BOOK IV

I

Being at Heyst, upon the dunes, Ulenspiegel and Lamme see, coming from Ostend, from Blanckenberghe, from Knokke, many fishing boats full of armed men, adherents of the Beggars of Zealand, who wear in their headgear the silver crescent with this inscription: "Better to serve the Turk than the Pope."

Ulenspiegel is glad; he whistles like the lark; from all sides answers the warlike clarion of the cock.

The boats, sailing or fishing and selling their fish, come to land, one after the other, at Emden. There William of Blois is detained, who is equipping a ship under commission from the Prince of Orange.

Très-Long, having been at Emden for eleven weeks, was bitterly sick of waiting. He went from his ship to land and from the land to his ship, like a bear on a chain.

Ulenspiegel and Lamme, wandering about on the quays, saw there a lord of a jovial visage, somewhat melancholy and at a loss to heave up one of the paving-stones of the quay with a pikestaff. Not succeeding in this he still bent every effort to carry out his undertaking, while a dog gnawed at a bone behind him.

Ulenspiegel came to the dog and pretended to want to rob him of his bone. The dog growls; Ulenspiegel does not stop: the dog makes a great uproar of doggish wrath.

The lord, turning at the noise, said to Ulenspiegel:

"What good does it do thee to torment this beast?"

"What good does it do you, Messire, to torment this pavement?"

"It is not the same thing at all," said the lord.

"The difference is not extreme," replied Ulenspiegel; "if the dog sets store by his bone and wants to keep it, this pavement holds to its quay and is fain to remain on it. And it is the very least that folk like us may do, turning to busy ourselves about a dog when folk like you busy yourselves about a paving stone."

Lamme remained behind Ulenspiegel, not daring to speak.

"Who art thou?" asked the lord.

"I am Thyl Ulenspiegel, the son of Claes, who died in the flames for his faith."

And he whistled like the lark and the lord crowed like the cock.

"I am Admiral Très-Long," said he; "what wouldst thou with me?"

Ulenspiegel narrated to him his adventures, and gave him five hundred carolus.

"Who is this big man?" asked Très-Long, pointing a finger at Lamme.

"My comrade and friend," replied Ulenspiegel: "he desires, like myself, to sing on your ship, with the fine voice of a musket, the song of deliverance for the land of our fathers."

"Ye are brave men both," said Très-Long, "and ye shall go on my ship."

They were then in the month of February; sharp was the wind, keen the frost. After three weeks of grudging waiting Très-Long left Emden under protest. Thinking to enter the Texel, he went out from Vlie, but was forced to go in to Wieringen, where his ship was locked up in the ice.

Soon there was a merry spectacle all about: sledges and skaters all in velvet; women skating in jackets and skirts broidered with gold, pearl, scarlet, azure; lads and lasses went, came, glided, laughed, following one another in line, or two by two, in pairs, singing the song of love upon the ice, or going to eat and drink in booths decked out with flags, brandy, oranges, figs, peperkoek, schols, eggs, hot vegetables, and eete-koeken, which are pancakes and pickled vegetables, while all about them sleds and sailing sleighs made the ice cry out under their runners.

Lamme, seeking his wife, went wandering on skates like the jolly men and women, but he fell often.

Meanwhile, Ulenspiegel went to drink and to feed in a small inn on the quay where he had not to pay too dear for his daily rations; and he liked to talk with the old baesine.

One Sunday about nine he went in there asking them to give him his dinner.

"But," said he to a pretty woman coming forward to serve him, "baesine rejuvenated, what hast thou done with thy old wrinkles? Thy mouth hath all its teeth, white and girlish, and its lips are red as cherries. Is it for me, that soft and cunning smile?"

"No, no," said she; "but what must I give you?"

"Thyself," said he.

The woman answered:

"That would be too much for a starveling like you; would you not like other meat?"

Ulenspiegel making no reply:

"What have you done," she said, "with that handsome, well-made, corpulent man whom I often saw with you?"

"Lamme?" said he.

"What have you done with him?" she said.

Ulenspiegel replied:

"He eats, in the booths, hard eggs, smoked eels, salt fish, zuertjes, and all that he can put under his tooth; and all to look for his wife. Why art thou not his wife, pretty one? Wouldst thou like fifty florins? Wouldst thou like a gold necklace?"

But she, crossing herself:

"I am not to buy or to take," said she.

"Dost thou love naught?" said he.

"I love thee as my neighbour, but I love above all my Lord Christ and Madame the Virgin, who bid me live a chaste life. Hard and heavy are its duties, but God is our helper, we poor women. Yet there are some that succumb. Is thy big friend happy?"

Ulenspiegel replied:

"He is gay when he is eating, sad when fasting, and always pensive. But thou, art thou happy or sad?"

"We women," said she, "are slaves of that that rules us!"

"The moon?" said he.

"Aye," said she.

"I am going to tell Lamme to come to see thee."

"Do not so," said she; "he would weep and I in likewise."

"Didst thou ever see his wife?" asked Ulenspiegel.

Sighing, she answered:

"She sinned with him and was condemned to a cruel penance. She knows that he goeth on the sea for the triumph of heresy, and that is a hard thing for a Christian heart to think on. Defend him if he is attacked; care for him if he is wounded: his wife bade me make this request of you."

"Lamme is my brother and my friend," replied Ulenspiegel.

"Ah!" she said, "why do ye not return to the bosom of our Mother Holy Church?"

"She devours her children," answered Ulenspiegel.

And he went his way.

One morning in March, since the wind, that was blowing sharp and cutting, ceased not to thicken the ice, and Très-Long's ship could not leave, the sailors and the soldiers of the vessel were holding feasting and revel on sledges and on skates.

Ulenspiegel was at the inn, and the pretty woman said to him, all woeful and as if bereft of her wits:

"Poor Lamme! poor Ulenspiegel!"

"Why do you lament?" asked he.

"Alas! Alas!" said she, "why do ye not believe in the mass. Ye would go to paradise, without a doubt, and I could save you in this life."

Seeing her go to the door and listen attentively, Ulenspiegel said to her:

"It is not the snow falling that you are listening to?"

"No," said she.

"It is not the moaning wind that you give ear to?"

"No," she said again.

"Nor to the merry din that our valiant sailors are making in the tavern close by?"

"Death cometh as a thief," she said.

"Death!" said Ulenspiegel. "I do not understand thee; come inside and speak."

"They are there," she said.

"Who?"

"Who?" she answered. "The soldiers of Simonen-Bol, who are to come, in the name of the duke, to throw themselves on all of you; if you are so well treated here, it is like the bullocks that are meant for the slaughter. Ah! why," said she all in tears, "why did I not know it save but just now."

"Do not weep, nor cry out," said Ulenspiegel, "and stay where you are!"

"Do not betray me," said she.

Ulenspiegel went out from her house, ran, made his way to all the booths and taverns, whispering into the ears of the seamen and the soldiers these words: "The Spaniard is coming."

All ran to the ship, preparing with the utmost haste all that was needed for battle, and they awaited the enemy. Ulenspiegel said to Lamme:

"Seest thou yon pretty woman standing upon the quay, with her black dress embroidered with scarlet, and hiding her face under her white hood?"

"It is all one to me," replied Lamme. "I am cold; I want to sleep."

And he rolled his head up in his opperst-kleed. And like that he was as a man deaf.

Ulenspiegel then recognized the woman and called to her from the ship:

"Dost thou wish to follow us?"

"To the grave," said she, "but I cannot...."

"Thou wouldst do well," said Ulenspiegel; "yet think of this: when the nightingale stays in the forest, it is happy and sings; but if it leaves the forest and risks its little wings in the wind of the great sea, it breaks them and dies."

"I have sung in my house," said she, "and would sing outside if I could." Then drawing closer to the ship: "Take this ointment," she said, "for thyself and thy friend who sleeps when he should wake...."

And she went away saying:

"Lamme! Lamme! God keep thee from harm; come back safe."

And she uncovered her face.

"My wife, my wife!" cried Lamme.

And he would have leaped down on the ice.

"Thy faithful wife!" said she.

And she ran away swiftly.

Lamme would have leaped from off the deck down on the ice, but he was prevented by a soldier, who held him back by his opperst-kleed. He cried, wept, implored that he might be given leave to go. But the provost said to him:

"Thou shalt be hanged if thou dost leave the ship."

Again Lamme would have cast himself on the ice, but an old Beggar held him back, saying to him:

"The floor is damp, you might get your feet wet."

And Lamme fell on his behind, weeping and saying without ceasing:

"My wife, my wife! let me go to my wife!"

"Thou shalt see her again," said Ulenspiegel. "She loves thee, but she loves God more than thee."

"The mad she-devil," cried Lamme. "If she loves God more than her husband, why does she show herself to me lovely and desirable? And if she loves me, why does she leave me?"

"Dost thou see clear in a deep well?" asked Ulenspiegel.

"Alas!" said Lamme, "I shall die before long."

And he stayed upon the deck, livid and distraught.

Meanwhile, had come up the men of Simonen-Bol, with a great artillery.

They fired against the ship, which replied to them. And their cannon balls broke the ice all about it. Towards evening a warm rain fell.

The wind blowing from the west, the sea grew angry under the ice, and heaved it up in immense blocks, which were seen rising up on high, falling back again, clashing against one another, one mounting on top of another, not without peril to the ship, which when dawn broke through the clouds of night, opened out its canvas wings like a bird of freedom and sailed towards the free ocean.

There they joined up with the fleet of Messire de Lumey de la Marche, admiral of Holland and Zealand, and chief and captain-general, and as such carrying a lantern at his ship's peak.

"Look well at him, my son," said Ulenspiegel; "that one will never spare thee, if thou shouldst wish to leave the ship against orders. Hearest thou his voice breaking forth like thunder? See how broad and strong he is in his great stature! Look at his long hands with the crooked nails! See his round eyes, eagle eyes and cold, and his long pointed beard that he means to leave to grow until he has hanged all the monks and priests to avenge the death of the two counts! See him redoubtable and cruel; he will have thee hanged high on a short rope, if thou dost continue to whine and cry always: 'My wife!'"

"My son," replied Lamme, "he that talks of a halter for his neighbour has already the hempen cravat on his own neck."

"Thou thyself shalt be the first to wear it. Such is my vow as a friend," said Ulenspiegel.

"I shall see thee on the gallows," replied Lamme, "thrust out thy poisonous tongue a fathom out of thy mouth."

And both were in mere jest.

On that day Très-Long's ship took a ship from Biscay laden with mercury, gold dust, wines, and spices. And the ship was emptied of its marrow, men, and booty, as a beef bone under a lion's teeth.

It was at this time also that the duke ordained in the Low Countries cruel and abominable imposts, obliging all the inhabitants who sold real or personal estate to pay one thousand florins in ten thousand. And this tax was a permanent one. All sellers and buyers whatsoever must pay the king the tenth part of the purchase price, and it was said among the people that if goods were sold ten times within a week the king should have all.

And thus commerce and industry took the way towards Ruin and Death.

And the Beggars took Briele, a strong seaboard fortress that was christened the Orchard of Freedom.

II

In the first days of May, under a clear sky, with the ship sailing proudly along the sea, Ulenspiegel sang:

"The ashes beat upon my heart. The butchers are come; they have struck With poignard, fire, violence, the sword. They have paid for foulest spying. Where once were Love and Faith, mild virtues, They have set Denunciation and Mistrust. May the butchers be smitten, Beat the drum of war.

"Long live the Beggar! Beat upon the drum! Briele is taken, Flessingue, too, the key of the Scheldt; God is good, Camp-Veere is taken, Where Zealand kept her artillery! We have bullets, powder, and shot, Iron shot and leaden shot. God is with us, who then is against?

"Beat upon the drum of war and glory! Long live the Beggar! Beat upon the drum!

"The sword is drawn, be our hearts high, Firm be our arms, the sword is drawn. Out upon the tenth tithe, the whole of ruin, Death to the butcher, halter to the spoiler, For a perjured king a rebel folk. The sword is drawn for our rights, For our houses, our wives, and our children. The sword is drawn, beat upon the drum!

"High are our hearts, stout are our arms. Out upon the tenth tithe, out upon the infamous pardon. Beat upon the drum of war, beat upon the drum!"

"Aye, good fellows and friends," said Ulenspiegel; "aye, they have set up at Antwerp, before the Townhall, a dazzling scaffold covered with red cloth; the duke is seated upon it like a king upon his throne in the midst of liverymen and soldiers. Meaning to smile benevolently, he makes a sour grimace. Beat upon the war drum!

"He hath accorded a pardon, make silence, his gilded cuirass shines in the sun; the grand provost is on horseback beside the dais; lo here cometh the herald with his kettle-drums; he reads; it is a pardon for all those that have not sinned; the others will be punished cruelly.

"Oyez, good fellows, he reads the edict that orders, on penalty as for rebellion, the payment of the tenth and twentieth deniers."

And Ulenspiegel sang:

"O Duke! hearest thou the voice of the people, The strong dull clamour? Tis the sea that rises In the hour of the mighty surges. Enough of gold, enough of blood. Enough of ruins. Beat upon the drum! The sword is drawn. Beat upon the drum of woe!

"It is the nails tearing the bleeding wound, Robbery after murder. Must thou then Mix all our gold with our blood for your drink? We moved in ways of duty, faithful and true To the King's Majesty. His Majesty is perjured, We are free of our oaths. Beat upon the drum of war.

"Duke of Alba, bloody duke, See these booths, these shops shut fast, See these brewers, bakers, grocers, Refusing to sell so as not to pay. Who then salutes thee when thou art passing? No man. Feelest thou, like a steaming plague Hate and Scorn enwrap thee round?

"The fair land of Flanders, The gay country of Brabant, Are sad as graveyards. There where of old, in freedom's days, Sang the viols, squealed the fifes, There are silence now and death. Beat upon the drum of war.

"Instead of jolly faces Of drinkers, and singing lovers There are pallid faces now Of men that wait, resigned, The stroke of the sword of injustice. Beat upon the drum of war.

"No man now hears in the taverns The jolly clink of pots, Nor the clear voices of girls Singing in bands about the streets. And Brabant and Flanders, lands of mirth, Are become the lands of tears. Beat upon the drum of woe.

"Land of our fathers, sufferer beloved, Stoop not your brow to the murderer's foot, Toilsome bees, rush in your swarms, Upon the hornets from Spain. Corpses of women and girls buried alive, Cry out to Christ: 'Vengeance!'

"Wander in the fields by night, poor souls, Cry unto God! The arm quivers to strike, The sword is drawn, Duke; we will tear out thy entrails And flog thy face with them. Beat upon the drum. The sword is drawn. Beat upon the drum. Long live the Beggar!"

And all the seamen and the soldiers of Ulenspiegel's ship and of the other ships sang likewise:

"The sword is drawn, long live the Beggar!"

And their voices growled like a thunder of deliverance.

III

The world was in January, the cruel month that freezes the calf in the cow's belly. It had snowed, and frozen over and above. The lads were taking with birdlime sparrows seeking some poor food on the hardened snow, and carried off this game into their cottages. Against the gray clear sky stood out motionless the skeletons of the trees, whose branches were covered with snowy cushions that covered also the cottages and the coping of walls on which were seen the prints of the paws of cats, which, like the boys, were hunting sparrows over the snow. At a distance the meadows were hidden over by this marvellous fleece, keeping the earth warm against the bitter cold of winter. The smoke of houses and cottages rose up black into the sky, and there was no noise heard of any kind.

And Katheline and Nele were alone in their house; and Katheline, nodding her head, said:

"Hans, my heart turns to thee. Thou must give back the seven hundred carolus to Ulenspiegel, the son of Soetkin. If thou art poor, come none the less that I may see thy shining face. Take away the fire, my head burns. Alas! where are thy snow-cold kisses? Where is thy icy body, Hans, my beloved?"

And she kept at the window. Suddenly there passed, running at full speed, a voet-looper, a courier carrying bells at his belt, and calling out:

"Here cometh the bailiff, the high bailiff of Damme!"

And he went thus as far as the Townhall, so as to assemble there the burgomasters and the sheriffs.

Then in the thick silence Nele heard two clarions sound. All the people of Damme came to their doors, believing it was His Majesty the king who announced himself by such flourishes.

And Katheline also went to the door with Nele. From afar they saw resplendent horsemen riding in a band, and before them, also on horseback, a personage covered in an opperst-kleed of black velvet laced with fine gold, and boots of yellow calfskin furred with marten. And they recognized the high bailiff.

Behind him there rode young lords, who, notwithstanding the ordinance of his late Imperial Majesty, wore on their velvet accoutrements embroideries, trimmings, bands, edgings, of gold, of silver, and of silk. And their opperst-kleederen, under their outer garments, were edged with fur like those of the bailiff. They rode gaily along, shaking in the wind the long ostrich feathers that adorned their bonnets, gold buttoned and gold laced.

