BOOK II

I

On that morning, which was in September, Ulenspiegel took his stick, three florins that Katheline gave him, a piece of pig's liver, and a slice of bread, and set out from Damme, going in the direction of Antwerp, seeking the Seven. Nele was sleeping.

As he journeyed, he was followed by a dog that came sniffing about him because of the liver, and leaped up on his legs. Ulenspiegel would have driven him away, and seeing that the dog was determined to follow him, addressed this discourse to him:

"Doggie, my dear, thou art but ill advised to leave the home where good messes await thee, delicious scraps, and bones full of marrow, to follow upon the road of adventure a vagabond fellow who mayhap will not always have even roots to give thee for thy food. Be guided by me, dog of no prudence, and go back to thine own baes. Avoid the rains, snows, hails, drizzles, mists, hoarfrosts, and other lean fare that fall upon the wanderer's back. Stay in the corner of the hearth, keeping thyself snug and warm, rolled up into a ball before the gay fire; leave me to walk in the mud, the dust, the cold, and the heat, roasted to-day, to-morrow frozen, feasted on Friday, famished on Sunday. Thou wilt do a sensible thing if thou dost return whence thou comest, dogling of small experience."

The animal did not appear to hear Ulenspiegel at all. Wagging his tail and leaping all he could, he went barking for appetite's sake. Ulenspiegel thought it was for friendliness, but he never thought of the liver he carried in his satchel.

He walked on; the dog followed him. Having thus gone more than a league, they saw in the road a cart drawn by an ass hanging its head. Upon a bank on the roadside there sat, between two clumps of thistles, a big man holding in one hand a knuckle bone of mutton, which he was gnawing, and in the other a flask whose juice he was draining. When he was not in the act of eating or of drinking, he whimpered and wept.

Ulenspiegel having stopped, the dog stopped likewise. Smelling the mutton and the liver, he climbed up the bank. There, sitting on his hindquarters beside the man, he pawed his doublet, that he might share the feast, but the man, repulsing him with an elbow and holding the knuckle bone high in air, groaned lamentably. The dog imitated him for greedy longing. The ass, cross to find himself harnessed to the cart, and so unable to reach the thistles, began to bray.

"What wouldst thou have, Jan?" asked the man of his ass.

"Nothing," answered Ulenspiegel, "except that he would fain breakfast on these thistles that flourish beside you as they grow on the roodscreen of Tessenderloo beside and above Monseigneur Christ. That dog, too, would not be grieved to effect a wedlock of jaws with the bone you have there; in the meanwhile, I am going to give him the liver I have here."

The liver having been devoured by the dog, the man looked at his bone picked it again to have the meat that still remained on it, then he gave it thus denuded of flesh to the dog, who, setting his forepaws on it, began to crunch it on the grass.

Then the man looked at Ulenspiegel.

The latter knew Lamme Goedzak, of Damme.

"Lamme," he said, "what dost thou here drinking, eating, and whimpering? What trooper can have rudely dressed down your ears?"

"Alas! my wife!" said Lamme.

He was on the point of emptying his wine flask, when Ulenspiegel put his hand on his arm.

"Do not drink in this fashion," said he, "for drinking precipitately doth no benefit save to the kidneys. It were better if this belonged to him that hath no bottle."

"You say well," said Lamme, "but will you drink any better?" And he proffered him the flask.

Ulenspiegel took it, lifted up his elbow, then, returning the flask:

"Call me Spaniard," said he, "if there is enough left to moisten a sparrow."

Lamme looked at the flask, and without ceasing to whine, groped in his satchel, pulled out another flask and a piece of sausage which he began to cut in slices and chew in melancholy fashion.

"Dost thou never stop eating, Lamme?" asked Ulenspiegel.

"Often, my son," replied Lamme, "but it is to drive away my mournful thoughts. Where art thou, wife?" said he, wiping away a tear.

And he cut off ten slices of sausage.

"Lamme," said Ulenspiegel, "do not eat so fast and without a thought of compassion for the poor pilgrim."

Lamme, still weeping, gave him four slices and Ulenspiegel eating them was moved and softened by their delicious flavour.

But Lamme, weeping and eating without ceasing, said:

"My wife, my good, dear wife! How sweet and shapely she was of her body, light as a butterfly, bright and swift as lightning, singing like a lark! Too well, however, loved she to clothe herself with fine adornments. Alas! they became her so well! But the flowers themselves have also a rich array. If you had seen, my son, her little hands so light for caressing, never would you have allowed them to touch pan or pot. The kitchen fire would have blackened their colour that was clear and bright as the day itself. And what eyes! I melted with love merely to look at them.--Take a draught of wine. I shall drink after you. Ah! if only she be not dead! Thyl, I kept all the work of my house for myself, so as to spare her the smallest task; I swept the house, I made the nuptial bed on which she lay down at night weary with idleness and comfort; I washed the dishes and the linen which I ironed myself.--Eat, Thyl, it is from Ghent, this sausage.--Often having gone out a walking she came back late for dinner, but it was so great a joy for me to see her that I never ventured to scold her, happy when, pouting, she did not turn her back to me at night. I have lost all.--Drink of this wine, it is a Brussels vintage, made in the same way as Burgundy."

"Why did she go away?" asked Ulenspiegel.

"Do I know that, I?" went on Lamme Goedzak. "Where are the days when I used to go to her home, hoping to marry her, and she fled from me for love or fear? If she had her arms bare, lovely round white arms, and saw me looking at them, all at once she would pull down her sleeves over them. At other times she would give herself to my caresses, and I could kiss her lovely eyes, which she shut for me, and the wide firm nape of her neck; then she would shiver, utter little cries, and throwing her head back, hit my nose with it. And she would laugh when I said 'oh!' and I would beat her in lover fashion, and there was nothing between us but games and laughter.--Thyl, is there any wine still left in the flask?"

"Aye," said Ulenspiegel.

Lamme drank and went on with his discourse:

"At other times, more loving, she would fling both arms about my neck and say to me, 'How handsome you are!' and she would kiss me gamesomely and a hundred times together, on my cheek or my forehead but never on the mouth, and when I asked her whence came this great reserve in so extended a license, she went running to take from a tankard on a chest a doll clad in silk and pearls, and said, shaking and dandling it: 'I don't want this.' Doubtless her mother, to keep her virtue safe, had told her that babies are made by the mouth. Ah! sweet moments! tender caresses! Thyl, see if you cannot find a little ham in the pouch of this bag."

"Half of one," replied Ulenspiegel, giving it to Lamme, who ate it all every bit.

Ulenspiegel watched him doing so, and said:

"This ham doth me great good in my stomach."

"To me also," said Lamme, picking his teeth with his nails. "But I shall never again see my darling; she has fled from Damme; would you seek her with me in my cart?"

"I will," replied Ulenspiegel.

"But," said Lamme, "is there nothing at all left in the flask?"

"Nothing at all," answered Ulenspiegel.

And they got up into the cart, drawn by the donkey, who sounded in melancholy wise the bray of departure.

As for the dog, he had gone off, well fed and filled, without saying a word.

II

While the cart rolled along upon a dyke between the canal and a pond, Ulenspiegel, in deep thought, caressed the ashes of Claes on his breast. He asked himself if the vision was false or true, if those spirits had mocked him or if they had by riddles told him what in good sooth he must find to make the land of his fathers happy.

Vainly groping for the interpretation, he could not discover what the Seven and the Girdle meant.

Thinking upon the dead Emperor, the living King, the Lady Governor, the Pope of Rome, the Grand Inquisitor, the General of the Jesuits, he found in these six great tormentors of the country whom he would gladly have burned alive. But he thought it was not they, for they were too easy to burn, so the Seven must be elsewhere.

And in his own mind he was always repeating:

When the North Shall kiss the West, Ruin shall end, Love thou the Seven, The Girdle Love.

"Alas!" said he to himself, "in death, blood, and tears, find seven, burn seven, love seven! My poor wit fails, for who then burns what he loves?"

The cart having already swallowed up a long stretch of the road, they heard a noise of feet on the sandy earth, and a voice singing:

"Good travellers, saw you him, I pray, My wild lost lover gone astray? He roams at random here and there, Saw you him, pray?

"As lamb by eagle of the air He bore my heedless heart away: A man whose face shows little hair. Saw you him, pray?

"When he is met, that Nele with care And toil is very weary, say, Beloved Thyl, where dost delay? Saw you him, pray?

"Does he not know the dove's despair What time her mate abroad doth stay? Much more a faithful heart must bear. Saw you him, pray?"

Ulenspiegel smote upon Lamme's paunch and said to him:

"Hold thy breath, big belly."

"Alas!" answered Lamme, "that is a hard thing for a man of my corpulence!"

But Ulenspiegel, paying him no heed, hid behind the tilt of the cart, and imitating the voice of a wheezy fellow lilting after drinking, he sang:

"Thy wild lover I saw, I say, Within an old worm-eaten shay Beside a glutton one fine day, I saw, I say."

"Thyl," said Lamme, "thou hast an ill tongue this morning."

Ulenspiegel, without listening to him, thrust his head out through the opening of the tilt and said:

"Nele, do you not know me?"

She, seized with fear, weeping and laughing at the same time, for her cheeks were all wet, said to him:

"I see you, nasty traitor!"

"Nele," said Ulenspiegel, "if you want to beat me I have a yard stick in here. It is heavy to make the strokes sink well in and knotty to make them leave their mark."

"Thyl," said Nele, "art thou going towards the Seven?"

"Aye," answered Ulenspiegel.

Nele was carrying a satchel that looked ready to burst; it was so full.

"Thyl," she said, holding it up to him, "I thought it was unwholesome for a man to travel without taking with him a good fat goose, a ham, and Ghent sausages. And you must eat this in remembrance of me."

As Ulenspiegel was looking at Nele and not at all thinking of taking the satchel, Lamme thrust out his head through another hole in the canvas and said:

"Forethinking damsel, if he does not accept, it is but in forgetfulness; but give me that ham, give me that goose, tender me those sausages; I shall keep them for him."

"What," said Nele, "is this good moonface?"

"That," said Ulenspiegel, "is a victim of marriage, who, devoured by sorrow, would wither away like an apple in the oven, if he did not recuperate his strength with constant nourishment."

"Thou hast said the truth, son," sighed Lamme.

The sun, which was shining strong, burned and scorched Nele's head. She covered herself up with her apron. Wishing to be alone with her, Ulenspiegel said to Lamme:

"Seest thou that woman wandering yonder in the meadow?"

"I see her," said Lamme.

"Dost thou recognize her?"

"Ah, me!" said Lamme, "could it be my wife? She is not clad like a townswoman."

"Thou doubtest still, blind mole," said Ulenspiegel.

"If it were not she?" said Lamme.

"Thou wouldst lose nothing by going; on the left there, towards the north, there is a kaberdoesje where thou wilt find good bruinbier. We shall go thither to join thee. And here is ham to salt thy natural thirst withal."

Lamme, getting out of the cart, ran quickly towards the woman that was in the meadow.

Ulenspiegel said to Nele:

"Why do you not come beside me?"

Then, helping her to get up into the cart, he made her sit beside him, took the apron from about her head and the cloak from her shoulders: then giving her a hundred kisses, he said:

"Whither wert thou going, my beloved?"

