marketplace she was set on the scaffold, bound to a stake, and the executioner laid before her a bundle of grass and a clod, signifying the pit of the grave.

They told Ulenspiegel, too, that she had been whipped already in prison.

As he was going away, he met Henri le Marischal, a swashbuckling rogue who had been hanged in the castle-ward of West Ypres and still showed the track of the cord around his neck. “He had been delivered,” he said, “while already hoisted into the air, by saying one only good prayer to Notre Dame of Hal, in such wise that, by a true miracle, the bailiffs and the judges having gone, the cords, already loosened, broke, he fell to earth, and was in this manner saved and sound.”

But later Ulenspiegel learned that this rascal delivered from the rope was a counterfeit Henri Marischal, and that he was left to run about retailing his lie because he was bearer of a parchment signedby the dean of Notre Dame de Hal, who by reason of the tale of this Henri le Marischal saw flocking to his church and lavishly feeing him all those who smelled the gallows from near by or far off. And for a long time Our Lady of Hal was surnamed Our Lady of the Hanged.

XXXIVAt this time the inquisitors and theologians for the second time made representation to the Emperor Charles:That the Church was going to ruin; that its authority was contemned; that if he had won so many glorious victories, he owed it to the prayers of Catholicism, which upheld the imperial power on its high throne.A Spanish Archbishop asked him to have six thousand heads cut off or the same number of bodies burned, in order to root the malignant Lutheran heresy out of the Low Countries. His Sacred Majesty deemed this insufficient.And so, everywhere the terrified Ulenspiegel went he saw nothing but heads on stakes, girls thrust into sacks and cast alive into the river; men stretched naked on the wheel and beaten with great blows of iron bars, women laid in shallow graves, with earth over them, and the executioner dancing on their breast to break it in. But the confessors of all, men and women, that had first repented, were richer by twelve sols a time.He saw at Louvain the executioners burn thirty Lutherans at once, and light the pile with gunpowder. At Limburg he saw a family, men and women, daughters and sons-in-law, walk to the scaffold singingpsalms. The man, who was old, cried out while he was a-burning.And Ulenspiegel, full of fear and grief, journeyed on over the poor earth.

XXXIV

At this time the inquisitors and theologians for the second time made representation to the Emperor Charles:That the Church was going to ruin; that its authority was contemned; that if he had won so many glorious victories, he owed it to the prayers of Catholicism, which upheld the imperial power on its high throne.A Spanish Archbishop asked him to have six thousand heads cut off or the same number of bodies burned, in order to root the malignant Lutheran heresy out of the Low Countries. His Sacred Majesty deemed this insufficient.And so, everywhere the terrified Ulenspiegel went he saw nothing but heads on stakes, girls thrust into sacks and cast alive into the river; men stretched naked on the wheel and beaten with great blows of iron bars, women laid in shallow graves, with earth over them, and the executioner dancing on their breast to break it in. But the confessors of all, men and women, that had first repented, were richer by twelve sols a time.He saw at Louvain the executioners burn thirty Lutherans at once, and light the pile with gunpowder. At Limburg he saw a family, men and women, daughters and sons-in-law, walk to the scaffold singingpsalms. The man, who was old, cried out while he was a-burning.And Ulenspiegel, full of fear and grief, journeyed on over the poor earth.

At this time the inquisitors and theologians for the second time made representation to the Emperor Charles:

That the Church was going to ruin; that its authority was contemned; that if he had won so many glorious victories, he owed it to the prayers of Catholicism, which upheld the imperial power on its high throne.

A Spanish Archbishop asked him to have six thousand heads cut off or the same number of bodies burned, in order to root the malignant Lutheran heresy out of the Low Countries. His Sacred Majesty deemed this insufficient.

And so, everywhere the terrified Ulenspiegel went he saw nothing but heads on stakes, girls thrust into sacks and cast alive into the river; men stretched naked on the wheel and beaten with great blows of iron bars, women laid in shallow graves, with earth over them, and the executioner dancing on their breast to break it in. But the confessors of all, men and women, that had first repented, were richer by twelve sols a time.

He saw at Louvain the executioners burn thirty Lutherans at once, and light the pile with gunpowder. At Limburg he saw a family, men and women, daughters and sons-in-law, walk to the scaffold singingpsalms. The man, who was old, cried out while he was a-burning.

And Ulenspiegel, full of fear and grief, journeyed on over the poor earth.