And they seemed to be all of them good friends and companions of the grand bailiff, and notably a lord of sharp visage clad in green velvet trimmed with gold lace, and a cloak of black velvet like his bonnet adorned with long plumes. And he had a nose shaped like a vulture's beak, a thin mouth, red hair, a pale face, and haughty carriage.

While the troop of these lords was passing in front of Katheline's house suddenly she darted to the bridle of the pale lord's horse, and beside herself with joy, she cried out:

"Hans! my beloved, I knew it; thou art back. Thou art goodly thus in velvet and all in gold like a sun upon the snow! Dost thou bring me the seven hundred carolus? Shall I hear thee once more crying like the sea-eagle?"

The high bailiff stopped the troop of gentlemen, and the pale lord said:

"What doth this beggar want with me?"

But Katheline, still keeping hold of the horse by the bridle:

"Do not go away again," said she, "I have wept so much for thee. Sweet nights, my beloved, kisses of snow--body of ice. The child is here!"

And she pointed him to Nele who was looking at him in anger, for he had raised his whip to Katheline: but Katheline, weeping:

"Ah!" said she, "dost thou not remember at all? Have pity on thy handmaiden. Take her with thee wherever thou wilt. Take away the fire, Hans; pity!"

"Begone!" said he.

And he drove his horse on so hard that Katheline, loosing the bridle, fell; and the horse stepped on her and gave her a bloody wound in the forehead.

The bailiff then said to the pale lord:

"Messire, do you know this woman?"

"I do not know her at all," said he, "doubtless it is some mad creature."

But Nele, having raised Katheline from the ground:

"If this woman is mad, I am not, Monseigneur, and I pray that I may die here of this snow that I eat"--and she took up snow in her fingers--"if this man has not known my mother, if he did not borrow all her money, if he did not kill Claes's dog in order to take from the wall of the well at our house seven hundred carolus belonging to the poor dead man."

"Hans, my darling," wept Katheline, bleeding, and on her knees, "Hans, my beloved, give me the kiss of peace: see the blood flowing: my soul has made the hole and would fain come forth: I shall die presently: leave me not." Then in a whisper: "Long ago thou didst slay thy comrade for jealousy, along by the dyke." And she stretched out her finger in the direction of Dudzeele. "Thou didst love me well in those days."

And she caught the gentleman's knee and embraced it, and she took his boot and kissed it.

"What is this slain man?" asked the high bailiff.

"I do not know, Monseigneur," said he. "We have nothing to do with the talk of this beggarwoman; let us forward."

The populace was assembling around them; the townsmen great and small, artisans and rustics, taking Katheline's part, cried out:

"Justice, Monseigneur Bailiff, justice."

And the bailiff said to Nele:

"What is this slain man? Speak in accordance with God and the truth."

Nele spoke and said, pointing to the pale gentleman:

"This man came every Saturday to the keet to see my mother and to take her money: he killed a friend of his, Hilbert by name, in the field of Servaes van der Vichte, not for love, as this innocent distracted woman thinks, but to have for himself alone the seven hundred carolus."

And Nele told of Katheline's loves and what she heard when she was hidden by night behind the dyke that ran through the field of Servaes van der Vichte.

"Nele is bad," said Katheline; "she speaks hardly of Hans, her father."

"I swear," said Nele, "that he used to cry like a sea-eagle to announce his presence."

"Thou liest," said the gentleman.

"Oh, no!" said Nele, "and monseigneur the bailiff and all these noble lords here present see it well: thou art pale not for cold, but with fear. Whence comes it that thy face no longer shines: thou hast then lost thy magic compound wherewith thou wast wont to rub it that it might appear bright, like the waves in summer when it thunders? But sorcerer accursed, thou shalt be burned before the doors of the Townhall. 'Tis thou that didst cause Soetkin's death, thou that didst reduce her orphan son to want; thou, a man of noble rank, doubtless, and who wast wont to come to us burgesses to bring my mother money once only and to take money from her all the other times."

"Hans," said Katheline, "thou wilt bring me again to the Sabbath and wilt rub me again with ointment; do not listen to Nele, she is bad: thou seest the blood, the soul has made the hole and would come forth: I shall die soon and I shall go into limbo where it burneth not."

"Hold thy tongue, mad witch, I know thee not," said the gentleman, "and know not what thou wouldst say."

"And yet," said Nele, "it was thou that camest with a companion and wouldst have given him to me for a husband: thou knowest that I would have none of him; what did he do, thy friend Hilbert, what did he do with his eyes after I had sunk my nails into them?"

"Nele is bad," said Katheline, "do not believe her, Hans, my darling: she is angry against Hilbert who would have taken her by force, but Hilbert cannot do it now; the worms have eaten him: and Hilbert was ugly. Hans, my darling, thou alone art goodly; Nele is bad."

Upon this the bailiff said:

"Women, go in peace."

But Katheline would by no means leave the place where her friend was. And they must needs bring her to her house by force.

And all the people there assembled cried out:

"Justice, Monseigneur, justice!"

The constables of the commune having come up at the noise, the bailiff bade them remain, and he said to the lords and gentlemen:

"Messeigneurs and Messires, notwithstanding all privileges protecting the illustrious order of nobility in the country of Flanders I must needs, upon the accusations and especially upon that of witchcraft, laid against Messire Joos Damman, have his person apprehended until he be judged according to the laws and ordinances of the Empire. Give me your sword, Messire Joos."

"Monseigneur Bailiff," said Joos Damman, with the utmost hauteur and pride of nobility, "in apprehending my person you are transgressing the law of Flanders, for you are not yourself a judge. Now you are aware that it is permitted to arrest without a warrant from a judge only false coiners, robbers on public roads and highways; fire-raisers, ravishers of women; gendarmes deserting their captain; enchanters making use of poison to poison water springs; monks or nuns that have renounced their vows and banished men. And now, Messires and Messeigneurs, defend me!"

Some would have obeyed, but the bailiff said to them:

"Messeigneurs and Messires, as representing here our king, count, and overlord, to whom is reserved the decision of difficult cases, I command and order you, upon pain of being proclaimed rebels, to return your swords to their scabbards."

The gentlemen having obeyed, and Messire Joos Damman still hesitating, the people cried out:

"Justice, Monseigneur, justice; let him give up his sword."

He did so then against his will, and dismounting from his horse, he was brought by two constables to the prison of the commune.

All the same, he was not shut up in the cellars, but in a barred chamber, where he had, for payment, a good fire, a good bed, and good food, the half of which the gaoler took.

IV

On the next day the bailiff, the two clerks of the court, two aldermen, and a barber-surgeon went by Dudzeele to see if they might find in the field of Servaes van der Vichte the body of a man along by the dyke running through the field.

Nele had said to Katheline: "Hans, thy darling, asks for the severed hand of Hilbert: this evening he will cry like the sea-eagle; he will come into the cottage, and will bring thee the seven hundred florins carolus."

Katheline had replied: "I will cut it off." And indeed, she took a knife and went forth accompanied by Nele and followed by the officers of justice.

She walked swiftly and proudly beside Nele, whose pretty face the keen air made all rosy and glowing.

The officers of justice, old and coughing, followed her, frozen with cold; and they were all like black shadows on the white plain; and Nele carried a spade.

When they arrived in the field of Servaes van der Vichte and on the dyke, Katheline, walking up to the middle of it, said, pointing to the meadow on her right hand: "Hans, thou didst not know that I was hidden there, shivering at the noise of the swords. And Hilbert cried out: 'This iron is cold.' Hilbert was ugly; Hans is goodly. Thou shalt have his hand; leave me alone."

Then she went down on the left hand, knelt in the snow and cried three times into the air to call the spirit.

Nele then gave her the spade, upon which Katheline made the sign of the cross thrice; then she traced upon the ice the shape of a coffin and three crosses reversed, one on the side of the east, one on the side of the west, and one on the south; and she said: "Three, it is Mars beside Saturn, and three is discovery under Venus, the bright star." She traced after, about the coffin, a great circle, saying: "Begone, evil demon that guardest corpses." Then falling on her knees in prayer: "Devil friend, Hilbert," said she, "Hans, my master and lord, bids me come here and cut off thy hand and bring it to him. I owe him obedience: make not the earth-fire to leap out against me, because I disturb thy noble burying place: and forgive me in the name of God and of the Saints."

Then she broke the ice, following the outline of the coffin: she came to the damp sword, then to the sandy soil, and monseigneur the bailiff, his officers, Nele, and Katheline beheld the body of a young man, chalk-white by reason of the soil. He was clad in a doublet of gray cloth with a cloak of the same; his sword was laid by his side. At his belt he had a chain purse, and a big poignard planted under his heart; and there was blood upon the cloth of the doublet; and that blood had flowed under his back. And the man was young.

Katheline cut off his hand and put it in her pouch. And the bailiff let her do what she would, then bade her to strip the body of all its insignia and clothing. Katheline having asked if Hans had thus commanded, the bailiff replied that he did nothing save by his orders; and Katheline then did what he wished.

When the body was stripped, it was seen to be dry as wood, but not decayed: and the bailiff and the officers of the commune departed, having covered it again with sand: and the constables carried the cloth.

Passing the front of the prison of the commune, the bailiff said to Katheline that Hans was awaiting her there; she went in joyously.

Nele wanted to prevent her, and Katheline always replied: "I would see Hans, my lord."

And Nele wept on the threshold, knowing that Katheline was arrested as a witch for the conjurations and figures she had made upon the snow.

And in Damme men said there could be no pardon for her.

And Katheline was put in the western cellar of the prison.

V

The next day, the wind blowing from Brabant, the snow melted and the meadows were flooded.

And the bell called borgstorm called the judges to the tribunal of the Vierschare, under the penthouse, because of the dampness of the turf.

And the populace surrounded the tribunal.

Joos Damman, being interrogated, confessed that he had killed his friend Hilbert in single combat with the sword. When they said to him: "He was smitten with a poignard," Joos Damman replied: "I struck him on the ground because he died not quick enough. I confess this murder of my own will, being under the protection of the laws of Flanders which forbid the prosecution, after ten years, of a manslayer."

The bailiff, addressing him:

"Art thou not a sorcerer?" said he.

"No," replied Damman.

"Prove this," said the bailiff.

"I will prove it at the proper time and place," said Joos Damman, "but it pleaseth me not to do so as now."

The bailiff then questioned Katheline; she never listened to him, and gazing at Hans:

"Thou art my green lord, lovely as the sun. Take away the fire, my darling!"

Nele, then speaking for Katheline, said:

"She can confess naught but what ye know already, Monseigneur and Messieurs; she is no witch, and only bereft of her wits."

The bailiff then spoke and said:

"A sorcerer is one that, by diabolical means wittingly employed, endeavours to attain somewhat. Now, these twain, man and woman, are sorcerers by intent and deed: he, in having given the ointment for the sabbath, and in having made his face bright like Lucifer in order to obtain money and the satisfying of lewdness; she, in having submitted herself to him, taking him for a devil, and for having given herself up to his desires: the one being the worker of witchcraft, the other his manifest accomplice. There can therefore be no pity, and I must say this, for I perceive the aldermen and the populace over-indulgent in the case of the woman. She has not, it is true, killed or robbed, nor bewitched either beasts or mankind, nor healed any sick by remedies extraordinary, but only by known simples, as an honest and Christian physician; but she would have given up her daughter to the devil, and if this maid had not in her youth resisted with frank and valiant courage she would have yielded to Hilbert and would have become a sorceress like the other. Accordingly, I put it to the members of this tribunal if they are not of the opinion to put both these two to the torture?"

The aldermen made no answer, showing sufficiently that this was not their desire with regard to Katheline.

The bailiff then said, continuing his discourse:

"I am, like yourselves, touched with pity and compassion for her, but this sorceress, bereft of her wits, so obedient to the devil, might she not, had her lewd co-defendant so bidden her, have been capable of cutting off her daughter's head with a sickle, even as Catherine Daru, in the country of France, did to her two daughters at the invitation of the devil? Might she not, if her black husband had so bidden her, have put animals to death; turned the butter in the churn by throwing sugar in it; been present in the body at all the worship and homage to the devil, dance, abominations, and copulations of sorcerers? Might she not have eaten human flesh, killed children to make pasties of them and sell them, as did a pastry cook in Paris; cut off the thighs of hanged men and carry them away to bite into them raw and thus commit infamous robbery and sacrilege? And I ask of the tribunal that in order to discover whether Katheline and Joos Damman have not committed other crimes than those already known and called into account, they be both put to the torture. Joos Damman refusing to confess anything further than the murder, and Katheline not having told everything, the laws of the empire enjoin upon us to proceed as I indicate."

And the aldermen gave sentence of torture for the Friday which was the day after the morrow.

And Nele cried: "Grace, Messeigneurs!" and the people cried with her. But it was in vain.

And Katheline, looking at Joos Damman, said:

"I have Hilbert's hand; come and take it to-night, my beloved."

And they were taken back to the prison.

There by order of the tribunal, the gaoler was ordered to assign two guardians to each of them, to beat them every time they would have slept; but the two guardians of Katheline left her to sleep all night, and those of Joos Damman beat him cruelly every time he closed his eyes or even nodded his head.

They were hungry all day on Wednesday, the same night and all Thursday until night, when they were given food and drink, meat salted and saltpetred, and water salted and saltpetred likewise. That was the beginning of their torment. And in the morning they brought them, crying out for thirst, into the torture chamber.

There they were set face to face with one another, and bound each upon a bench covered with knotted ropes which made them suffer grievously.

And they were each forced to drink a glass of water, full of salt and saltpetre.

Joos Damman beginning to sleep upon his bench, the constables struck him.

And Katheline said:

"Do not strike him, sirs; you break his poor body. He only committed one crime, for love, when he killed Hilbert. I am athirst, and thou, too, Hans my beloved. Give him to drink first. Water! Water! my body burns. Spare him, I will die soon in his place. A drink!"

Joos said to her:

"Ugly witch, die and burst like a bitch. Throw her in the fire, Messieurs the Judges. I am athirst!"

The clerks took down all he said.

The bailiff then said to him:

"Hast thou nothing to confess?"

"I have nothing more to say," replied Damman; "you know all."

"Since he persists," said the bailiff, "in his denials, he shall remain on these benches and on these cords until he makes a fresh and full confession, and he shall be athirst, and he shall be kept from sleeping."

"I will stay here," said Joos Damman, "and I will take my pleasure in seeing that witch suffer on this bench. How do you find the marriage bed, my love?"

And Katheline replied, groaning:

"Cold arms and hot heart, Hans, my beloved. I am athirst; my head burns!"

"And thou, woman," said the bailiff, "hast thou naught to say?"

"I hear," said she, "the chariot of death and the dry noise of bones. I thirst! And he taketh me to a great river where there is water, water fresh and clear; but this water it is fire. Hans, my dear, deliver me from these cords. Yea, I am in purgatory and I see on high Monseigneur Jesus in his paradise and Madame Virgin so full of compassion. O our dear Lady, give me one drop of water: do not eat those lovely fruits all alone."

"This woman is smitten with cruel madness," said one of the aldermen. "She must be taken from the bench of torment."

"She is no more mad than I," said Joos Damman; "it is mere play and acting." And in a threatening voice: "I shall see thee in the fire," he said to Katheline, "thou playest the madwoman so well."

And grinding his teeth, he laughed at his cruel lie.

"I thirst," said Katheline; "have pity, I thirst. Hans, my beloved, give me to drink. How white thy face is! Let me come to him, Messieurs the Judges." And opening her mouth wide: "Yea, yea, they are now putting fire in my breast, and the devils fasten me on this cruel bed. Hans, take thy sword and slay them, thou so mighty. Water, to drink, to drink!"

"Perish, witch," said Joos Damman; "they ought to thrust a choke-pear into her mouth to keep her from setting herself up thus, a low creature like her, against me, a man of rank."

At this word one of the aldermen, an enemy of the nobility, replied:

"Messire Bailiff, it is contrary to the laws and customs of the empire to put a choke-pear into the mouth of any that are being interrogated, for they are here to tell the truth, and for us to judge them from what they say. That is permitted only when the accused being condemned might, upon the scaffold, speak to the people, and in this way move them, and stir up popular feelings."

"I thirst," said Katheline, "give me to drink, Hans, my darling."

"Ah!" said he, "thou dost suffer, accursed witch, sole cause of all the torments I am enduring; but in this torture chamber thou shalt undergo the pain of the candles, the strappado, the wooden splinters under the nails of thy feet and hands. They will make thee ride naked astride a coffin whose back will be sharp as a blade, and thou shalt confess that thou art not mad, but a foul witch to whom Satan hath given it in charge to work evil upon noble men. A drink!"

"Hans, my beloved," said Katheline, "be not wroth with thy handmaiden! I suffer a thousand pangs for thee, my lord. Spare him, Messieurs the Judges. Give him a full goblet to drink, and keep but one drop for me. Hans, is it not yet the hour of the sea-eagle?"