She answered no word, but she seemed all entranced in ecstasy. And Ulenspiegel, transported even as she, said to her:

"So thou art here, indeed! The sweetbriar roses in the hedges have not the lovely redness of your fresh skin. You are no queen, but let me make you a crown of kisses. Darling arms, all soft, all rosy, that Love himself made all on purpose for kissing! Ah, beloved maid, will not my rugged man's hands wither that shoulder? The light butterfly settles on the crimson carnation, but can I rest on your dazzling whiteness without withering it, clumsy lout that I am? God is in his heaven, the king upon his throne, and the sun is aloft, triumphing; but am I God, the king, or sunlight, to be so near you? Oh, hair softer than flossy silk! Nele, I strike, I rend, I tear to pieces! But do not be afraid, my love. Thy darling little foot! How comes it to be so white! Has it been bathed in milk?"

She would fain have risen.

"What fearest thou?" said Ulenspiegel. "'Tis not the sun that shineth on us and paints thee all in gold. Lower not thine eyes. See in mine what a lovely fire he lighteth there. Listen, beloved; hear, my darling; it is the silent hour of noon; the peasant is in his home feeding on his soup, shall not we feed upon love? Why have not I a thousand years to pluck one by one on thy knees like a string of pearls from the Indies!"

"Golden tongue!" said she.

And Master Sun blazed through the white canvas of the cart, and a lark sang above the clover, and Nele drooped her head upon Ulenspiegel's shoulder.

III

Meanwhile Lamme came back sweating big drops of perspiration, and puffing and blowing like a dolphin.

"Alas!" he said, "I was born under an ill star. After I had to run hard to come up with that woman, who was not my wife and who was old, I saw by her face that she was full forty-five years of age, and by her headdress that she had never been married. She asked me tartly what I was coming to do among the clover with my paunch.

"'I am looking for my wife, who has left me,' I replied with all gentleness, 'and taking you for her, I came hastening towards you.'

"At that word the old maid told me I had nothing to do but to go back whence I had come, and that if my wife had left me, she had done right, seeing that all men were scoundrels, heretics, disloyal, poisoners, deceiving poor maids despite even their ripe years, and that anyhow she would make her dog eat me if I did not make myself scarce as quickly as possible.

"I did so, though not without apprehension; for I could see a huge mastiff lying growling at her feet. When I had cleared the boundary of her field, I sat down and to restore myself I bit into your piece of ham you gave me. I was at that moment between two patches of clover; suddenly I heard a noise behind me, and turning round, I saw the old girl's big mastiff, not threatening now, but wagging his tail to and fro with amiability and appetite. It was my ham he was sharp set against. So I gave him a few little pieces, when his mistress came up, and she cried out:

"'Seize the fellow! seize him, put your teeth in him, my son!'

"And I started to run, and the big mastiff at my stockings, and he took a piece of them and the flesh with it. But being angered with the pain of this, turning round on him I fetched him such a sour blow of my stick on his front paws that I broke at least one of them for him. He fell, crying out in his dog's speech 'mercy,' which I accorded him. Meanwhile, his mistress was throwing clods of earth at me for want of stones. And I ran.

"Alas! is it not cruel and unjust that because a girl had not enough beauty to find a man to marry her, she should take revenge on poor innocent folk like myself?

"I went away all melancholy to the kaberdoesje that you had pointed out to me, hoping to find there the bruinbier of consolation, were it but one quart or half a dozen. But I was deceived, for when I went within I saw a man and a woman and they fighting. I asked them to be so good as to interrupt their battle to give me a pot of bruinbier, were it one quart or half a dozen; but the woman, a regular stokfisch, in a fury, answered that if I did not be off from there as quickly as possible she would make me swallow the sabot with which she was beating her husband over the head. And so, my friend, here I am, sweating sore and sore wearied. Have you not anything to eat?"

"Aye," said Ulenspiegel.

"At last!" said Lamme.

IV

Thus re-united, they went on their way together. The donkey, laying back his ears, pulled the cart along.

"Lamme," said Ulenspiegel, "here be we four food comrades: the ass, the beast of the good God, feeding on chance-found thistles along the meadows; thou, good belly, seeking her that fled from thee; she, sweet girl beloved, tender hearted, finding one that is not worthy of her, I mean myself the fourth.

"Now, then, my children, courage! the leaves are yellowing and the skies will be more gorgeous, for soon will Master Sun go to rest amid the autumnal mists, winter will come, the image and likeness of death, covering with snowy shrouds those that sleep beneath our feet, and I shall be trudging it for the happiness of the land of our fathers. Poor dead ones; Soetkin who didst die of grief; Claes that diedst in the fire; oak of goodness and ivy of love, I, your seedling, I suffer greatly and I shall avenge you, beloved ashes that beat upon my breast."

Lamme said:

"We must not weep those that die for justice's sake."

But Ulenspiegel remained rapt in thought; all at once he said:

"This, Nele, is the hour of farewell, for a long long time, and never again, it may be, shall I look on thy sweet face."

Nele, looking at him with her eyes gleaming like stars:

"Why," said she, "why do you not leave this cart to come with me into the forest where you would find good and dainty things to eat; for I know the plants and how to call the birds to me?"

"Damsel," said Lamme, "'tis ill done of thee to seek to stop Ulenspiegel in the way, for he must look for the Seven and help me to find my wife again."

"Not yet," said Nele; and she wept, laughing tenderly through her tears upon her friend Ulenspiegel.

He, seeing this, answered him:

"Your wife, you will always find her soon enough, when you want to seek a new sorrow."

"Thyl," said Lamme, "wilt thou leave me thus alone in my cart for this damsel? Thou dost not answer and art thinking of the forest, where the Seven are not, nor my wife, either. Let us rather seek her along this stone paven road on which carts go so well and handily."

"Lamme," said Ulenspiegel, "you have a full satchel in the cart, you will not therefore die of hunger if you go without me from here to Koolkerke, where I shall join you again. You must be alone there, for there you will know towards which point of the compass you must direct yourself in order to find your wife again. Listen and hearken. You will go at once with your cart to Koolkerke, three leagues away, the cool church, so named because like many others it is beaten upon by the four winds all at once. Upon the spire there is a vane shapen like a cock and swinging to all the winds on its rusty hinges. It is the screeching of these hinges that indicates to poor men that have lost their lovers the way they must follow to find them again. But first they must strike each wall seven times with a hazel wand. If the hinges cry out when the wind blows from the north, that is the direction in which you must go, but prudently, for the northern wind is a wind of war; if from the south, go lightly thither, it is a love wind; if from the east, run along full speed, it is gaiety and light; if from the west, go softly, it is the wind of rain and tears. Go, Lamme, go to Koolkerke, and wait for me there."

"I go thither," said Lamme.

And he set off in his cart.

While Lamme was trundling towards Koolkerke, the wind, which was both high and warm, drove like a flock of sheep in the sky the gray clouds drifting in bands; the trees complained like the waves of a swelling sea. Ulenspiegel and Nele were now a long while in the forest alone together. Ulenspiegel was hungry, and Nele looked for roots that were good to eat, and found nothing but the kisses her friend gave her, and acorns.

Ulenspiegel, having laid down snares, whistled to call the birds down, in order to catch and cook any that might come. A nightingale settled on a leafy branch close to Nele; she did not catch it, for she wished to leave it to sing; a warbler came, and she had pity on it, because it was so pretty and proud in its air; then came a lark, but Nele told it it would do better to fly away into the heights of the sky and sing a hymn to Nature, than to come stupidly to struggle on the murderous point of a spit.

And she said the truth, for in the meantime Ulenspiegel had lighted a clear fire and cut a wooden spit that only awaited its victims.

But no more birds came now, except a few evil ravens that croaked a long way up over their heads.

And so Ulenspiegel did not eat at all.

Now the time had come when Nele must go away and return to Katheline. And she went weeping, and Ulenspiegel from afar off watched her go.

But she came back, and flinging herself on his neck:

"I am going," she said.

Then she went a few steps, came back again, saying once more:

"I am going."

And thus twenty times and more over and over.

Then she went indeed, and Ulenspiegel remained alone. He set off then to go and find Lamme.

When he came up with him, he found him sitting at the foot of the tower, with a great pot of bruinbier between his legs and nibbling most melancholy-wise at a hazel wand.

"Ulenspiegel," said he, "I think you but sent me here that you might be alone with the damsel; I smote as you bade me, seven times with the hazel wand on each wall of the tower, and though the wind is blowing like the devil, the hinges have not made a sound."

"Without doubt, then, they must have been oiled," replied Ulenspiegel.

Then they went away in the direction of the Duchy of Brabant.

V

King Philip, dark and gloomy, dabbled with paper with no respite all day long, and even by night, and scribbled over papers and parchments. To them he confided the thoughts of his hard heart. Loving no man in his life, knowing that no man loved him, fain to bear his immense empire alone, a dolorous Atlas, he bowed beneath the burden. Phlegmatic and melancholy of temperament, his excessive toil devoured his weak body. Detesting every bright or merry face, he had conceived hatred for our country because of its gaiety; for our traders because of their wealth; for our nobles because of their free speech, frank ways and manners, the sanguine mettlesomeness of their gallant joviality. He knew, for he had been told, that long before Cardinal de Cousa had indicted the abuses of the Church and preached the need for reforms, the revolt against the Pope and the Romish Church, having been manifested throughout our country under different kinds of sect, was in every head like boiling water in a tight shut kettle.

Obstinate and mulish, he thought that his will ought to lie heavy on the whole world like the will of God; he desired that our countries, little used to ways of servile obedience, should bow beneath the old yoke without obtaining any reform. He wanted his Holy Mother the Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman, to be one, entire and universal with neither modification nor change, and with no other grounds for wanting this except that he did want it so. Acting in this like an unreasonable woman, tossing and turning by night on his bed as though a couch of thorns, incessantly tormented by his thoughts.

"Yea, Master Saint Philip, yea, Lord God, were I to be forced to make of the Low Countries a common grave and throw into it all the inhabitants, they shall come back to you, my blessed patron, and to you, Madame Virgin Mary, and to you, all ye Saints of Paradise."

And he sought to do even as he said, and thus he was more Roman than the Pope and more Catholic than the councils.

And Ulenspiegel and Lamme, and the people of Flanders and the Low Countries, full of anguish, imagined that they could see from far within the gloomy haunt of the Escurial, that crowned spider, with long legs and open claws, spreading out his web to entangle them around and suck the best of their heart's blood.

Although the Papal Inquisition had, under the reign of Charles, killed at the stake, by burying alive, and by the rope, a hundred thousand Christians; though the goods of the poor condemned folk had found their way into the coffers of the Emperor and the King, as the rain flows into the drain, Philip deemed that it was insufficient; he imposed new bishops upon the country and proposed to introduce into it the Spanish Inquisition.

And the town heralds everywhere read out to the sound of trump and tambourine proclamations decreeing to all heretics, men and women and girls, death by fire to those who did not abjure their error, by the rope to those who should abjure. Women and girls would be buried alive, and the executioner should dance upon their bodies.

And the flame of resistance ran throughout the whole land.

VI

The fifth of April, before Easter Day, the lords Count Louis of Nassau, Culembourg, and Brederode, the Drinking Hercules, entered with three hundred other gentlemen of birth into the Court of Brussels, to the Duchess of Parma, the Lady Governor. Going in ordered ranks of four, they went in this way up the great stair of the palace.