XXXVIn the fields, he shook himself like a bird or like a dog loosed from the lead, and his heart took comfort before the trees, the meadows, the clear sun.Having walked for three days, he came to the neighbourhood of Brussels, in the powerful commune of Uccle. Passing before the hostelry of the Trumpet, he was enticed by a celestial fragrance of fricassees. He asked a little tramp who, nose in air, was regaling himself with the odour of the sauces, in whose honour this festival incense arose to heaven. The other replied that the Brothers of the Good Red Nose were to assemble after vespers to celebrate the deliverance of the commune by the women and girls in olden time.Ulenspiegel, spying from far off a pole surmounted by a popinjay, and all around goodwives armed with bows, asked if women were becoming archers nowadays.The tramp, sniffing up the odour of the sauces, replied that in the days of the Good Duke those same bows, in the hands of the women of Uccle, had laid low more than a hundred brigands.Ulenspiegel, desiring to know more of this, the tramp told him that he would not say another word so hungry and so thirsty was he, unless he gave him a patard for food and drink. Ulenspiegel gave it him out of pity.As soon as the tramp had his patard, he went into the Trumpet Inn, like a fox into a henroost, and came out in triumph with half a sausage and a great hunch of bread.All at once Ulenspiegel heard a soft noise of tambourines and viols, and beheld a great troop of women dancing, and among them a comely matron with a gold chain about her neck.The tramp, who laughed for joy at having had something to eat, told Ulenspiegel that this handsome young woman was the Queen of the Archery, was called Mietje, the wife of Messire Renonckel, the sheriff of the commune. Then he asked Ulenspiegel for six liards for drink: Ulenspiegel gave them to him. Thus having eaten and drunken, the tramp sat down in the sun and picked his teeth and trimmed his nails.When the women archers caught sight of Ulenspiegel in his pilgrim’s array, they set to work dancing about him in a ring, saying:“Good morrow, handsome pilgrim; do you come from far away, youngling pilgrim?”Ulenspiegel replied:“I come from Flanders, a fine country rich in loving girls.”And he thought sadly of Nele.“What was your crime?” they asked him, desisting from their dancing.“I would not dare to confess it,” said he, “so great a one it was. But I have other things that are not small.”They smiled at that and asked why he must travel in this wise with staff and scrip and oyster shell.“Because,” said he, lying a little, “I said that masses for the dead are of advantage to the priests.”“They bring them in good coin,” replied they, “but they are of advantage to souls in purgatory.”“I wasn’t there,” rejoined Ulenspiegel.“Will you eat with us, pilgrim?” said the prettiest of the archers.“I will gladly eat with you,” said he, “and eat you, and all the others turn about, for you are titbits for a king, more delicious than ortolans or thrushes or woodcocks.”“God give you food,” said they, “this is game beyond price.”“Like all of you, dear ones,” he answered.“Aye, verily,” said they, “but we are not for sale.”“And for the giving?” he asked.“Ay,” said they, “of blows to the overbold. And if you need it, we will thrash you like a sheaf of corn.”“I abstain therefrom,” said he.“Come eat,” said they.He followed them into the court of the inn, happy to see these fresh faces about him. Suddenly he beheld entering the court with high ceremony, with banner and trumpet and flute and tambourine, the Brothers of the Good Red Nose, wearing in fatness the jolly name of their fellowship. As they looked curiously upon him, the women told them it was a pilgrim they had picked up by the way and that finding him a true Red Nose, and matching their husbands and betrotheds, they had been minded to make him share their feast.The men approved their tale, and one said:“Pilgrim on pilgrimage, wouldst thou pilgrimage through sauces and fricassees?”“I shall have seven-leagued boots for that,” said Ulenspiegel.As he was on the point of entering the hall of the feasting with them, he descried on the road to Paris twelve blind men trudging along. When they passed before him, complaining of hunger and of thirst, Ulenspiegel said to himself that they would sup that night like kings, at the charge of the dean of Uccle, in memory of the masses for the dead. He went to them and said:“Here be nine florins, come and eat. Do ye smell the good fragrance of the fricassees?”“Alas!” said they, “for the last half of a league, and no hope.”“You shall eat,” said Ulenspiegel, “now you have nine florins.” But he did not give them.“A blessing on thee,” said they.And guided by Ulenspiegel, they sat down around a small table, while the Brothers of the Good Red Nose sate at a great one with their goodwives and sweethearts.Speaking with full assurance of nine florins:“Host,” said the blind men, proudly, “give us to eat and drink of your best.”The host, who had heard a mention of the nine florins, believed them to be in their pouches, and asked what they wished to have.Then all of them, speaking at once, cried out:“Peas with bacon, a hotchpotch of beef, veal, mutton, and fowl.”—“Are sausages meant for dogs?”—“Who ever smelled the passing of black puddings and white,without seizing them by the collar? I used to see them, alas! when my poor eyes were candles to me.”—“Where are thekoekebakkenau beurreof Anderlecht? They sing in the pan, succulent and crisp, mother of quart draughts.”—“Who will bring under my nose ham and eggs or eggs and ham, those tender brothers and close friends in the mouth?”—“Where are ye, divinechoesels, swimming, proud viands that you are, in the midst of kidneys, of cockscombs, ofriz de veau, of oxtails, sheep’s trotters, and abundant onions, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, all in the stew and three quarts of white wine for sauce?”—“Who will bring you to me, divineandouilles, so good that ye say no word when ye are swallowed? Ye came ever straight fromLuy-leckerland, the rich country of the happy do-naughts, the lickers up of never-ending sauces. But where are ye, withered leaves of bygone autumns!”—“I want a leg of mutton with beans.”—“I want pigs’ plumes, their ears.”—“For me a rosary of ortolans, with woodcocks for thePaterson it and a fat capon for theCredo.”The host answered sedately:“You shall have an omelette of sixty eggs, and for guiding posts for you spoons, fifty black puddings, planted smoking hot on this mountain of nourishment, anddobbel petermanto wash all down with: that will be the river.”The water came into the mouths of the poor blind men and they said:“Serve us the mountain, the guideposts, and the river.”And the Brothers of the Good Red Nose and their goodwives already at table with Ulenspiegel said that this day was for the blind the day of invisible junketing,and that the poor men thus lost the half of their pleasure.When the omelette arrived, all decked with parsley and nasturtium, and borne by the host and four cooks, the blind men would fain have thrown themselves upon it and already were haggling in it, but the host served them separately, not without difficulty, to each his share in his own dish.The archer women were touched to see them eating and heaving sighs of content, for they were mightily hungered and swallowed down the black puddings like oysters. Thedobbel petermanflowed down into their bellies like cascades falling from mountain tops.When they had cleaned their dishes, they asked again forkoekebakken, for ortolans and fresh fricassees. The host only served them a great dish of bones of beef and veal and mutton swimming in a good sauce. He did not give each his portion.When they had dipped their bread and their hands up to the elbows in the sauce, and only brought up bones of every kind, even some ox jaw bones, everyone thought his neighbour had all the meat, and they beat each other’s faces furiously with the bones.The Brothers of the Good Red Nose, having laughed their fill, charitably conveyed part of their own feast into the poor fellows’ dish, and he who groped in the plate for a bone for a weapon would set his hand on a thrush, a chicken, a lark or two, while the goodwives, pulling their heads back, would pour Brussels wine down their throats in a flood, and when they groped about blindly to feel whence these streams of ambrosia were coming to them, they caughtnothing but a petticoat, and would fain have held it, but it would whisk away from them suddenly.And so they laughed, drank, ate, and sang. Some scenting out the pretty goodwives, ran all about the hall beside themselves, bewitched by love, but teasing girls would mislead them, and hiding behind a Good Red Nose would say “kiss me.” And they would, but instead of a woman, they kissed the bearded face of a man, and not without rebuffs.The Good Red Noses sang, the blind men, too. And the jolly goodwives smiled kindly seeing their glee.When these rich and sappy hours were over, thebaessaid to them:“You have eaten well and drunk well, I want seven florins.”Each one swore he had no purse, and accused his neighbour. Hence arose yet another fray in which they sought to strike one another with foot and fist and head, but they could not, and struck out wildly, for the Good Red Noses, seeing the play, kept man away from man. And blows hailed upon the empty air, save one that by ill chance fell upon the face of thebaes, who, in a rage, searched them all and found on them nothing but an old scapular, seven liards, three breeches buttons, and their paternosters.He wanted to fling them into the swinehouse and leave them there on bread and water until someone should pay what they owed for them.“Do you,” said Ulenspiegel, “want me to go surety for them?”“Ay,” replied thebaes, “if someone will be surety for you.”The Good Red Noses were about to do it, but Ulenspiegel stopped them, saying:“The dean will be surety, I am going to find him.”Thinking of the masses for the dead, he went to the deanery and told him how that thebaesof the Trumpet, being possessed of the devil, spoke of nothing but pigs and blind men, the pigs devouring the blind and the blind eating the pigs under divers unholy guises of roasts and fricassees. During these fits, said he, thebaesbroke everything in the house, and he begged the dean to come and deliver the poor man from this wicked fiend.The dean promised, but said he could not go immediately, for at that moment he was casting up the accounts of the chapter, and endeavouring to derive some profit out of them.Seeing him impatient, Ulenspiegel said he would come back with the wife of thebaesand that the dean could speak to her himself.“Come both of you,” said the dean.Ulenspiegel came back to thebaes, and said to him:“I have just seen the dean, he will stand surety for the blind men. While you keep guard over them, let the hostess come with me to the dean, he will repeat to her what I have just told you.”“Go, goodwife,” said thebaes.She went off with Ulenspiegel to the dean, who was still figuring to find his profit. When she came in with Ulenspiegel, he impatiently waved her away, saying:“Be easy, I shall come to your husband’s help in a day or two.”And Ulenspiegel, returning to the Trumpet, saidto himself, “He will pay seven florins, and that will be my first mass for the dead.”And he went on his way, and the blind men likewise.

