BOOK I

I

When May was unfolding the whitethorn blossom Ulenspiegel, son of

Claes, was born at Damme in Flanders.

A gossip midwife, by name Katheline, wrapt him in warm swaddling

clothes, and, looking at his head, pointed out a caul on it.

"A caul! he is born under a lucky star!" exclaimed she, rejoicing.

But in a moment, lamenting and displaying a little black spot on the

babe's shoulder:

"Alas," she wept, "'tis the black print of the devil's finger."

"Master Satan has been getting up very early, then," rejoined Claes,

"if he has had time already to put his mark on my son."

"It was not yet his bedtime," said Katheline, "for there is Chantecleer

only now waking up the hens."

And she went away, putting the child in the arms of Claes.

Then the dawn burst through the night clouds, the swallows skimmed the

meadows with shrill cries, and the sun showed his dazzling countenance,

bright and red upon the horizon. Claes threw the window wide and

spake to Ulenspiegel.

"Son with the caul," said he, "lucky son, here is our lord Sun coming

to salute the soil of Flanders. Look always on him when thou canst,

and whenever thou art in a maze, knowing not what to do so as to do

right, ask counsel of him: he is bright and warm; be thou honest as

he is bright, and kind even as he is warm."

"Husband Claes," said Soetkin, "you are preaching to deaf ears; come,

drink, my son."

And the mother offered the newly born nature's goodly flagons.

II

While Ulenspiegel drank of them, and called for no cup, all the birds

in the countryside awoke.

Claes, who was binding faggots, looked upon his wife as she gave the

breast to Ulenspiegel.

"Wife," said he, "have you laid up store of this good milk?"

"The jars are full," said she, "but that is not enough for my content."

"You speak piteously of so great a joy."

"'Tis in my mind," said she, "that in the wallet you see hanging by

the wall there is not one poor patard."

Claes took the wallet in his hand; but in vain did he shake it,

no morning song of coin answered him from within. Thereat he was

chapfallen, but wishing nevertheless to hearten his good wife.

"Why do you vex yourself?" said he. "Have we not in the hutch the cake

Katheline gave us yesterday? Do not I behold a noble piece of beef

that for three days at least will make good milk for the babe? That

sack of beans squatting so snugly in the corner, does it prophesy

famine? Yon firkin of butter, is it a ghost? Be they but phantoms,

those bright platoons and companies of apples ranged warrior-like in

ranks of eleven in the loft? Doth not that full-girthed cask of Bruges

cuyte, that in its belly keeps the wherewithal for our refreshing,

doth it not proclaim good drinking?"

"Needs must," said Soetkin, "when the babe is borne to baptism,

that we give two patards to the priest and a florin for the feasting."

Therewith entered Katheline, holding a great sheaf of plants in her

hand, saying:

"I bring the lucky babe angelica, that keepeth man from lewdness;

fennel that putteth Satan to flight...."

"Have you not," said Claes, "gotten the herb that conjureth florins?"

"Nay," quoth she.

"Then," said he, "I will even go see if there be none in the canal."

Forth he went carrying line and net, being well assured of meeting

nobody, for it still lacked an hour of the oosterzon, which is,

in Flanders, the morning sun of six of the clock.

III

Claes came to the canal of Bruges, not far from the sea. There,

baiting his line, he cast it in the water, and let down his net. A

little lad, well attired, lay upon the other bank, sleeping like a

log upon a clump of mussels.

The noise Claes made awoke him, and he would have fled away, fearing

it might be some sergeant of the commune coming to turn him off his

couch and hale him to the Steen for unlicensed vagrancy.

But his fears ceased when he knew Claes and when he heard him call:

"Would you like to earn six liards? Drive the fish this way."

The lad on the word went down into the water, with his little belly

already showing round and puffed up, and, arming himself with a tuft

of long reeds, drove the fish toward Claes.

His fishing over, Claes drew in his net and line, and walking across

the lock, came to the lad.

"You are he," said Claes, "whom they call Lamme by baptism and Goedzak

for your gentle nature, and you live in the street of the Heron,

behind Notre Dame. How comes it, young and well clothed as you are,

that you must needs sleep on a public bed?"

"Alas, master coalman," replied the lad, "at home I have a sister a

year younger than I, who beats me with heavy blows for the smallest

wrangle. But I dare not take my revenge on her back, for I should

do her a hurt. Last night, at supper, I was an-hungered and cleaned

with my fingers a dish of beef and beans in which she meant to have

a share. There was not enough of it for me, master. When she saw

me licking my lips for the goodness of the sauce, she became as one

out of her wits, and beat me so fast and furiously that I fled all

bruised from out of the house."

Claes asked him what his father and mother did during all this cuffing.

Lamme Goedzak replied:

"My father beat me on one shoulder and my mother on the other saying,

'Avenge thyself, coward!' But I, not willing to strike a girl,

fled away."

Suddenly Lamme grew pale and trembled all over.

And Claes saw a tall woman approaching, and by her side a little girl

lean and of a fierce aspect.

"Ah!" said Lamme, taking hold of Claes by his breeches, "here be my

mother and my sister coming to find me. Protect me, master coalman."

"Here," said Claes, "first take these seven liards for wages and let

us go stoutly to meet them."

When the two women saw Lamme, they ran to him and both were fain

to beat him, the mother because she had been anxious and the sister

because it was her habit.

Lamme hid behind Claes and cried:

"I have earned seven liards, I have earned seven liards, do not

beat me!"

But already the mother was hugging him, while the little girl tried

with might and main to open Lamme's hands to have his money. But

Lamme cried:

"It's mine. You shall not have it."

And he clenched his fists tight.

Claes shook the girl smartly by the ears and said to her:

"If you happen ever again to raise a brawl with your brother, who is

as good and gentle as a lamb, I shall put you in a black coal-hole

and there it will not be I that pull your ears, but the red devil out

of hell, who will rend you in pieces with his long claws and his big

forked teeth."

At this threat the little girl, not daring now to look at Claes or

to go near Lamme, took shelter behind her mother's skirts. But as

she went into the town she cried out everywhere:

"The coalman beat me: he has the devil in his cellar."

However, she never struck Lamme again; but being tall, she made him

work instead of her. And the kindly simpleton did it with a good will.

On his way back Claes had sold his catch to a farmer who usually

bought it from him. And reaching home he said to Soetkin:

"Here is what I found in the belly of four pike, nine carp, and a

basketful of eels." And he threw two florins and a patard on the table.

"Why do you not go a-fishing every day, husband?" asked Soetkin.

Claes replied:

"Not to be fish myself in the nets of the constables."

IV

At Damme they called Ulenspiegel's father Claes the Kooldraeger or

coalman: Claes had a black fell, eyes shining bright, a skin the same

colour as his wares, except on Sundays and feast days, when there was

great plenty of soap in the cottage. He was short, square, and strong,

and of a gay countenance.

When the day was ended and the evening shadows were falling, if he

went to some tavern on the Bruges road, to wash out his coal-blackened

gullet with cuyte, all the women taking the cool air on their doorsteps

would call out a friendly greeting:

"Good even and clear beer, coalman!"

"Good even and a wakeful husband," Claes would reply.

The lasses coming back from the fields in troops used to plant

themselves all in front of him so as to prevent him from going on,

and would say:

"What will you give for your right of way: scarlet ribbon, gilt buckle,

velvet shoon, or florin in the pouch?"

But Claes would take one round the waist and kiss her cheeks or her

neck, according to which fresh skin was nearest his mouth, then he

would say:

"Ask your lovers, darlings, ask your lovers for the rest."

Then they would go off in bursts of laughter.

The boys knew Claes by his big voice and the clatter of his

shoes. Running to him they would say:

"Good evening, coalman."

"God give you the like, my cherublings," Claes would answer, "but

don't come too close, or I shall turn you into blackamoors."

The little fellows, being bold, would come close all the same; and

then he would seize one by the tunic, and rubbing his soft little

muzzle with his smutty hands, would send him back like that, laughing

in spite of it, to the great delight of all the others.

Soetkin, Claes's wife, was a good helpmeet, early as the dawn and

diligent as the ant.

She and Claes tilled their field together, yoking themselves like

oxen to the plough. Hard and toilsome was the dragging, but harder

still the harrowing when that rustic engine must tear the stiff

earth with its wooden teeth. Yet always they worked light-hearted,

singing some ballad song.

And in vain was the earth stony hard; in vain did the sun dart his

hottest beams upon them: dragging the harrow, bending at the knees,

it was as naught that they must strain their loins cruelly; when

they would pause, and Soetkin turn toward Claes her gentle face,

and Claes kiss that mirror of a tender heart, then, ah, then, they

would forget their utter weariness.

V

Last night it had been cried at the doorway of the Townhall that Madam,

the wife of the Emperor Charles, being great with child, all men must

pray for her speedy delivery.

Katheline came to Claes's house all trembling.

"What aileth thee, gossip?" asked the goodman.

"Alas me!" she replied, and spoke brokenly. "Last night, spectres

cutting down men as reapers mow the grass. Girl children buried

quick! The hangman danced on the corpse----Stone sweating blood nine

months, broken this night."

"Have pity upon us," groaned Soetkin, "Lord God, have pity: 'tis a

black foreboding for the land of Flanders."