Being in the chamber where Madame was they presented to her a request in which they asked her to seek to obtain from King Philip the rescinding of the proclamations touching upon religion and also of the Spanish Inquisition, declaring that within our roused and discontented country there could result from it only troubles, ruins, and universal distress.

And this request was termed The Compromise.

Berlaymont, who later was so treacherous and so cruel to the land of his fathers, was standing beside Her Highness, and said to her, mocking at the poverty of certain of the confederated nobles:

"Madame, fear nothing, they are nothing but beggars."

Meaning thus that these nobles had ruined themselves in the king's service or else in trying to match the Spanish lords by their sumptuous display.

To turn to scorn the speech of the Sieur de Berlaymont, the lords declared afterwards that they "held it an honour to be esteemed and called beggars for the king's service and the good of these lands."

They began to wear a gold medallion about their neck, having the king's effigy on one side and on the other two hands locked and passing through a beggar's wallet, with these words: "Faithful to the king even unto the beggar's wallet." They wore also in their hats and bonnets little gold jewels in the shape of beggars' bowls and beggars' hats.

Meanwhile, Lamme was taking his paunch throughout the whole town, looking for his wife and not finding her.

VII

Ulenspiegel said to him one morning:

"Follow me: we are going to pay our respects to a high, noble, powerful, and redoubted personage."

"Will he tell me where my wife is?" asked Lamme.

"If he knows," answered Ulenspiegel.

And they went to call on Brederode, the Drinking Hercules. He was in the courtyard of his house.

"What wouldst thou with me?" he asked of Ulenspiegel.

"To speak with you, Monseigneur," answered Ulenspiegel.

"Speak," replied Brederode.

"You," said Ulenspiegel, "are a goodly, valiant, and mighty lord. You strangled, once long ago, a Frenchman within his cuirass like a mussel in its shell: but if you are mighty and valiant, you are also of good counsel. Why, then, do you wear this medal on which I read 'Faithful to the king even unto the beggar's wallet?'"

"Aye," asked Lamme, "why, Monseigneur?"

But Brederode made no reply whatever and looked hard at Ulenspiegel. The latter continued:

"Why are you, you noble lords, fain to be faithful to the king even to the wallet? Is it for the great good he wills you, for the goodly amity he bears you? Why, instead of being faithful to him unto the wallet, why do ye not make it so that the despoiled tormentor of his countries should be ever faithful to the beggar's wallet?"

And Lamme nodded his head in sign of assent.

Brederode looked at Ulenspiegel with his keen glance and smiled, seeing his friendly open mien.

"If thou art not," said he, "a spy of King Philip's, thou art a good Fleming, and I shall reward thee for either case."

He brought him along, Lamme following, into his office. There, pulling his ear till the blood came:

"That," he said, "is for the spy."

Ulenspiegel uttered no cry.

"Bring," he said to his cellarer, "bring that kettle of wine with cinnamon."

The cellarer brought the kettle and a great tankard of mulled wine perfuming the air.

"Drink," said Brederode to Ulenspiegel; "this is for the good Fleming."

"Ah!" said Ulenspiegel, "good Flemish, lovely cinnamon speech, the saints speak not its like."

Then having drunk the half of the wine, he passed the other half to Lamme.

"Who is he?" said Brederode, "this big-bellied papzak who is rewarded without having done anything?"

"This," answered Ulenspiegel, "is my friend Lamme, who every time he drinks wine mulled imagines he is going to find his wife again."

"Aye," said Lamme, draining the wine from the tankard with devout zeal.

"Whither go ye as now?" asked Brederode.

"We are going," answered Ulenspiegel, "in search of the Seven that shall save the land of Flanders."

"What Seven?" asked Brederode.

"When I have found them, I shall tell you what they are," answered Ulenspiegel.

But Lamme, all merry disposed from having drunk:

"Thyl," said he, "if we were to go to the moon to look for my wife?"

"Order the ladder," answered Ulenspiegel.

In May, the month of greenery, Ulenspiegel said to Lamme:

"Lo the lovely month of May! Ah! the clear sky of blue, the happy swallows; see the branches on the trees ruddy with sap, the earth is in love. 'Tis the moment to hang and burn for religion. They are there, the dear little inquisitors. What noble countenances! They have all power to correct, to punish, to degrade, to hand over to the secular judges, to have their prisons. Ah, the lovely month of May!--to arrest the person, to conduct law suits without adhering to the customary forms of justice, to burn, hang, behead, and dig for poor women and girls the grave of premature death. The finches sing in the trees. The good inquisitors have their eye on the rich. And the king shall be heir. Go, damsels, dance in the meadows to the sound of pipes and shawms. Oh! the lovely month of May!"

The ashes of Claes beat upon the breast of Ulenspiegel.

"Let us on," he said to Lamme. "Happy they that will keep an upright heart, and the sword aloft in the black days that are to come!"

VIII

Ulenspiegel passed, one day in the month of August, in the rue de Flandre at Brussels, before the house of Jean Sapermillemente, so called because his paternal grandsire when angry used to swear in this fashion as so to avoid blaspheming the most holy name of God. The said Sapermillemente was a master broiderer by trade; but having grown deaf and blind by dint of drinking, his wife, an old gossip with a sour face, broidered in his stead the coats, doublets, cloaks, and shoes of the lords. Her pretty young daughter helped her in this well-paid work.

Passing before the aforesaid house in the last hours of daylight, Ulenspiegel saw the girl at the window and heard her crying aloud:

"August, August Tell me, sweet month, ho will take me to wife, Tell me, sweet month?"

"I will," said Ulenspiegel, "if you like."

"Thou?" said she. "Come nearer that I may see thee." But he:

"Whence comes it that you are calling in August what the Brabant girls call on the Eve of March?"

"Those girls," she said, "have only one month to give them a husband; I have twelve, and on the eve of each, not at midnight but for six hours up to midnight, I jump out of my bed, I take three steps backwards towards the window, I cry what you have heard; then returning, I take three steps backwards towards the bed, and at midnight, going to bed, I fall asleep, dreaming of the husband I shall have. But the months, the sweet months, being mockers by nature, 'tis not of one husband I dream now, but of twelve together; you shall be the thirteenth if you will."

"The others would be jealous," answered Ulenspiegel. "You cry also 'Deliverance'."

The girl answered, blushing:

"I cry 'Deliverance' and know what I ask for."

"I know, too, and I am bringing it to you," answered Ulenspiegel.

"You must wait," said she, smiling and showing her white teeth.

"Wait," said Ulenspiegel, "nay. A house may fall on my head, a gust of wind might blow me into a ditch, a mad pug might bite me in the leg; nay, I shall not wait."

"I am too young," said she, "and only cry this for custom's sake."

Ulenspiegel became suspicious, thinking that it is on the Eve of March and not of the corn month that the Brabant girls cry to have a husband.

She said, smiling:

"I am too young and only cry this for the sake of the old custom."

"Will you wait till you are too old?" answered Ulenspiegel. "That is bad arithmetic. Never have I seen a neck so round, or whiter breasts, Flemish breasts full of that good milk that makes men."

"Full?" said she, "not yet, Traveller in a hurry."

"Wait," repeated Ulenspiegel. "Must I have no teeth left to eat you raw with, darling? You do not answer, you smile with your eyes clear brown and your lips red as cherries."

The girl, looking craftily at him, replied:

"Why dost thou love me so quickly? What is thy trade? Art thou beggar, art thou rich?"

"A beggar," said he, "am I, and rich at the same time, if you give me your darling self."

She replied:

"That is not what I want to know. Dost thou go to mass? Art thou a good Christian? Where dost thou dwell? Wouldst thou dare to say that thou art a Beggar, a true blue Beggar resisting the proclamations and the Inquisition?"

The ashes of Claes beat upon Ulenspiegel's breast.

"I am a Beggar," said he, "I would fain see dead and eaten by worms the oppressors of the Low Countries. Thou lookest on me confounded and astonied. This fire of love that burns for thee, darling, is the fire of youth. God lighted it; it flames as the sun shines, until it dieth down. But the fire of vengeance that broodeth in my heart, God lit that as well. It will be the sword, the fire, the rope, conflagration, devastation, war, and ruin to the murderers."

"Thou art goodly," said she, sadly, kissing him on both cheeks, "but hold thy peace."

"Why dost thou weep?" answered he.

"You must always," she said, "watch here and elsewhere wherever you are."

"Have these walls ears?" asked Ulenspiegel.

"No ears but mine," said she.

"Carven by love, I will stop them with a kiss."

"Mad lover, listen to me when I speak to you."

"Why? what have you to say to me?"

"Listen to me," she said, impatient. "Here comes my mother.... Hold your tongue, hold your peace above all things before her...."

The old Sapermillemente woman came in. Ulenspiegel studied her.

"Muzzle full of holes like a skimming ladle," said he to himself, "eyes with a hard false look, mouth that would laugh and grimace, you make me curious."

"God be with you, Messire," said the old woman, "be with you without ceasing. I have received moneys, Daughter, good moneys from Messire d'Egmont when I took him his cloak on which I had embroidered the fool's bauble. Yes, Messire, the fool's bauble against the Red Dog."

"The Cardinal de Granvelle?" asked Ulenspiegel.

"Aye," said she, "against the Red Dog. It is said that he denounces their doings to the King; they would fain bring him to death. They are right, are they not?"

Ulenspiegel answered not a word.

"You have not seen them in the streets clad in a gray doublet and opperst-kleed, gray as the common folk wear them, and the long hanging sleeves and their monks' hoods and on all the opperst-kleederen the fool's bauble embroidered. I made at least twenty-seven and my daughter fifteen. That incensed the Red Dog to see these baubles."

Then speaking in Ulenspiegel's ear:

"I know that the lords have decided to replace the bauble by a sheaf of corn in sign of unity. Aye, aye, they mean to struggle against the king and the Inquisition. It is well done of them, is it not, Messire?"

Ulenspiegel made no answer.

"The stranger lord is melancholy," said the old woman; "he has his mouth tight shut all of a sudden."

Ulenspiegel said not a word and went out.

Presently he went into a gaffhouse so as not to forget to drink. The gaff was full of drinkers speaking imprudently of the king, of the detested proclamations, of the Inquisition and of the Red Dog who must be forced to leave the country. He saw the old woman, all in rags, and seeming to doze beside a pint of brandy. She remained like that for a long time; then he saw her taking a little platter out of her pocket, asking money, especially from those who spoke the most incautiously.

And the men gave her florins, deniers, and patards, and without stinginess.

Ulenspiegel, hoping to learn from the girl what the old Sapermillemente woman did not say to him, passed before the house again; he saw the girl who was not crying out her rhyme any more, but smiled at him and winked her eye, a sweet promise.

All on a sudden the old woman came back after him.

Ulenspiegel, angry to see her, ran like a stag into the street crying out: "'T brandt! 't brandt! Fire! Fire!" till he came before the house of the baker Jacob Pietersen. The front, glazed in the German fashion, was flaming red to the sunset. A thick smoke, the smoke of faggots turning to red coals in the furnace, was pouring out of the bakehouse chimney. Ulenspiegel never ceased to cry as he ran: "'T brandt, 't brandt," and pointed out Jacob Pietersen's house. The crowd, gathering in front of it, saw the red windows, the thick smoke, and cried like Ulenspiegel: "'T brandt, 't brandt, it burns! it burns!" The watchman on Notre Dame de la Chapelle blew his trumpet while the beadle rang the bell called Wacharm in full peal. And lads and lasses ran up in swarms, singing and whistling.