XXXV

In the fields, he shook himself like a bird or like a dog loosed from the lead, and his heart took comfort before the trees, the meadows, the clear sun.Having walked for three days, he came to the neighbourhood of Brussels, in the powerful commune of Uccle. Passing before the hostelry of the Trumpet, he was enticed by a celestial fragrance of fricassees. He asked a little tramp who, nose in air, was regaling himself with the odour of the sauces, in whose honour this festival incense arose to heaven. The other replied that the Brothers of the Good Red Nose were to assemble after vespers to celebrate the deliverance of the commune by the women and girls in olden time.Ulenspiegel, spying from far off a pole surmounted by a popinjay, and all around goodwives armed with bows, asked if women were becoming archers nowadays.The tramp, sniffing up the odour of the sauces, replied that in the days of the Good Duke those same bows, in the hands of the women of Uccle, had laid low more than a hundred brigands.Ulenspiegel, desiring to know more of this, the tramp told him that he would not say another word so hungry and so thirsty was he, unless he gave him a patard for food and drink. Ulenspiegel gave it him out of pity.As soon as the tramp had his patard, he went into the Trumpet Inn, like a fox into a henroost, and came out in triumph with half a sausage and a great hunch of bread.All at once Ulenspiegel heard a soft noise of tambourines and viols, and beheld a great troop of women dancing, and among them a comely matron with a gold chain about her neck.The tramp, who laughed for joy at having had something to eat, told Ulenspiegel that this handsome young woman was the Queen of the Archery, was called Mietje, the wife of Messire Renonckel, the sheriff of the commune. Then he asked Ulenspiegel for six liards for drink: Ulenspiegel gave them to him. Thus having eaten and drunken, the tramp sat down in the sun and picked his teeth and trimmed his nails.When the women archers caught sight of Ulenspiegel in his pilgrim’s array, they set to work dancing about him in a ring, saying:“Good morrow, handsome pilgrim; do you come from far away, youngling pilgrim?”Ulenspiegel replied:“I come from Flanders, a fine country rich in loving girls.”And he thought sadly of Nele.“What was your crime?” they asked him, desisting from their dancing.“I would not dare to confess it,” said he, “so great a one it was. But I have other things that are not small.”They smiled at that and asked why he must travel in this wise with staff and scrip and oyster shell.“Because,” said he, lying a little, “I said that masses for the dead are of advantage to the priests.”“They bring them in good coin,” replied they, “but they are of advantage to souls in purgatory.”“I wasn’t there,” rejoined Ulenspiegel.“Will you eat with us, pilgrim?” said the prettiest of the archers.“I will gladly eat with you,” said he, “and eat you, and all the others turn about, for you are titbits for a king, more delicious than ortolans or thrushes or woodcocks.”“God give you food,” said they, “this is game beyond price.”“Like all of you, dear ones,” he answered.“Aye, verily,” said they, “but we are not for sale.”“And for the giving?” he asked.“Ay,” said they, “of blows to the overbold. And if you need it, we will thrash you like a sheaf of corn.”“I abstain therefrom,” said he.“Come eat,” said they.He followed them into the court of the inn, happy to see these fresh faces about him. Suddenly he beheld entering the court with high ceremony, with banner and trumpet and flute and tambourine, the Brothers of the Good Red Nose, wearing in fatness the jolly name of their fellowship. As they looked curiously upon him, the women told them it was a pilgrim they had picked up by the way and that finding him a true Red Nose, and matching their husbands and betrotheds, they had been minded to make him share their feast.The men approved their tale, and one said:“Pilgrim on pilgrimage, wouldst thou pilgrimage through sauces and fricassees?”“I shall have seven-leagued boots for that,” said Ulenspiegel.As he was on the point of entering the hall of the feasting with them, he descried on the road to Paris twelve blind men trudging along. When they passed before him, complaining of hunger and of thirst, Ulenspiegel said to himself that they would sup that night like kings, at the charge of the dean of Uccle, in memory of the masses for the dead. He went to them and said:“Here be nine florins, come and eat. Do ye smell the good fragrance of the fricassees?”“Alas!” said they, “for the last half of a league, and no hope.”“You shall eat,” said Ulenspiegel, “now you have nine florins.” But he did not give them.“A blessing on thee,” said they.And guided by Ulenspiegel, they sat down around a small table, while the Brothers of the Good Red Nose sate at a great one with their goodwives and sweethearts.Speaking with full assurance of nine florins:“Host,” said the blind men, proudly, “give us to eat and drink of your best.”The host, who had heard a mention of the nine florins, believed them to be in their pouches, and asked what they wished to have.Then all of them, speaking at once, cried out:“Peas with bacon, a hotchpotch of beef, veal, mutton, and fowl.”—“Are sausages meant for dogs?”—“Who ever smelled the passing of black puddings and white,without seizing them by the collar? I used to see them, alas! when my poor eyes were candles to me.”—“Where are thekoekebakkenau beurreof Anderlecht? They sing in the pan, succulent and crisp, mother of quart draughts.”—“Who will bring under my nose ham and eggs or eggs and ham, those tender brothers and close friends in the mouth?”