The bailiff then said to Joos Damman:

"When thou didst kill Hilbert, what was the motive of this combat?"

"It was," said Joos, "for a girl at Heyst we both wished to have."

"A girl at Heyst!" cried Katheline, trying at all costs to rise up from her bench; "thou art deceiving me for another, traitor devil. Didst thou know that I was listening to thee behind the dyke when thou saidst that thou wouldst fain have all the money, which was Claes's money? Without doubt it was to go and spend it with her in liquorishness and revelling! Alas! and I that would have given him my blood if he could have made gold of it! And all for another! Be accursed!"

But suddenly, weeping and trying to turn round on her bench of torture:

"Nay, Hans, say that thou wilt still love thy poor handmaid, and I shall scratch the earth with my fingers and find thee a treasure; aye, there is such; and I will go with the hazel twig that bends this way and that where there are metals; and I will find it and bring it back to thee; kiss me, darling, and thou shalt be rich; and we shall eat meat, and we shall drink beer every day; aye, aye, all these folk also drink beer; fresh, foaming beer. Oh! sirs, give me but one single drop; I am in the fire; Hans, I know well where there are hazel trees, but we must wait for the spring time."

"Hold thy tongue, witch," said Joos Damman; "I know thee not. Thou hast taken Hilbert for me: it was he that came to see thee. And in thy wicked mind thou didst call him Hans. Know that I am not called Hans, but Joos: we were of the same height, Hilbert and I. I do not know thee; it was Hilbert, without doubt, that stole the seven hundred florins carolus; give me to drink; my father will pay a hundred florins for a little goblet of water; but I know not this woman."

"Monseigneur and Messires," exclaimed Katheline, "he saith he knows me not, but I know him well, I, and know that he hath upon his back a mole, brown, and of the size of a bean. Ah! thou didst love a girl at Heyst! Doth a good lover blush for his lover? Hans, am I not still fair?"

"Fair!" said he, "thou hast a face like a medlar and a body like a century of faggots: see the trash that would be loved by noble men! Give me to drink!"

"Thou didst not speak so, Hans, my sweet lord," said she, "when I was sixteen years younger than I am now." Then, beating her head and her breast: "'Tis the fire that is there," said she, "and dries up my heart and withers my face. Do not reproach me with it; dost thou remember when we ate salt meat to drink better, so thou saidst? Now the salt is in us, my beloved, and monseigneur the bailiff is drinking Romagna wine. We do not want wine: give us water. It runs among the grass, the streamlet that makes the clear spring; the good water, it is cold. Nay, it burns. It is water of hell." And Katheline wept, and she said: "I have done ill to no one, and the whole world casteth me into the fire. Give me to drink; men give water to straying dogs. I am a Christian woman. Give me to drink. I have done no ill to any. Give me to drink."

An alderman then spoke and said:

"This witch is mad only in what concerns the fire she saith burns her head, but she is nowise mad upon other matters, since she helped us with a clear head to discover the remains of the dead man. If the mole is there upon the body of Joos Damman, that sign sufficeth to establish his identity with the devil Hans, for whom Katheline was out of her wits; tormentor, let us see the mark."

The tormentor, uncovering Damman's neck and shoulder, showed the mole, brown and hairy.

"Ah!" said Katheline, "how white is thy skin! One would say a girl's shoulders; thou art goodly, Hans, my beloved: give me to drink!"

The tormentor then thrust a long needle into the mole. But it did not bleed.

And the aldermen said one to the other:

"This man is a devil, and he must have killed Joos Damman and taken his shape the more securely to deceive the poor world."

And the bailiff and the aldermen fell into fear.

"He is a devil and there is witchcraft in it."

And Joos Damman said:

"Ye know there is no witchcraft, and that there are such fleshy excrescences that can be pricked without bleeding. If Hilbert hath taken this witch's money, for it is she that confesseth to have lain with the devil, he could well have done so by the good and free will of this foul hag. And was thus, being a man of rank, paid for his caresses even as bona robas are every day. Are there not in the world, the same as girls, gay fellows that make women pay for their strength and comeliness?"

The aldermen said one to another:

"See you his diabolical assurance? His hairy wart hath not bled: being an assassin, a devil, and a magician, he would fain pass simply for a duellist, throwing his other crimes on to the devil his friend, whose body he has killed, but not his spirit.... And consider how pale his face is."--"Thus appear all the devils, red in hell, and pale on earth, for they have none of the fire of life that giveth ruddiness to the countenance, and they are ashes within."--"We must put him in the fire that he may be red and that he may burn."

Then said Katheline:

"Yea, he is a devil, but a kind devil, a sweet devil. And Monseigneur Saint Jacques, his patron, has given him licence to come out of hell. He prays Monseigneur Jesus for him every day. He will have but seven thousand years of purgatory: Madame Virgin wishes it, but Monsieur Satan is against it. None the less Madame does what she has a mind to. Will he go against her? If ye consider well, ye shall see he hath kept naught of his estate and condition as a devil, save the cold body, and also the face luminous as are the waves of the sea in August when it is like to thunder."

And Joos Damman said:

"Hold thy tongue, witch, thou wilt burn me." Then speaking to the bailiff and the aldermen: "Look at me, I am no devil; I have flesh and bones, blood and water. I drink and eat, digest and void like yourselves; my skin is like yours, my foot likewise; tormentor, take my boots off, for I cannot budge with my feet bound."

The tormentor did so, not without fear.

"Look," said Joos, showing his white feet: "are those cloven feet, devil's feet? As for my paleness, is there none of you that is pale like me? I see more than three among you. But the sinner is not I, but verily this ugly witch, and her daughter, the evil accuser. Whence did she have the money she lent to Hilbert; whence came those florins that she gave him? Was it not the devil that paid her to accuse and bring death to men of noble birth and guiltless? It is those twain that should be asked who killed the dog in the yard, who dug the hole and went off leaving it empty, doubtless to hide the stolen treasure in another place. Soetkin the widow had placed no trust in me, for she never knew me, but in them, and saw them every day. It is they that stole the Emperor's property."

The clerk wrote, and the bailiff said to Katheline:

"Woman, hast thou naught to say for thy defence?"

Katheline, looking upon Joos Damman, said most amorously:

"It is the hour of the sea-eagle. I have Hilbert's hand, Hans, my beloved. They say that thou wilt give me back the seven hundred carolus. Take away the fire! Take away the fire!" cried she after that. "Give me to drink! to drink! my head burns. God and the angels are eating apples in the sky."

And she lost consciousness.

"Loosen her from the bench of torment," said the bailiff.

The tormentor and his assistants obeyed. And she was seen staggering and with feet swollen out, for the tormentor had pulled the cords too tight.

"Give her to drink," said the bailiff.

Cold water was given her, and she swallowed it greedily, holding the goblet in her teeth as a dog does with a bone and not willing to let it go. Then they gave her more water, and she would have gone to take it to Joos Damman, but the tormentor took the goblet out of her hands. And she fell sleeping like a lump of lead.

Joos Damman cried out furiously:

"I, too, I thirst and am sleepy. Why do you give her to drink? Why do you leave her to sleep?"

"She is weak, a woman, and out of her wits," replied the bailiff.

"Her madness is a game," said Joos Damman, "she is a witch. I want to drink, I want to sleep!"

And he shut his eyes, but the tormentor's knechts struck him on the face.

"Give me a knife," he shouted, "till I cut these clowns to pieces: I am a man of rank, and I have never been struck in the face. Water, let me sleep, I am innocent. It was not I that took the seven hundred carolus, it was Hilbert. Give me to drink! I never committed sorceries or incantations. I am innocent. Let me go. Give me to drink!"

The bailiff then:

"How," he asked, "hast thou spent thy time since thou didst leave Katheline?"

"I know not Katheline; I have never left her," said he. "Ye question me on matters foreign to the case. I need not answer you. Give me to drink; let me sleep. I tell you it was Hilbert that did all."

"Untie him," said the bailiff. "Take him back to his prison. But let him thirst and have no sleep until he hath confessed his sorceries and incantations."

And that was a cruel torture to Damman. He cried out in his cell: "Give me to drink! Give me to drink!" so loud that the people heard him, but without any pity. And when his guardians struck him in the face as he was falling with sleep, he was like a tiger and cried:

"I am a man of rank and will kill you, ye clowns. I will go to the king, our head. Give me to drink." But he confessed nothing, and they left him alone.

VI

They were then in May, the lime tree of justice was green; green, too, were the turf seats upon which the judges placed themselves; Nele was called as witness. On this day sentence was to be pronounced.

And the people, men, women, townsfolk, and artisans were all round about in the field; and the sun shone bright.

Katheline and Joos Damman were brought before the tribunal; and Damman appeared paler than ever by reason of the torture of the thirst and the nights spent without sleep.

Katheline, who could not maintain herself on her shaking legs, said, pointing to the sun:

"Take away the fire; my head burns!"

And she looked on Joos Damman with tender love.

And he looked at her with hate and contempt.

And the lords and gentlemen his friends, having been summoned to Damme, were all present as witnesses before the tribunal.

Then the bailiff spake and said:

"Nele, the girl who defends her mother Katheline with such great and courageous affection, found in the pocket stitched in her mother's jacket, a jacket for feast days, a note signed 'Joos Damman.' Among the belongings taken from the corpse of Hilbert Ryvish I found in the dead man's satchel another letter addressed to him by the said Joos Damman, the defendant here present before you. I have kept both these letters in my custody, in order that at the appropriate moment, which is the present, you might judge of this man's obstinacy and acquit or condemn him in accordance with law and justice. Here is the parchment found in the satchel; I have never touched it, and know not whether it is legible or not."

The judges were then in great perplexity.

The bailiff endeavoured to undo the parchment ball; but it was in vain, and Joos Damman laughed.

An alderman said:

"Let us put the ball in water, and then before the fire. If there is in it any secret of adhesion, the fire and the water will melt it."

The water was brought; the executioner lit a great fire of wood in the field; the smoke rose up blue into the clear sky through the verdurous branches of the lime tree of justice.

"Do not put the letter in the basin," said an alderman "for if it is written with sal ammoniac dissolved in water, you will efface the characters."

"Nay," said the surgeon, who was there, "the characters will not be effaced; the water will soften only the point that keeps the magic ball from opening up."

The parchment was dipped in the water and being softened, was unfolded.

"Now," said the surgeon, "put it before the fire."

"Aye, aye," said Nele, "put the paper before the fire; master surgeon is on the road to the truth, for the murderer grows pale and trembles in his limbs."

Thereupon, Messire Joos Damman said:

"I neither grew pale nor trembled, thou little common harpy that art fain of the death of a man of rank; thou shalt never succeed; this parchment must needs be rotten, after sixteen years' sojourning in the earth."

"The parchment is not decayed," said the sheriff, "for the satchel was lined with silk; silk is not consumed in the earth, and the worms have not gone through the parchment."

The parchment was put in front of the fire.

"Monseigneur Bailiff, Monseigneur Bailiff," said Nele, "there is the ink appearing before the fire; give orders that the writing be read."

As the surgeon was about to read it, Messire Joos Damman would have stretched out his arms to seize the parchment; but Nele flung herself upon his arm quick as the wind and said:

"Thou shalt not touch it, for thereon is written thy death or the death of Katheline. If now thy heart bleeds, murderer, there are fifteen years through which ours have been bleeding; fifteen years that Katheline suffers; fifteen years she had her brain in her head burned by thee; fifteen years that Soetkin is dead by consequence of the torture; fifteen years that we are needy, ragged, and live in abject want, but proudly. Read the paper, read the paper! The judges are God upon earth, for they are Justice; read the paper!"

"Read the paper!" cried the men and women, weeping. "Nele is a brave lass! read the paper! Katheline is no witch!"

And the clerk read:

"To Hilbert, son of Willem Ryvish, Esquire, Joos Damman, greeting.

"Blessed friend, lose thy money no more in gambling dens, at dice, and other follies. I will tell thee how it can be won for very certain. Let us make us devils, handsome devils, beloved of women and of girls. Let us take the fair and rich, let us leave the ugly and poor; let them pay for their pleasure. I made, at this trade, in six months five thousand rixdaeldars in the country of Germany. Women will give their petticoat and chemise to their man when they love him; flee from the miserly ones with pinched up nose that take time to pay for their pleasures. For thy own affair, and to appear goodly and a true devil, an incubus, if they accept thee for the night, announce thy coming by crying like a night bird. And to make thee a veritable devil's face, of a terrifying devil, rub thy visage with phosphorus, which is luminous in spots when it is damp. Its odour is disagreeable, but they will believe that it is the odour of hell. Slay what is in thy way, man, woman, or beast.

"We shall soon go together to the house of Katheline, a fine good-natured wench; her daughter Nele, a child of my own, if Katheline was faithful to me, is comely and pretty; thou wilt take her easily; I give her to thee, for I care but little for these bastards that cannot for certain be recognized as one's own offspring. Her mother gave me already more than twenty-three carolus, all she possessed. But she hath a treasure hidden, which is, unless I be a fool, the inheritance of Claes, the heretic burned at Damme: seven hundred florins carolus liable to confiscation, but the good King Philip, who had so many of his subjects burned to inherit after them, could never lay his claw on this sweet treasure. It will weigh more in my pouch than in his. Katheline will tell me where it is; we shall divide. Only thou must leave me the greater part for the discovery.

"As for the women, being our gentle handmaids and slaves in love, we shall take them to the land of Germany. There we shall teach them to become female demons and succubae, drawing the love of all the rich burgesses and men of birth; there we shall live, they and we, upon love paid for with good rixdaeldars, velvets, silk, gold, pearls, and jewels; we shall thus be rich without fatigue, and, unknown to the succubae devils, beloved by the most lovely, always exacting payment besides. All women are fools and ninnies for the man that can light the fire of love that God set beneath their girdles. Katheline and Nele will be more so than others, and believing us to be devils, will obey us in all things: thou, do thou keep thy forename, but never give the name of thy father, Ryvish. If the judge seizes the women, we shall depart without their knowing us or being able to denounce us. To the rescue, my trusty comrade. Fortune smiles on the young, as was wont to say his late Sainted Majesty Charles the Fifth, past master in affairs of love and of war."

And the clerk, making an end of reading, said:

"Such is this letter, and it is signed, 'Joos Damman, esquire'."

And the people shouted:

"To the death with the murderer! To the death with the sorcerer! To the fire the turner of women's wits! To the gallows with the robber!"

The bailiff said then:

"People, keep silence, that in all freedom we may judge this man."

And speaking to the aldermen:

"I will," said he, "read to you the second letter, found by Nele in the pocket of Katheline's festal jacket; it is conceived as follows:

"Darling Witch, here is the recipe of a compound sent me by the very wife of Lucifer: by the help of this compound thou wilt be able to transport thyself to the sun, the moon, and the stars, converse with the elemental spirits that carry the prayers of men unto God, and to traverse all the towns and burgs and rivers and fields of the whole universe. Thou art to bruise together in equal quantities: stramonium, sleep-solanum, henbane, opium, the fresh tips of hemp, belladonna, and datura.

"If thou wilt, we shall go this night to the sabbath of the spirits: but thou must love me better and not be miserly again like the other night, when thou didst refuse me ten florins, saying thou didst not have them. I know that thou dost hide a treasure and wilt not tell me of it. Dost thou love me no longer, my sweetheart?"

"Thy cold devil,

"Hanske."

"To the death with the sorcerer!" cried the people.

The bailiff said:

"We must compare the two writings."

This being done, they were adjudged to be similar. The bailiff then said to the lords and gentlemen there present:

"Do ye recognize this man for Messire Joos Damman, son of the alderman of La Keure of Ghent?"

"Aye," said they.

"Did ye know," said he, "Messire Hilbert, son of Willem Ryvish, Esquire?"

One of the gentlemen, who was called Van der Zickelen, spoke and said:

"I am from Ghent; my house is in St. Michael's Place; I know Willem Ryvish, Esquire, sheriff of La Keure of Ghent. He lost, fifteen years past, a son of twenty-three years of age, debauched, a gamester, an idler; but everyone forgave it him because of his youth. Since that time no man has had news of him. I ask to see the sword, the poignard, and the satchel of the dead man."

Having them before him, he said:

"The sword and the poignard carry on the pommel of the hilt the arms of the Ryvishes, which are three silver fish on an azure field. I see the same arms reproduced on a gold shield between the meshes of his pouch. What is that other poignard?"

The bailiff speaking:

"It is that poignard," said he, "which was found planted in the body of Hilbert Ryvish, the son of Willem."

"I recognize on it," said the lord, "the arms of the Dammans; the tower gules on a silver field. So keep me God and all his saints."

The other gentlemen also said:

"We recognize the aforesaid arms for those of Ryvish and of Damman. So keep us God and all his saints."

Then the bailiff said:

"From the evidence heard and read by the tribunal of aldermen, Messire Joos Damman is the sorcerer, a murderer, a seducer of women, a robber of the king's goods, and as such guilty of the crime of treason human and divine."