The bell and the trumpet still sounding, the old Sapermillemente woman picked up her heels and went off.

Ulenspiegel was watching her. When she was far away, he came into the house.

"You here!" said the girl; "is there not a fire then over yonder?"

"Yonder? No," replied Ulenspiegel.

"But that bell that is ringing so lamentably?"

"It knows not what it doth," answered Ulenspiegel.

"And that dolorous trumpet and all these folk running?"

"Infinite is the tale of fools."

"What is burning then?" said she.

"Thy eyes and my flaming heart," answered Ulenspiegel.

And he leaped to her mouth.

"You eat me," she said.

"I like cherries," said he.

She looked at him, smiling and distressed. Suddenly bursting into tears:

"Come back here no more," she said. "You are a Beggar, a foe to the Pope, do not come back...."

"Thy mother!" said he.

"Aye," she said, blushing. "Dost thou know where she is at this moment? She is listening where the fire is. Dost thou know where she will go presently? To the Red Dog, to report all she knows and make ready the work for the duke that is to come. Flee, Ulenspiegel; I save thee, but flee. Another kiss, but come back no more; still another, thou art goodly, I weep, but begone."

"Brave girl," said Ulenspiegel, holding her embraced.

"I was not always," she said. "I, too, like her...."

"These songs," said he, "these mute appealings of beauty to men prone to love...?"

"Aye," said she. "My mother would have it so. Thou, I save thee, loving thee for love's sake. The others, I shall save them in remembrance of thee, my beloved. When thou art far away, will thy heart pull a little towards the girl that repented? Kiss me, darling. She will never again for money give victims to the stake. Go, go; nay, stay a little still. How soft and smooth thy hand is! There, I kiss thy hand, it is the sign of slavery; thou art my master. Listen, come nearer, hush. Men, ragged scoundrels and robbers and an Italian among them, came here last night, one after the other. My mother brought them into the chamber where thou art, and bade me go out from it, and she shut the door. I heard these words: 'Stone crucifix.... Borgerhoet gate ... procession ... Antwerp.... Notre Dame,' suppressed laughter and florins counted out on the table.... Flee, here they are; flee away, my beloved. Keep a kind memory for me; flee...."

Ulenspiegel ran as she bade him as far as the Old Cock, In den ouden Haen, and found there Lamme plunged in melancholy, eating a sausage and draining his seventh quart of Louvain peterman.

And he forced him to run like himself, in spite of his belly.

IX

Running thus at full speed, followed by Lamme, he found in the Eikenstraat a savage lampoon on Brederode. He went and took it to him directly.

"Monseigneur," he said, "I am that good Fleming and that king's spy whose ears you dressed down so well, and to whom you gave such good mulled wine to drink. He brings you a pretty little pamphlet in which among other things you are accused of calling yourself Count of Holland, like the king. It is fresh and hot from the press of Jan a Calumnia, living near the Vagabonds' Quay, in the blind alley of the Thieves of Honour."

Brederode answered, smiling:

"I shall have you flogged for two hours if you do not tell me the scribe's real name."

"Monseigneur," replied Ulenspiegel, "have me flogged for two years if you will, but you will not be able to make my back tell you what my mouth does not know."

And he went away, not without getting a florin for his trouble.

X

Since June, the month of roses, the preachings had begun in the country of Flanders.

And the apostles of the primitive Christian Church preached everywhere, in every place, in fields and in gardens, on the hillocks which in times of flood were used to keep cattle on, upon rivers, in boats.

On land, they entrenched themselves as in a camp, surrounding themselves with their wains. Upon the rivers and in harbours, boats filled with armed men kept guard round about them.

And thus the word of freedom was heard on every side on the soil of our fathers.

XI

Ulenspiegel and Lamme being at Bruges, with their cart, which they left in a yard close by, went into the church of Saint Sauveur, instead of going to the tavern, for there was in their pouches no more the merry clink of coins.

Father Cornelis Adriensen, a minor friar, dirty, brazen, furious, and a bellowing preacher, was on that day occupying the pulpit of truth.

Beautiful young devout women were thronging all around.

Father Cornelis was discoursing of the Passion. When he came to the passage in the Holy Gospel where the Jews cried to Pilate, speaking of our Lord Jesus, "Crucify him, crucify him, for we have our law, and by that law he must die," Broer Cornelis exclaimed:

"Ye have just heard it, good people, if Our Lord Jesus Christ endured a dreadful and a shameful death, it is because there have at all times been laws to punish heretics. He was justly condemned, because he had disobeyed those laws. And to-day they would fain regard as naught the edicts and proclamations. Ah! Jesus! What curse wouldst thou set upon these lands. Honoured Mother of God, if the Emperor Charles were still alive, and could he see the scandal of these confederate nobles who have dared to present to the Lady Governor a request against the Inquisition and against the proclamations made for an aim so good, which are so ripely thought out, and promulgated after so long and so wise reflection and deliberation, to destroy all sects and heresies! And they would fain reduce them to nothing, though they are more necessary than bread and than cheese! In what foul, loathsome, abominable gulf are we to be made to fall to-day? Luther, that vile Luther, that mad ox, triumphs in Saxony, in Brunswick, in Lunebourg, in Mecklenburg; Brentius, that dung Brentius who lived in Germany upon acorns the pigs refused, Brentius triumphs in Württemberg; Servetus the Lunatic, who hath a quarter of the moon in his head, the Trinitarian Servetus, reigns in Pomerania, in Denmark and in Sweden, and there he dares to blaspheme the holy, glorious, and mighty Trinity. Aye. But I am informed that he hath been burned alive by Calvin, who was never right or good save in that; aye, by the stinking Calvin who smells of musty sourness; aye, with his long face like a leather bottle; a face of cheese, with his big teeth like a gardener's shovel. Aye, these wolves eat one another; aye, the ox Luther, the mad ox, roused the princes of Germany to arms against the Anabaptist Münzer, who was a good man, they say, and lived according to the Gospel. And through all Germany the bellowings of this ox have been heard, aye!

"Aye, and what do we see in Flanders, Gueldre, Frisia, Holland, Zealand? Adamites running naked through the streets; yea, good people, naked in the streets, showing their lean flesh without shame to the passers-by. There was but one of them, say you: aye--let it pass--one is as good as a hundred, a hundred is even as one. And he was burned, say you, and he was burned alive, at the request of the Calvinists and Lutherans. These wolves eat one another, I say unto you!

"Aye, and what do we see in Flanders, Gueldre, Frisia, Holland, Zealand? Free thinkers teaching that all servitude is contrary to the word of God. They lie, the stinking heretics; we must submit to the Holy Mother Church of Rome. And there, in that accursed city of Antwerp, the rendezvous and meeting-ground of all the heretic dogs in the world, they have dared to preach that we prepare and bake the host with dog's grease. Another saith, 'tis that beggar upon the chamber pot at the corner of the street, 'There is no God, nor life eternal, nor resurrection of the body, nor everlasting damnation.' 'We can,' saith another yonder, in a whining voice, 'baptise without salt, or lard, or spittle, without exorcism and without candle.' 'There is no purgatory,' says another. There is no purgatory, good people! Ah! it were better for you to have committed sin with your mothers, your sisters, and your daughters, than to doubt purgatory.

"Aye, and they turn up their nose at the Inquisitor, that holy man, aye. They came to Belem, near this place, as many as four thousand Calvinists, with weaponed men, banners and drums. Aye. And you can smell from here the smoke of their cooking fires. They have taken the Church of Saint Catholyne to dishonour it, profane it, desecrate it by their damnable preachifying.

"What is this impious and scandalous tolerance? By the thousand devils of hell, ye supine, faint-hearted Catholics, why do not ye also take weapons into your hands? Ye have, even as these damned Calvinists, cuirasses, lances, halberds, swords, daggers, arbalests, knives, cudgels, pikes, the town falconets and culverins.

"They are peaceful folk, say you; they desire in all freedom and tranquillity to hear the word of God. That is all one to me. Go forth from Bruges! hunt me, slay me, blow me up all these Calvinists that are without the pale of the Church. Ye are not yet started! Fie on you! Ye are hens trembling with fear on your dunghill. I see the moment when these damned Calvinists will drum on your wives' and daughters' bellies, and you will let them, men of tow and putty. Go not over yonder, go not ... ye will get your stockings wet in the battle. Fie upon you, men of Bruges! fie upon you, Catholics! That is well done and like true Catholics, O cowardly poltroons! Shame upon you, ducks and drakes, geese and turkeys that you are!

"Are not they goodly preachers, that you should go in crowds to hearken to the lies they belch forth, that the young girls should go by night to their sermons, aye, and that in nine months the town should be full of little beggar-boys and beggar-girls? There were four of them there, four scandalous vagabonds, that preached in the cemetery of the church. The first of these vagabonds, livid and lean, the ugly loose-belly, had a dirty hat upon his head. Thanks to it his ears were not to be seen. Which of you hath seen the ears of a preacher? He had no shirt, for his bare arms came linenless out through his doublet. I saw it well, though he tries to cover himself up with a dirty little cloak, and I saw, too, all right in his black canvas breeches, full of open work like the spire of Notre Dame, the swinging of his bells and clapper. The other vagabond preached in a doublet, and no shoes. Nobody saw his ears. And he had to stop short in his preachifying, and the boys and girls began to hoot him, crying: 'Yah! Yah! he doesn't know his lesson!' The third of these scandalous vagabonds had on his head a dirty ugly little hat, with a little feather sticking out of the top. And his ears were not to be seen, either. The fourth of the rascals, Hermanus, better arrayed than the others, must have been branded on the shoulder twice by the executioner, aye, verily.

"They all wear under their headgear greasy silk caps that hide their ears. Did you ever see the ears of a preacher? Which of these rogues ever dared to show his ears? His ears! Ah! yes, show his ears; they have all been cut off. Aye, the executioner has cut the ears off every one of them.

"And yet it was round about these scandalous rogues, these cut purses, these cobblers that have run away from their stools, these ragamuffin preachers, that all the whole populace went crying and shouting: 'Long live the Beggars!' as if they had all been mad, drunk, or fools.

"Ah, it only remains for us poor Roman Catholics to leave the Low Countries, since there they allow this bawling cry: 'Long live the Beggars! Long live the Beggars!' What a millstone of a curse hath therefore fallen upon this bewitched and foolish folk, ah! Jesus! Everywhere, rich and poor, noble and base, young and old, men and women, all cry out: 'Long live the Beggars!'

"And what are all these lords, these scald leather seats that have come to us from Germany? All their having is gone on harlots, or gaming, lechery, lewdness, long-drawn debauchery, rooted villainies, abominations of dice and ostentation of outward array. They have not even a rusty nail to scratch themselves with where they itch. And now they must needs have the goods and wealth of churches and convents.

"And there at their banquet in the house of that rogue De Culembourg, with that other rogue De Brederode, they drank in wooden bowls, for scorn of Messire de Berlaymont and Madame the Lady Governor. Aye, and they shouted 'Long live the Beggars!' Ah! if I had been the good God (with all respect), I would have caused their drink, whether it was beer or wine, to be changed into a foul and loathy dishwater, aye, into foul, abominable, stinking suds, in which they had washed their shirts and foul sheets.