—“Where are ye, divinechoesels, swimming, proud viands that you are, in the midst of kidneys, of cockscombs, ofriz de veau, of oxtails, sheep’s trotters, and abundant onions, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, all in the stew and three quarts of white wine for sauce?”—“Who will bring you to me, divineandouilles, so good that ye say no word when ye are swallowed? Ye came ever straight fromLuy-leckerland, the rich country of the happy do-naughts, the lickers up of never-ending sauces. But where are ye, withered leaves of bygone autumns!”—“I want a leg of mutton with beans.”—“I want pigs’ plumes, their ears.”—“For me a rosary of ortolans, with woodcocks for thePaterson it and a fat capon for theCredo.”The host answered sedately:“You shall have an omelette of sixty eggs, and for guiding posts for you spoons, fifty black puddings, planted smoking hot on this mountain of nourishment, anddobbel petermanto wash all down with: that will be the river.”The water came into the mouths of the poor blind men and they said:“Serve us the mountain, the guideposts, and the river.”And the Brothers of the Good Red Nose and their goodwives already at table with Ulenspiegel said that this day was for the blind the day of invisible junketing,and that the poor men thus lost the half of their pleasure.When the omelette arrived, all decked with parsley and nasturtium, and borne by the host and four cooks, the blind men would fain have thrown themselves upon it and already were haggling in it, but the host served them separately, not without difficulty, to each his share in his own dish.The archer women were touched to see them eating and heaving sighs of content, for they were mightily hungered and swallowed down the black puddings like oysters. Thedobbel petermanflowed down into their bellies like cascades falling from mountain tops.When they had cleaned their dishes, they asked again forkoekebakken, for ortolans and fresh fricassees. The host only served them a great dish of bones of beef and veal and mutton swimming in a good sauce. He did not give each his portion.When they had dipped their bread and their hands up to the elbows in the sauce, and only brought up bones of every kind, even some ox jaw bones, everyone thought his neighbour had all the meat, and they beat each other’s faces furiously with the bones.The Brothers of the Good Red Nose, having laughed their fill, charitably conveyed part of their own feast into the poor fellows’ dish, and he who groped in the plate for a bone for a weapon would set his hand on a thrush, a chicken, a lark or two, while the goodwives, pulling their heads back, would pour Brussels wine down their throats in a flood, and when they groped about blindly to feel whence these streams of ambrosia were coming to them, they caughtnothing but a petticoat, and would fain have held it, but it would whisk away from them suddenly.And so they laughed, drank, ate, and sang. Some scenting out the pretty goodwives, ran all about the hall beside themselves, bewitched by love, but teasing girls would mislead them, and hiding behind a Good Red Nose would say “kiss me.” And they would, but instead of a woman, they kissed the bearded face of a man, and not without rebuffs.The Good Red Noses sang, the blind men, too. And the jolly goodwives smiled kindly seeing their glee.When these rich and sappy hours were over, thebaessaid to them:“You have eaten well and drunk well, I want seven florins.”Each one swore he had no purse, and accused his neighbour. Hence arose yet another fray in which they sought to strike one another with foot and fist and head, but they could not, and struck out wildly, for the Good Red Noses, seeing the play, kept man away from man. And blows hailed upon the empty air, save one that by ill chance fell upon the face of thebaes, who, in a rage, searched them all and found on them nothing but an old scapular, seven liards, three breeches buttons, and their paternosters.He wanted to fling them into the swinehouse and leave them there on bread and water until someone should pay what they owed for them.“Do you,” said Ulenspiegel, “want me to go surety for them?”“Ay,” replied thebaes, “if someone will be surety for you.”The Good Red Noses were about to do it, but Ulenspiegel stopped them, saying:“The dean will be surety, I am going to find him.”Thinking of the masses for the dead, he went to the deanery and told him how that thebaesof the Trumpet, being possessed of the devil, spoke of nothing but pigs and blind men, the pigs devouring the blind and the blind eating the pigs under divers unholy guises of roasts and fricassees. During these fits, said he, thebaesbroke everything in the house, and he begged the dean to come and deliver the poor man from this wicked fiend.The dean promised, but said he could not go immediately, for at that moment he was casting up the accounts of the chapter, and endeavouring to derive some profit out of them.Seeing him impatient, Ulenspiegel said he would come back with the wife of thebaesand that the dean could speak to her himself.“Come both of you,” said the dean.Ulenspiegel came back to thebaes, and said to him:“I have just seen the dean, he will stand surety for the blind men. While you keep guard over them, let the hostess come with me to the dean, he will repeat to her what I have just told you.”“Go, goodwife,” said thebaes.She went off with Ulenspiegel to the dean, who was still figuring to find his profit. When she came in with Ulenspiegel, he impatiently waved her away, saying:“Be easy, I shall come to your husband’s help in a day or two.”And Ulenspiegel, returning to the Trumpet, saidto himself, “He will pay seven florins, and that will be my first mass for the dead.”And he went on his way, and the blind men likewise.