"You say so, Messire Bailiff," rejoined Joos, "but you will not condemn me, lacking sufficient proofs: I am not nor ever was a sorcerer; I did but play at the game of being a devil. As for my shining face, you have the recipe for it and that for the unguent, the which, while containing henbane, is merely soporific. When this woman, a real witch, used it, she fell in a trance, and thought she went to the sabbath and there danced in the ring with her face to the outside of the circle, and adored a devil with the shape of a goat, set upon an altar.

"The dance being over, she thought she went and kissed him under the tail, as sorcerers do, to give herself up thereafter with me, her friend, to strange copulations pleasing to her perverted mind. If I had, as she says, cold arms and cool body, it was a mark of youth, not of sorcery. In the works of love coolness doth not endure. But Katheline would fain believe what she desired, and take me for a devil notwithstanding that I am a man of flesh and bone, in everything as yourselves that look at me. She alone is guilty: taking me for a demon and receiving me in her bed, she sinned both in intention and deed against God and the Holy Spirit. It is therefore she, and not I, that committed the crime of sorcery; it is she that is to be made to pass through the fire, as a furious and malignant witch that seeks to make herself pass for a madwoman, in order to hide her cunning."

But Nele:

"Do ye hear him," said she, "the murderer? He hath, like a girl for sale, with the armlet on her arm, made a trade and merchandise of love. Do ye hear him? He means, to save himself, to have her burned that gave him all."

"Nele is bad," said Katheline, "do not listen to her, Hans, my beloved."

"Nay," said Nele, "nay, thou art no man: thou art a cowardly cruel devil." And taking Katheline in her arms: "Messieurs Judges," exclaimed she, "listen not to this pale evil one: he hath but one wish, to see my mother burn, she that did no other crime but to be smitten by God with madness, and to believe the phantoms of her dreams real. She hath already suffered much in her body and in her mind. Do not put her to death, Messieurs the Judges. Leave the innocent to live out her sad life in peace."

And Katheline said: "Nele is bad; thou must not believe her, Hans my lord."

And among the common folk the women were weeping and the men said: "Pardon for Katheline."

The bailiff and the aldermen gave their sentence on Joos Damman, upon a confession which he made after being tortured afresh: he was condemned to be degraded from his noble estate and burned alive in a slow fire until death ensued, and suffered the penalty the next day before the doors of the Townhall, still saying: "Put the witch to death; she alone is guilty! Cursed be God! my father will slay the judges."

And he rendered up the ghost.

And the people said: "See him cursing and a blasphemer: he dies like a dog."

Next day the bailiff and the aldermen gave their sentence upon Katheline, who was condemned to undergo the trial by water in the Bruges Canal. Floating, she should be burned as a witch; going to the bottom and dying, she should be regarded as dying like a Christian, and as such should be interred in the garden of the church, which is the graveyard.

The day after, Katheline, holding a wax taper in her hand, barefooted and clad in a chemise of black linen, was brought to the bank of the canal, all along by the trees, in grand procession. Before her marched, singing the prayers for the dead, the dean of Notre Dame, his vicars, the beadle carrying the cross; and behind, the bailiffs of Damme, the aldermen, the clerks and recorders, the constables of the commune, the provost, the executioner and his two assistants. Upon the banks there was a great crowd of women weeping and men growling, in pity for Katheline, who walked as a lamb suffering herself to be led she knew not whither, and always saying: "Take away the fire, my head burns! Hans, where art thou?"

In the midst of the women Nele cried: "I want to be thrown in with her." But the women did not suffer her to come near to Katheline.

A sharp wind blew from the sea; from the gray sky a fine hail was falling into the water of the canal; a bark was there, which the executioner and his men seized in the name of His Majesty the king. At their command, Katheline went into it; the executioner was seen, standing in it, and at the signal of the provost lifting his wand of justice, he cast Katheline into the canal: she struggled, but not for long, and went to the bottom, having cried out: "Hans! Hans! help!"

And the people said: "This woman is no witch."

Men plunged into the canal and pulled Katheline out from it, unconscious and rigid as a corpse. Then she was brought into a tavern and placed before a great fire; Nele took off her clothes and her wet linen, to give her others; when she came back to herself, she said, trembling and chattering her teeth:

"Hans, give me a woollen cloak."

And Katheline could not get back her warmth. And she died on the third day. And she was interred in the garden of the church.

And Nele, orphaned, departed to the land of Holland, to Rosa van Auweghen.

VII

Upon the hulls of Zealand, on boyers, on croustèves, away goes Thyl Claes Ulenspiegel.

The free sea wafts the valiant flyboats on which are eight, ten or twenty guns all of iron: they belch forth death and massacre on the traitor Spaniards.

He is an expert gunner, Thyl Ulenspiegel, son of Claes, lo how he aims straight and true, and pierces like a wall of butter the carcases of the butchers.

In his hat he wears the silver crescent, with this legend: "Liever den Turc als den Paus": "Rather to serve the Turk than the Pope."

The sailors that see him climb up upon their ships, agile as a cat, supple as a squirrel, singing some song or other, with some gay jest in his mouth, would ask him curiously:

"Whence is it, little man, that thou hast so young a mien, for they say thou wert born long ago at Damme?"

"I am no body, but a spirit," said he, "and Nele, my sweetheart, is like me. Spirit of Flanders, love of Flanders, we shall never die."

"And yet," said they, "when thou art cut, thou dost bleed."

"Ye see but the appearance of it," answered Ulenspiegel, "it is wine and not blood."

"We will broach thy belly, then!"

"I would be the only one to drain it," replied Ulenspiegel.

"Thou art mocking us."

"He that beats the case will hear the drum," answered Ulenspiegel.

And the embroidered banners of the Roman Catholic processions floated from the masts of the ships. And clad in velvet, in brocade, in silk, in cloth of gold and of silver, such as abbots wear at solemn masses, bearing mitre and crozier, drinking the monks' wine, the Beggars kept guard on their ships.

And it was a strange sight to behold appearing from out of these rich vestments those coarse hands that held arquebus or arbalest, halberd or pike, and all men of hard physiognomy, girt about with pistols and cutlasses gleaming in the sun, and drinking from golden chalices the abbots' wine that had become the wine of liberty.

And they sang and they shouted: "Long live the Beggar!" and thus they scoured the ocean and the Scheldt.

VIII

At this time the Beggars, among whom were Lamme and Ulenspiegel, took Gorcum. And they were commanded by Captain Marin: this Marin, who had been a workman on the dykes, disported himself with great haughtiness and sufficiency, and signed with Gaspard Turc, the defender of Gorcum, a capitulation whereby Turc, the monks, burgesses, and soldiers shut up in the citadel were to come forth freely, bullet in mouth, musket on shoulder, with all that they could carry, save that the goods of the Church should be left to the assailants.

But Captain Marin, upon an order from Messire de Lumey, held the nineteen monks as prisoners, and let the soldiers and the citizens go free.

And Ulenspiegel said:

"The word of a soldier should be a word of gold. Why doth he fail of his?"

An ancient Beggar made answer to Ulenspiegel:

"The monks are sons of Satan, the leprosy of nations, the shame of countries. Since the coming of the Duke of Alba, these fellows lifted up their noses high in Gorcum. There is among them one, the priest Nicolas, prouder than a peacock and fiercer than a tiger. Every time he passed in the street with his pyx in which was his host made with dog's fat, he would look with eyes full of fury at the houses from which the women did not come and kneel, and would denounce to the judge all that did not bend the knee before his idol of dough and gilded brass. The other monks imitated him. That was the cause of many great oppressions, burnings, and cruel punishments in the town of Gorcum. Captain Marin does well to keep prisoner the monks who would else go off with their likes into villages, burgs, towns, and townlets, to preach against us, stirring up the populace and causing the poor reformers to be burned. Mastiffs are put on the chain until they die: to the chain with the monks; to the chain with the bloed-honden, the duke's blood-hounds; to the cage with the butchers. Long live the Beggar!"

"But," said Ulenspiegel, "Monseigneur d'Orange, our prince of liberty, wills that we should respect, among those who surrender, the property of individuals and freedom of conscience."

The ancient Beggars replied:

"The admiral wills it not for the monks: he is master; he took Briele. To the cage with the monks!"

"Word of a soldier, word of gold! why does he fail of it?" answered Ulenspiegel. "The monks kept in prison suffer a thousand insults."

"The ashes beat no longer upon thy heart," said they: "a hundred thousand families, in consequence of the edicts, have taken over yonder, to the north-west, to the land of England, the trades, the industry, the wealth of our country; bemoan then those that wrought our ruin! Under the Emperor Charles the Fifth, Butcher the First, under this one, the king of Blood, Butcher the Second, one hundred and eighteen thousand persons have perished by execution. Who carried the taper of the obsequies in murder and in tears? Monks and soldiers of Spain. Dost thou not hear the souls of the dead lamenting?"

"The ashes beat upon my heart," said Ulenspiegel. "Word of a soldier, 'tis word of gold."

"Who then," said they, "would by excommunication have put the country under the ban of all nations? Who would have armed against us, had it been possible, earth and sky, God and the devil, and their serried ranks of saints, both male and female? Who made the sacred host bleed with the blood of an ox, who made wooden statues weep? Who had the De Profundis sung in the land of our fathers, if not this accursed clergy, these hordes of lazy monks, in order that they might keep their riches, their influence over idol worshippers, and reign over the poor country by ruin, blood, and fire. To the cage with the wolves that rush upon men on earth; to the cage with the hyænas! Long live the Beggar!"

"Word of a soldier, word of gold," said Ulenspiegel.

The next day a message came from Messire de Lumey, with orders to transfer from Gorcum to Briele, where the admiral was, the nineteen monks that were prisoners.

"They will be hanged," said Captain Marin to Ulenspiegel.

"Not while I am alive," replied he.

"My son," said Lamme, "speak not thus to Messire de Lumey. He is fierce, and will hang thee with them without mercy."

"I shall speak according to the truth," replied Ulenspiegel; "word of a soldier, word of gold."

"If thou canst save them," said Marin, "take their boat to Briele. Take with thee Rochus the pilot and thy friend Lamme if thou wilt."

"I do wish it," answered Ulenspiegel.

The boat was moored at the Green quay; the nineteen monks entered into it; Rochus the timid was set at the helm; Ulenspiegel and Lamme, well armed, took their place at the prow of the ship. Certain rascal troopers that had come among the Beggars for pillage were beside the monks, who were hungry. Ulenspiegel gave them drink and food. "That one is going to turn traitor!" said the rascal troopers. The nineteen monks, seated amidships, were all gaping and shivering, though it was July, and the sun was bright and hot, and a gentle breeze filled out the sails of the ship as she glided massive and bulging over the green waves.

Father Nicolas then spake and said to the pilot:

"Rochus, are we being brought to the Gallows Field?"

Then turning towards Gorcum: "O town of Gorcum!" said he, standing and stretching out his hand, "town of Gorcum! how many woes hast thou to suffer: thou shalt be accursed among cities, for thou hast grown within thy walls the grain of heresy! O town of Gorcum! And the angel of the Lord shall watch no longer at thy gates. He will have no more care of thy virgins' modesty, the courage of thy men, the fortune of thy merchants! O town of Gorcum! thou art accursed, unfortunate!"

"Accursed, accursed," answered Ulenspiegel, "accursed as the comb that hath passed through and taken away the Spanish lice, accursed as the dog breaking his chain, as the proud horse shaking a cruel rider from off his back! Accursed thyself, booby preacher, who findest ill that the rod should be broken, were it an iron rod upon the tyrants' back!"

The monk held his tongue, and lowering his eyes, appeared steeped in holy hate.

The rascal soldiers that had come among the Beggars for the sake of pillage were close by the monks, who soon were hungry. Ulenspiegel asked biscuit and herrings for them; the ship master answered:

"Let them be thrown into the Meuse, they can have fresh herring to eat then."

Ulenspiegel then gave the monks all the bread and sausage he had for himself and for Lamme. The ship-master and the rascal Beggars said one to another:

"This one is a traitor, he is feeding the monks; we must denounce him."

At Dordrecht the ship stopped in the Harbour at the Bloemen-Key, the Flower quay; men, women, lads, and lasses ran up in crowds to see the monks, and said to one another pointing at them with a finger or threatening them with their fist:

"Look at those clowns, manufacturers of Bons Dieux that bring men's bodies to the stake and their souls to the fire everlasting; look at the fat tigers and big-bellied jackals."

The monks hung their heads and dared not speak. Ulenspiegel saw them trembling once more.

"We are hungry again," said they, "compassionate soldier."

But the ship master:

"What is always drinking? Dry sand. Who eats without ceasing? The monk."

Ulenspiegel went up the town to find bread for them, ham, and a great jug of beer.

"Eat and drink," said he; "ye are our prisoners, but I shall save you if I can. Word of a soldier, word of gold."

"Why dost thou give them that? They will never pay you," said the rascal Beggars; and talking among themselves they whispered these words in each other's ears: "He has promised to save them; let us keep good watch upon him."

At dawn they came to Briele. The gates having been opened to them, a voet-looper, a courier, went to inform Messire de Lumey of their coming.

As soon as he had the news, he came on horseback, having just put on his clothes, and accompanied by some horsemen and foot-soldiers, with their weapons.

And Ulenspiegel could see once more the fierce admiral clad like a proud lord living in opulence.

"Hail and greeting," said he, "Messires the monks. Lift up your hands. Where is the blood of Messieurs d'Egmont and de Hoorn? Ye show me clean white paws; 'tis well for you."

A monk called Leonard answered:

"Do with us as thou wilt. We are monks; no one will claim us."

"He hath well said," said Ulenspiegel; "for the monk having broken with the world, which is father and mother, brother and sister, spouse and lover, finds at the hour of God no soul that claims him. And yet, Your Excellency, I will do so. Captain Marin, when he signed the capitulation of Gorcum, agreed that these monks should be free as all those that were taken in the citadel, and who came out from it. And yet they were held prisoner without cause; I hear it said they shall be hanged. Monseigneur, I address myself humbly to you, speaking to you on their behalf, for I know that the word of a soldier is word of gold."

"Who art thou?" asked Messire de Lumey.

"Monseigneur," answered Ulenspiegel, "Fleming am I from the goodly land of Flanders, clown, nobleman, all at once, and through the world in this wise I go wandering, praising things good and lovely, and mocking folly without stint. And I will praise you if you keep to the promise made by the captain: word of a soldier, word of gold."

But the rascally Beggars that were upon the ship:

"Monseigneur," said they, "that fellow is a traitor: he hath promised to save them; he hath given them bread, ham, sausages, and beer, and to us nothing."

Messire de Lumey said then to Ulenspiegel:

"Fleming gadabout and monk feeder, thou shalt be hanged with them."

"I have no fear," answered Ulenspiegel, "word of a soldier, word of gold."

"Thou carriest thy comb high," said de Lumey.

"The ashes beat upon my heart," said Ulenspiegel.

The monks were brought into a barn, and Ulenspiegel with them: there they would fain have converted him by theological disputations; but he fell asleep listening to them.

Messire de Lumey being at table, full of wine and meat, a messenger arrived from Gorcum, from Captain Marin, with a copy of letters from the Silent, Prince of Orange, "commanding all governors of cities and other places to hold the ecclesiastics in like safeguard, safety, and privilege as the rest of the people."

The messenger asked to be brought before de Lumey to give the copy of the letters into his own hands.

"Where is the original?" de Lumey asked him.

"With my master," said the messenger.

"And the clown sends me the copy!" said de Lumey. "Where is thy passport?"

"Here it is, Monseigneur," said the messenger.

Messire de Lumey read it in a loud voice:

"Monseigneur and master Marin Brandt enjoins upon the ministers, governors, and officers of the republic that they suffer to pass safely," etc.

De Lumey, striking his fist on the table and tearing up the passport:

"God's blood!" said he, "what is he meddling with, this Marin, this trash, who had not, before the taking of Briele, the backbone of a red herring to put between his teeth? He dubs himself monseigneur and master, and sends me his order. He enjoins and ordains! Tell thy master that since he is so much captain and monseigneur, and so much bidding and forbidding, the monks shall be hanged high and short at once, and thou with them if thou dost not take thyself off."

And fetching him a kick, he sent him out of the chamber.

"Give me to drink," he cried. "Have you seen the insolence of this Marin? I could spit out my breakfast with rage. Let them hang the monks immediately in their barn, and bring me their Flemish conductor, after he has seen their execution. We shall see if he will dare to tell me I have done wrong. God's blood! what are these jugs and glasses wanted here for still?"

And he broke with a great crashing the cups and dishes, and no man dared speak to him. The servants would have picked up the pieces; he did not allow them, and drinking out of the flasks immoderately, he became more and more angry, striding about and crushing the bits and trampling on them furiously.

Ulenspiegel was brought before him.