"Sawest thou that with thine eyes or in a dream?" asked Claes.

"With mine own eyes," said Katheline.

All pale and weeping Katheline spake again:

"Two boy babes are born, one in Spain, the Infante Philip, the other

in the country of Flanders, the son of Claes who will in after days be

surnamed Ulenspiegel. Philip will become a butcher, being engendered

by Charles the Fifth, the murderer of our country. Ulenspiegel will

be greatly learned in jests and pranks of youth, but he will be kind

of heart, having had to father Claes, the stout worker that knew

how to earn his bread in courage, honour, and simplicity. Charles

the Emperor and Philip the King will ride roughshod through life,

working ill by battles, exactions, and other crimes. Claes toiling

all week long, living by righteousness and law, and laughing instead

of weeping in his heavy labours, will be the ensample of all the good

workers of Flanders. Ulenspiegel ever young, and never to die, will run

throughout the world without ever tying himself to any place. And he

will be churl, noble, painter, sculptor, all together and at once. And

through the world will journey in this wise, praising all things good

and lovely, and flouting without stint all manner of folly. Claes

is thy courage, noble Flanders folk, Soetkin thy valiant mother,

Ulenspiegel is thy spirit; a darling sweet girl, Ulenspiegel's mate

and like him immortal, will be thy heart, and a fat paunch, Lamme

Goedzak, will be thy stomach. And up aloft shall be the devourers

of the folk; below, the victims; aloft the thieving hornets, below,

the toiling bees, and in the skies shall bleed the wounds of Christ."

This much having said, Katheline the good spaewife fell on sleep.

VI

They bore Ulenspiegel to baptism: on a sudden fell a spouting shower

that soaked him through. Thus was he baptized for the first time.

When he came within the church, word was given to godfather and

godmother, father and mother, by the schoolmaster beadle, that they

were to range themselves about the baptismal font, the which they did.

But there was in the roof above the font a hole made by a mason

wherefrom to hang a lamp from a star of gilded wood. The mason,

spying from on high the godfather and godmother stiffly standing

around the font covered with its lid, poured through the hole in the

roof a treacherous bucket of water, which falling between them upon

the lid of the font made a mighty splashing. But Ulenspiegel had the

biggest share. And thus was he baptized for the second time.

The dean arrived: they complained to him; but he told them to make

haste, and that it was an accident. Ulenspiegel was twisting about

and kicking because of the water that had fallen on him. The dean

gave him salt and water, and named him Thylbert, which signifies

"rich in movements." Thus he was baptized for the third time.

Leaving Notre Dame, they went opposite the church in the rue Longue

to the Rosary of Bottles whose credo was a jar. There they drank

seventeen quarts of dobbel-cuyt, and more. For this is the true

Flanders way of drying drenched folk, to light a fire of beer in the

belly. Ulenspiegel was thus baptized for the fourth time.

Going home and zigzagging along the road, their heads weighing more

than their bodies, they came to a foot plank thrown across a little

pool; Katheline, the godmother, was carrying the child, she missed her

footing and fell in the mud with Ulenspiegel, who was thus baptized

for the fifth time.

But he was pulled out of the pond and washed with warm water in the

house of Claes, and that was his sixth baptism.

VII

On that same day, His Sacred Majesty Charles resolved to hold high

festival to celebrate the birth of his son befittingly. Like Claes

he determined to go a-fishing, not in a canal, but in the pouches

and pockets of his people. Thence is it that sovereign houses draw

crusadoes, silver daelders, gold lions, and all those miraculous fishes

that change, at the fisher's will, into velvet robes, priceless jewels,

exquisite wines, and dainty meats. For the rivers best stocked with

fish are not those that hold most water.

Having brought together his councillors, His Sacred Majesty resolved

that the fishing should be done in the following manner.

His lordship the Infante should be borne to baptism toward nine or ten

of the clock; the inhabitants of Valladolid, to testify their joy,

should hold revelry and feast all night long, at their own charges,

and should scatter their silver upon the great square for the poor.

In five carfaxes there should be a great fountain spouting until

daybreak with strong wine paid for by the city. In five other carfaxes

there should be displayed, upon wooden stages, sausages, saveloys,

botargoes, chitterlings, ox tongues, and all kinds of meats, also at

the city's charges.

The folk of Valladolid should erect at their own expense, along

the route of the procession, a great number of triumphal arches

representing Peace, Felicity, Abundance, Propitious Fortune, and

emblems of all and sundry gifts from the skies with which they were

loaded under the reign of His Sacred Majesty.

Finally, besides these pacific arches, there should be set up certain

others on which should be displayed in bright colours less benignant

emblems, as lions, eagles, lances, halberds, pikes with wavy bladed

heads, hackbuts, cannons, falconets, mortars with their huge jowls,

and other engines showing in image the might and power in war of His

Sacred Majesty.

As for the lighting of the church, it should be graciously permitted

to the Guild of Candlemakers to make free gratis and for nothing more

than twenty thousand wax tapers, the unburned ends of which should

revert to the chapter.

As for any other expenses, the Emperor would gladly bear them, thus

showing his kindly determination not to burden his people overmuch.

As the commune was about to carry out these orders, lamentable

tidings came from Rome. Orange, Alencon and Frundsberg, captains

of the Emperor, had entered into the holy city and there sacked and

spoiled churches, chapels, and houses, sparing no living soul, priests,

nuns, women, children. The Holy Father had been made prisoner. For

a whole week pillage had never ceased, and Reiters and Landsknechts

were wandering through Rome, stuffed with food, drunken with wine,

brandishing their weapons, hunting for cardinals, declaring they

would cut enough out of their hides to save them from ever becoming

popes. Others, having already carried out this threat, strutted proudly

through the city, wearing on their breast rosaries of twenty-eight

or more beads, big as walnuts, and all bloody. Certain streets were

red streams in which lay heaped the rifled bodies of the dead.

Some said that the Emperor, needing money, had determined to fish for

it in the blood of the Church, and that having taken cognizance of the

treaty imposed by his commanders upon the captive pontiff, he forced

him to cede all the strongholds in his states, to pay four hundred

thousand ducats and to be prisoner until all was duly carried out.

None the less, great was His Majesty's grief; he countermanded all

the joyous preparations, all feasts and rejoicings, and ordered the

lords and ladies of his palace to don mourning.

And the Infante was baptized in white robes, the hue of royal mourning.

And lords and ladies interpreted this as a sinister omen.

For all this, my lady the nurse presented the Infante to the lords

and ladies of the palace, that these might, as is the custom, offer

good wishes and gifts.

Madame de la Coena hanged upon his neck a black stone potent against

poison, the size and shape of a hazelnut, with a gold shell; Madame

de Chauffade fastened upon him, by a silken cord, hanging down upon

his stomach, a filbert, the which bringeth good digestion of all

nourishment; Messire van der Steen of Flanders gave a Ghent sausage

five ells long and half an ell in thickness, wishing that at its mere

fragrance His Highness might be thirsty for clauwaert in the manner of

the people of Ghent, saying that whoso loveth the beer of a town will

never hate the brewers; Messire Squire Jacque-Christophe of Castile

prayed my Lord the Infante to wear green jasper on his tiny feet,

to make him run well. Jan de Paepe the fool, who was there present,

exclaimed:

"Messire, give him rather the trumpet of Joshua, at the sound whereof

all towns ran full trot before him, hastening to plant themselves

elsewhere with all their inhabitants, men and women and babes. For

monseigneur must not learn to run, but to make others run."

The tearful widow of Floris van Borsele, who was lord of Veere in

Zealand, gave Monseigneur Philip a stone, which, said she, made men

loving and women inconsolable.

But the Infante whimpered like a young calf.

At the same time Claes was putting in his son's hands a rattle made of

osier, with little bells, and said, dancing Ulenspiegel on his hand:

"Bells, bells, tinkling bells may you have ever on your cap, manikin;

for 'tis to the fools belongeth the realm of good days."

And Ulenspiegel laughed.

VIII

Claes having caught a big salmon, that salmon was eaten one Sunday

by himself and by Soetkin, Katheline, and little Ulenspiegel, but

Katheline ate no more than a bird.

"Gossip," said Claes to her, "is Flanders air so solid to-day that it

is enough for you to breathe it to be fed as with a dish of meat? When

shall we live in this wise? Rain would be good soup, it would hail

beans, and the snows, transformed to celestial fricassees, would

restore and refresh poor travelling folk."

Katheline, nodding her head, uttered not a word.

"Lo now," said Claes, "our dolorous gossip. What is it grieves

her then?"

But Katheline, in a voice that seemed but a low breathing:

"The wicked one," said she, "night is falling black--I hear him

announcing his coming--screaming like a sea hawk--shuddering, I beseech

the Virgin--in vain. For him, neither walls nor hedges nor doors

nor windows. Entereth anywhere like a spirit----Ladder creaking----He

beside me in the garret where I sleep. Seizes me in his cold arms, hard

like marble. Face frozen cold, kisses like damp snow----The cottage

tossed upon the earth, moving like a bark on the stormy sea...."

"You must go," said Claes, "every morning to mass, that our Lord Jesu

may give you strength to drive away this phantom come from hell."

"He is so handsome!" said she.

IX

Being weaned, Ulenspiegel grew like a young poplar.