In the fields, he shook himself like a bird or like a dog loosed from the lead, and his heart took comfort before the trees, the meadows, the clear sun.

Having walked for three days, he came to the neighbourhood of Brussels, in the powerful commune of Uccle. Passing before the hostelry of the Trumpet, he was enticed by a celestial fragrance of fricassees. He asked a little tramp who, nose in air, was regaling himself with the odour of the sauces, in whose honour this festival incense arose to heaven. The other replied that the Brothers of the Good Red Nose were to assemble after vespers to celebrate the deliverance of the commune by the women and girls in olden time.

Ulenspiegel, spying from far off a pole surmounted by a popinjay, and all around goodwives armed with bows, asked if women were becoming archers nowadays.

The tramp, sniffing up the odour of the sauces, replied that in the days of the Good Duke those same bows, in the hands of the women of Uccle, had laid low more than a hundred brigands.

Ulenspiegel, desiring to know more of this, the tramp told him that he would not say another word so hungry and so thirsty was he, unless he gave him a patard for food and drink. Ulenspiegel gave it him out of pity.

As soon as the tramp had his patard, he went into the Trumpet Inn, like a fox into a henroost, and came out in triumph with half a sausage and a great hunch of bread.

All at once Ulenspiegel heard a soft noise of tambourines and viols, and beheld a great troop of women dancing, and among them a comely matron with a gold chain about her neck.

The tramp, who laughed for joy at having had something to eat, told Ulenspiegel that this handsome young woman was the Queen of the Archery, was called Mietje, the wife of Messire Renonckel, the sheriff of the commune. Then he asked Ulenspiegel for six liards for drink: Ulenspiegel gave them to him. Thus having eaten and drunken, the tramp sat down in the sun and picked his teeth and trimmed his nails.

When the women archers caught sight of Ulenspiegel in his pilgrim’s array, they set to work dancing about him in a ring, saying:

“Good morrow, handsome pilgrim; do you come from far away, youngling pilgrim?”

Ulenspiegel replied:

“I come from Flanders, a fine country rich in loving girls.”

And he thought sadly of Nele.

“What was your crime?” they asked him, desisting from their dancing.

“I would not dare to confess it,” said he, “so great a one it was. But I have other things that are not small.”

They smiled at that and asked why he must travel in this wise with staff and scrip and oyster shell.

“Because,” said he, lying a little, “I said that masses for the dead are of advantage to the priests.”

“They bring them in good coin,” replied they, “but they are of advantage to souls in purgatory.”

“I wasn’t there,” rejoined Ulenspiegel.

“Will you eat with us, pilgrim?” said the prettiest of the archers.

“I will gladly eat with you,” said he, “and eat you, and all the others turn about, for you are titbits for a king, more delicious than ortolans or thrushes or woodcocks.”

“God give you food,” said they, “this is game beyond price.”

“Like all of you, dear ones,” he answered.

“Aye, verily,” said they, “but we are not for sale.”

“And for the giving?” he asked.

“Ay,” said they, “of blows to the overbold. And if you need it, we will thrash you like a sheaf of corn.”

“I abstain therefrom,” said he.

“Come eat,” said they.

He followed them into the court of the inn, happy to see these fresh faces about him. Suddenly he beheld entering the court with high ceremony, with banner and trumpet and flute and tambourine, the Brothers of the Good Red Nose, wearing in fatness the jolly name of their fellowship. As they looked curiously upon him, the women told them it was a pilgrim they had picked up by the way and that finding him a true Red Nose, and matching their husbands and betrotheds, they had been minded to make him share their feast.

The men approved their tale, and one said:

“Pilgrim on pilgrimage, wouldst thou pilgrimage through sauces and fricassees?”

“I shall have seven-leagued boots for that,” said Ulenspiegel.

As he was on the point of entering the hall of the feasting with them, he descried on the road to Paris twelve blind men trudging along. When they passed before him, complaining of hunger and of thirst, Ulenspiegel said to himself that they would sup that night like kings, at the charge of the dean of Uccle, in memory of the masses for the dead. He went to them and said:

“Here be nine florins, come and eat. Do ye smell the good fragrance of the fricassees?”

“Alas!” said they, “for the last half of a league, and no hope.”

“You shall eat,” said Ulenspiegel, “now you have nine florins.” But he did not give them.

“A blessing on thee,” said they.