"Well!" said he, "dost thou bring tidings of thy friends the monks?"

"They are hanged," said Ulenspiegel; "and a cowardly executioner, killing them for hire, opened the belly and sides of one of them after death, like a disembowelled pig, to sell the fat to an apothecary. Word of a soldier is no longer word of gold."

De Lumey, trampling among the broken crockery:

"Thou bravest me," said he, "four-foot rascal, but thou, too, shalt be hanged, not in a barn, but ignominiously on the open square, in the eyes of everybody."

"Shame upon you," said Ulenspiegel, "shame upon us: word of a soldier no longer word of gold."

"Wilt thou hold thy tongue, mule!" said Messire de Lumey.

"Shame upon thee," said Ulenspiegel; "word of a soldier is no more word of gold. Punish rather the rascally vendors of human fat."

Then Messire de Lumey, rushing on him, raised his hand to strike him.

"Strike," said Ulenspiegel; "I am thy prisoner, but I have no fear of thee; word of a soldier is no more word of gold."

Messire de Lumey then drew his sword and would certainly have slain Ulenspiegel if Messire de Tres-Long, holding back his arm, had not said:

"Have pity! he is brave and valiant; he hath committed no crime!"

De Lumey, then controlling himself:

"Let him ask pardon," said he.

But Ulenspiegel, remaining upright:

"I will not," said he.

"Let him say at least that I was not wrong," cried de Lumey, becoming furious.

Ulenspiegel made answer:

"I do not lick the boots of lords: word of a soldier is no more word of gold."

"Let them erect the gallows," said de Lumey, "and let them bring him to it; that will be a hempen word for him."

"Aye," said Ulenspiegel, "and I shall cry out in the presence of all the people: 'Word of a soldier is no more word of gold!'"

The gallows was set up on the great marketplace. The news ran swiftly about the town that they were about to hang Ulenspiegel, the valiant Beggar. And the people were moved with pity and compassion. And they ran together in a crowd to the great market; Messire de Lumey came thither also on horseback, wishing himself to give the signal for the execution.

He looked with no mildness upon Ulenspiegel on the ladder, arrayed for death, in his shirt, his arms tied to his body, his hands folded, the rope about his neck, and the executioner ready to do his work.

Tres-Long said to him:

"Monseigneur, pardon him; he is no traitor, and no one ever saw a man hanged because he was sincere and merciful."

And the men and women of the people, hearing Tres-Long speak, cried: "Pity, Monseigneur, grace and pity for Ulenspiegel."

"That mule-headed fellow braved me," said de Lumey: "let him repent and say I did right."

"Wilt thou repent and say that he did right?" said Tres-Long to Ulenspiegel.

"Word of a soldier is no more word of gold," replied Ulenspiegel.

"Put on the rope," said de Lumey.

The executioner was about to obey; a young girl, all clad in white and garlanded with flowers, ran up the stairs of the scaffold, leaped on Ulenspiegel's neck, and said:

"This man is mine; I take him for my husband."

And the people applauded and the women cried out:

"Long live, long live the girl who is Ulenspiegel's saviour!"

"What is this?" asked Messire de Lumey.

Tres-Long answered:

"After the use and custom of the town, it is by right and law that a young maiden and unmarried woman can save a man from the rope by taking him for husband at the foot of the gallows."

"God is with him," said de Lumey; "untie him."

Then riding up to the scaffold, he saw the girl prevented from cutting Ulenspiegel's ropes and the executioner seeking to oppose her efforts and saying:

"If you cut them, who will pay for them?"

But the girl paid no heed to him.

Seeing her so light, so loving, and so subtle, he was touched.

"Who art thou?" said he.

"I am Nele, his betrothed," said she, "and I come from Flanders to seek him."

"Thou didst well," said de Lumey in a naughty voice.

And he went away.

Tres-Long then coming up:

"Little Fleming," said he, "once thou art married wilt thou be a soldier still in our ships?"

"Aye, Messire," answered Ulenspiegel.

"And thou, girl, what wilt thou do without thy man?" Nele answered:

"If you are willing, Messire, I will be fifer in his ship."

"I am willing," said Tres-Long.

And he gave her two florins for the wedding feast.

And Lamme, weeping and laughing with pleasure, said:

"Here are three florins more: we shall eat it all; I am paying. Let us go to the Golden Comb. He is not dead, my friend. Long live the Beggar!"

And the people applauded, and they went off to the Golden Comb, where a great feast was ordered: and Lamme threw deniers to the people out of the windows.

And Ulenspiegel said to Nele:

"Darling beloved, there thou art then beside me! Hurrah! She is here, flesh, heart, and soul, my sweet friend. Oh! the sweet eyes and lovely red lips whence there came never aught but kind words! She saved my life, the dear beloved! Thou shalt play the fife of deliverance on our ships. Dost thou remember ... but no.... Ours is the present hour full of gladness, and mine thy face sweet as June flowers. I am in paradise. But," said he, "thou art weeping...."

"They have killed her," said she.

And she told him the tale of mourning.

And, looking on one another, they wept with love and grief.

And at the feast they drank and ate, and Lamme looked on them woefully, saying:

"Alas! my wife, where art thou?"

And the priest came and married Nele and Ulenspiegel.

And the morning sun found them one beside the other in their bridal bed.

And Nele lay with her head on Ulenspiegel's shoulder. And when she awoke in the sunshine, he said:

"Fresh face and sweet heart, we shall be the avengers of Flanders."

She, kissing him on the mouth:

"Wild head and stout arms," said she, "God will bless the fife and the sword."

"I will make thee a soldier's garb."

"At once?" said she.

"At once," replied Ulenspiegel; "but who said that strawberries are good in the morning? Thy mouth is far better."

IX

Ulenspiegel, Lamme, and Nele had, like their friends and comrades, taken from the convents the wealth gotten from the people by the help of processions, feigned miracles, and other Roman mummeries. This was against the orders of the Silent, the prince of liberty, but the money helped with the charges of the war. Lamme Goedzak, not content with providing himself with money, looted from out the convents hams, sausages, flasks of beer and wine, and came back from them joyously carrying across his breast a baldric of fowls, geese, turkeys, capons, hens and pullets, and leading behind him on a rope certain monastical calves and pigs. And this by right of war, said he.

Rejoicing in each prize, he fetched it to the ship that there might be revel and feast, but lamented all the same that the master cook was so ignorant in the science of sauces and fricassees.

Now on that day the Beggars, having looked victoriously upon the cup, said to Ulenspiegel:

"Thou hast thy nose always in the wind to smell out news of terra firma; thou knowest all the adventures of the war: sing them to us. And Lamme shall beat the drum the while and the pretty little fifer shall squeal to the measure of thy song."

And Ulenspiegel said:

"One bright cool day in May, Ludwig of Nassau, thinking to enter into Mons, finds not his footmen nor his horse. A few trusty men held a gate open and a drawbridge down, that he might have the town. But the citizens seized the gate and the drawbridge. Where are the soldiers of Count Louis? The citizens are about to hoist up the bridge. Count Louis winds his horn."

And Ulenspiegel sang:

"Where are thy footmen and thy horse? They are in the woods, treading all down: Dry twigs, and lily of the valley in bloom. Master Sun makes all shine, Their ruddy warrior faces, The polished rumps of their horses; Count Ludwig winds his horn: They hear it. Softly beat the drum.

"Full trot, bridle loose! Speed of the lightning, speed of the cloud: Water spout of clinking iron; They fly, the heavy horsemen! Haste! haste! to the rescue! The bridge rises.... Send the spur Into the chargers' bloody flanks. The bridge rises: The town is lost!

"They are before it. Is it too late? Ride like the wind! Bridle loose! Guitoy de Chaumont on his Spanish steed Leaps on the bridge that falls again. The town is won! Do ye hear Along the paven streets of Mons Speed of the lightning, speed of the cloud, Waterspout of clinking iron!

"Hurrah for Chaumont and his Spanish steed! Sound the clarion of joy, beat upon the drum: 'Tis the hay month, fragrant are the meadows; The lark mounts up, singing in the sky: Long live the bird of freedom! Beat upon the drum of glory. Hurrah for Chaumont and the Spanish steed. Hey there. Drink up there. The town is won!... Long live the Beggar!"

And the Beggars sang on the ships: "Christ look down upon thy soldiers. Furbish our weapons, Lord. Long live the Beggar!"

And Nele, smiling, made the fife squeal amain, and Lamme beat the drum, and aloft, towards the sky, God's temple, there were raised golden cups and hymns of liberty. And the waves, like sirens, bright and cool about the ships, murmured in harmony.

X

One day in the month of August, a hot and heavy day, Lamme was plunged in melancholy. His jolly drum was dumb and sleeping, and he had thrust the drumsticks into the mouth of his satchel. Ulenspiegel and Nele, smiling with amorous delight, were warming themselves in the sun: the look-out men stationed in the tops were whistling or singing, searching over the wide ocean if they could not see some prey on the horizon. Très-Long kept questioning them; they still replied: "Niets," nothing.

And Lamme, pale and broken down, sighed piteously. And Nele said to him:

"Whence cometh it, Lamme, that thou art so woebegone?"

And Ulenspiegel said to him:

"Thou art growing thin, my son."

"Aye," said Lamme, "I am woebegone and thin. My heart loses its gaiety and my jolly face its freshness. Aye, laugh at me, ye that have found one another again through a thousand perils. Mock you at poor Lamme, who lives a widower, being married, while she," said he, pointing to Nele, "must needs tear her man away from the kisses of the rope, his last lover. She did well, God be praised; but let her not laugh at me. Aye, thou must not laugh at poor Lamme, Nele, my dear. My wife laughs enough for ten. Alas, ye females, ye are cruel towards others' woes. Aye, I have a grieved heart, stricken with the sword of desertion, and nothing will ever comfort it, if not she."

"Or some fricassee," said Ulenspiegel.

"Aye," said Lamme, "where is the meat in this miserable ship? On the king's vessels, they have meat four times a week, if there be no fast, and fish three times. As for the fish, God destroy me if this tow--I mean their flesh--does anything but kindle my blood for nothing, my poor blood that will go to water before long. They have beer, cheese, soup, and good drink. Aye! they have everything for the comfort of their stomachs: biscuit, rye bread, beer, butter, smoked meat, yea, all, dried fish, cheese, mustard seed, salt, beans, peas, barley, vinegar, oil, tallow, wood, and coal. We, we have just been forbidden to take the cattle of any so-ever, be he citizen, abbot, or gentleman. We eat herrings and drink small beer. Alas! I have nothing left now: neither love of women, nor good wine, nor dobbele-bruinbier, nor good food. Where are our joys here?"

"I will tell thee, Lamme," answered Ulenspiegel. "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth: at Paris, on Saint Bartholomew's night, they killed ten thousand free hearts in Paris city alone; the king himself shot at his folk. Awake, Fleming; seize the axe without mercy: there are our joys; smite the Spaniard and Roman enemy wherever thou shalt find him. Let be thy eatables. They have taken the dead or living victims to their rivers, and by full cartloads, and have flung them in the water. Dead or alive, dost thou hear, Lamme? The Seine ran red for nine days, and the ravens settled down in clouds upon the town. At La Charité, at Rouen, Toulouse, Lyons, Bordeaux, Bourges, Meaux, terrible was the massacre. Seest thou the troops of dogs satiate with eating, lying beside the bodies? Their teeth are tired. The flight of the ravens is heavy, so laden are their stomachs with the flesh of the victims. Hearest thou, Lamme, the voice of their spirits crying vengeance and pity? Awake, Fleming! Thou dost speak of thy wife. I do not believe her unfaithful, but bereft of her wits, and she loveth thee still, poor friend of mine: she was not among those court ladies who on the very night of the massacre stripped the bodies with their fine hands to see how great or how small were their carnal members. And they laughed, these ladies great in lewdness. Rejoice, my son, notwithstanding thy fish and thy small beer. If the after taste of the herring is insipid, more insipid still is the smell of this foulness. Those that slew took their meals, and with ill-washen hands carved fat geese to offer the wings, legs, and rump to the charming Paris damozels. They had but lately felt other meat, cold meat."

"I will complain no more, my son," said Lamme, rising up: "the herring is ortolan; malvoisie is small beer to free hearts."

And Ulenspiegel said:

"Long Live the Beggar! Let us not weep, brothers. In ruins and blood

"Flowers the rose of liberty. If God is with us, who shall be against?

"When the hyæna triumphs, Comes the lion's turn, With one stroke of his paw he flings him, disbowelled, on the ground. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Long live the Beggar!"

And the Beggars on the ship sang:

"The Duke keeps the same fate for us. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, Wound for wound. Long live the Beggar!"

XI

On a black night the tempest growled in the depths of the clouds. Ulenspiegel was on the deck of the ship with Nele, and said:

"All our lights are out. We are foxes, watching by night for the passing of the Spanish poultry, which is to say their two and twenty assabres, rich ships with lanterns burning, that will be to them stars of ill fortune. And we shall rush upon them."

Nele said:

"This night is a witches' night. This sky is black as the mouth of hell; these lightnings gleam like the smile of Satan; the distant thunderstorm is growling dully; the sea-mews pass, uttering loud cries; the sea rolls its phosphorescent waves like silver serpents. Thyl, my beloved, come into the world of the spirits. Take the powder of vision."

"Shall I see the Seven, my darling?"

And they took the powder of vision.

And Nele shut Ulenspiegel's eyes, and Ulenspiegel shut Nele's eyes. And they beheld a cruel spectacle.

Heaven, earth, sea were full of men, of women, of children, toiling, wandering, journeying, or dreaming. The sea cradled them; the earth carried them. And they swarmed like eels in a basket.

Seven men and women were in the middle of the firmament, seated upon thrones, their brows girt with a brilliant star, but they were so shadowy that Nele and Ulenspiegel could see only their stars with any distinctness.

The sea rose up to the sky, tumbling in its foam the innumerable multitude of ships whose masts and rigging clashed together, interlocked, broke one another, crushed each other, following the tempestuous moving of the waves. Then one ship appeared in the midst of all the others. Its bottom was of flaming iron. Its keel was made of steel shaped and sharpened like a knife. The water cried out, groaning, when it went through. Death was upon the stern of the ship, seated, grinning, holding his scythe in one hand and in the other a whip which he smote upon seven personages. One was a man woebegone, thin, haughty, silent. He held in one hand a sceptre and in the other a sword. Beside him, mounted upon a goat, there was a ruddy girl, with bared breast, her robe open, and a sprightly eye. She was stretched out lasciviously beside an old Jew picking up bits of rubbish and a big bloated fellow that fell down every time she set him on his feet, while a thin and angry woman beat them both. The big man never avenged himself nor did his red-faced she-companion. A monk in their midst was eating sausages. A woman lying on the earth, was crawling like a serpent among the others. She bit the old Jew because of his old rubbish, the bloated man because he was too comfortable, the red woman for the dewy brightness of her eyes, the monk for his sausage, and the thin man because of his sceptre. And soon all of them fell a-fighting.

When they passed, the battle was horrible on the sea, in the sky, and on the earth. It rained blood. The ships were broken with blows of axes, arquebuses, and cannon shot. The shattered fragments flew into the air in the midst of the powder smoke. On the earth armies clashed together like walls of bronze. Towns, villages, harvests burned amid cries and tears: tall spires, stone lace-work, held up their proud silhouettes in the midst of the fire, then fell down with a crash like oak trees laid low. Black horsemen, numerous and close arrayed as bands of ants, sword in hand, pistol in hand, were smiting men, women, children. Some made holes in the ice and buried old men alive in them; others cut off women's breasts and sprinkled pepper on the place; others hanged children in the fireplaces. Those who were tired of killing violated some girl or some woman; drank, played dice, and tossing over piles of gold, the fruit of pillage, dabbled their red fingers in it.

The Seven, crowned with stars, cried: "Pity for the poor world!"

And the phantoms grinned with laughter. And their voices were as the voices of a thousand sea-eagles crying together. And Death brandished his scythe.

"Dost thou hear them?" said Ulenspiegel; "they are the birds of prey of poor mankind. They live on small birds, which are the simple and the good."

The Seven, crowned with stars, cried: "Love, justice, compassion!"

And the Seven phantoms laughed loudly. And their voices were like the voices of a thousand sea-eagles crying all together. And Death struck them with his whip.

And the ship passed over the sea, cutting in two boats, vessels, men, women, children. On the sea reëchoed the plaints of the victims crying: "Pity!"

And the red ship passed over them all, while the phantoms, laughing, cried like sea-eagles.

And Death, laughing loud, drank the water that was full of blood.

And the ship having disappeared in the mist, the battle ceased, and the Seven crowned with stars vanished away.

And Ulenspiegel and Nele saw nothing now save the black sky, the surging sea, the dark clouds coming forward on the phosphorescent sea, and close at hand, red stars.

These were the lanterns of the two and twenty assabres. The sea and the thunder were growling dully and faintly.