Claes now did not kiss him often, but loved him with a surly air so

as not to spoil him.

When Ulenspiegel would come home, complaining of being beaten in

some fray, Claes would beat him because he had not beaten the others,

and thus educated Ulenspiegel became valiant as a young lion.

If Claes was from home, Ulenspiegel would ask Soetkin for a liard,

to go play. Soetkin, angry, would say, "What need have you to go

play? It would fit you better to stay at home to tie faggots."

Seeing that she would give him nothing, Ulenspiegel would cry like an

eagle, but Soetkin would make a great clatter of pots and pans, which

she was washing in a wooden tub, to pretend she did not hear him. Then

would Ulenspiegel weep, and the gentle mother, dropping her feigned

harshness, would come to him, petting him, and say, "Will a denier

be enough for you?" Now take notice that a denier is worth six liards.

So she loved him overmuch, and when Claes was not there, Ulenspiegel

was king in the house.

X

One morning Soetkin beheld Claes with head down wandering about the

kitchen like a man lost in his own thought.

"What grieves thee, husband?" said she. "Thou art pale, wroth,

and distraught."

Claes answered in a low tone, like a growling dog:

"They are going to renew the Emperor's cruel edicts. Death will hover

once more over the soil of Flanders. Informers are to have the half of

the victims' goods, if the goods exceed not a hundred florins carolus."

"We are poor folk," said she.

"Poor," said he, "but not poor enough. There are some of that vile

crew, ravens and vultures living on corpses, who would denounce us

to divide a basket of charcoal with His Majesty as well as a bag of

carolus. What had poor Tanneken, the widow of Sis the tailor, who

perished at Heyst, buried alive? A Latin Bible, three gold florins,

and some pewter pans that her neighbour coveted. Johannah Martens was

burned for a witch, being first flung into water, for her body had

floated and they took it as a judgment of heaven. She had some poor

bits of furniture, seven gold carolus in a purse, and the informer

wanted half. Alas! I could tell thee the like until to-morrow, but

come, goodwife, life is no longer worth the living in Flanders by

reason of these edicts. Soon every night will the chariot of death

pass through the town, and we shall hear the skeleton shaking in it

with a dry clatter of bones."

"You must not frighten me, husband. The Emperor is the father of

Flanders and Brabant, and like a father is endued with long-suffering

gentleness, patience, and compassion."

"He would lose too much by that," said Claes, "for he inherits the

goods that are confiscate."

Of a sudden sounded the trumpet and gnashed the cymbals of the town

herald. Claes and Soetkin, carrying Ulenspiegel in their arms turn

about, ran to the sound with the crowd.

They came to the Townhall, before which were the heralds upon

horseback, blowing their trumpets and clashing their cymbals, the

provost holding the wand of justice and the procurator of the commune

on horseback, holding in both hands an edict of the Emperor and making

ready to read it to the assembled throng.

Claes heard that it was thenceforward straightly forbidden, to all

men in general and in particular, to print, read, have, or maintain

the writings, books, or doctrine of Martin Luther, Johannes Wycliff,

Johannes Huss, Marcilius de Padua, AEcolampadius, Ulricus Zwinglius,

Philippus Melancthon, Franciscus Lambertus, Joannes Pomeranus, Otto

Brunselsius, Justus Jonas, Johannes Puperis et Gorcianus, the New

Testaments printed by Adrien de Berghes, Christopher de Remonda,

and Joannes Zel, full of Lutheran and other heresies, banned and

condemned by the Theological Faculty of the University of Louvain.

"In like manner neither to paint or pourtray, nor cause to be painted

or pourtrayed either opprobrious figures of God and the Blessed

Virgin or of their saints; nor to break, rend, or efface the images

or pourtraitures made in honour, memory, or remembrance of God and

of the Virgin Mary or of saints approved by the Church.

"Furthermore," said the proclamation, "no man, of whatever station,

shall put himself forward to discuss or dispute upon Holy Writ,

even upon matters that are held in doubt, if he is not a theologian

renowned and approved by a great university."

His Sacred Majesty enacted among other penalties that suspected persons

should ever after be incapable of holding honourable estate. As for

persons fallen a second time into their error, or persons who were

stubborn therein, they should be condemned to burn by a slow fire

or quick, in an envelope of straw, or fastened to a stake, at the

discretion of the judge. Other men should be executed by the sword

if they were noble or reputable burgesses, churls by the gallows, and

women by burying alive. Their heads, for a warning, should be planted

on spikes. And there would be confiscation to the Emperor of the

goods and chattels of all that lay within the limits of confiscation.

His Sacred Majesty granted to informers the half of all possessed

by the condemned, provided their goods did not amount in all to one

hundred pounds in Flanders money. As for the Emperor's portion, he

reserved to himself the right to employ it in works of piety and alms,

as he did at the sack of Rome.

And Claes went sadly away, with Soetkin and Ulenspiegel.

XI

The year had been a good one, and Claes bought a donkey and nine

measures of peas for seven florins and one morning he mounted on

the beast, and Ulenspiegel clung to the crupper behind him. They

were going in this fashion to salute their uncle and elder brother,

Josse Claes, who lived not far from Meyborg in Germany.

Josse, who had been simple and kind in his youth, having suffered

various wrongs, became crotchety and malicious, his blood turned to

bile in his veins, he became misanthropic and lived solitary and alone.

His delight then was to make two so-called faithful friends fight

each other, and he would give three patards to the one that gave the

other the hardest drubbing.

He loved also to bring together in a well-heated room a great many

old gossips, the oldest and crabbedest that could be found, and he

would give them toasted bread to eat and hypocras to drink.

Those who were more than sixty years old he gave wool to knit in a

corner, recommending them to let their nails always grow long. And

it was a marvel to hear all the gurgling, the tongue clacking, the

ill-natured tattle, the thin coughings and spittings of these old

hags, who, with their knitting needles under their armpits, sat all

together nibbling at their neighbours' good name.

Now when he saw them all animated and lively, Josse would throw a

hank of hair into the fire, and as it flared up the air would all at

once be poisoned.

The gossips then, all talking together, would accuse each other of

making the stench; all denying it, they would very soon have each

other by the hair, and Josse would go on throwing more hair on the

fire, and chopped up horsehair on the floor. When he could see no

longer, by reason of the fury of the melee, the thick smoke and the

flying dust, he would fetch two of his men disguised as constables,

who would drive the old women out of the hall, beating them soundly

with long switches, like a troop of angry geese.

And Josse would examine the battlefield, finding strips of clothes,

fragments of shoes, pieces of chemises, and old teeth.

And filled with melancholy he would say to himself:

"My day is wasted, never a one of them has left her tongue behind in

the melee."

XII

Claes, being in the bailiwick of Meyborg, was going through a little

wood: the donkey as he travelled was browsing on the thistles;

Ulenspiegel was throwing his bonnet after the butterflies and picking

it up without leaving the beast's back. Claes was eating a hunch of

bread, meaning to wash it down at the next tavern. Far off he heard

a bell clinking and the noise of a great crowd of men all speaking

together.

"'Tis some pilgrimage," said he, "and the pilgrims will doubtless

be numerous. Hold on well, my son, to the donkey, so that they may

not knock you over. Come and let us see. Now, then, ass, stick to

my heels."

And the ass began to run.

Leaving the fringe of the wood, he descended towards a wide plateau

bordered by a stream at the foot of its western slope. On the eastern

slope was a little chapel with a gable surmounted by the image of Our

Lady and at her feet two little figures each representing a bull. Upon

the chapel steps, grinning with glee, were a hermit shaking his bell,

fifty flunkeys holding lighted candles, players, blowers, bangers of

drums, clarions, fifes, shawms, and bagpipes, and a knot of jolly

companions holding with both hands iron boxes full of old metal,

but all silent at the moment.

Five thousand pilgrims and more went along seven by seven in close

ranks, casques on their heads, cudgels of green wood in their hands. If

there came fresh arrivals helmeted and armed in like fashion, they

ranged themselves tumultuously behind the others. Then passing seven

by seven before the chapel they had their cudgels blessed, received

each man a candle from the hands of the flunkeys, and in exchange

paid a demi-florin to the hermit.

And so long was the procession that the candles of the first were

burnt down to the end of the wick while those of the latest were all

but choking with too much tallow.

Claes, Ulenspiegel, and the donkey, astonished, saw thus passing

before them an immense variety of bellies, broad, long, high, pointed,

proud, firm, or falling ignobly upon their natural props. And all

the pilgrims had casques on their heads.

Some of these casques had come from Troy, and were like Phrygian caps,

or surmounted by aigrettes of red horsehair; some of the pilgrims,

though they were fat-faced and paunchy, wore helms with outspread

wings, but had no notion of flying; then came those who had on

their heads salades that snails would have disdained for their lack

of greenery.

But the greater part had casques so old and rusty that they seemed to

date from the days of Gambrinus, the King of Flanders and of beer,

the which monarch lived nine hundred years before Our Lord and wore

a quart pot for a hat, so that he need never have to refrain from

drinking for lack of a cup.

All at once rang, droned, thundered, thumped, squealed, brayed,

clattered bells, bagpipes, shawms, drums, and ironmongery.