And guided by Ulenspiegel, they sat down around a small table, while the Brothers of the Good Red Nose sate at a great one with their goodwives and sweethearts.

Speaking with full assurance of nine florins:

“Host,” said the blind men, proudly, “give us to eat and drink of your best.”

The host, who had heard a mention of the nine florins, believed them to be in their pouches, and asked what they wished to have.

Then all of them, speaking at once, cried out:

“Peas with bacon, a hotchpotch of beef, veal, mutton, and fowl.”—“Are sausages meant for dogs?”—“Who ever smelled the passing of black puddings and white,without seizing them by the collar? I used to see them, alas! when my poor eyes were candles to me.”—“Where are thekoekebakkenau beurreof Anderlecht? They sing in the pan, succulent and crisp, mother of quart draughts.”—“Who will bring under my nose ham and eggs or eggs and ham, those tender brothers and close friends in the mouth?”—“Where are ye, divinechoesels, swimming, proud viands that you are, in the midst of kidneys, of cockscombs, ofriz de veau, of oxtails, sheep’s trotters, and abundant onions, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, all in the stew and three quarts of white wine for sauce?”—“Who will bring you to me, divineandouilles, so good that ye say no word when ye are swallowed? Ye came ever straight fromLuy-leckerland, the rich country of the happy do-naughts, the lickers up of never-ending sauces. But where are ye, withered leaves of bygone autumns!”—“I want a leg of mutton with beans.”—“I want pigs’ plumes, their ears.”—“For me a rosary of ortolans, with woodcocks for thePaterson it and a fat capon for theCredo.”

The host answered sedately:

“You shall have an omelette of sixty eggs, and for guiding posts for you spoons, fifty black puddings, planted smoking hot on this mountain of nourishment, anddobbel petermanto wash all down with: that will be the river.”

The water came into the mouths of the poor blind men and they said:

“Serve us the mountain, the guideposts, and the river.”

And the Brothers of the Good Red Nose and their goodwives already at table with Ulenspiegel said that this day was for the blind the day of invisible junketing,and that the poor men thus lost the half of their pleasure.

When the omelette arrived, all decked with parsley and nasturtium, and borne by the host and four cooks, the blind men would fain have thrown themselves upon it and already were haggling in it, but the host served them separately, not without difficulty, to each his share in his own dish.

The archer women were touched to see them eating and heaving sighs of content, for they were mightily hungered and swallowed down the black puddings like oysters. Thedobbel petermanflowed down into their bellies like cascades falling from mountain tops.

When they had cleaned their dishes, they asked again forkoekebakken, for ortolans and fresh fricassees. The host only served them a great dish of bones of beef and veal and mutton swimming in a good sauce. He did not give each his portion.

When they had dipped their bread and their hands up to the elbows in the sauce, and only brought up bones of every kind, even some ox jaw bones, everyone thought his neighbour had all the meat, and they beat each other’s faces furiously with the bones.

The Brothers of the Good Red Nose, having laughed their fill, charitably conveyed part of their own feast into the poor fellows’ dish, and he who groped in the plate for a bone for a weapon would set his hand on a thrush, a chicken, a lark or two, while the goodwives, pulling their heads back, would pour Brussels wine down their throats in a flood, and when they groped about blindly to feel whence these streams of ambrosia were coming to them, they caughtnothing but a petticoat, and would fain have held it, but it would whisk away from them suddenly.

And so they laughed, drank, ate, and sang. Some scenting out the pretty goodwives, ran all about the hall beside themselves, bewitched by love, but teasing girls would mislead them, and hiding behind a Good Red Nose would say “kiss me.” And they would, but instead of a woman, they kissed the bearded face of a man, and not without rebuffs.

The Good Red Noses sang, the blind men, too. And the jolly goodwives smiled kindly seeing their glee.

When these rich and sappy hours were over, thebaessaid to them:

“You have eaten well and drunk well, I want seven florins.”

Each one swore he had no purse, and accused his neighbour. Hence arose yet another fray in which they sought to strike one another with foot and fist and head, but they could not, and struck out wildly, for the Good Red Noses, seeing the play, kept man away from man. And blows hailed upon the empty air, save one that by ill chance fell upon the face of thebaes, who, in a rage, searched them all and found on them nothing but an old scapular, seven liards, three breeches buttons, and their paternosters.

He wanted to fling them into the swinehouse and leave them there on bread and water until someone should pay what they owed for them.

“Do you,” said Ulenspiegel, “want me to go surety for them?”

“Ay,” replied thebaes, “if someone will be surety for you.”

The Good Red Noses were about to do it, but Ulenspiegel stopped them, saying:

“The dean will be surety, I am going to find him.”

Thinking of the masses for the dead, he went to the deanery and told him how that thebaesof the Trumpet, being possessed of the devil, spoke of nothing but pigs and blind men, the pigs devouring the blind and the blind eating the pigs under divers unholy guises of roasts and fricassees. During these fits, said he, thebaesbroke everything in the house, and he begged the dean to come and deliver the poor man from this wicked fiend.

The dean promised, but said he could not go immediately, for at that moment he was casting up the accounts of the chapter, and endeavouring to derive some profit out of them.

Seeing him impatient, Ulenspiegel said he would come back with the wife of thebaesand that the dean could speak to her himself.

“Come both of you,” said the dean.

Ulenspiegel came back to thebaes, and said to him:

“I have just seen the dean, he will stand surety for the blind men. While you keep guard over them, let the hostess come with me to the dean, he will repeat to her what I have just told you.”

“Go, goodwife,” said thebaes.

She went off with Ulenspiegel to the dean, who was still figuring to find his profit. When she came in with Ulenspiegel, he impatiently waved her away, saying:

“Be easy, I shall come to your husband’s help in a day or two.”

And Ulenspiegel, returning to the Trumpet, saidto himself, “He will pay seven florins, and that will be my first mass for the dead.”