And Ulenspiegel rang the bell for the wacharm softly, and cried: "The Spaniard, the Spaniard! He is sailing for Flessingue!" And the cry was repeated throughout the whole fleet.

And Ulenspiegel said to Nele:

"A gray hue is spreading over the sky and over the sea. The lanterns burn now but feebly; the dawn lifts, the wind is freshening, the waves throw their spume over the decks of the ships; a thick rain is falling and speedily ceases; the sun rises radiant, gilding the crest of the waves: it is thy smile, Nele, fresh as the morning, sweet as the sun's ray."

The two and twenty assabres pass: on the ships of the Beggars the drums are beating, the fifes are squealing: de Lumey cries: "In the Prince's name, to the chase!" Ewout Pietersen Wort, sub-admiral, cries: "In the name of Monseigneur d'Orange and the admiral, to the chase!" On all the ships, the Johannah, the Swan, Anne-Mie, the Beggar, the Compromise, the d'Egmont, the de Hoorn, on the Willem de Zwyger (the William the Silent,) all the captains cry: "In the name of Monseigneur d'Orange and the admiral!"

"To the chase! Long live the Beggar!" cry the soldiers and sailors. Très-Long's houlque, on which are Lamme and Ulenspiegel, and called Briele, followed closely by the Johannah, the Swan, and the Beggar, take four assabres. The Beggars fling everything Spanish into the sea, make the inhabitants of the Low Countries prisoners, empty the ships like eggshells, and leave them to float without masts or sails in the roadstead. Then they pursue the other eighteen. The wind blows violently; coming from Antwerp, the sides of the swift ships bend over in the water of the river beneath the weight of the sails swollen like a monk's cheeks in the wind that comes from kitchens; the assabres go swiftly; the Beggars pursue them into the very roadstead of Meddleburg under the fire from the forts. There a bloody battle joins: the Beggars carrying axes rush on the decks of the ships, soon strewn with lopped-off arms and legs, that have to be thrown into the waves after the combat ends. The forts fire on them: they take no heed, and to the shout of "Long live the Beggar!" take from out the assabres powder, artillery, bullets, and corn; burn the boats when they have emptied them; and make off to Flessingue, leaving them smoking and flaming in the roadsteads.

From there they will send squadrons to pierce the dykes of Zealand and Holland, to help in the construction of fresh ships, and notably of flyboats of one hundred and forty tons carrying up to twenty cannon of cast iron.

XII

On the ships it is snowing. The air is all white as far as eye can see, and the snow falls without ceasing, falls softly upon the black water where it melts.

On the earth it is snowing: all white are the roadways, all white the black silhouettes of the trees bereft of their leaves. No sound but the distant bells of Haarlem striking the hour, and the gay chime sending its muffled notes through the thick air.

Bells, ring not; bells, play not your sweet and simple airs: Don Frederic draws near, the dukeling of blood. He is marching upon thee, followed by thirty-five companies of Spaniards, thy mortal foes, Haarlem, O thou city of liberty; twenty-two companies of Walloons, eighteen companies of Germans, eight hundred horse, a powerful artillery, all follow in his train. Hearest thou the clang of this murderous iron on the wagons? Falconets, culverins, big-mouthed mortars, all that is for thee, Haarlem. Bells, ring not; chimes, fling not your gladsome notes into the air thickened with snow.

"Bells, we the bells, shall ring; I, the chime, I shall sing, flinging my bold notes into the air thick with snow. Haarlem is the town of hardy hearts, of brave women. Undaunted she sees, from her topmost towers, the black masses of the butchers undulating like troops of ants: Ulenspiegel, Lamme, and a hundred sea Beggars are within her walls. Their fleet is cruising in the lake."

"Let them come!" say the inhabitants; "we are but citizens, fishermen, sailors, and women.

"The son of the Duke of Alba wanteth, he declares, no other keys to come into our house than his cannon. Let him open, if he can, these weak gates; he will find men behind them. Ring out, bells; chimes, launch your glad notes into the air thick with snow.

"We have but weak walls and old-fashioned ditches. Fourteen guns belch out their balls of forty-six pound on the Cruys-poort. Put men where stones are lacking. Night comes, every man toileth, it is as though the cannon had never been there. On the Cruys-poort they have hurled six hundred and eighty shot; on St. John's Gate six hundred and seventy-five. These keys do not open, for there, behind, rises a new rampart. Ring out, bells; chimes, hurl into the thick air your merry notes.

"The cannon beat, beat, beat ever on the walls; the stones fly, the walls crumble. Wide enough is the breech to let a company pass in abreast. The assault! 'Kill! Kill!' they cry. They mount, they are ten thousand; suffer them to pass the moats with their bridges, with their ladders. Our cannon are ready. Lo, there the flag of those that are to die. Salute them, cannon of liberty! They salute: chain shot, balls of flaming tar flying and hissing, pierce, cut, kindle, blind the assailing masses that fall back and flee in disorder. Fifteen hundred dead lie in the ditch. Ring out, bells; and ye, chimes, fling into the thickened air your merry notes.

"Come back to the assault! They dare not. They fall to shooting and sapping. We, too, we know the arts of the mine. Beneath them, beneath them light the train; run, we shall see a goodly sight. Four hundred Spaniards blown into the air. This is not the road of eternal fires. Oh! the goodly dance to the silver sound of our bells, to the merry music of our chimes!

"They never suspect that the prince is watching over us; that every day there come to us by ways well guarded sledges of corn and gunpowder; the corn for us, the powder for them. Where are their six hundred Germans that we slew and drowned in the Haarlem Wood? Where are the eleven ensigns we have taken from them, the six pieces of artillery, and the fifty oxen? We had one girdle of walls; now we have two. Even the women fight, and Kennan leads their valiant band. Come, butchers, march down our streets; the children will hamstring you with their little knives. Ring out, bells; and ye, chimes, fling into the thickened air your merry notes!

"But fortune is not with us. The Beggars' fleet is beaten in the lake. They are beaten, the troops Orange had sent to our help. It freezes, it freezes bitterly. No more help now. Then for five months, a thousand against ten thousand, we hold out. Now we must needs come to terms with the butchers. Will he listen to any terms, this bloody dukeling who hath sworn our destruction? Let us send out all our soldiers with their arms: they will pierce the enemy bands. But the women are at the gates, fearing lest they be left to guard the town alone. Bells, ring out no more; chimes, fling no more into the air your merry notes.

"Here is June; the hay is fragrant, the corn grows golden in the sun, the birds are singing: we have been hungry for five months; the town is in mourning; we shall all go forth from Haarlem, the musketeers at the head to open up the way, the women, the children, the magistrates behind, guarded by the infantry that watches at the breech. A letter, a letter from the dukeling of blood! Is it death he announces? Nay, it is life to all that are in the town. O unlooked-for clemency; O lie, mayhap! Wilt thou still sing, O merry chime? They are entering the town."

Ulenspiegel, Lamme, and Nele had donned the costume of the German soldiers shut up with them, to the number of six hundred, in the cloister of the Augustines.

"We shall die to-day," said Ulenspiegel in a low tone to Lamme.

And he clasped to his breast the dainty form of Nele all shivering with fear.

"Alas! my wife, I shall never see her more," said Lamme. "But perhaps our costume as German soldiers will save our lives?"

Ulenspiegel nodded his head to show he believed in no hope of grace.

"I hear no noise of pillage," said Lamme.

Ulenspiegel replied:

"By the terms, the townsfolk redeemed their lives, and the town from pillage, for the sum of two hundred and forty thousand florins. They must pay one hundred thousand florins down in twelve days, and the rest three months after. The women have been ordered to retire into the churches. They are about to begin the massacre, beyond a doubt. Dost thou hear them nailing up the scaffolds and erecting the gallows?"

"Ah! we are to die!" said Nele; "I am hungry."

"Aye," said Lamme low to Ulenspiegel, "the dukeling of blood has said that being famished we shall be more docile when we are brought out to die."

"I am so hungry!" said Nele.

That night soldiers came and distributed bread enough for six men.

"Three hundred Walloon soldiers have been hanged in the marketplace," said they. "It will soon be your turn. There was always a matrimony between the Beggars and the Gallows."

The next night they came again with their bread for six men.

"Four high burgesses," said they, "have been beheaded. Two hundred and forty-nine soldiers have been bound together two by two and cast into the sea. The crabs will be fat this year. You do not look well, you folk, since the seventh of July that saw you come here. They are gluttons and drunkards, these dwellers in the Low Countries; we Spaniards, we have enough with two figs for our supper."

"That is why, then," replied Ulenspiegel, "you must needs, everywhere in the townsfolks' houses, have four meals of meats, poultry, creams, wines, and preserves; that ye must have milk to wash the bodies of your mustachos and wine to bathe your horses' feet?"

On the eighteenth of July, Nele said:

"My feet are wet; what is this?"

"Blood," said Ulenspiegel.

At night the soldiers came again with their bread for six.

"Where the rope is no longer enough," said they, "the sword does the work. Three hundred soldiers and twenty-seven burghers who tried to flee out of the town are now walking about the streets of hell with their heads in their hands."

The next day the blood came again into the cloister; the soldiers came not to bring the bread, but merely to contemplate the prisoners, saying:

"The five hundred Walloons, Englishmen, and Scotsmen that were beheaded yesterday looked better. These are hungry, no doubt, but who then should die of hunger if not the Beggar!"

And indeed, they were like phantoms, all pale, haggard, broken, trembling with cold ague.

On the sixteenth of August, at five in the evening, the soldiers came in laughing and gave them bread, cheese, and beer. Lamme said:

"It is the feast of death."

At ten o'clock four companies came; the captains had the doors of the cloister opened, ordering the prisoners to march four abreast behind fifes and drums, to the place where they would be told to halt. Certain streets were red, and they marched towards the Gallows Field.

Here and there shallow pools of blood defiled the meadows; there was blood all about the walls. The ravens came in clouds on every hand; the sun hid in a bed of mists; the sky was still clear, and in its depths awoke the shy stars. Suddenly they heard lamentable howlings.

The soldiers said:

"They that are crying there are the Beggars of the Fuycke Fort, without the town; they are being left to die of hunger."

"We, too," said Nele, "we are going to die." And she wept.

"The ashes beat upon my heart," said Ulenspiegel.

"Ah!" said Lamme in Flemish--for the soldiers of the escort understood not that proud speech--"Ah!" said Lamme, "if I could catch that duke of blood and make him eat, until his skin burst, each and all ropes, gallows, torture benches, wooden horses, weights, and boots; if I could make him drink the blood he has shed, if there came out of his torn skin and opened bowels splinters of wood and pieces of iron, and still he did not give up the ghost, I would tear out his heart from his breast and make him eat it raw and poisoned. Then for certain would he fall from life to death into the sulphur pit, where may the devil make him eat it and eat it again without ceasing. And thus through all long eternity."

"Amen," said Ulenspiegel and Nele.

"But dost thou see naught?" said she.

"Nay," said he.

"I see in the west," she said, "five men and two women seated in a circle. One is clad in purple and wears a crown of gold. He seems the chief over the rest, all ragged and tattered. I see from the east another band of seven coming: one commands them also who is clad in purple, without a crown. And they come against those of the west. And they fight against them in the clouds, but I see nothing more now."

"The Seven," said Ulenspiegel.

"I hear," said Nele, "near by us in the foliage, a voice like a breath of wind saying:

"By war and fire By pikes and swords Seek; In death and blood Ruins and tears. Find."

"Others than we shall deliver the land of Flanders," replied Ulenspiegel. "Night grows black, the soldiers are lighting torches. We are near the Gallows Field. O sweet beloved, why didst thou follow me? Dost thou hear nothing more, Nele?"

"Aye," said she, "a noise of arms among the corn. And there, above that ridge, surmounting the way in which we are entering, seest thou the red light of the torches gleam upon steel? I see sparks of fire gleaming upon the matches of arquebuses. Are our guardians asleep, or are they blind? Dost thou hear that clap of thunder? Seest thou the Spaniards fall pierced with bullets? Hearest thou 'Long live the Beggar!'? They climb the path running, musket in hand; they come down with axes all along the slope. Long live the Beggar!"

"Long live the Beggar!" cry Lamme and Ulenspiegel.

"Lo," said Nele, "here are soldiers that give us arms. Take, Lamme, take, my beloved. Long live the Beggar!"

"Long live the Beggar!" cry the whole troop of prisoners.

"The arquebuses cease not from firing," said Nele, "they fall like flies, lit up as they are by the light of the torches. Long live the Beggars!"

"Long live the Beggar!" cry the band of rescuers.

"Long live the Beggar!" cry Ulenspiegel and the prisoners. "The Spaniards are in a ring of fire. Kill! kill! There is not one left on his feet. Kill! no pity, war without mercy. And now let us be off and run to Enckhuyse. Who hath the butchers' clothes of cloth and silk? Who hath their weapons?"

"All! all!" they cry. "Long live the Beggar!"

And indeed, they went off for Enckhuyse by boat, and there the Germans delivered with them remained to guard the town.

And Lamme, Nele, and Ulenspiegel found their ships again. And lo once more they are singing upon the free sea: "Long live the Beggar!"

And they cruise in the roadstead of Flessingue.

XIII

There once again was Lamme joyous. He was always ready to go on shore, hunting oxen, sheep, and fowl like hares, stags, and ortolans.

And he was not alone in this nourishing hunting. Good was it then to see the huntsmen return, Lamme at their head, dragging the big beasts by the horns, driving the small cattle before them, directing flocks of geese with long wands, and carrying slung from their boathooks hens, pullets, and capons in spite of their struggling.

Then it was revel and feasting on the ships. And Lamme would say: "The fragrance of the sauces mounts up to the very sky, there delighting their worships the angels, which say: ''Tis the best part of the meat'."

While they were cruising there came a fleet of merchantmen from Lisbon, whose commander knew not that Flessingue had fallen into the hands of the Beggars. It is ordered to cast anchor; it is hemmed round. Long live the Beggar! Drums and fifes sound the signal for boarding; the merchants have guns, pikes, hatchets, arquebuses.

Musket balls and cannon balls rain from the ships of the Beggars. Their musketeers, entrenched round about the main mast in their wooden forts, fire with deadly aim, without any danger. The merchants fall like flies.

"To the rescue!" said Ulenspiegel to Lamme and to Nele, "to the rescue! Here be spices, knicknacks, precious dainties, sugar, nutmegs, cloves, ginger, reals, ducats, moutons d'or all bright and shining. There are more than five hundred thousand pieces in coin. The Spaniard will pay the cost of the war. Drink ho! Let us sing the Beggars' Mass, which is battle!"

And Ulenspiegel and Lamme rushed everywhere like lions. Nele played the fife, sheltered in the wooden castle. The whole of the fleet was taken.

The dead were counted and these were a thousand on the side of the Spaniards, three hundred on the side of the Beggars: among them was the master cook of the fly boat La Briele.

Ulenspiegel asked to be allowed to speak before Très-Long and the sailors: this Très-Long granted with a good will. And he said to them as follows:

"Master captain and ye comrades, we have but now inherited much spices, and here is Lamme, the good belly, who findeth that the poor dead man there, God have him in joy, was in no wise a doctor great enough in fricassees. Let us name him in the place of the dead. And he will prepare you divine stews and paradisaic soups."

"We will," said Très-Long and the others; "Lamme shall be the master cook of the ship. He shall bear the great wooden ladle to skim the froth off his sauces."

"Messire Captain, comrades and friends," said Lamme, "ye behold me weeping with joy, for I deserve not so great honour. Nevertheless, since ye deign to call upon my worthlessness, I accept the noble functions of master of arts in fricassees upon the stout fly boat La Briele, but with a humble prayer to you that ye invest me with the supreme command of the kitchen work, in such fashion that your master cook--the which will be myself--may by right law and might be empowered to prevent anyonesoever from coming and eating another's share."

Très-Long and the others cried out:

"Long live Lamme! thou shalt have right, law, and might."

"But," said he, "I have another prayer to make before you in all humility: I am a fat man, big and strong; deep is my paunch, deep my stomach; my poor wife--may God restore her to me--always gave me two portions instead of one: accord me this same favour."

Très-Long, Ulenspiegel, and the sailors said:

"Thou shalt have the two portions, Lamme."

And Lamme, suddenly fallen melancholy, said:

"My wife, my sweet darling! if anything can console me for thy absence, it will be to bring again to mind in my duties thy heavenly cooking in our sweet home."

"You must take the oath, my son," said Ulenspiegel. "Let the great wooden ladle and the great copper caldron be brought hither."