At the sound of this din, the signal for the pilgrims, they turned

about, placing themselves face to face by bands of seven, and by way

of provocation every man thrust his flaming candle into the face of

his opposite. Therefrom arose great sternutation. And it began to

rain green wood. And they fought with foot, with head, with heel,

with everything. Some hurled upon their adversaries like rams, casque

foremost, smashing it down on to their shoulders, and ran blinded

to fall on a seven-fold rank of furious pilgrims, the which received

them ungently.

Others, whimperers and cowards, bemoaned themselves because of the

blows, but while they were mumbling their dolorous paternosters, there

whirled upon them, swift as a thunderbolt, two sevens of struggling

pilgrims, flinging the poor blubberers to earth and trampling them

without compassion.

And the hermit laughed.

Other sevens, keeping in clusters like grapes, rolled from the top

of the plateau into the very stream where they still exchanged shrewd

strokes without quenching their fury.

And the hermit laughed.

Those that remained upon the plateau were blacking each other's eyes,

breaking each other's teeth, tearing out each other's hair, rending

each other's doublet and breeches.

And the hermit would laugh and call out:

"Courage, friends, he that smiteth sore but loves the more. To the

hardest hitters the love of their fair ones! Our Lady of Rindisbels,

'tis here may be seen the true males!"

And the pilgrims fell to it with joyous heart.

Claes, meanwhile, had drawn near the hermit, while Ulenspiegel,

laughing and shouting, applauded the blows.

"Father," said Claes, "what crime, then, have these poor fellows

committed to be forced so cruelly to strike one another?"

But the hermit, not giving ear to him, shouted:

"Lazybones! ye lose courage. If the fists are weary are the feet? God's

life! some of you have legs to run like hares! What makes fire

leap from the flint? 'Tis the iron that beateth it. What blows up

virility in old folk if not a goodly dish of blows well seasoned with

male fury?"

At these words, the pilgrims continued to belabour one another with

casque, with hands, with feet. 'Twas a wild melee where not Argus

with his hundred eyes had seen aught but the flying dust or the peak

of some casque.

Sudden the hermit clanked his bell. Fifes, drums, trumpets, bagpipes,

shawms, and old iron ceased their din. And this was the signal

for peace.

The pilgrims picked up their wounded. Among them were seen many tongues

swollen with anger, protruding from the mouths of the combatants. But

they returned of themselves to their accustomed palates. Most difficult

of all it was to take off the casques of those who had thrust them

down as far as their necks, and now were shaking their heads, but

without making them fall, no more than green plums.

None the less the hermit said to them:

"Recite each one an Ave and go back to your good wives. Nine months

hence there will be as many children more in the bailiwick as there

were valiant champions in the battle to-day."

And the hermit sang the Ave and all sang it with him. And the bell

tinkled above.

Then the hermit blessed them in the name of Our Lady of Rindisbels

and said:

"Go in peace!"

They departed shouting, jostling, and singing all the way to

Meyborg. All the goodwives, old and young, were waiting for them on

the threshold of their houses which they entered like men at arms in

a town taken by storm.

The bells of Meyborg were pealing their loudest: the little lads

whistled, shouted, played the rommel-pot.

Quart stoups, tankards, goblets, glasses, flagons, and pint-pots

rang and jingled marvellously. And the good wine rolled in waves down

thirsty throats.

During this ringing, and while the wind brought to the ears of Claes

from the town, in gusts, songs of men and women and children, he

spake once again to the hermit, asking him what heavenly boon these

good folk looked to win by these rough devotions.

The hermit answered, laughing:

"Thou seest upon this chapel two carven images, representing two

bulls. They are placed there in memory of the miracle whereby Saint

Martin transformed two bullocks into bulls, by making them fight with

their horns. Then he rubbed their muzzles with a candle and green

wood for an hour and longer.

"Wotting of the miracle, and fortified with a brief from His Holiness,

for which I paid roundly, I came hither and established myself.

"Thenceforward all the ancient coughers and big-bellies in Meyborg and

the country roundabout, persuaded by my arguments, were certain that

having once beaten one another soundly with the candle, the which is

unction, and with the cudgel, that is power, they would win favour of

Our Lady. The women send their ancient husbands hither. The children

born by virtue of this pilgrimage are violent, bold, fierce, nimble,

and make perfect soldiers."

Suddenly the hermit said to Claes:

"Dost thou know me?"

"Yea," said Claes, "thou art Josse my brother."

"I am," replied the hermit; "but what is this little man that makes

faces at me?"

"It is thy nephew," said Claes.

"What difference dost thou make between me and the Emperor Charles?"

"It is great," replied Claes.

"It is but small," rejoined Josse, "for we do both alike, we two:

he makes men to slay one another, I to beat one another for our gain

and pleasure."

Then he brought them to his hermitage, where they held feast and

revel for eleven days without pause or truce.

XIII

Claes, when he parted from his brother, mounted his donkey once more,

taking Ulenspiegel on the crupper behind him. He passed by the great

square of Meyborg, and there beheld, assembled in groups, a great

number of pilgrims, who seeing them became enraged and flourishing

their cudgels they all suddenly cried out, "Scamp!" because of

Ulenspiegel, who, opening his breeches, plucked up his shirt and

showed them his nether visage.

Claes, seeing that it was his son they were threatening, said to him:

"What did you do for them to be so angry against you?"

"Dear father," replied Ulenspiegel, "I am sitting on the donkey,

saying no word to any man, and nevertheless they say I am a scamp."

Then Claes set him in front.

In this position Ulenspiegel thrust out his tongue at the pilgrims,

who, roaring, shook their fists at him, and lifting up their cudgels,

would fain have beaten Claes and the donkey.

But Claes smote the beast with his heels to flee from their wrath,

and while they pursued, losing their breath, he said to his son:

"Thou wert then born on a luckless day, for thou art sitting in front

of me, doing no harm to any, and yet they would fain destroy thee."

Ulenspiegel laughed.

Passing by Liege, Claes learned that the poor Rivageois were starving

and that they had been placed under the jurisdiction of the Official, a

tribunal composed of ecclesiastical judges. They made a riot demanding

bread and lay judges. Some were beheaded or hanged, and the rest

banished out of the country, such at that time was the clemency of

Monseigneur de la Marck, the gentle archbishop.

Claes saw by the way the banished folk, fleeing from the pleasant

vale of Liege, and on the trees near to the town the bodies of men

hanged for being hungry. And he wept over them.

XIV

When he came home, riding upon his donkey, and provided with a bag

full of patards his brother Josse had given him and a goodly tankard of

pewter, there were in the cottage Sunday good cheer and daily feasts,

for every day they had meat and beans to eat.

Claes filled often the great pewter tankard with dobbel-cuyt and

emptied it as often.

Ulenspiegel ate for three and paddled in the dishes like a sparrow

in a heap of corn.

"Look," said Claes, "he's eating the saltcellar, too!"

Ulenspiegel answered:

"When the saltcellar, as in our house, is made of a hollow piece of

bread, it must be eaten now and then, lest the worms might come in

it as it gets old."

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

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

At this moment Claes drank a deep draught from his tankard. Ulenspiegel

said to him:

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

Claes answered:

"Because I am your father and the baes of this house."

Ulenspiegel retorted:

"You have been drinking for forty years, I for nine only; your time

to drink is passed, mine is come; it is therefore for me to have the

tankard and for you to take the mug."

"Son," said Claes, "he that would pour a hogshead into a keg would

throw his beer into the gutter."

"You will then be wise to pour your keg into my hogshead, for I am

bigger than your tankard," replied Ulenspiegel.

And Claes, delighted, gave him his tankard to drain. In this wise

Ulenspiegel learned how to talk for his drink.

XV

Soetkin carried beneath her girdle the signs of renewed maternity;

Katheline, too, was with child, but for fear dared not stir out of

her house.

When Soetkin went to see her:

"Ah!" said she, lamenting, "what shall I do with the poor fruit of my

womb? Must I strangle it? I would rather die. But if the constables

take me, for having a child without being married, they will make me

pay twenty florins, like a girl of loose life, and I shall be whipped

on the marketplace."

Soetkin then said some soothing word to console her, and having left

her, went home pondering. Then one day she said to Claes:

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

"I don't know that," replied Claes.

"But," said she, "if this second were not born of me, and like

Katheline's were the offspring of an unknown, of the devil, mayhap?"

"Devils," replied Claes, "engender fire, death, and foul smoke,

but not children. I will hold as mine the child of Katheline."

"You would do this?" she said.

"I have said," replied Claes.

Soetkin went to tell Katheline.

Hearing it, the latter cried out, overjoyed.

"He has spoken, good man, spoken for the sake of my poor body. He

will be blessed by God, and blessed of the devil, if it is a devil,"

she said, shuddering, "that hath made thee, poor babe that movest in

my bosom."

Soetkin and Katheline brought into the world one a lad, the

other a girl. Both were borne to baptism, as son and daughter of

Claes. Soetkin's son was named Hans, and did not live, Katheline's

daughter was named Nele and throve well.

She drank the wine of life from four flagons, two of Katheline and

two of Soetkin. And the two women quarrelled softly which should give

the babe to drink. But against her desire Katheline must needs allow

her milk to dry up, so that none might ask whence it came without

her having been a mother.

When little Nele, her daughter, was weaned, she took her home and

only let the child go to Soetkin's when she had called her her mother.