And he went on his way, and the blind men likewise.

XXXVIFinding himself, on the morrow, upon a highway in the midst of a great crowd of folk, Ulenspiegel went with them, and soon knew that it was the day of the pilgrimage of Alsemberg.He saw poor old women marching backwards, barefooted, for a florin and for the expiation of the sins of certain great ladies. On the edge of the highway, to the sound of rebecks, viols, and bagpipes, more than one pilgrim was holding a frying feast and junketing ofbruinbier. And the smoke of delicious stews mounted towards heaven like a suave incense of food.But there were other pilgrims, low fellows, needy and starveling, who, paid by the Church, were walking backwards for six sols.A little man, completely bald, with staring eyes and a savage look, was skipping along backwards behind them reciting paternosters.Ulenspiegel, wishing to know why he was mimicking the crayfishes in this fashion, planting himself before him and smiling, jumped in step with him. The rebecks, fifes, viols, and bagpipes, and the groans of the pilgrims made the music for the dance.“Jan van den Duivel,” said Ulenspiegel, “is it that you may more certainly fall that you run in this wise?”The man made no answer and went on mumbling his paternosters.“Perhaps,” said Ulenspiegel, “you want to knowhow many trees there are along the road. But are you not counting the leaves also?”The man, who was reciting aCredo, signed to Ulenspiegel to hold his tongue.“Perhaps,” said the latter, still skipping before him and imitating him, “it is the result of some sudden madness that you should thus be going the contrary way to everybody else. But he who would have a wise answer from a madman is not wise himself. Is not this true, master of the peeled poll?”As the man still made no answer, Ulenspiegel went on skipping, but making so much noise with his boot-soles that the road reëchoed like a wooden box.“Maybe,” said Ulenspiegel, “you might be dumb, good sir?”“Ave Maria,” said the other, “gratia plena et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesu.”“Maybe you are deaf as well?” said Ulenspiegel. “We shall see that: they say deaf men hear neither praises nor insults. Let us see if the drums of your ears are skin or brass: thinkest thou, lantern without candle, simulacrum of a foot-goer, that thou dost resemble a man? That will be when men are made of rags. Where has such jaundiced visnomy been ever seen, that peeled head, save on the gallows field? Wast thou not hanged of yore?”And Ulenspiegel went on dancing, and the man, who was entering on the ways of wrath, was running backwards angrily still mumbling his paternosters.“Maybe,” said Ulenspiegel, “thou comprehendest but high Flemish, I will speak to thee in the low: if thou art no glutton, thou art a drunkard, if no drunkard, but a water bibber, thou art foully choked elsewhere; if not constipated, thou art jerry-go-nimble; if not alecher, a capon; if there be temperance, it was not that that filled the tun of thy belly, and if in the thousand million men that people the earth there were but one only cuckold, it would be thou.”At this word Ulenspiegel sat down upon his seat, legs in air, for the man had fetched him such a blow with his fist under the nose that he saw more than a hundred candles. Then cunningly falling upon him, despite the weight of his belly, he struck him everywhere, and blows rained like hail upon the thin frame of Ulenspiegel, whose cudgel fell to the ground.“Learn by this lesson,” said the man, “not to pester honest folk going on pilgrimage. For you may know that I go thus to Alsemberg according to custom to implore Madam Holy Mary to cause to miscarry a child my wife conceived when I was on my travels. To win so great a boon, a man must needs walk and dance backward from the twentieth step from his home to the foot of the church steps, without speaking. Alas! now I must begin all over again.”Ulenspiegel having picked up his cudgel said:“I shall help you, rascal, you who would have Our Lady serve to kill babes in their mothers’ womb.”And he fell to beating the wretched cuckold so cruelly that he left him for dead on the road.All this while there rose to heaven the groans of pilgrims, the sounds of fifes, viols, rebecks, and bagpipes, and, like a pure incense, the savour of frying.