"Aye, bawl, donkeys that you are, bawl 'Long live the Beggars!' Aye! and I am a prophet. And all the curses, miseries, fevers, plagues, conflagrations, ruins, desolations, cankers, English sweating sickness and black plagues will fall upon the Low Countries. Aye, thus will God be revenged upon your filthy braying of 'Long live the Beggars!' And there will not be left one stone of your houses upon another, and not a morsel of bone in your damned legs that ran to this accursed Calvinistry and preachifying. And so, so, so, so, so be it. Amen!"

"Let us go, my son," said Ulenspiegel to Lamme.

"In a moment," said Lamme.

And he looked and searched among the beautiful young devotees there present at the sermon, but he did not discover his wife.

XII

Ulenspiegel and Lamme came to the place called Minne-Water, Love-Water; but the great doctors and Wysneusen Pedants say it is Minre-Water, Minim-Water. Ulenspiegel and Lamme sat down upon the brink, seeing pass by beneath the trees all leafy down to their very heads, like a low roof, men, women, girls, and boys, hand in hand, garlanded with flowers, walking hip to hip, looking tenderly in one another's eyes, without seeing anything in this world but themselves.

Ulenspiegel, thinking of Nele, gazed at them. In his melancholy, he said:

"Let us go drink."

But Lamme, not hearkening Ulenspiegel, also looked upon the pairs of lovers:

"In the old days we, too, used to pass, my wife and I, loving each other under the eyes of those who like you and me, on the edge of ditches, were stretched out solitary and without a woman."

"Come and drink," said Ulenspiegel, "we shall find the Seven at the bottom of a quart."

"A drinker's word," answered Lamme: "you know the Seven are giants who could not stand upright under the big dome of the church of Saint Sauveur."

Ulenspiegel, thinking wretchedly of Nele, and also that in some hostelry he might perchance find a good bed, good supper, a comely hostess, said yet again:

"Let us go and drink!"

But Lamme paid no heed, and said, looking at the tower of Notre Dame:

"Madame Holy Mary, patroness of lawful loves, grant me to see again her white bosom, that soft pillow."

"Come and drink," said Ulenspiegel, "you shall find her, displaying it to the drinkers, in a tavern."

"Dost thou dare think so ill of her?" said Lamme.

"Let us go and drink," said Ulenspiegel, "she is baesine somewhere, without a doubt."

"Thirst talk," said Lamme.

Ulenspiegel went on:

"Perchance keepeth she in reserve for poor travellers a dish of goodly stewed beef, whose spices perfume the air, not too rich, tender, succulent as rose leaves, and swimming like Shrove Tuesday fishes amid cloves, nutmeg, cocks' combs, sweetbreads, and other celestial dainties."

"Cruel!" said Lamme, "you mean to kill me for sure. Do you not know that for two days we have lived on nothing but dry bread and small beer?"

"Hunger talk," answered Ulenspiegel. "You are weeping with appetite; come and eat and drink. I have here a fine half florin that will defray the cost of our feast."

Lamme laughed. They went to find their cart and thus went about the town, seeking to know which was the best inn. But seeing several crabbed countenances on the baes and no wise pleasing on the baesines, they passed on, thinking that a sour face is a poor sign for a hospitable kitchen.

They arrived at the Saturday Market and went into the hostelry called de Blauwe-Lanteern, the Blue-Lantern. Here there was a baes of pleasant aspect.

They put up their cart and had the ass lodged in the stable, in company with a peck of oats. They ordered supper to be served, ate their fill, slept well, and rose to eat again. Lamme, bursting with comfort, said:

"I hear heavenly music in my stomach."

When the time came to pay, the baes came to Lamme and said to him:

"Ten patards, if you please."

"He has them," said Lamme, pointing to Ulenspiegel who answered:

"I have not."

"And the half florin?" said Lamme.

"I have not got it," said Ulenspiegel.

"This is all very well," said the baes: "I shall take the doublet and the shirt off both of you."

Suddenly Lamme, plucking up bottle courage:

"And if I want to eat and drink, I," exclaimed he, "to eat and drink, aye, drink for twenty-seven florins worth or more, I will do it. Dost thou think there is not a sou's value in this belly of mine? Good God! it was never fed till now but on ortolans. Never didst thou carry the like under thy greasy girdle. For like an ill fellow thou hast thy tallow on the collar of thy doublet, and not like me, three inches of dainty fat on the paunch!"

The baes had fallen into an ecstasy of rage. A stammerer by nature, he wanted to speak quickly; the more he hurried, the more he sneezed and sputtered like a dog coming out of the water. Ulenspiegel threw little balls of bread at his nose. And Lamme, becoming hotter, went on:

"Aye, I have wherewith to pay for your three scraggy hens, your four mangy pullets, and that big idiot of a peacock dragging his dirty tail in your yard. And if your skin was not drier than an old cock's, if your bones were not crumbling to dust in your breast, I would have still enough to eat you, yourself, your snot of a man, your one-eyed maid and your cook, who if he had itch would have arms too short to scratch himself.

"Do you see," he went on, "do you see this fine bird that, for half a florin, wants to seize our doublets and our shirts? Tell me what your wardrobe is worth, tattered impertinence, and I will give you three liards for it."

But the baes, becoming angrier and angrier, puffed and blew the more.

And Ulenspiegel flung balls in his face.

Lamme, like a roaring lion, said:

"How much do you think, scrawny face, a fine ass is worth, with a fine muzzle, long ears, wide chested, with legs of iron? Eighteen florins at the least, is not that so, miserable baes? How many old nails have you in your coffers to pay for so fine a beast?"

The baes sputtered more and more, but dared not budge.

Lamme said:

"How much do you think a fine cart is worth, all made of ash painted red, and equipped all over with Courtrai canvas against the sun and the showers? Twenty-four florins at least, hey? And how much is twenty-four florins and eighteen florins? Answer that, leper devoid of arithmetic. And as it is a market day, and as there are farming folk in your miserable hostelry, I am going to sell cart and donkey to them at once."

And so it was done, for all knew Lamme. And in fact he got for his ass and his cart forty-four florins and ten patards. Then, clinking the gold under the nose of the baes, he said to him:

"Dost thou smell in that the savour of feasting to come?"

"Aye," replied the host.

And he said under his breath:

"When you are selling your skin, I will buy a liard's worth to make a charm against prodigality with it."

In the meantime, a pretty, taking woman who was in the dark of the yard had come again and again to look at Lamme through the window, and drew back every time he might have caught sight of her pretty face.

That night, on the staircase, as he was going up without a light, tottering a little from the wine he had drunk, he felt a woman who flung her arms about him, kissed him on the cheek, the mouth, even on the nose, gluttonously, and wetting his face with amorous tears, then left him.

Lamme, all sleepy from his drink, went to bed, fell asleep, and next day went off to Ghent with Ulenspiegel.

XIII

There he sought for his wife in all the kaberdoesjen, musicos, tafelhooren, and taverns. At night, he rejoined Ulenspiegel in den zingende Zwaan, at the Singing Swan. Ulenspiegel went wherever he could, spreading alarm and rousing the people against the butchers of the land of their fathers.

Finding himself in the Friday Market, near the Dulle-Griet, the Great Cannon, Ulenspiegel lay down flat on his face on the pavement.

A coalman came and said to him:

"What are you doing there?"

"I am damping my nose to know which way the wind blows," replied Ulenspiegel.

A carpenter came along.

"Do you take the pavement," said he, "for a mattress?"

"There are some," replied Ulenspiegel, "who will soon take it for a quilt."

A monk stopped.

"What is this moon calf doing there?" he asked.

"He is on his face begging for your blessing, Father," replied Ulenspiegel.

The monk having bestowed it, went on his way.

Ulenspiegel then lay with his ear against the ground. A peasant came by.

"Dost thou hear any noise from below?" he said.

"Aye," replied Ulenspiegel, "I hear the wood growing, the wood whose faggots will serve to burn poor heretics."

"Dost thou hear naught else?" said a constable of the commune to him.

"I hear," said Ulenspiegel, "the gendarmerie coming from Spain; if thou hast aught to keep, bury it, for soon the towns will be safe no longer by reason of robbers."

"He is mad," said the constable.

"He is mad," repeated the townsfolk.

XIV

Meanwhile, Lamme could not eat, thinking of the sweet vision of the stairs at the Blauwe-Lanteern. His heart turning to Bruges, he was led perforce by Ulenspiegel to Antwerp, where he continued his sorrowful searchings.

Ulenspiegel being in the taverns, in the midst of good Flemings of the reformed faith, or even Catholics that were lovers of liberty, would say to them about the proclamations: "They bring us the Inquisition under pretext of purging us from heresy, but it is meant for our purses, this rhubarb. We have no love to be physicked save at our own will and as we choose; we shall be wroth, we shall rebel and take arms in our hands. The king knew this well beforehand. Seeing that we have no mind to rhubarb, he will advance the syringes, to wit the great guns and the little guns, serpents, falconets, and mortars with their big mouths. A kingly clyster! There will not be left a single rich Fleming in all Flanders physicked in this fashion. Happy is our land to have so royal a physician."

But the townsfolk could only laugh.

Ulenspiegel would say: "Laugh to-day, but flee or arm on that day when something is broken at Notre Dame."

XV

On the 15th of August, the great feast of Mary and of the blessing of herbs and roots, when filled with corn the hens are deaf to the bugle of the cock imploring love, a great stone crucifix was broken at one of the gates of Antwerp by an Italian in the pay of the Cardinal de Granvelle, and the procession of the Virgin, preceded by fools in green, in yellow, and in red, came forth out of the church of Notre Dame.

But the Virgin's statue, having been insulted on the way by men whom no one knew, was hastily taken back into the choir of the church, the iron gates of which were shut.

Ulenspiegel and Lamme went into Notre Dame. Young beggars and ragamuffins, and some grown men among them, that nobody knew were in front of the choir, making certain signs and grimaces one to another. They were making a great din with feet and tongues. No one had seen them before in Antwerp, no one ever saw them again. One of them, with a face like a burned onion, asked if Mieke, that was Our Lady, had been afraid that she had gone back to the church in such a hurry.

"It is not of thee that she is afeared, ugly blackamoor," replied Ulenspiegel.

The young man to whom he spoke went up to him, to beat him, but Ulenspiegel, gripping him by the collar:

"If you strike me," said he, "I will make you spew out your tongue."

Then turning towards certain men of Antwerp that were present:

"Signorkes and pagaders," said he, pointing out the ragged young men, "be cautious, these are spurious Flemings, traitors paid to bring us to ill, to misery, and to ruin."

Then speaking to the strangers:

"Hey," said he, "donkey faces, withered with want, whence have ye the money that chinks to-day in your pouches? Have ye perchance sold your skins beforehand for drumheads?"

"Look at the sermonizer!" said the strangers.

Then they all began to shout together with one accord speaking of Our Lady:

"Mieke has a fine robe. Mieke has a fine crown! I will give them to my doxy."

They went away, while one of them had got up into a pulpit to proclaim insulting and outrageous things from it, and they came back crying:

"Come down, Mieke, come down before we go and fetch you. Perform a miracle, that we may see if you can walk as well as you can have Mieke carried about, the lazy thing!"

But Ulenspiegel cried in vain: "Workers of ruin, have done with your vile talk; all pillage is a crime!" They ceased not at all from their talk; and some spoke even of breaking into the choir to force Mieke to come down.