The neighbours said it was well done of Katheline, who was well to

do, to feed the child of the Claes, who for the most part lived in

poverty their toilsome life.

XVI

Ulenspiegel found himself alone one morning at home, and for want

of something better to do, he began to cut up one of his father's

shoes to make a little ship. Already he had planted the mainmast in

the sole and bored the toe for the bowsprit, when at the half door

he saw passing the bust of a horseman and the head of a horse.

"Is any one within?" asked the horseman.

"There are," replied Ulenspiegel, "a man and a half and a horse's

head."

"How so?" asked the horseman.

"Because I see here a whole man, which is me; the half of a man,

which is your bust; and a horse's head, which is that of your steed."

"Where are your father and your mother?" asked the man.

"My father has gone to make bad worse," replied Ulenspiegel, "and my

mother is engaged in bringing us shame or loss."

"Explain," said the horseman.

Ulenspiegel answered:

"My father at this moment is deepening the holes in his field so

as to bring from bad to worse the huntsmen who trample down his

corn. My mother has gone to borrow money: if she repays too little

'twill shame us, if too much 'twill be our loss."

The man asked then which way he should go.

"Where the geese are," replied Ulenspiegel.

The man went away and came back just when Ulenspiegel was making an

oared galley out of Claes's other shoe.

"You have misled me," said he: "where the geese are is nothing but

mud and marsh in which they are paddling."

Ulenspiegel answered to this:

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

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

"In Flanders, it is the travellers that go and not the roads,"

said Ulenspiegel.

XVII

One day Soetkin said to Claes:

"Husband, my heart is sad: it is now three days since Thyl left the

house; dost thou not know where he is?"

Claes replied ruefully:

"He is where homeless dogs are, on some highway with a crew of other

vagabonds of his own kidney. God was cruel to give us such a son. When

he was born, I beheld in him the joy of our age, a tool more in the

house; I looked to make a craftsman of him, and wicked fate makes

him a thief and a drone."

"Be not so hard, husband," said Soetkin, "our son being but nine years

old is in the heyday of childish thoughtlessness and folly. Is it not

so that like the trees, he must shed the young buds before the coming

of the full leaves, which for the human tree are honour and virtue? He

is full of tricks, I am not blind to them, but they will turn later to

his advantage, if instead of employing them to ill ends, he applies

them to some useful trade. He is prone to flout his neighbours;

but later this will help him to hold his own in merry company. He

laughs ever and always; but faces sour before they are ripe are an

ill omen for the countenance to come. If he runs, 'tis that he must

grow; if he does not work, it is for that he is not yet of an age to

feel that work is duty, and if now and then he spends day and night

away from home for half a week together, 'tis that he knows nothing

of what grief he gives us, for he has a good heart, and he loves us."

Claes wagged his head and made no answer, and while he slept, Soetkin

wept alone. And in the morning, thinking that her son was sick in

a corner of some highway, she went out on the doorstep to see if

he was not coming back; but she saw nothing, and she sate near the

window, looking thence into the street. And many a time her heart

danced in her bosom at the sound of the light foot of some lad; but

when he passed, she saw it was not Ulenspiegel, and then she wept,

poor dolorous mother.

In the meanwhile, Ulenspiegel with his vagabond companions was at

Bruges, at the Saturday fair.

There might be seen cobblers and shoemakers in booths apart, tailors

selling clothes, miesevangers from Antwerp, who catch tits with an

owl at night; poultry sellers, dog stealers, vendors of catskins for

gloves, waistcoats, and doublets, buyers of every kind and condition,

burgesses and their womenfolk, menservants and maidservants, pantlers,

butlers, and all together, sellers and buyers, crying up and crying

down, vaunting and disparaging the wares.

In one corner of the fair there was a fine canvas tent erected on

four poles. At the door of the tent, a churl from the flat country of

Alost, with two monks who were there to get something for themselves,

was showing the curious devout, for a patard, a piece of the shoulder

blade of Saint Mary of Egypt. Hoarsely he bawled out the saint's

merits, and omitted not from his song how, having no silver, she paid

a young ferryman in kind, so as not to sin against the Holy Ghost by

refusing the labourer his hire.

And the two monks nodded their heads to show that what the churl said

was true. By them was a woman fat and ruddy, lascivious as Astarte,

violently inflating a wretched bagpipe, while a pretty young girl sang

beside her like a nightingale; but no one listened to her. Above the

entrance to the tent was hung on two poles, held by cords in the two

handles, a bucket full of holy water that had been blessed in Rome,

according to the fat woman, while the two monks waggled head to bear

witness to her tale. Ulenspiegel, beholding the bucket, became pensive.

To one of the poles supporting the tent was fastened a donkey that was

fed more upon hay than on oats: head down it was gazing at the earth,

with no hope of seeing thistles spring up from it.

"Comrades," said Ulenspiegel, pointing with his finger at the fat

woman, the two monks, and the ass, "since the masters sing so sweetly,

we must make the donkey dance as well."

So saying, he went off to the next booth, bought six liards' worth of

pepper, pulled up the donkey's tail and clapped the pepper underneath.

The donkey, feeling the pepper at work, looked round under his tail

to see whence proceeded this unwonted heat. Thinking he had a red-hot

devil there, he would fain run away to escape him, began to bray and

rear, and shook the tent pole with all his might. At the first shock,

the tub between the two poles spilled all its holy water on the tent

and on those who were within it. And presently collapsing, the tent

covered with a moist mantle those who were hearkening to the history of

Mary of Egypt. And from under the canvas Ulenspiegel and his companions

heard a great noise of moaning and lamenting, for the devout who were

there were wild with anger and exchanged furious thwacks and thumps

with one another. The canvas rose and fell at the struggles of the

combatants. Every time Ulenspiegel saw a roundness shape itself under

the cloth, he stuck a needle into it. Then there were louder shrieks

beneath the canvas and a more liberal distribution of thwackings.

And he was transported, but more still seeing the donkey fleeing and

dragging behind him tent, tub, and poles, while the baes of the tent,

his wife and his daughter, hung desperately on to the baggage. The

donkey, which could run no longer, lifted his head into the air and

ceased not to sing, except in order to look beneath his tail to see

if the fire there burning would not soon be extinguished.

All this while the devout were going on with their battle; the monks,

without giving them a thought, were picking up the money that had

fallen from the collecting dishes, and Ulenspiegel was helping them,

most devoutly, not without profiting.

XVIII

Whilst the vagabond son of the coalman was growing up gay and

frolicsome, in lean melancholy vegetated the dolorous scion of the

sublime Emperor. Lords and ladies saw the pitiful little weakling

dragging through the rooms and corridors of Valladolid his frail body

and his tottering limbs that could scarce sustain the weight of his

big head, covered with fair stiff hair.

Ever seeking out the darkest corridors, there he would sit for hours

thrusting out his legs in front of him. If a servant trod on him by

accident, he had the man flogged, and took pleasure in hearing him

cry out under the lashes, but he never laughed.

The next day, going elsewhere to set the same trap, he would sit

again in some corridor with his legs thrust out. The ladies, lords,

and pages who might pass there going fast or slow would trip over

him, fall down and hurt themselves. He took pleasure in this, also,

but he never laughed.

When one of them, having run into him, failed to fall, he would cry

out as if he had been struck, and he was delighted to see their fear,

but he never laughed.

His Sacred Majesty was informed of his behaviour and gave orders to

take no notice of the boy, saying that if he did not wish to have his

legs trodden on, he ought not to put them in the way of people's feet.

This angered Philip, but he said nothing, and no one saw him after,

except when on bright summer days he went to warm his shivering body

in the sunshine in the courtyard.

One day, coming back from the wars, Charles saw him steeped in

melancholy in this fashion.

"Son," said he, "how different art thou from me! At thy age, I loved

to climb among trees to hunt the squirrels; I had myself lowered

by a rope down some steep cliff to take eaglets from the nest. At

this play I might have left my bones behind me; they but became the

harder for it. In the chase the wild things fled to their dens when

they saw me coming with my good arquebus."

"Ah," sighed the boy, "I have a pain in the belly, monseigneur

my father."

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

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

"Son," said Charles, "thou must run and leap and romp as do other

boys of thine own years."

"My legs are stiff, monseigneur my father."

"How," said Charles, "how can they be otherwise if thou usest them

no more than if they were legs of wood? I will have thee fastened on

some nimble steed."

The boy wept.

"Do not so," said he, "I have a pain in my loins, monseigneur my

father."

"But," said Charles, "you have a pain everywhere then?"

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

"Dost thou think," rejoined the Emperor, impatiently, "to pass thy

royal life in brooding as do clerks? For them, if it must be, in

order that they may soil their parchments with ink, from the silence,

solitude, and retirement; for thee, son of the sword, there needs

hot blood, the eye of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the strength

of Hercules. Why dost thou make the holy sign? God's blood! 'tis not

for the lion's cub to ape paternoster-mongering females."

"Hark, the Angelus, monseigneur my father," replied the child.

XIX

This year May and June were verily the months of flowers. Never did

any see in Flanders hawthorn so fragrant, never in the gardens so many

roses, such heaps of jasmine and honeysuckle. When the wind that blew

up out of England drove the incense of this flowery land towards the

east, every man, and specially in Antwerp, nose in air with delight,

would say:

"Do you smell the sweet wind that comes from Flanders?"