XXXVI

Finding himself, on the morrow, upon a highway in the midst of a great crowd of folk, Ulenspiegel went with them, and soon knew that it was the day of the pilgrimage of Alsemberg.He saw poor old women marching backwards, barefooted, for a florin and for the expiation of the sins of certain great ladies. On the edge of the highway, to the sound of rebecks, viols, and bagpipes, more than one pilgrim was holding a frying feast and junketing ofbruinbier. And the smoke of delicious stews mounted towards heaven like a suave incense of food.But there were other pilgrims, low fellows, needy and starveling, who, paid by the Church, were walking backwards for six sols.A little man, completely bald, with staring eyes and a savage look, was skipping along backwards behind them reciting paternosters.Ulenspiegel, wishing to know why he was mimicking the crayfishes in this fashion, planting himself before him and smiling, jumped in step with him. The rebecks, fifes, viols, and bagpipes, and the groans of the pilgrims made the music for the dance.“Jan van den Duivel,” said Ulenspiegel, “is it that you may more certainly fall that you run in this wise?”The man made no answer and went on mumbling his paternosters.“Perhaps,” said Ulenspiegel, “you want to knowhow many trees there are along the road. But are you not counting the leaves also?”The man, who was reciting aCredo, signed to Ulenspiegel to hold his tongue.“Perhaps,” said the latter, still skipping before him and imitating him, “it is the result of some sudden madness that you should thus be going the contrary way to everybody else. But he who would have a wise answer from a madman is not wise himself. Is not this true, master of the peeled poll?”As the man still made no answer, Ulenspiegel went on skipping, but making so much noise with his boot-soles that the road reëchoed like a wooden box.“Maybe,” said Ulenspiegel, “you might be dumb, good sir?”“Ave Maria,” said the other, “gratia plena et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesu.”“Maybe you are deaf as well?” said Ulenspiegel. “We shall see that: they say deaf men hear neither praises nor insults. Let us see if the drums of your ears are skin or brass: thinkest thou, lantern without candle, simulacrum of a foot-goer, that thou dost resemble a man? That will be when men are made of rags. Where has such jaundiced visnomy been ever seen, that peeled head, save on the gallows field? Wast thou not hanged of yore?”And Ulenspiegel went on dancing, and the man, who was entering on the ways of wrath, was running backwards angrily still mumbling his paternosters.“Maybe,” said Ulenspiegel, “thou comprehendest but high Flemish, I will speak to thee in the low: if thou art no glutton, thou art a drunkard, if no drunkard, but a water bibber, thou art foully choked elsewhere; if not constipated, thou art jerry-go-nimble; if not alecher, a capon; if there be temperance, it was not that that filled the tun of thy belly, and if in the thousand million men that people the earth there were but one only cuckold, it would be thou.”At this word Ulenspiegel sat down upon his seat, legs in air, for the man had fetched him such a blow with his fist under the nose that he saw more than a hundred candles. Then cunningly falling upon him, despite the weight of his belly, he struck him everywhere, and blows rained like hail upon the thin frame of Ulenspiegel, whose cudgel fell to the ground.“Learn by this lesson,” said the man, “not to pester honest folk going on pilgrimage. For you may know that I go thus to Alsemberg according to custom to implore Madam Holy Mary to cause to miscarry a child my wife conceived when I was on my travels. To win so great a boon, a man must needs walk and dance backward from the twentieth step from his home to the foot of the church steps, without speaking. Alas! now I must begin all over again.”Ulenspiegel having picked up his cudgel said:“I shall help you, rascal, you who would have Our Lady serve to kill babes in their mothers’ womb.”And he fell to beating the wretched cuckold so cruelly that he left him for dead on the road.All this while there rose to heaven the groans of pilgrims, the sounds of fifes, viols, rebecks, and bagpipes, and, like a pure incense, the savour of frying.

Finding himself, on the morrow, upon a highway in the midst of a great crowd of folk, Ulenspiegel went with them, and soon knew that it was the day of the pilgrimage of Alsemberg.

He saw poor old women marching backwards, barefooted, for a florin and for the expiation of the sins of certain great ladies. On the edge of the highway, to the sound of rebecks, viols, and bagpipes, more than one pilgrim was holding a frying feast and junketing ofbruinbier. And the smoke of delicious stews mounted towards heaven like a suave incense of food.

But there were other pilgrims, low fellows, needy and starveling, who, paid by the Church, were walking backwards for six sols.

A little man, completely bald, with staring eyes and a savage look, was skipping along backwards behind them reciting paternosters.

Ulenspiegel, wishing to know why he was mimicking the crayfishes in this fashion, planting himself before him and smiling, jumped in step with him. The rebecks, fifes, viols, and bagpipes, and the groans of the pilgrims made the music for the dance.

“Jan van den Duivel,” said Ulenspiegel, “is it that you may more certainly fall that you run in this wise?”

The man made no answer and went on mumbling his paternosters.

“Perhaps,” said Ulenspiegel, “you want to knowhow many trees there are along the road. But are you not counting the leaves also?”

The man, who was reciting aCredo, signed to Ulenspiegel to hold his tongue.

“Perhaps,” said the latter, still skipping before him and imitating him, “it is the result of some sudden madness that you should thus be going the contrary way to everybody else. But he who would have a wise answer from a madman is not wise himself. Is not this true, master of the peeled poll?”

As the man still made no answer, Ulenspiegel went on skipping, but making so much noise with his boot-soles that the road reëchoed like a wooden box.

“Maybe,” said Ulenspiegel, “you might be dumb, good sir?”

“Ave Maria,” said the other, “gratia plena et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesu.”

“Maybe you are deaf as well?” said Ulenspiegel. “We shall see that: they say deaf men hear neither praises nor insults. Let us see if the drums of your ears are skin or brass: thinkest thou, lantern without candle, simulacrum of a foot-goer, that thou dost resemble a man? That will be when men are made of rags. Where has such jaundiced visnomy been ever seen, that peeled head, save on the gallows field? Wast thou not hanged of yore?”

And Ulenspiegel went on dancing, and the man, who was entering on the ways of wrath, was running backwards angrily still mumbling his paternosters.

“Maybe,” said Ulenspiegel, “thou comprehendest but high Flemish, I will speak to thee in the low: if thou art no glutton, thou art a drunkard, if no drunkard, but a water bibber, thou art foully choked elsewhere; if not constipated, thou art jerry-go-nimble; if not alecher, a capon; if there be temperance, it was not that that filled the tun of thy belly, and if in the thousand million men that people the earth there were but one only cuckold, it would be thou.”

At this word Ulenspiegel sat down upon his seat, legs in air, for the man had fetched him such a blow with his fist under the nose that he saw more than a hundred candles. Then cunningly falling upon him, despite the weight of his belly, he struck him everywhere, and blows rained like hail upon the thin frame of Ulenspiegel, whose cudgel fell to the ground.

“Learn by this lesson,” said the man, “not to pester honest folk going on pilgrimage. For you may know that I go thus to Alsemberg according to custom to implore Madam Holy Mary to cause to miscarry a child my wife conceived when I was on my travels. To win so great a boon, a man must needs walk and dance backward from the twentieth step from his home to the foot of the church steps, without speaking. Alas! now I must begin all over again.”

Ulenspiegel having picked up his cudgel said:

“I shall help you, rascal, you who would have Our Lady serve to kill babes in their mothers’ womb.”

And he fell to beating the wretched cuckold so cruelly that he left him for dead on the road.

All this while there rose to heaven the groans of pilgrims, the sounds of fifes, viols, rebecks, and bagpipes, and, like a pure incense, the savour of frying.

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