Hearing this, an old woman, who sold candles in the church, flung in their faces the ashes of her foot warmer; but she was beaten and flung down on the floor, and then the riot began.

The markgrave came to the church with his sergeants. Seeing the populace assembled, he exhorted them to leave the church, but so feebly that only a few went away; the others said:

"First we want to hear the canons singing vespers in honour of Mieke."

The markgrave replied:

"There shall be no singing."

"We will sing ourselves," answered the ragged strangers.

Which they did in the naves and near the porch of the church. Some played at Krieke-steenen, at cherry-stones, and said: "Mieke, you never game in paradise and you are bored there; play with us."

And insulting the statue without ceasing, they cried out, hooted and whistled.

The markgrave pretended to be afraid and departed. By his orders all the doors of the church were shut save one.

Without the populace having any hand in it, the ragtag and bobtail of the strangers became bolder and shouted more and more. And the roofs reëchoed as though to the din of a hundred cannon.

One of them, he of the face like a burned onion, appearing to have some authority among them, got up into a pulpit, made a sign with his hand to them, and began to preach:

"In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," said he: "the three making but one, and the one making three, God keep us in paradise from arithmetic; this day the twenty-ninth of August, Mieke went forth in great pomp of array to show her wooden face to the signorkes and pagaders of Antwerp. But Mieke, in the procession met the devil Satanas. And Satanas said to her, mocking her: 'There you are, high and mighty, prinked up like a queen, Mieke, and borne by four signorkes, and you will not look now at the poor pagader Satanas that makes his way on foot.' And Mieke answered: 'Begone, Satanas, or I bruise thy head still more than ever, foul serpent!' 'Mieke,' said Satanas, 'that is the task in which you have been spending your time for fifteen hundred years, but the Spirit of the Lord, your master, hath delivered me. I am stronger than you are; you shall not walk over my head any more, and I am going to make you dance now.' Satanas took a great whip, sharp and cutting, and started to flog Mieke, who dared not cry out for fear of showing her terror, and then she began to run as hard as she could, forcing the signorkes that were carrying her to run, too, so as not to let her fall with her gold crown and her jewels among the poor common folk. And now Mieke stays as stiff and as still as a frightened mouse in her niche, watching Satan, who is seated up at the top of the pillar under the little dome, and who says to her, still grasping his whip and grinning, 'I will make you pay for the blood and tears that flow in your name! Mieke, how goes your virgin birth? This is the time to flit. You shall be cut in twain, evil statue of wood, for all the statues of flesh and bone that were burned in your name, burned, hanged, buried alive without pity.' So spake Satanas; and he spoke well. And thou must come down from thy niche, bloody Mieke, Mieke the cruel, that wast in no way like thy son Christus."

And all the band of the strangers, hooting and crying out, shouted: "Mieke! Mieke! it is time to come out! Are you wetting your linen for fear in your niche? Up Brabant for the good Duke. Away with the wooden saints! Who will have a bath in the Scheldt! Wood swims better than fishes."

The populace listened to them without saying a word.

But Ulenspiegel, getting up into the pulpit, threw down the stair by main force the one that was haranguing.

"Fools fit to tie," he said, speaking to the populace; "lunatic fools, idiot fools, who see no further than the end of your dirty noses, do ye not see that all this is the work of traitors? They mean to make you commit sacrilege and pillage that they may declare you rebels, empty your coffers, cut off your heads, and burn you alive! And the king will inherit. Signorkes and pagaders, do not believe in the speeches of these artificers of woes: leave Notre Dame in her niche, live stoutly, working happily, spending your earnings and profits. The black devil of ruin has his eye upon you, and it is through sackings and destruction that he will call up the army of your foes to treat you as rebels and make Alba reign over you with dictatorship, inquisition, confiscation, and death."

"And he will inherit!"

"Alas," said Lamme, "do not pillage anything, signorkes and pagaders; the king is already very angry. The daughter of the embroideress told my friend Ulenspiegel so. Do not indulge in pillage, sirs!"

But the populace would not give ear to them.

The unknown kept shouting:

"Sack and turn out! Sack Brabant for the good Duke! To the river with wooden saints! They swim better than fishes!"

Ulenspiegel, still in the pulpit, cried in vain:

"Signorkes and pagaders do not suffer pillage! Do not call down ruin upon the town!"

He was plucked away from there all torn, face, doublet, and breeches, though he avenged himself with both feet and hands. And all bleeding he never ceased to cry out:

"Do not suffer pillage!"

But it was in vain.

The unknown and the ragtag and bobtail of the city flung themselves on the iron grille of the choir, which they broke through, crying:

"Long live the Beggar!"

They all set to work to break, sack, destroy. Before midnight this great church, in which there were seventy altars, every kind of noble paintings and precious things, was empty as a nut. The altars were broken, the images flung down, and all the locks smashed.

This being done, the same unknown set off to treat like Notre Dame, the Minor Brothers, the Franciscans, Saint Peter, Saint Andrew, Saint Michael, Saint Pierre-au-Pot, the Bourg, the Fawkens, the White Sisters, the Gray Sisters, the Third Order, the Preachers, and all the churches and chapels in the city. They took candles and torches out of them and ran around everywhere in this manner.

Among them there was no quarrel nor dispute; not one of them was hurt in that great demolishing of wood and other materials.

They betook themselves to The Hague to proceed there to the overthrow of statues and altars, without the reformed lending them any aid either there or elsewhere.

At The Hague, the magistrate asked them where was their commission.

"It is here," said one of them, striking upon his heart.

"Their commission, hear you, signorkes and pagaders?" said Ulenspiegel, having been informed of this. "So then there is someone who deputes them to this work of sacrilege. Let some robber thief come into my cottage; I will do as did the magistrate of The Hague, I will say, taking off my bonnet: 'Gentle robber, gracious rogue, worshipful rascal, show me your commission.' He will reply that it is in his heart that is greedy for my goods. And I shall give him the keys of everything. Seek, seek out who it is that profits by this pillage. Beware of the Red Dog. The great stone crucifix is flung down. Beware of the Red Dog!"

The Great Sovereign Council of Malines having given orders through its president Viglius, not to put any obstacle in the way of image breaking:--"Alas!" said Ulenspiegel, "the harvest is ripe for the Spanish reapers. The Duke! the Duke is marching upon you. Flemings, the sea rises, the sea of vengeance. Poor women and girls, flee the living grave! Poor men, flee the gallows, the fire, and the sword! Philip means to finish the bloody work of Charles. The father sowed death and exile, the son hath sworn that he would rather rule over a cemetery than over a heretic folk. Flee; here be the executioner and the gravediggers."

The populace hearkened to Ulenspiegel, and families left the cities by hundreds, and the roads were encumbered with carts laden with the household stuff of those that were going into exile.

And Ulenspiegel went everywhere, followed by Lamme grieving and looking for his beloved.

And at Damme Nele wept by the side of Katheline the madwife.

XVI

Ulenspiegel being at Ghent in the barley month which is October, saw Egmont returning from revelling and feasting in the noble company of the Abbot of Saint Bavon. Being in a singing humour, he was absentmindedly allowing his horse to go at a foot pace. Suddenly he saw a man who, carrying a lighted lantern, was walking alongside him.

"What wouldst thou of me?" asked Egmont.

"Good," replied Ulenspiegel, "the good of a lantern when it is lit."

"Begone and leave me," replied the Count.

"I will not begone," rejoined Ulenspiegel.

"Wouldst thou have a stroke of the whip then?"

"I would willingly have ten, if I can put in your head such a lantern that you might see clear from here to the Escurial."

"I take no stock in thy lantern nor in the Escurial," replied the Count.

"Well, for my part," answered Ulenspiegel, "it burns in me to give you a good advice."

Then taking by the bridle the Count's horse, rearing and kicking:

"Monseigneur," said he, "think that now you dance well on your horse and that your head dances also very well upon your shoulders; but the king, they say, means to interrupt this fine dance, to leave you your body, but to take your head and make it dance in a land so far away that you will never be able to overtake it. Give me a florin, I have earned it."

"The whip, if thou wilt not be off, evil newsmonger."

"Monseigneur, I am Ulenspiegel, the son of Claes, that was burned alive for his belief and of Soetkin that died of sorrow. The ashes beating upon my breast tell me that Egmont, the gallant soldier, might with the gendarmerie in his command oppose the thrice-victorious troops of the Duke of Alba."

"Begone," replied Egmont, "I am no traitor."

"Save the countries; you alone can save them," said Ulenspiegel.

The Count would have beaten Ulenspiegel; but he had not waited for this and fled away, crying:

"Eat lanterns, eat lanterns, Messire Count. Save the countries."

Another day, Egmont being athirst had stopped in front of the inn In 't bondt verken, the Piebald Pig--kept by a woman of Courtrai, a pretty piece, called Musekin, the Little Mouse.

The Count, rising up in his stirrups, cried out:

"Bring me to drink!"

Ulenspiegel, who was in Musekin's service, came up to the Count holding a pewter tankard in one hand and in the other a flask of red wine.

The Count, seeing him:

"Are you there," said he, "ill-omened raven?"

"Monseigneur," answered Ulenspiegel, "if my omens are black, 'tis because they are ill washen; but will you tell me which is the redder, the wine that goes down the throat or the blood that leaps out of the neck? That is what my lantern asked."

The Count made no answer, but paid and departed.

XVII

Ulenspiegel and Lamme, each mounted on an ass, which Simon Simonsen had given them, one of the faithfuls of the Prince of Orange, went everywhere, warning the burgesses of the black designs of the king of blood, and ever on the watch to discover news coming from Spain.

They sold vegetables, being clad like country folk, and haunted all the markets.

Coming back from the Brussels market, they saw in a stone house, on the Brick Quay, in a low chamber, a handsome dame clad in satin, high coloured, well bosomed, and with a lively eye.

She was saying to a fresh young cookmaid:

"Scour me this pan, I do not like rust sauce."

Ulenspiegel put his nose in at the window.

"I," said he, "I like every sauce, for a hungry belly is no great picker and chooser among fricassees."

The dame turning round:

"Who," said she, "is this fellow that interferes with my soup?"

"Alas! fair dame," answered Ulenspiegel, "if you would only make it in my company, I would teach you travellers' stews unknown to fair dames that sit at home."

Then clacking with his tongue, he said:

"I am thirsty."

"For what?" said she.

"For thee," said he.

"He is a pretty fellow," said the cookmaid to the dame. "Let us bring him in and let him tell us his adventures."

"But there are two of them," said the dame.

"I will look after one," replied the maid.

"Madame," said Ulenspiegel, "we are two, it is true, myself and my poor Lamme, who cannot carry five pounds on his back, but carries five hundred on his stomach in meats and drinks with the best will in the world."

"My son," said Lamme, "do not mock at an unhappy man to whom it costs so much to fill his paunch."

"It will not cost thee a liard to-day," said the dame. "Come within, both of you."

"But," said Lamme, "there are also two asses upon which we are."

"Pecks of corn," replied the dame, "are nowise lacking in the stable of the Count of Meghem."

The cookmaid left her pan and drew into the yard Ulenspiegel and Lamme bestriding their asses, which began to bray incontinent.

"That," said Ulenspiegel, "is the flourish for food near at hand. They are trumpeting their joy, the poor asses!"