In like wise the busy bees sucked the flowers' honey, made wax, laid

their eggs in hives too small to harbour their swarms. What music

of labour under the blue sky that covered the rich earth with its

dazzling tent!

Men made hives out of rushes, of straw, of osiers, of plaited

hay. Basketmakers, tubmakers, coopers were wearing out their tools

over the work. As for the wood carvers, for a long time they had been

unequal to the task.

The swarms were of full thirty thousand bees and two thousand seven

hundred drones. The honeycombs were so delicious that because of their

rare quality, the dean of Damme sent eleven to the Emperor Charles,

by way of thanks for having through his edicts restored the Holy

Inquisition to all its full vigour. It was Philip that ate them,

but they did him no good.

Tramps, beggars, vagabonds, and all that ragtag and bobtail of idle

rogues that parade their laziness about the roads, preferring to be

hanged rather than to work, enticed by the taste of the honey, came

to get their share of it. And they prowled about by night, in crowds.

Claes had made hives to attract the swarming bees to them; some were

full and others empty, awaiting the bees. Claes used to watch all

night to guard this sugared wealth. When he was tired, he used to

bid Ulenspiegel take his place. And the boy did so with a good will.

Now one night Ulenspiegel, to avoid the cold air, had taken shelter

in a hive, and, all huddled up, was looking through the openings,

of which there were two, in the top of the hive.

As he was on the point of falling asleep, he heard the little trees

and bushes of the hedge crackling and heard the voices of two men

whom he took to be robbers. He looked out through one of the openings

in the hive, and saw that they both had long hair and a long beard,

though the beard was the mark and sign of noble rank.

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

they said:

"Let us take this one: it is the heaviest."

Then they carried it off, using their sticks to do it. Ulenspiegel

took no pleasure in being thus carted in a hive. The night was clear

and bright, and the thieves walked along without uttering a word. Every

fifty paces they stopped, clean out of breath, to go on their way again

presently. The one in front grumbled furiously at having so heavy a

weight to bear, and the one behind whimpered melancholy-wise. For in

this world there are two kinds of idle cowards, those who grow angry

with work, and those that whine when there is work to be done.

Ulenspiegel, having nothing else to do, pulled the hair of the robber

who went in front, and the beard of the one behind, so that growing

tired of this game, the angry one said to the snivelling one:

"Stop pulling my hair, or I will give you such a wallop on the head

with my fist that it will sink down into your chest and you will look

through your ribs like a thief through the bars of his prison."

"I wouldn't dare, my friend," said the sniveller, "but it is you that

are pulling me by the beard."

The angry one answered:

"I don't go hunting vermin in beggar fellows' fur."

"Sir," replied the sniveller, "do not make the hive jump about so much;

my poor arms are nearly breaking in two."

"I'll have them off altogether," answered the angry fellow.

Then, putting off his leathern gear he set the hive down on the

ground, and leaped upon his comrade. And they fought with each other,

the one cursing and swearing, the other crying for mercy.

Ulenspiegel, hearing the blows pattering down, came out of the hive,

dragged it with him as far as the nearest wood so as to find it there

again, and went back to Claes's house.

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

XX

When he was fifteen, Ulenspiegel erected a little tent at Damme

upon four stakes, and he cried out that everyone might see within,

represented in a handsome frame of hay, his present and future self.

When there came a man of law, haughty and puffed up with his own

importance, Ulenspiegel would thrust his head out of the frame,

and mimicking the face of an old ape, he would say:

"An old mug may decay, but never flourish; am I not your very mirror,

good sir of the doctoral phiz?"

If he had a stout soldier for client, Ulenspiegel would hide and show

in the middle of the frame, instead of his face, a dishful of meat

and bread, and say:

"Battle will make hash of you; what will you give me for my prophecy,

O soldier beloved of the big-mouthed sakers?"

When an old man, wearing ingloriously his hoary head, would bring

Ulenspiegel his wife, a young woman, the boy, hiding himself as he

had done for the soldier, and showing in the frame a little tree,

on whose branches were hung knife handles, caskets, combs, inkhorns,

all made of horn, would call out:

"Whence come all these fine nicknacks, Messire? Is it not from the

hornbeam that groweth within the garden of old husbands? Who shall

say now that cuckolds are folk useless in a commonweal?"

And Ulenspiegel would display his young face in the frame alongside

the tree.

The old man, hearing him, would cough with masculine anger, but

his dear wife would soothe him with her hand, and smiling, come up

to Ulenspiegel.

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

"Come closer," Ulenspiegel would answer.

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

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

And the darling would go away also, but not without giving him florins

one or two.

To the fat, blear-eyed monk who would ask to see his present and

future self, Ulenspiegel would answer:

"Thou art a ham cupboard, and so thou shalt be a still room for

cervoise ale; for salt calleth upon drinking, is not this true,

great belly? Give me a patard for not having lied."

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

"'Tis then the money carries thee," would Ulenspiegel answer, "for

I know thou dost put it between two soles under thy feet. Give me

thy sandal."

But the monk:

"My son, 'tis the property of the Convent; I will none the less take

from it, if I must, two patards for thy trouble."

The monk gave them. Ulenspiegel received them graciously.

Thus showed he their mirror to the folk of Damme, of Bruges, of

Blankenberghe, nay, even as far away as Ostend.

And instead of saying to them in his Flemish speech: "Ik ben u

lieden Spiegel," "I am your mirror," he said to them, shortening it,

"Ik ben ulen spiegel," even as it is still said to-day in East and

West Flanders.

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

XXI

As he grew up, he conceived a liking for wandering about through

fairs and markets. If he saw there any one playing on the hautbois,

the rebeck, or the bagpipes, he would, for a patard, have them teach

him the way to make music on these instruments.

He became above all skilled in playing on the rommel-pot, an instrument

made of a pot, a bladder, and a stout straw. This is how he arranged

them: he damped the bladder and strained it over the pot, fastened

with a string the middle of the bladder round the knot on the straw,

which was touching the bottom of the pot, on the rim of which he

then fixed the bladder stretched to bursting point. In the morning,

the bladder, being dried, gave the sound of a tambourine when it was

struck, and if the straw of the instrument was rubbed it hummed better

than a viol. And Ulenspiegel, with his pot booming and sounding like

a mastiff's barking, went singing carols at house doors in company

with youngsters, one of whom carried the shining star made out of

paper on Twelfth Night.

If any master painter came to Damme to pourtray, on their knees

on canvas, the companions of some Guild, Ulenspiegel, desiring to

see how he wrought, would ask to be allowed to grind his colours,

and for all salary would accept only a slice of bread, three liards,

and a pint of ale.

Applying himself to the grinding, he would study his master's

manner. When the master was away, he would try to paint like him, but

put vermilion everywhere. He tried to paint Claes, Soetkin, Katheline,

and Nele, as well as quart pots and sauce-pans. Claes prophesied

to him, seeing his works, that if he would be bold and persevering,

he might one day earn florins by the score, painting inscriptions on

the speel-wagen, which are pleasure carts in Flanders and in Zealand.

He learned, too, from a master mason how to carve wood and stone,

when the man came to make, in the choir of Notre Dame, a stall so

constructed that when it was necessary the aged dean could sit down

on it while still seeming to remain standing.

It was Ulenspiegel who carved the first handle for the knife

used by the Zealand folk. This handle he made in the shape of a

cage. Within there was a loose death's head; above it a dog in a

lying posture. These emblems taken together signify "Blade faithful

to the death."

And in this wise Ulenspiegel began to fulfil the prediction of

Katheline, showing himself painter, sculptor, clown, noble, all at

once and together, for from father to son the Claes bore for arms

three quart pots argent on a field of bruinbier.

But Ulenspiegel was constant to no trade, and Claes told him if this

game went on, he would turn him away from the cottage.

XXII

The Emperor being returned from war, asked why his son Philip had

not come to greet him.

The Infante's archbishop-governor replied that he had not desired to

do so, for, so he said, he cared for nothing but books and solitude.

The Emperor enquired where he was at that moment.

The governor answered that they must seek him in every place where

it was dark. They did so.

Having gone through a goodly number of chambers, they came at last

to a kind of closet, unpaven, and lit by a skylight. There they

saw stuck in the earth a post to which was fastened by the waist a

pretty little tiny monkey, that had been sent to His Highness from

the Indies to delight him with its youthful antics. At the foot of

this stake faggots still red were smoking, and in the closet there

was a foul stench of burnt hair.

The little beast had suffered so much dying in this fire that its

little body seemed to be not an animal that ever had life, but a

fragment of some wrinkled twisted root, and in its mouth, open as

though to cry out on death, bloody foam was visible, and the water

of its tears made its face wet.

"Who did this?" asked the Emperor.

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

sad, and wrathful.

Suddenly in this silence there was heard a low little sound of a

cough that came from a corner in the shadow behind them. His Majesty,

turning about, received the Infante Philip, all clad in black and

sucking a lemon.

"Don Philip," said he, "come and salute me."

The Infante, without budging, looked at him with his timid eyes in

which there was no affection.

"Is it thou," asked the Emperor, "that hast burned this little beast

in this fire?"

The Infante hung his head.

But the Emperor:

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

The Infante made no answer.