"I swear," quoth Lamme, "by God, may he be here my helper, I swear fidelity to Monseigneur the Prince of Orange, called the Silent, governing the provinces of Holland and Zealand for the king; fidelity to Messire de Lumey, the admiral commanding our gallant fleet, and to Messire Très-Long, vice-admiral and captain of the good ship La Briele; I swear to dress at my poor best, according to the use and wont of the great cooks of old, which have left behind them noble books with cuts upon the great art of cookery, what flesh and fowl Fortune shall accord to us; I swear to feed the said Messire Très-Long, our captain, his second in command, which is my friend, Ulenspiegel, and all you, master mariner, pilot, boatswain, companions, soldiers, gunners, captain's page, chirurgeon, trumpeteer, sailors, and all others. If the roast is too underdone, the fowl unbrowned; if the soup sends up an insipid fragrance, inimical to all good digestion; if the steam of the sauces doth not entice you all to rush into the kitchen--always with my good will; if I make you not all sprightly and well favoured, I will resign my noble functions, judging myself unfit longer to occupy the throne of the kitchen. So may God help me in this life and in the next."

"Long live the master cook," said they, "the king of the kitchen, the emperor of fricassees. He shall have three portions instead of two on Sundays."

And Lamme became master cook of the ship La Briele. And while the succulent soups were simmering in the saucepans, he stood at the door of the galley, proudly holding his great wooden ladle like a sceptre.

And he had his treble rations on Sundays.

When the Beggars came to grips with the enemy, he would stay preferably in his sauce laboratory but would come out every now and then to run up on the deck and fire a few rounds. Then he would hurry down again at once to keep an eye to his sauces.

Thus being trusty cook and valiant soldier, he was well beloved of all.

But no one must penetrate the sanctuary of his galley. For then he was even like a devil and with his wooden ladle he smote them pitilessly hip and thigh.

And thenceforth he was called Lamme the Lion.

XIV

On the ocean, on the Scheldt, in sunshine, in rain, in snow, in hail, winter and summer, glided the ships of the Beggars to and fro.

All sails out like mantling swans, swans of white freedom.

White for freedom, blue for great heart, orange for the prince, 'tis the standard of the proud ships.

All sails set! all sails set, the stout ships; the billows beat upon them, the waves besprinkle them with foam.

They pass, they run, they fly along the river, their sails in the water, swift as clouds in the north wind, the proud ships of the Beggars. Hear you their prows cleaving the wave? God of freemen! Long live the Beggar!

Hulks, flyboats, boyers, croustèves, swift as a wind big with tempest, like the cloud that bears the thunderbolt. Long live the Beggar!

Boyers and croustèves, flat-bottomed boats, slide along the river. The waters groan as they are cloven through, when the ships go straight on face forwards with the deadly mouth of their long culverin on the point of the bows. Long live the Beggar!

All sail out! all sail out, the gallant ships, the waves toss them, sprinkle them with foam.

Night and day, through rain, hail, and snow, they go on their way! Christ smileth on them in cloud, in sun, in starshine. Long live the Beggar.

XV

The king of blood learned the news of their victories. Death was already gnawing at the murderer and his body was full of worms. He would walk about the corridors of Valladolid, sullen and savage, dragging heavily his swollen feet and leaden legs. He never sang, the cruel tyrant; when the day came, he never laughed, and when the sun lighted up his empire like a smile from God he felt no joy in his heart.

But Ulenspiegel, Lamme, and Nele sang like birds, risking their hide, that is to say Lamme and Ulenspiegel, their white skin, to wit Nele, living from day to day, and finding more joy in one death fire quenched by the Beggars than the dark king had in the burning of a town.

At this time, too, William the Silent, Prince of Orange, broke from his rank as admiral Messire de Lumey de la Marck, by reason of his great cruelties. He appointed Messire Bouwen Ewoutsen Worst in his stead. He took measures also to pay for the grain taken by the Beggars from the peasants, to restore the forced contributions levied upon them, and to grant the Roman Catholics, like all others, the free exercise of their religion, without either persecution or insult.

XVI

On the ships of the Beggars, under the dazzling sky, over the shining waves, squealed the fifes; droned bagpipes, gurgled flasks, chimed glasses, and shone the steel of weapons and armour.

"Ho!" said Ulenspiegel, "let us beat the drum of glory, let us beat the drum of joy. Long live the Beggar! Spain is conquered; the ghoul is beaten down. Ours is the sea, Briele is taken. Ours the coast as far as Nieuport, beyond Ostende and Blanckenberghe, the islands of Zealand, the mouths of the Scheldt, the mouths of the Meuse, the Rhine mouths as far as Helder. Ours are Texel, Vlieland, Ter-Schelling, Ameland, Rottum, Borkum. Long live the Beggar!

"Ours are Delft, and Dordrecht. 'Tis a trail of powder. God holdeth the linstock. The murderers abandon Rotterdam. Free conscience, like a lion with teeth and claws of justice, seizes the county of Zutphen, the towns of Deutecom, Doesburg, Goor, Oldenzeel, and on the Welnuire, Hattem, Elburg, and Harderwyck. Long live the Beggar!

"'Tis lightning, 'tis a thunder bolt: Campen, Zwol, Hassel, Sheenwyck fall into our hands with Oudewater, Gouda, Leyden. Long live the Beggar!

"Ours are Bueren, Enckhuyse! Not yet have we Amsterdam, Schoonhoven, or Middelburg. But all cometh in time to patient blades. Long live the Beggar!

"Drink we the wine of Spain. Drink from the chalices whence they drank the blood of the victims. We shall go by way of the Zuyderzee, by rivers, streams, canals; we have North Holland, South Holland, and Zealand; we shall take East and West Frisia; La Briele shall be the refuge for our ships, the nest of the hens that hatch out liberty. Long live the Beggar!

"Hearken in Flanders, our beloved land, how there bursts forth the cry of avenging. Armour is polishing, the swords are a-whetting. All are astir, athrill like the strings of a harp in the warm breeze, the breath souls that cometh from grave pits, from torture fires, from the bleeding corpses of the victims. All, Hainaut, Brabant, Luxembourg, Namur, Liége the free city, all! Blood sprouts and springs up. The harvest is ripe for the sickle. Long live the Beggar.

"Ours the Noord-Zee, the wide North Sea. Ours are good guns, proud ships, the bold band of redoubted seamen: rogues, robbers, soldier-priests, gentlemen, townsfolk, and artisans fleeing persecution. Ours to all of us joined together for the work of freedom! Long live the Beggar!

"Philip, king of blood, where art thou? D'Alba, where art thou? Thou dost cry out and curse and blaspheme, thou with the holy hat, the Holy Father's gift. Beat the drums of joy. Long live the Beggar! Drink all!

"The wine flows into the golden cups. Drain it with glee. Priestly robes on the backs of rough men are flooded with the red liquor; banners, ecclesiastic and Roman, wave in the wind. Eternal music! To you, fifes squealing, bagpipes droning, drums beating, peals of glory. Long live the Beggar!"

XVII

The world was then in the wolf month, which is the month of December. A thin sharp rain was falling like needles upon the sea. The Beggars were cruising in the Zuyderzee. Messire the Admiral summoned by trumpet the captains of houlques and flyboats on board his ship, and with them Ulenspiegel.

"Now," said the Admiral, addressing himself first of all to Ulenspiegel, "the Prince is minded to recognize thy good devoirs and trusty services, and names thee as captain of the ship La Briele. Herewith I hand thee the commission engrossed upon parchment."

"All thanks to you, Messire Admiral," replied Ulenspiegel: "I shall be captain with all my little power, and thus captaining I have great hope, if God help me, to uncaptain Spain from the lands of Flanders and Holland: I mean from the Zuid and the Noord-Neerlande."

"That is well," said the admiral. "And now," he added, speaking to them all, "I will tell you that the folk of Catholic Amsterdam are going to besiege Enckhuyse. They have not yet come out from the Y canal; let us cruise about in front that they may stay inside there and fall on each and all of their ships that may show their tyrannical carcases in the Zuyderzee."

They made answer:

"We will knock holes in them. Long live the Beggar!"

Ulenspiegel, returned to his ship, called his soldiers and his sailors together on the deck, and told them what the admiral had decided.

They replied:

"We have wings, the which are our sails; skates, which are the keels of our ships; and giant hands, which are the grapples for boarding. Long live the Beggar!"

The fleet set forth and cruised in front of Amsterdam a sea league away, in such a sort that none could enter or come out against their will.

On the fifth day the rain ceased; the wind blew sharper in the clear sky; the Amsterdam folk made no stir.

Suddenly Ulenspiegel saw Lamme come up on deck, driving before him with great blows of his wooden ladle the ship's truxman, a young man skilful in the French and Flemish tongues, but more skilful still in the science of the teeth.

"Good-for-naught," said Lamme, beating him, "didst thou deem thou couldst scatheless eat my fricassees before their due time? Go up to the masthead and see if aught budges on the ships of Amsterdam. Doing this thou wilt do well."

But the truxman answered:

"What will you give me?"

"Dost thou think," said Lamme, "to be paid without doing the work? Thieves' spawn, if thou dost not climb, I shall have thee flogged. And thy French shall not save thee."

"'Tis a beauteous tongue," said the truxman, "a tongue for love and war."

And he climbed the mast.

"Well! lazybones?" asked Lamme.

The truxman answered:

"I see naught in the town nor on the ships." And descending:

"Now pay me," said he.

"Keep what thou hast stolen," replied Lamme; "but such gains are no profit; thou wilt doubtless vomit it up."

The truxman, climbing again to the masthead, cried out suddenly:

"Lamme! Lamme! there is a thief going into the galley."

"I have the key in my pouch," rejoined Lamme.

Ulenspiegel then, taking Lamme apart, said to him:

"My son, this great tranquillity of Amsterdam affrights me. They have some hidden project."

"I thought of that," said Lamme. "The water is freezing in the jugs in the cupboard; the fowl are like wood; hoar frost whitens the sausages; the butter is a stone, the oil is all white, the salt is dry as sand in the sun."

"'Tis a frost at hand," said Ulenspiegel. "They will come in great numbers to attack us with artillery."

Going on board the admiral's ship, he told his fear to the admiral, who answered him:

"The wind blows from England: there will be snow, but it will not freeze: go back to your ship."

And Ulenspiegel went away.

That night heavy snow fell; but soon, the wind blowing out of Norway, the sea froze and was like a floor. The admiral beheld the sight.

Then fearing lest the Amsterdam folk might come over the ice to burn the ships, he bade the soldiers make ready their skates, in case they might have to fight around and away from the ships, and the gunners of the iron guns and the brass to pile up heaps of cannon-balls by the gun carriages, to load the pieces, and to keep the portfires always well lighted.

But the Amsterdam folk never came.

And so it was for seven days.

Towards evening on the eighth day Ulenspiegel gave orders that a good feast should be served to the sailors and men at arms, to make them a cuirass against the sharp wind that was blowing.

But Lamme said:

"There is nothing at all left now but biscuit and small beer."

"Long live the Beggar!" said they. "'Twill be Lenten revelry until the hour of battle."

"Which will not strike soon," said Lamme. "The Amsterdammers will come to burn us our ships, but not on this night. First they must needs assemble themselves together around fires, and there drink many a measure of wine mulled with Madeira sugar--may God give us thereof--then having talked till midnight with patience, logic, and full stoups, they will decide that there are grounds for coming to a decision to-morrow as to whether they shall attack or not attack next week. To-morrow, again drinking wine mulled with Madeira sugar--may God give you thereof--they will decide anew with calm, patience, and full stoups, that they must assemble together another day, to the end that they may know if the ice can or cannot bear a great band of men. And they will have it proved and essayed by men of learning, who will lay down their conclusions upon parchment. Having received which, they will know that the ice is half an ell in thickness, and that it is solid enough to bear some hundreds of men with field guns and artillery. Then assembling themselves together once more to deliberate with calm, patience, and many stoups of mulled wine, they will debate whether, by reason of the treasure seized by us from the men of Lisbon, it is more suitable to assault or to burn our ships. And being thus perplexed, but temporizers, they will none the less decide that they must capture and not burn our ships, notwithstanding the great wrong and hurt they would do us by that."

"You say well," replied Ulenspiegel; "but see you not those fires kindle up within the town, and folk bearing lanterns running busily about there?"

"'Tis because they are cold," said Lamme.

And he added, sighing:

"Everything is eaten. No more beef, pork, nor poultry; no more wine, alas! nor good dobbel-bier, nothing but biscuit and small beer. Let who loves me follow me!"

"Whither goest thou?" said Ulenspiegel. "No man may go from the ship."

"My son," said Lamme, "thou art captain and master as now. I will never go from the ship if thou dost forbid it. Yet deign to consider that we ate the last of our sausage on the day before yesterday: and that in this stern weather the fire of the kitchen is the sun of good companions. Who would not fain smell here the odour of sauces; sniff up the fragrant bouquet of the divine drink made of those joyous blossoms that are gaiety, laughter, and good will to every man? And so, captain and trusty friend, I dare say this: I devour my very soul, since I eat naught, I who, though loving but repose, never slaying by my will, save it were a tender goose, a fat chicken, a succulent turkey, follow thee amid fatigue and battles. See from here the lights in that rich farm well furnished of big and little cattle. Knowest thou who it is that dwelleth there? It is the boatman of Frisia, that betrayed Messire Dandelot and furthermore brought to Enckhuyse, while it was still in D'Alba's hand, eighteen poor lords our friends, the which, of his doing, were beheaded on the Horse Market at Brussels. This traitor, who hath to name Slosse, got from the duke two thousand florins for his treachery. With the price of that blood, a very Judas, he purchased the farm thou seest there, and his great cattle and the fields around about, which bearing fruit and increasing, I mean land and herds, make him rich as now."

Ulenspiegel replied:

"The ashes beat upon my heart. Thou makest the hour of God to strike."

"And," said Lamme, "the hour of food in like wise. Give me twenty lads, valiant soldiers and sailors; I will go and seek out the traitor."

"I will be their leader," said Ulenspiegel. "Who loves justice let him follow me. Not all of you, dear friends and trusty; there must be twenty only, else who would keep the ship? Draw lots by the dice. Ye are twenty, come. The dice speak well. Put your skates on your feet and glide towards the star of Venus burning bright above the treachour's farm.

"Guiding yourselves by the clear beam, come, ye twenty, skating and sliding, axe on shoulder.

"The wind whistles and drives white whirls of snow before it on the ice. Come, brave men!

"Ye sing not, nor speak; ye go straight on, in silence, towards the star; your skates make the ice complain.

"He that falls picks himself up at once. We touch the shore; no human shape on the white snow, not a bird in the icy air. Take off the skates from your feet.

"Here we are on land; here are the meadows; put on your skates again. We are round about the farm, holding our breath."

Ulenspiegel knocks on the door; dogs bark. He knocks again, a window opens and the baes says, sticking out his head:

"Who art thou?"

He sees but Ulenspiegel only: the others are concealed behind the keet, which is the washhouse.

Ulenspiegel makes answer:

"Messire de Boussu bids thee betake thee to him at Amsterdam upon the instant."

"Where is thy safe-conduct?" said the man, coming down and opening the door to him.

"Here," replied Ulenspiegel, showing him the twenty Beggars who hurl themselves behind him into the opening.

Ulenspiegel then says to him:

"Thou art Slosse, the traitor boatman that brought into an ambuscade Messires Dandelot, de Battenberg, and other lords. Where is the price of their blood?"

The farmer replies, trembling:

"Ye are the Beggars; grant me a pardon; I knew not what I did. I have no money here within; I will give all I have."

Lamme said:

"It is black dark; give us candles of tallow or of wax."

The baes replies:

"The tallow candles are hanging there."

A candle being lit, said one of the Beggars, in the hearthplace:

"It is cold; let us kindle a fire. Here are proper faggots."

And he pointed out upon a shelf flower pots in which withered and dried plants might be seen.

He took one by the stalk and shaking it with the pot, the pot fell, scattering over the ground ducats, florins, and reals.

"There is the treasure," said he, pointing to the other flower pots.

In very deed, having emptied them, they found ten thousand florins.

Seeing which, the baes cried out and wept.

The farm servants, both men and maids, came to the cries, in shirts and smocks. The men wishing to avenge their master, were bound. Soon the shamefaced women, and especially the younger, hid behind the men.

Then Lamme went forward and said:

"Traitor farmer, where are the keys of the cellar, the stables, the cowshed, and the sheep-pens?"

"Infamous pillagers," said the baes, "ye shall be hanged until ye are dead."

Ulenspiegel replied:

"It is the hour of God; give up the keys!"

"God will avenge me," said the baes, handing them over to him.

Having emptied the farm, the Beggars departed skating towards the ships, those light dwelling places of freedom.

"Master cook am I," said Lamme, guiding them; "Master cook am I. Push along the gallant sledges laden with wines and beer; drive on before you, by their horns, or by anything, horses, oxen, swine, sheep, and flocks singing their native songs. The pigeons coo in the baskets; the capons, stuffed with crumb, are astonied in their wooden cages wherein they cannot budge. I am master cook. The ice cries out beneath the steel of the skates. We are at the ships. To-morrow there will be kitchen music. Let down the pulleys; put girths on the horses, cows, and oxen. 'Tis a noble sight to see them thus pendent by their bellies; to-morrow we shall be hanging by the tongue to fat fricassees. The crane hoists them up into the ship. These be carbonadoes. Throw me them pell mell into the hold, hens, geese, ducks, capons. Who will wring their necks? The master cook. The door is locked, I have the key in my satchel. Praised be God in the kitchen! Long live the Beggar!"