And having both dismounted, Ulenspiegel said to the cookmaid:

"If you were a she-ass, would you like an ass like me?"

"If I was a woman," she replied, "I should like a young man with a jolly face."

"What are you, then, being neither woman nor ass?" asked Lamme.

"A virgin," quoth she, "a virgin is neither woman nor ass either: do you understand, big belly?"

Ulenspiegel said to Lamme:

"Do not believe her, 'tis half a wild girl and quarter of two she-devils. Her carnal tricks have already bespoken for her in hell a place on a mattress to fondle Beelzebub."

"Evil mocker," said the cook, "if your hairs were horsehair I would not have them even to walk on them."

"For my part," said Ulenspiegel, "I would like to eat all your hair."

"Golden tongue," said the dame, "must you have them all?"

"No," replied Ulenspiegel, "a thousand would suffice me melted down into one like you."

The dame said to him:

"Drink first a quart of bruinbier, eat a piece of ham, cut deep into this leg of mutton, disembowel me this pie, swallow me this salad."

Ulenspiegel joined his hands.

"Ham," said he, "is a good meat; bruinbier, heavenly beer; leg of mutton, divine flesh; a pie that one disembowels makes one's tongue tremble with pleasure in the mouth; a fat salad is princely swallowing. But blessed will he be to whom you will give to sup on your beauty."

"See how he rattles on," said she. "Eat first of all, vagabond!"

Ulenspiegel replied:

"Shall we not say the benedicite before the graces?"

"No," said she.

Then Lamme, whining, said:

"I am hungry."

"You shall eat," said the fair dame, "since you have no other care than for cooked meat."

"And fresh, too, as my wife was," said Lamme. The cookmaid became sullen at this word. All the same they ate copiously and drank in floods. And the dame that night gave Ulenspiegel his supper, and next day and the days that followed.

The asses had double measure of corn and Lamme a double portion. For a whole week he never left the kitchen, and he played with the dishes, but not with the cook, for he thought of his wife.

That angered the girl, who said it was hardly worth while to cumber the world only to think of one's belly.

Meanwhile, Ulenspiegel and the dame lived in good amity. And one day she said to him:

"Thyl, thou hast no manners: who art thou?"

"I am," said he, "a son that Happy Chance had one day on Good Adventure."

"Thou dost not missay thyself," said she.

"'Tis for fear others may not praise me," replied Ulenspiegel.

"Wouldst thou undertake the defence of thy brothers that are persecuted?"

"The ashes of Claes beat upon my breast," replied Ulenspiegel.

"How goodly thou art there!" said she. "Who is this Claes?"

Ulenspiegel replied:

"My father, burned for his belief."

"The Count of Meghem is not like thee," she said. "He would bleed the country I love, for I was born at Antwerp the glorious city. Know then that he has accorded with the Councillor Scheyf of Brabant to admit him into Antwerp with his ten companies of infantry."

"I will denounce him to the citizens," said Ulenspiegel, "and I go immediately, light as a ghost."

He went, and on the morrow the townsfolk were in arms.

However, Ulenspiegel and Lamme, having left their asses with a farmer of Simon Simonsen's, were forced to hide for fear of the Count de Meghem who had them searched for everywhere to have them hanged; for he had been told that two heretics had drunk of his wine and eaten of his meat.

He was jealous, and said so to the fair dame, who gnashed her teeth with anger, wept, and fainted seventeen times. The cookmaid did the same, but not so often, and declared upon her share of Paradise and eternal salvation that she nor her lady had done nothing, except to give the remains of a dinner to two poor pilgrims who, mounted on wretched donkeys, had stopped at the kitchen window.

And that day there were shed so many tears that the floor was all damp with them. Seeing which, Messire de Meghem was assured that they were not lying.

Lamme dared not show himself again at M. de Meghem's house, for the cook always called him "My wife!"

And he was exceedingly grieved, thinking of the food; but Ulenspiegel always brought him some good dish, for he used to go into the house by the rue Sainte Catherine and hide in the garret.

The next day, at vespers, the Count de Meghem confessed to the handsome goodwife how that he had determined to fetch the gendarmerie he commanded into Bois-le-Duc before daybreak. The goodwife went to the garret to recount this to Ulenspiegel.

XVIII

Ulenspiegel in pilgrim's robes set out incontinent with neither provisions nor money for Bois-le-Duc, in order to warn the citizens. He counted on taking a horse by the way at Jeroen Praet's, Simon's brother, for whom he had letters from the Prince, and from thence he would go full speed by cross-country ways to Bois-le-Duc.

Going along the highway, he saw a band of troopers coming. He was sore afraid because of the letters.

But, resolved to set a good face against misadventure, he waited the troopers stoutly, and stopped in the way muttering his paternosters; when they passed he marched with them, and learned that they were going to Bois-le-Duc.

A company of Walloons opened the march, and at the head was Captain Lamotte with his guard of six halberdiers; then according to their rank, the ensign with a smaller guard, the provost, his halberdiers and his two myrmidons, the chief of the watch, the baggage wardens, the executioner and his assistant, and fifes and tambourines making loud uproar.

Then came a Flemish company of two hundred men, with its captain and its standard bearer, and divided into two centuries commanded by the troop sergeants, and in decuries commanded by the rot-meesters. The provost and the stocks-knechten were likewise preceded by fifes and tambourines beating and squealing.

Behind them came, with bursts of laughter, twittering like warblers, singing like nightingales, eating, drinking, dancing, standing, lying, or riding, their women; handsome wild girls, in two open carts.

Some were clad like lansquenets, but in fine white linen low-necked, slashed on the arms, the legs, the doublet, showing their sweet flesh; with caps on their heads of fine linen edged with gold, and surmounted by handsome ostrich plumes floating in the wind. At their belts of cloth-of-gold touched off with red satin, hung the cloth-of-gold scabbards of their daggers. And their shoes, stockings, and breeches, their doublets, laces, and metal trappings were all made of gold and white silk.

Others were also clad in the fashion of landsknechts, but in blue, in green, in scarlet, in azure, in crimson, slashed, broidered, blazoned at their own caprice. And all wore upon their arm the armlet of the colour that indicated their profession.

A hoer-wyfel, their sergeant, would fain have made them keep silence; but by their captivating grimaces and speeches they forced him to laugh and never obeyed him at all.

Ulenspiegel, in pilgrim array, walked in company with the two troops, as a small boat might with a great ship. And he kept on murmuring his paternosters.

Suddenly Lamotte said to him:

"Whither art thou going thus, Pilgrim?"

"Master Captain," replied Ulenspiegel, who was hungry, "long ago I committed a grave sin and was condemned by the chapter of Notre Dame to go a-foot to Rome to ask for pardon from the Holy Father, who accorded it to me. I came back to these countries cleansed of my offence on condition that on the way I should preach the Sacred Mysteries to all and any soldiers I might meet with, who should in return for my sermons give me bread and meat. And thus preaching I sustain my poor life. Will you grant me permission to keep my vow at the next halt?"

"Yea," said Messire de Lamotte.

Ulenspiegel, mingling and fraternizing with the Walloons and Flemings, felt his letters underneath his doublet.

The girls cried out to him:

"Pilgrim, handsome pilgrim, come hither and show us the power of your scallops."

Ulenspiegel, drawing near to them, said modestly:

"My sisters in God, mock not ye the poor pilgrim who goeth over mountain and by vale to preach the holy faith unto soldiers."

And he devoured with his eyes their dainty charms.

But the girls, thrusting their sprightly faces into the openings in the canvas of the carts:

"You are very young," said they, "to preach to soldiers. Come up into our carts, we will teach you pleasant discourses."

Ulenspiegel would willingly have obeyed, but could not on account of his letters; already two of the girls, reaching their round white arms out of the cart, were trying to pull him up to them, when the hoer-wyfel, jealous, said to Ulenspiegel: "If you do not take yourself off, I will have your head off."

And Ulenspiegel went farther off, looking slyly at the fresh girls, all golden in the sun, which shone bright and clear on the road.

They came to Berchem. Philippe de Lannoy, sieur de Beauvoir, the commander of the Flemings, ordered them to halt.

At this place there was an oak of middle height, bereft of all its branches, except one big bough broken off halfway on which the month before there had been an Anabaptist hanged by the neck.

The soldiers stopped; the sutlers came to them, and sold them bread, wine, beer, meats of every kind. As for the girls, they sold them sugar, castrelins, almonds, tartlets, seeing which Ulenspiegel grew still hungrier.

Suddenly climbing up the tree like a monkey, he planted himself astride of the great bough that was some seven feet above the earth; there, lashing himself with a scourge, while the troopers and the girls made circle about him:

"In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," said he. "Amen. It is written: 'He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord': soldiers, and ye, beauteous dames, sweet companions in love to these valiant warriors, lend ye to the Lord, which is to say: give me bread, meat, wine, beer, if ye will, tartlets if it please you, and God, who is rich, will repay it you in morsels of ortolans, in rivers of malvoisie, in mountains of sugar candy, in rystpap which ye shall eat in paradise with silver spoons."

Then bemoaning himself:

"See ye not with what cruel torments of penance I seek to merit forgiveness for my sins? Will ye not ease the sharp anguish of this scourge that woundeth my back and maketh me to bleed?"

"Who is this mad man?" said the troopers.

"Friends," answered Ulenspiegel, "I am not mad, but repentant and famished; for while my spirit weepeth for its guilty crimes, my belly weepeth its lack of meat. Blessed soldiers, and you, fair damsels, I see there among you fat ham, goose, sausages, wine, beer, tartlets. Will you not give somewhat to the pilgrim?"

"Aye, aye," said the Flemish troopers, "he has a good old phiz, the preacher."

And all began to throw pieces of food to him like balls. Ulenspiegel ceased not to talk, and went on eating, sitting astride the bough.

"Hunger," said he, "maketh man hard-hearted and unfit for prayer, but ham taketh away this evil humour all of a sudden."

"Look out, crackpot!" said a troop sergeant, throwing him a bottle half full.

Ulenspiegel caught the bottle in the air, and drinking by little sips, said:

"If a sharp and raging hunger is a thing harmful to the poor body of a man, there is another thing as hurtful, and that is the anguish of a poor pilgrim to whom generous soldiers have given, one a slice of ham, the others a bottle of beer. For the pilgrim is sober by his custom, and if he drank and had in his inside such scanty and trifling nourishment, he would be drunk immediately."

As he spoke, he caught once again a goose's thigh in the air.

"This," said he, "is a thing miraculous, to fish meadow fish out of the air. But it has disappeared, bone and all. What is greedier than dry sand? A barren woman and a famished stomach."

Suddenly he felt a halberd point prick him in the seat. And he heard an ensign say:

"Do pilgrims disdain a leg of mutton for the nonce?"

Ulenspiegel saw, spitted on the blade of the halberd, a big knuckle bone. Taking it he said:

"I will make a marrow flute of it to sing thy praises, compassionate halberdier. And yet," said he, eating at the knuckle bone, "what is a meal without dessert, what is a knuckle bone, however succulent, if after it the pilgrim doth not behold a tartlet displaying its blessed face?"

Saying this he put up his hand to his face, for two tartlets coming from the group of girls had flattened themselves out, one on his eye, the other on his cheek. And the girls laughed and Ulenspiegel answered:

"All thanks, sweet damsels, who give me accolades of sweetmeats."

But the tartlets had fallen to the ground.