His Majesty plucked the lemon out of his hands and flung it on the

ground, and he was about to beat his son melting away with fright,

when the archbishop, stopping him, whispered in his ear:

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

The Emperor smiled, and the two men went away, leaving the Infante

alone with his monkey.

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

XXIII

November had come, the month of hail in which coughing folk give

themselves up wholehearted to the music of phlegm. In this month also

the small boys descend in bands on the turnip fields, pilfering what

they can from them, to the great rage of the peasants, who vainly

run after them with sticks and forks.

Now one evening, as Ulenspiegel was coming back from a marauding

foray, he heard close by, in a corner of the hedge, a sound of

groaning. Stooping down, he saw a dog lying upon some stones.

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

Caressing the dog, he felt his back wet, thought that someone had

tried to drown him, and took him up in his arms to warm him.

Coming home he said:

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

"Heal him," said Claes in reply.

Ulenspiegel set the dog down upon the table. Claes, Soetkin, and

himself then saw by the light of the lamp a little red Luxembourg

spaniel hurt on the back. Soetkin sponged the wounds, covered them

with ointment, and bound them up with linen. Ulenspiegel took the

little beast into his bed, though Soetkin wanted to have him in her

own, fearing, as she said, lest Ulenspiegel, who tumbled about in

bed like a devil in a holy water pot, should hurt the dog as he slept.

But Ulenspiegel had his own way, and tended him so well that after

six days the patient ran about like his fellows full of doggish tricks.

And the school-meester christened him Titus Bibulus Schnouffius: Titus

in memory of a certain good Emperor of Rome, who took pains to gather

in lost dogs; Bibulus because the dog loved bruinbier with the love

of a true tosspot, and Schnouffius because sniff-sniffing everywhere

he was always thrusting his nose into rat-holes and mole holes.

XXIV

At the end of the Rue Notre Dame there were two willows planted face

to face on the edge of a deep pond.

Ulenspiegel stretched a rope between the two willows and danced upon

it one Sunday after vespers, so well that all the crowd of vagabonds

applauded him with both hand and voice. Then he came down from his

rope and held out to all the bystanders a bowl that was speedily filled

with money, but he emptied it in Soetkin's apron and kept only eleven

liards for himself.

The next Sunday he would fain dance again on his rope, but certain

good-for-nought lads, being jealous of his nimbleness, had made a nick

in the rope, so that after a few bounds the rope broke in sunder and

Ulenspiegel tumbled into the water.

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

shouted to him:

"How is your limber health, Ulenspiegel? Are you going to the bottom

of the pond to teach the carps to dance, dancer beyond price?"

Ulenspiegel coming out from the water and shaking himself cried out

to them, for they were making off from him for fear of his fists:

"Be not afraid; come back next Sunday, I will show you tricks on the

rope and you will have a share in the proceeds."

On Sunday, the lads had not sliced the cord, but were keeping watch

round about it, for fear any one might touch it, for there was a

great crowd of people.

Ulenspiegel said to them:

"Each of you give me one of your shoes, and I wager that however big

or little they may be I will dance with every one of them."

"What do you pay if you lose?" they asked.

"Forty quarts of bruinbier," replied Ulenspiegel, "and ye shall pay

me three patards if I win the wager."

"Aye," said they.

And they each gave him a shoe. Ulenspiegel put them all in the apron

he was wearing, and thus laden he danced upon the rope, though not

without trouble.

The cord slicers called out from below:

"Thou saidst thou wouldst dance with every one of our shoes; put them

on then and hold thy wager!"

Ulenspiegel, all the while dancing, made reply:

"I never said I would put on your shoes, but that I would dance with

them. Now I am dancing and everything in my apron is dancing with

me. Do ye not see it with your frog's eyes all staring out of your

heads? Pay me my three patards."

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

back.

Ulenspiegel threw them at them one after the other into a

heap. Therefrom arose a furious affray, for none of them could

clearly distinguish his own shoe in the heap, or lay hold of it

without a fight.

Ulenspiegel then came down from the tree and watered the combatants,

but not with fair water.

XXV

The Infante, being fifteen years of age, went wandering, as his way

was, through corridors, staircases, and chambers about the castle. But

most of all he was seen prowling about the ladies' apartments, in

order to brawl with the pages who like himself were like cats in

ambush in the corridors. Others planting themselves in the court,

would be singing some tender ditty with their noses turned aloft.

The Infante, hearing them, would show himself at a window, and so

terrify the poor pages that beheld this pallid muzzle instead of the

soft eyes of their fair ones.

Among the court ladies there was a charming Flemish woman from Dudzeele

hard by Damme, plump, a handsome ripe fruit and marvellously lovely,

for she had green eyes and red crimped hair, shining like gold. Of

a gay humour and ardent temperament, she never hid from any one her

inclination for the lucky lord to whom she accorded the divine right of

way of love over her goodly pleasaunce. There was one at this moment,

handsome and high spirited, whom she loved. Every day at a certain

hour she went to meet him, and this Philip discovered.

Taking his seat upon a bench set close up against a window, he watched

for her and when she was passing in front of him, her eye alight,

her lips parted, amiable, fresh from the bath, and rustling about her

all her array of yellow brocade, she caught sight of the Infante who

said to her, without getting up from his seat:

"Madame, could you not stay a moment?"

Impatient as a filly held back in her career, at the moment when she is

hurrying to the splendid stallion neighing in the meadow, she answered:

"Highness, everyone here must obey your princely will."

"Sit down beside me," said he.

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

"Repeat the Pater to me in Flemish; they have taught it to me, but

I have forgotten it."

The poor lady then must begin to say a Pater and he must needs bid

her say it slower.

And in this way he forced the poor thing to say as many as ten Paters,

she that thought the hour had come to go through other orisons.

Then covering her with praises and flatteries, he spoke of her lovely

hair, her bright colour, her shining eyes, but did not venture to

say a word to her either of her plump shoulders or her smooth round

breast or any other thing.

When she thought she could get away and was already looking out into

the court where her lord was waiting for her, he asked her if she

knew truly what are the womanly virtues.

As she made no answer for fear of saying the wrong thing, he spoke

for her and preaching at her, he said:

"The womanly virtues, these be chastity, watchfulness over honour,

and sober living."

He counselled her also to array herself decently and to hide closely

all that pertained to her.

She made sign of assent with her head saying:

That for His Hyperborean Highness she would much sooner cover herself

with ten bearskins than with an ell of muslin.

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

However, the fire of youth was lit up in the Infante's bosom, but it

was not that hot burning flame that incites strong souls to high deeds,

but a dark, sinister flame come out of hell where Satan had without

doubt kindled it. And it shone in his gray eyes like the wintry moon

upon a charnel-house, and it burned him cruelly.

XXVI

The beautiful and sweet lady on a day left Valladolid to go to her

Chateau of Dudzeele in Flanders.

Passing through Damme attended by her fat seneschal, she saw

sitting against the wall of a cottage a boy of fifteen blowing into

a bagpipe. In front of him was a red dog that, not liking this music,

howled in a melancholy fashion. The sun shone bright. Standing beside

the lad there was a pretty girl laughing loudly at each fresh pitiful

burst of howling from the dog.

The beautiful dame and the fat seneschal, as they passed by the

cottage, looked at Ulenspiegel blowing, Nele laughing, and Titus

Bibulus Schnouffius howling.

"Bad boy," said the dame, addressing Ulenspiegel, "could you not

cease from making that poor red beast howl in that way?"

But Ulenspiegel, with his eyes on her, blew up his bagpipe more stoutly

still. And Bibulus Schnouffius howled still more melancholily, and

Nele laughed the more.

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

Ulenspiegel:

"If I were to give this beggar's spawn a dressing with my scabbard,

he would stop making this impudent hubbub."

Ulenspiegel looked at the seneschal, called him Jan Papzak, because

of his belly, and continued to blow his bagpipe. The seneschal went up

to him with a threatening fist, but Bibulus Schnouffius threw himself

on the man and bit him in the leg, and the seneschal tumbled down in

affright crying out:

"Help!"

The dame said to Ulenspiegel, smiling:

"Could you not tell me, bagpiper, if the road that runs from Damme

to Dudzeele has not been changed?"

Ulenspiegel, without stopping his playing, nodded his head and looked

still at the dame.

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

But he, still playing, stretched his eyes wide as though rapt in an

ecstasy of admiration.

She said to him:

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

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

"I asked you," she went on, "if the road that runs from Damme to

Dudzeele has not altered?"

"It is not green now since you deprived it of the joy of carrying you,"

replied Ulenspiegel.

"Wilt thou guide me?" said the dame.

But Ulenspiegel remained seated, still never taking his eyes from

her. And she, seeing him so roguish, and knowing that it was a mere

trick of youth, forgave him easily. He got up, and turned to go into

his home.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

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

"Go then," said the dame.

She sat down then on the bench beside the doorstep; the seneschal did

the same. She would have talked to Nele, but Nele did not answer her,

for she was jealous.

Ulenspiegel came back carefully washed and clad in fustian. He looked

well in his Sunday garb, the little man.

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

"I shall be back soon," replied Ulenspiegel.

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

"Nay," he said, "the roads are full of mire."

"Why," said the dame, angry and jealous together, "why, little girl,

do you want to keep him from coming with me?"