Then Ulenspiegel went on board the admiral's ship taking with him Dierick Slosse and the other prisoners, moaning and weeping for terror of the rope.

Messire Worst came at the noise: perceiving Ulenspiegel--his companions lit up by the red glare of the torches:

"What would you of us?" said he.

Ulenspiegel replied:

"This night we took, in his farm, the traitor Dierick Slosse, that brought the eighteen into an ambuscade. This is the man. The others are innocent menservants and maidservants. Then handing him a satchel:

"These florins," said he, "were flourishing in flower pots in the traitor's house: there are ten thousand."

Messire Worst said to them:

"Ye did ill to leave your ship; but because of your good success pardon shall be granted to you. Welcome be the prisoners and the satchel of florins, and ye, gallant men, to whom I assign, after the laws and customs of the sea, a third of the prize: the second will be for the fleet, and another third for Monseigneur d'Orange; string me up the traitor incontinent."

The Beggars having obeyed, they opened afterward a hole in the ice and threw the body of Dierick Slosse into it.

Messire Worst then said:

"Has grass sprung up around the ships that I hear hens cackling, sheep bleating, cows and oxen lowing?"

"These are the prisoners of our teeth," answered Ulenspiegel; "they will pay ransom of fricassees. Messire Admiral shall have the choicest."

"As for these folk, the knaves and the maidservants, among whom are sprightly and pretty women, I will fetch them back aboard my ship."

Having done so, he addressed them as follows:

"Goodfellows and goodwives, ye are here upon the best ship in the world. Here we pass our time in jollity, feast, and revel without end. If it please you to depart herefrom, pay ransom; if it please you to stay here, ye shall live like us, toiling hard and eating well. As for these dear women, I accord them, with the admiral's sanction, full freedom of their persons, giving them to know that it is all one to me whether they are fain to keep to their lovers that came upon the ship with them or to make their choice of some stout Beggar here present in order to bear him conjugal company."

But the fair women were all faithful to their lovers, save only one, who, smiling and looking upon Lamme, asked him if he would have her.

"All thanks, dear one," said he, "but I am otherwise bound."

"He is married, poor fellow," said the Beggars, seeing the girl vexed.

But she, turning her back on Lamme, chose another who like him had a good round belly and a good round face.

That day and the following days there were great revels and feastings on board with wines, fowl, and meats. And Ulenspiegel said:

"Long live the Beggar! Blow, sharp wintry winds, we will warm the air with our hot breath. Our heart is afire for freedom of conscience; our stomachs on fire for the enemy's meats. Drink we wine, the milk of men. Long live the Beggar!"

Nele, too, drank from a great golden tankard, and ruddy in the breath of the wind, played the shrill fife. And for all the cold, the Beggars ate and drank rejoicing on the deck.

XVIII

Suddenly the whole fleet perceived upon the bank a black troop among which torches shone and the gleaming of arms; then the torches were put out, and a great darkness reigned.

The admiral's orders being sent round, the alarm was given on the ships, and all fires were quenched; sailors and soldiers lay flat on the decks, armed with axes. The gallant gunners, linstock in hand, watched by the guns loaded with bags of bullets and with chain shot. As soon as the admiral and the captains should call out "A hundred paces!"--which denoted the enemy's distance, they were to fire from the bows, the poop, or the broadside, according to their position in the ice.

And Messire Worst's voice was heard saying:

"Death to whoever speaks aloud!"

And the captains said after him:

"Death to whoever speaks aloud!"

The night was moonless, filled with stars.

"Dost thou hear?" said Ulenspiegel to Lamme, in a voice like a whispering ghost. "Hearest thou the voices of the Amsterdammers, and the steel of their skates ringing over the ice? They come swiftly. We can hear them speak. They are saying 'The lazy Beggars are asleep. Ours is the Lisbon treasure!' They are lighting torches. Seest thou their ladders for the assault, their ugly faces, and the long line of their band deployed for the attack? There are a thousand of them, and more."

"A hundred paces!" cried Messire Worst.

"A hundred paces!" cried the captains all.

And there was a great noise like thunder, and lamentable outcries upon the ice.

"Eighty guns are thundering all together!" said Ulenspiegel. "They are fleeing! Seest thou the torches vanishing away?"

"Pursue them!" said Admiral Worst.

"Pursue them!" said the captains.

But the pursuit did not last long, the fugitives having a start of a hundred paces, and the legs of frightened hares.

And on the men that were crying out and dying on the ice were found gold, jewels, and ropes for the Beggars.

And after this victory the Beggars said one to another: "Als God met ons is, wie tegen ons zal zijn. If God is with us, who shall be against us? Long live the Beggar!"

Now on the morning of the third day thereafter Messire Worst was uneasy, and looked for a fresh attack. Lamme leaped upon the deck and said to Ulenspiegel:

"Fetch me to this admiral that would not listen to you when you prophesied a frost."

"Go without any fetching you?" said Ulenspiegel.

Lamme departed, first locking the door of his galley. The admiral was on deck, straining his eyes to see if he did not perceive some movement from the city.

Lamme came up to him.

"Monseigneur Admiral," said he, "may a humble master cook give you a rede?"

"Speak, my son," said the admiral.

"Monseigneur," said Lamme, "the water is thawing in the jugs; the fowl grow soft again; the sausage is laying aside its mildew of hoar frost; the butter becomes unctuous, the oil liquid; the salt is weeping. It will rain before long, and we shall be saved, Monseigneur."

"Who art thou?" asked Messire Worst.

"I am Lamme Goedzak," he replied, "the master cook of the ship La Briele. And if all those great savants that boast themselves astronomers read in the stars as true as I read in my sauces, they could tell us that to-night there will be a thaw with a great hubbub of storm and hail: but the thaw will not last."

And Lamme went back to Ulenspiegel, to whom he said, towards noon:

"I am a prophet already; the sky grows black, the wind breathes stormily: a warm rain is falling; already there is a foot of water upon the ice."

At night he cried, rejoicing:

"The North Sea is swollen: 'tis the hour of the flood tide; the high waves rolling into the Zuyderzee break up the ice, which splinters in great fragments and leaps up on the ships; it flashes sparkles of light; here comes the hail. The admiral bids us to withdraw from before Amsterdam, and that with as much water as our greatest ship can draw. Here we are in the harbour of Enckhuyse. The sea is freezing afresh. I am a fine prophet, and it is a miracle from God."

And Ulenspiegel said:

"Drink we to Him, and blessings on Him."

And the winter passed, and summer came.

XIX

In mid-August, when hens, fed full with grain, remain deaf to the call of the cock trumpeting his loves, Ulenspiegel said to his sailors and soldiers:

"The duke of blood, being at Utrecht, dares there to issue a blessed edict, promising among other gracious gifts, hunger, death, ruin to the inhabitants of the Low Countries who might be unwilling to submit. Everything that still remains whole, saith he, shall be exterminate, and His Majesty the king will people the country with strangers. Bite, duke, bite! The file breaketh the viper's tooth; we are files. Long live the Beggar!

"Alba, blood maketh thee drunk! Deemest thou that we would fear thy threats or believe in thy clemency? Thy famous regiments whose praises thou didst sing throughout the whole world, thy Invincibles, thy Tels Quels, thy Immortals, remained seven months bombarding Haarlem, a feeble city defended by mere citizens; like mortal common men they danced in air the dance of the bursting mines. Mere citizens besmeared them with tar; in the end they were glorious victors, slaughtering the disarmed. Hearest thou, murderer, the hour of God that striketh now?

"Haarlem hath lost her splendid defenders, her stones sweat blood. She hath lost and expended in her siege twelve hundred and eighty thousand florins. The bishop is reinstated there; with light hand and joyful countenance he blesses the churches; Don Frederick is present at these consecrations; the bishop washes for him those hands that in God's eyes are red and he communicates in two kinds, which is not permitted to the poor common herd. And the bells ring out and the chime flings into the air its calm, harmonious notes; it is like the singing of angels over a cemetery. An eye for an eye! A tooth for a tooth! Long live the Beggar!"

XX

The Beggars were then at Flushing, where Nele caught fever. Forced to leave the ship, she was lodged at the house of one Peeters, of the Reformed faith, at Turven-Key.

Ulenspiegel, deeply grieving, was yet rejoiced, thinking that in this bed where she would doubtless be healed the Spanish bullets could not reach her.

And with Lamme he was always beside her, tending her well and loving her better. And there they used to talk together.

"Friend and true comrade," said Ulenspiegel one day, "dost thou not know the news?"

"Nay, my son," said Lamme.

"Seest thou the flyboat that but late came to join our fleet, and knowest thou who it is upon it that twangs the viol every day?"

"Through the late colds," said Lamme, "I am as one deaf in both ears. Why dost thou laugh, my son?"

But Ulenspiegel, continuing:

"Once," he said, "I heard her sing a Flemish lied and found her voice was sweet."

"Alas," said Lamme, "she, too, sang and played upon the viol."

"Dost thou know the other news?" went on Ulenspiegel.

"I know naught of it, my son," said Lamme.

Ulenspiegel made answer:

"We have our orders to drop down the Scheldt with our ships as far as Antwerp, to find there the enemy ships to take or burn. As for the men, no quarter. What thinkest thou of this, big paunch?"

"Alas!" said Lamme, "shall we never hear aught else in this distressful land save burnings, hangings, drownings, and other ways of exterminating poor men? When then will blessed peace come, that we can in quiet roast partridges, fricassee chickens, and make the puddings sing in the pan among the eggs? I like the black ones best; the white are too rich."

"This sweet time will come," replied Ulenspiegel, "when in the orchards of Flanders we see on apple, plum, pear trees and cherry trees, a Spaniard hanged on every bough."

"Ah!" said Lamme, "if only I could find my wife again, my so dear, so sweet, beloved soft darling faithful wife! For know it well, my son, cuckold I was not nor shall ever be; she was too sober and calm in her ways for that; she eschewed the company of other men; if she loved fair and fine array, it was but for woman's need. I was her cook, her kitchenman, her scullion, I am glad to say it, why am I it not once more? but I was her master as well and her husband."

"Let us end this talk," said Ulenspiegel. "Hearest thou the admiral calling: 'Up anchors!' and captains after him calling the same? We must needs weigh soon."

"Why dost thou go so quickly?" said Nele to Ulenspiegel.

"We are going to the ships," said he.

"Without me?" she said.

"Aye," said Ulenspiegel.

"Dost thou not think," said she, "how lying here I shall be distressed for thee?"

"Dearest," said Ulenspiegel, "my skin is made of iron."

"Thou art mocking," said she. "I see nothing on thee but thy doublet, which is cloth, not iron; beneath it is thy body, made of bone and flesh, like my own. If they wound thee, who will heal thee? Art thou to die all alone in the midst of the fighters? I shall go with thee."

"Alas!" said he, "if the lances, balls, swords, axes, maces, sparing me, fall on thy dear body, what shall I do--I, good for naught without thee in this vile world?"

But Nele said:

"I would fain follow thee; there will be no peril; I will hide in the wooden forts where the arquebusiers are."

"If thou dost go, I stay, and they will hold thy friend Ulenspiegel traitor and coward; but listen to my lay:

"My hair is steel, as casque set there; An armour forged by Nature's hand My skin the first is buff well tanned, And steel the second skin I wear.

"In vain to catch me in his snare Death, grinning monster, takes his stand; My skin the first is buff well tanned, And steel the second skin I wear.

"My standards 'Live' as motto bear, Live ever in a sunshine land: My skin the first is buff well tanned, And steel the second skin I wear."

And he went off singing, not without having kissed the shaking mouth and the lovely eyes of Nele sunk in fever, smiling and weeping all together.

The Beggars are at Antwerp; they take the ships of Alba even in the very harbour. Entering the city, in broad day, they set free certain prisoners, and make others prisoner to bring ransom. By force they make the citizens rise, and some they constrain to follow them, on pain of death, without uttering a word.

Ulenspiegel said to Lamme:

"The admiral's son is detained at the Écoutête's: we must deliver him."

Going into the house of the Écoutête, they see the son they sought in the company of a big monk with a noble belly, who was preaching wrathfully to him, fain to make him return to the bosom of our Mother Holy Church. But the lad would by no means consent thereto. He departed with Ulenspiegel. Meanwhile Lamme, seizing the monk by the cowl, made him walk before him in the streets of Antwerp, saying:

"Thou art worth a hundred florins ransom: pack up and march on. Why dost thou hang back? Hast thou lead in thy sandals? March, bag of lard, victual press, soup belly!"

"I march, Master Beggar, I march; but saving the respect due to your arquebuse, you are as big in the belly as myself, a paunchy, vasty fellow."

Then Lamme, pushing him on:

"Dost thou dare indeed, foul monk," said he, "to liken thy cloistral, useless, lazy grease to my Fleming fat honourably sustained and fed by toils, fatigues, and battles? Run, or I shall make thee go like a dog, and that with the spur at the end of my boot-sole."

But the monk could not run, and he was all out of breath, and Lamme the same. And so they came to the ship.

XXI

Having taken Rammekens, Gertruydenberg, Alckmaer, the Beggars came back to Flushing.

Nele, now hale and cured, was waiting for Ulenspiegel at the harbour.

"Thyl," said she, "my love, Thyl, art thou not wounded?"

Ulenspiegel sang:

"My standards 'Live' as motto bear, Live ever in a sunshine land; My skin the first is buff well tanned My second skin is forged of steel."

"Alas!" said Lamme, dragging a leg, "the bullets, grenades, chain shot rain around him; he feels but the wind of them. Thou art without doubt a spirit, Ulenspiegel, and thou, too, Nele, for I behold thee ever brisk and young."

"Why dost thou drag thy leg?" asked Nele of Lamme.

"I am no spirit and never will be," said he. "And so I took an axe stroke in the thigh--how round and white my wife's was!--see, I am bleeding. Alas! why have I her not here to tend me!"

But Nele, angry, replied:

"What need hast thou of a wife forsworn?"

"Say naught ill of her," replied Lamme.

"Here," said Nele, "here is balsam; I was keeping it for Ulenspiegel; put it upon the wound."

Lamme, having dressed his wound, was joyous, for the balsam put an end to the keen anguish; and they went up again to the ship all three.

Seeing the monk who was walking to and fro there with his hands bound:

"Who is that one?" she said. "I have seen him already and I think I know him."

"He is worth a hundred florins ransom," replied Lamme.

XXII

That day aboard the fleet there was a feast. In spite of the sharp December wind, despite the rain, despite the snow, all the Beggars of the fleet were on the decks of the ships. The silver crescents gleamed lurid upon the bonnets of Zealand.

And Ulenspiegel sang:

"Leyden is delivered: the bloody duke leaves the Low Countries: Ring out, ye bells reëchoing: Chimes, fling your songs into the air: Clink, ye glasses and bottles, clink.

"When the mastiff slinks away from blows, His tail between his legs, With bloodshot eye He turns upon the cudgels.

"And his torn jaw Shivers and pants He has gone, the bloody duke; Clink bottle and glass. Long live the Beggar!

"Fain would he bite himself, The cudgels broke his teeth. Hanging his puff-jowled head He thinks of the days of murder and lust. He is gone, the bloody duke: Then beat upon the drum of glory, Then beat upon the drum of war! Long live the Beggar!

"He cries to the devil: 'I will sell thee My doggish soul for one hour of might.' 'Thy soul it is no more to me,' Said the devil, 'than a herring is.' The teeth meet no longer now. They must avoid hard morsels. He hath gone, the bloody duke: Long live the Beggar!

"The little street dogs, crooklegged, one-eyed, full of mange, That live or die on rubbish heaps. Heave up their leg one by one On him that killed for love of slaughter.-- Long live the Beggar.

"He loved not women, nor friends, Nor gayness, nor sun, nor his master, Nothing but Death, his betrothed, Who broke his legs As prelude to the betrothal, For she loves not men hale and whole; Beat upon the drum of joy, Long live the Beggar!

"And the little street dogs, crooklegged, Limping, one-eyed, full of mange, Heave their leg up once again In a hot and salty fashion. And with them greyhounds and mastiffs, Dogs of Hungary, of Brabant, Of Namur and Luxembourg, Long live the Beggar!

"And, miserably, with foaming mouth, He goes to die beside his master, Who fetches him a sounding kick, For not biting enough. "In hell he weddeth Death. She calleth him 'My Duke'; He calleth her 'My Inquisition.' Long live the Beggar!

"Ring out ye bells reëchoing: Chimes, fling your songs into the air; Clink, glasses and bottles, clink: Long live the Beggar!"