Suddenly the drums beat, the fifes squealed, and the soldiers resumed their march.

Messire de Beauvoir bade Ulenspiegel come down from his tree and march beside the troop from which he would fain have been a hundred leagues, for from the talk of some sour-faced troopers he scented that they were suspicious of him, that they would before long seize him for a spy, would search him and hang him if they found his letters.

And so, letting himself tumble into a ditch, he cried:

"Pity, soldiers; my leg is broken, I cannot walk farther, let me get up into the women's cart."

But he knew that the jealous hoer-wyfel would never allow it.

The girls called to him from their cart:

"Now, come up, dear pilgrim, come. We will love you, caress you, feast you, heal you all in one day."

"I know," said he, "a woman's hand is a heavenly balm for every wound."

But the jealous hoer-wyfel, speaking to Messire de Lamotte:

"Messire," said he, "I believe that this pilgrim is fooling us with his broken leg, to get into the cart of the women. Give orders to leave him in the road."

"That is my will," said Messire de Lamotte.

And Ulenspiegel was left in the ditch.

Certain troopers, believing that he had really broken his leg, were sorry for it because of his jollity. They left him meat and wine enough for two days. The girls would fain have gone to help him, but not being able to, they threw him all the castrelins they had left.

The band was far away; Ulenspiegel made across the fields in his pilgrim's robes, bought a horse, and by highways and byways he came like the wind to Bois-le-Duc.

At the news of the coming of Messires de Beauvoir and de Lamotte, the townspeople took arms to the number of eight hundred, chose captains for them, and despatched Ulenspiegel to Antwerp disguised as a coalman to ask help from the Drinking Hercules, Brederode.

And the troopers of Messires de Lamotte and de Beauvoir could not come into Bois-le-Duc, a city armed and watchful, and ready for a stout defence.

XIX

The following month, a certain doctor, Agileus, gave Ulenspiegel two florins and letters with which he was to betake himself to Simon Praet, who would tell him what he had to do.

At Praet's, Ulenspiegel found food and shelter. He slept well, and well liking was his face in the flower of youth; Praet, on the contrary, with a wretched and pitiful mien, seemed for ever locked in with melancholy thoughts. And Ulenspiegel was astonished to hear by night, if by any chance he awoke, the noise of hammering.

However early he might rise, Simon Praet was up before him, and more pitiful his look, sadder still his eyes, gleaming like a man's making ready for death or for battle.

Often Praet sighed, clasping his hands for prayer, and ever seemed filled with indignation. His fingers were black and greasy, and so, too, were his arms and his shirt.

Ulenspiegel determined to discover whence came the hammering, and the black arms and the melancholy of Praet. One night, having been at the Blauwe Gans, the tavern of the Blue Goose, in company with Simon who was there against his will, he feigned to be so drunk and to have so much in his head that he must needs take it incontinently to his pillow.

And Praet brought him home mournfully.

Ulenspiegel slept in the garret, under the cats; Simon's bed was below, near the cellar.

Ulenspiegel, continuing his drunken feigning, went climbing staggering up the stairs, pretending to be about to fall and holding on by the rope. Simon helped him with tender care, like a brother. Having put him to bed, condoling with him for his drunkenness, and praying God to be good enough to forgive him, he came down, and soon Ulenspiegel heard the same noise of hammering that had awakened him many times.

Getting up noiselessly, he went barefoot down the narrow stairs, so that after two and seventy steps he found himself in front of a low little door, through the chinks of which filtered a thread of light.

Simon was printing broadsides on the old types of the time of Laurens Coster, the great fosterer of the noble art of printing.

"What dost thou there?" asked Ulenspiegel.

Simon answered in affright:

"If thou art on the devil's side, denounce me, that I may die; but if thou art on God's side let thy mouth be prison to thy tongue."

"I am on God's side," replied Ulenspiegel, "and wish thee no evil. What dost thou?"

"I am printing Bibles," answered Simon. "For if by day to keep my wife and my children I publish the cruel and wicked edicts of His Majesty, by night I sow the true word of God and thus repair the ill I did during the day."

"Thou art brave," said Ulenspiegel.

"I have the faith," replied Simon.

In very deed, it was from this holy printing shop that there issued the Bibles in Flemish that were distributed through the countries of Brabant, of Flanders, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Noord-Brabant, Over-Yssel, Gelderland, until the day when Simon was condemned to have his head cut off, thus finishing his life for Christ.

XX

Simon said one day to Ulenspiegel:

"Listen, brother, hast thou courage?"

"I have enough," replied Ulenspiegel, "to serve to flog a Spaniard to the death, to kill an assassin, to destroy a murderer."

"Could you," asked the printer, "stay patiently in a chimney place to hear what is said in a room?"

Ulenspiegel made answer:--"Having by the grace of God, strong loins and supple knees, I can stay a long while as I please, like a cat."

"Hast thou patience and a good memory?" asked Simon.

"The ashes of Claes beat upon my breast," answered Ulenspiegel.

"Hearken, then," said the printer; "you shall take this playing card folded in this wise, and you shall go to Dendermonde and knock twice loudly and once softly at the door of the house whose outward appearance is here limned. One will open to you and ask if you are the chimney sweeper; you shall answer that you are thin and that you have not lost the card. You shall then show him the card. And then, Thyl, you shall do your duty. Great woes hover above the land of Flanders. A chimney will be shown to you, prepared and swept in advance; you will find in it good climbing irons for your feet, and for your seat a little wooden board firmly stayed. When the one that opened the door to you bids you climb into the chimney, you shall do so, and there you shall remain quiet and still. Illustrious lords will meet within the chamber, before the chimney in which you will be. They are William the Silent, Prince of Orange, the Counts of Egmont, Hoorn, Hoogstraeten, and Ludwig of Nassau, the valiant brother of the Silent One. We of the reformed faith would know what these lords will and can undertake in order to save the country."

Now on the first of April Ulenspiegel did as he had been bidden, and posted himself in the chimney. He was satisfied to see that no fire burned in it, and thought that, having no smoke, he would thus have better hearing.

Presently, the door of the chamber opened, and he was pierced through and through by a gust of wind. But he took this wind patiently, saying that it would freshen his attentiveness.

Then he heard the lords of Orange, Egmont, and the others come into the chamber. They began to speak of their fears, of the king's anger and the bad administration of the public moneys and finances. One of them spoke in sharp, haughty clear tones; that was Egmont. Ulenspiegel recognized Hoogstraeten by his hoarse voice; De Hoorn by his big voice; Count Louis of Nassau by his firm and warrior-like speaking; and the Silent One, by his pronouncing all his words slowly as if he had first weighed every one in a balance.

The Count of Egmont asked why they were brought together a second time, while at Hellegat they had had leisure to determine on what they meant to do.

De Hoorn replied:

"The hours go by swiftly, the king grows angry; let us take care not to waste time."

The Silent One said then:

"The countries are in danger; we must defend them against the attack of an army of foreigners."

Egmont replied, growing angry, that he found it astonishing that the king his master should think it necessary to send an army there, at a time when all was pacified by the care of the lords and especially by himself.

But the Silent:

"Philip hath in the Low Countries fourteen bands of regulars, of whom all the soldiers are devoted to him who commanded at Gravelines and at Saint Quentin."

"I do not understand," said Egmont.

The prince went on:

"I do not wish to say more, but there will be read to you and the assembled lords certain letters, those from the poor prisoner Montigny to begin with.

"In these letters, Messire de Montigny wrote:

"'The king is exceeding wroth at what has come to pass in the Low Countries, and he will punish the abettors of trouble at a given hour.'"

Herewith the Count of Egmont said that he was cold and that it would be well to light a great fire of wood. That was done while the two lords discussed the letters.

The fire did not catch because of the over-great stopper that was in the chimney, and the chamber was filled with smoke.

The Count of Hoogstraeten then read, coughing, the intercepted letters of Alava, the Spanish Ambassador, addressed to the Lady Governor.

"The Ambassador," said he, "writes that all the ill that has befallen the Low Countries has come from the doings of three men: to wit, Orange, Egmont, and Hoorn. We must, says the Ambassador, show a fair face to these three lords and tell them that the king recognizes that he holds these countries in his obedience through their services. As for the two single ones, Montigny and De Berghes, they are in the place where they ought to be."

"Ah," said Ulenspiegel, "I like better a smoky chimney in Flanders than a cool, airy prison in Spain: for garrottes spring up out of the damp walls."

"The said Ambassador adds that the king said in the city of Madrid:

"'By all that hath come to pass in the Low Countries our royal reputation is diminished, the service of God is disparaged, and we shall rather expose all our other lands than leave such a rebellion unpunished. We are determined to go in person to the Low Countries and to request the help of the Pope and of the Emperor. Under the present evil lies the future good. We will reduce the Low Countries under our absolute sway, and will change and modify to our mind state, religion, and government.'"

"Ah! Philip King," said Ulenspiegel to himself, "if I could in my mode modify thee, thou shouldst undergo a great modification of thy thighs, arms, and legs under my Flemish cudgel; I should fasten thy head in the middle of thy back with two nails to see whether in that state, looking at the graveyard thou leavest behind thee, thou wouldst sing in thine own fashion thy song of tyrannical modifying."

Wine was brought in. D'Hoogstraeten rose and said: "I drink to the countries!" All followed his example, and putting his tankard down empty on the table, he added: "The evil hour strikes for the Belgian nobles. We must take thought for means of defending ourselves."

Waiting for an answer, he looked at Egmont, who uttered not a word.

But the Silent One spoke: "We will resist," said he, "if Egmont who twice, at Saint Quentin and at Gravelines, made France tremble, who has all authority over the Flemish soldiers, will come to our rescue and prevent the Spaniard from coming into our countries."

Messire d'Egmont replied: "I think of the king with too much respect to believe that we must arm ourselves like rebels against him. Let those who fear his anger draw back. I will remain, having no way of living save by his help."

"Philip may take cruel vengeance," said the Silent.

"I have complete trust!" answered Egmont.

"Your head included?" asked Ludwig of Nassau.

"Included," replied Egmont, "head, body, and loyal devotion, which are his."

"Trusty and well-beloved, I will do even as thou," said De Hoorn. Said the Silent:

"We must foresee and not wait."

Then Messire d'Egmont, speaking vehemently, "I have," said he, "had two and twenty reformed hanged at Grammont. If the preachings come to an end, if the image breakers are punished, the king's anger will be appeased."

The Silent replied:

"There are hopes that are uncertain."

"Let us put on the armour of trust," said Egmont.

"Let us put on the armour of trust," said De Hoorn.

"It is iron we should arm with, not trust," replied D'Hoogstraeten.

Hereupon the Silent made a sign that he wished to go.

"Adieu, Prince without land!" said Egmont.

"Adieu, Count without a head!" replied the Silent. Ludwig of Nassau said then: "For the sheep the butcher, and glory for the soldier that is the saviour of the land of our fathers!"

"I cannot, and will not," said Egmont.

"Blood of the victims," said Ulenspiegel, "fall upon the head of the courtier!"

The lords withdrew.

Then Ulenspiegel came down out of his chimney and went immediately to bring the news to Praet. The latter said: "Egmont is a traitor, God is with the Prince."

The Duke! the Duke in Brussels! Where are the strong boxes that have wings?

END OF VOL. I

End of Project Gutenberg's The Legend of Ulenspiegel, by Charles de Coster