Nele made her no answer, but big tears welled up from her eyes and

she gazed on the dame in sadness and in anger.

They started on their way, four all told, the dame sitting like a queen

on her white hackney caparisoned with black velvet; the seneschal

whose belly shook to his walking; Ulenspiegel holding the dame's

hackney by the bridle, and Bibulus Schnouffius walking alongside him,

tail in air proudly.

They rode and strode thus for some time, but Ulenspiegel was not at his

ease; dumb as a fish he breathed in the fine odour of benjamin wafted

from the dame, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at all her

fine tags and rare jewels and furbelows, and also at her soft mien,

her bright eyes, her bared bosom, and her hair that the sun made to

shine like a golden cap.

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

He made no reply.

"Your tongue is not so deep down in your shoes that you could not

manage a message for me?"

"Right," said Ulenspiegel.

"You must," said the dame, "leave me here and go to Koolkercke, on

the other way of the wind, and tell a gentleman clad particoloured

in black and red, that he must not look for me to-day, but to come

on Sunday at ten at night, into my castle by the postern."

"I will not go," said Ulenspiegel.

"Why not?" asked the dame.

"I will not go, no!" said Ulenspiegel again.

The dame said to him:

"What is it then, little ruffled cock, that inspires thee with this

fierce mind?"

"I will not go!" said Ulenspiegel.

"But if I gave thee a florin?"

"No!" said he.

"A ducat?"

"No!"

"A carolus?"

"No," said Ulenspiegel again. "And yet," he added, sighing, "I should

like it in my mother's purse better than a mussel-shell."

The dame smiled, then cried out suddenly:

"I have lost my fine rare purse, made of silken cloth and broidered

with rich pearls! At Damme it was still hanging at my girdle."

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

"Madame," he said, "send not this young thief to look for it, for

you would never see it again."

"And who will go then?" asked the dame.

"Myself," he answered, "despite my great age."

And he went off.

Noon struck, the heat was great, the solitude profound; Ulenspiegel

said no word, but he doffed his new doublet that the dame might sit

down in the shade beneath a lime, without fearing the cool of the

grass. He remained standing close by her, sighing.

She looked at him and felt pity rising up in her for this timid

little fellow, and asked him if he was not weary with standing so on

his tender young legs. He answered not a word, and as he let himself

drop down beside her, she tried to catch him, and pulled him on to

her bared bosom, where he remained with such good will that she would

have thought herself guilty of the sin of cruelty if she had bidden

him seek another pillow.

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

"I found it myself," replied the dame, "when I dismounted from my

horse, for it had unfastened its broochpin and got caught up on the

stirrup. Now," she said to Ulenspiegel, "take us the direct way to

Dudzeele and tell me how thou art called."

"My patron," he answered, "is Master Saint Thylbert, a name which

signifies light of foot to run after good matters; my name is Claes

and my to-name Ulenspiegel. If you would look at yourself in my mirror,

you will see that there is not upon all this land of Flanders a flower

of beauty so dazzling as your fragrant loveliness."

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

Ulenspiegel.

And Soetkin and Nele wept during this long absence.

XXVII

When Ulenspiegel came back from Dudzeele, he saw Nele at the entrance

to the town, leaning up against a barrier. She was eating a bunch of

grapes, crunching them one by one, and was doubtless refreshed and

rejoiced by the fruit, but allowed none of her pleasure to be seen. She

appeared, on the contrary, to be angry, and plucked the grapes from off

the bunch with a choleric air. She was so dolorous and showed a face so

marred, so sad and so sweet, that Ulenspiegel was overcome with loving

pity, and going up behind her, gave her a kiss on the nape of her neck.

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

"I can't fathom that!" exclaimed Ulenspiegel.

She wept with heavy sobs.

"Nele," said he, "are you going to set up fountains at the entrance

to the villages?"

"Begone!" she said.

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

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

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

"Will you go away?" said she.

"No," said he.

She was holding her apron the while with her little trembling hands,

and she was pulling the stuff jerkily and tears fell on it, wetting it.

"Nele," asked Ulenspiegel, "will it be fine presently?" And he looked

on her, smiling lovingly.

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

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

"Go," said she, "go to your beautiful lady in the brocade dress;

you made her laugh well enough," said she.

Then sang Ulenspiegel:

"When my darling's tears I see

My heart is torn atwain,

'Tis honey when she laughs for me,

When she weeps, a pearl.

Always I love my dearest girl,

And I'll buy good wine for us,

Good wine of Louvain,

I'll buy good wine for us to drink,

When Nele smiles again."

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

"Nele," said Ulenspiegel, "a man I am, but not low, for our noble

family, an aldermanish family, bears three silver quarts on a ground

of bruinbier. Nele, is it so that in Flanders when a man sows kisses

he reaps boxes on the ear?"

"I do not wish to speak to you," said she.

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

"I am angry," said she.

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

and said:

"Kiss a mean thing, she'll punch you; punch a mean thing and she'll

anoint you. Anoint me then, darling, since I have punched you."

Nele turned about. He opened his arms, she cast herself in them still

weeping, and said:

"You won't go there again, Thyl, will you?"

But he made her no answer, for he was too busy clasping her poor

trembling fingers and wiping away with his lips the hot tears falling

from Nele's eyes like the big drops of a thunder shower.

XXVIII

In these days, the noble town of Ghent refused to pay her quota of the

subsidy her son Charles the Emperor had asked of her. She could not,

being void of money through the very doings of Charles. This was a

great crime; he determined to go in his own person to chastise her.

For more than any other is a son's cudgel grievous to the back of

a mother.

Francois of the long nose, his foe, offered him free passage through

the land of France. Charles accepted, and instead of being held a

prisoner he was feasted and cherished imperially. 'Tis a sovereign

concord between princes to help one another against the peoples.

Charles stayed long at Valenciennes without making any show of

anger. Ghent, his mother, lived free from fear, in the certain belief

that the Emperor, her son, would pardon her for having acted as was

her lawful right.

Charles arrived beneath the city walls with four thousand horse. D'Alba

was with him, so was the Prince of Orange. The common folk and the men

of petty trades had wanted to prevent this filial entry, and to call

out the eighty thousand men of the town and the flat country; the men

of substance, the so-called hoogh-poorters, opposed this, fearing the

predominance of the lower orders. Ghent could in this way have made

mincemeat of her son and his four thousand horse. But she loved him

too well, and even the petty traders had resumed their trust in him.

Charles also loved his mother, but for the money he held in his

coffers from her, and the further moneys he meant to have from her.

Having made himself master of the town, he set up military posts

everywhere, and had Ghent patrolled by rounds night and day. Then he

pronounced, with all pomp and ceremony, his sentence upon the town.

The most eminent citizens must come before his throne, with ropes

about their necks, and make full public confession of their misdeeds:

Ghent was declared guilty of the most expensive crimes, which are:

disloyalty, treaty-breaking, disobedience, sedition, rebellion,

and treason. The Emperor declared all and sundry privileges, rights,

franchises, customs, and usages void and abolished; stipulating and

engaging the future, as though he were God, that thenceforward his

successors on their entering into their seigniory would swear to

observe nothing save only the Caroline Concession of slavery granted

by him to the town.

He had the Abbey of Saint Bavon pulled down in order to rear on its

site a fortress from which he could pierce his mother's bosom with

cannon shot.

Like a good son eager to come into his inheritance, he confiscated all

that belonged to Ghent, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war.

Finding her over well defended, he knocked down the Red Tower, the

Toad's Hole Tower, the Braampoort, the Steenpoort, the Waalpoort, the

Ketelpoort, and many others wrought and carven like jewels in stone.

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

"What is this flat, desolate town whose wonders and praises were sung

so loudly?"

And the folk of Ghent would make answer:

"The Emperor Charles hath taken her precious girdle from the good

town."

And so saying they were shamed and wroth. And from the ruins of the

gates the Emperor had the bricks for his fortress.

He would have Ghent poor, for thus neither by toil nor industry nor

gold could she oppose his haughty plans; therefore he condemned her

to pay the refused quota of the subsidy, four hundred thousand gold

carolus, and besides this, one hundred and fifty thousand carolus down

and six thousand every year in perpetuity. She had lent him money:

he was to pay one hundred and fifty pounds interest yearly. He took

possession by force of the deeds recording his debt and paying it in

this way, he actually enriched himself.

Many a time had Ghent given him love and succour, but he now smote

her bosom with a dagger, seeking blood from it because he found not

enough milk there.

Then he looked upon Roelandt, the great bell, and hanged from the

clapper the fellow who had sounded the alarm to call the city to

defend her right. He had no mercy for Roelandt, his mother's tongue,

the tongue with which she spoke to Flanders: Roelandt, the proud bell,

which saith of himself:

Als men my slaet dan is't brandt.

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

When they ring me there is fire.

When they toll me there is storm in Flanders.

Finding that his mother spoke too loud and free, he took away the

bell. And the folk of the flat country say that Ghent died because

her son had torn out her tongue with his iron pincers.

XXIX

One of these days, which were bright fresh days of the springtime,

when all the earth is full of love, Soetkin was talking by the open

window, Claes humming some refrain, while Ulenspiegel had put a

judge's cap on the head of Titus Bibulus Schnouffius. The dog was

working with his paws as though endeavouring to utter a judgment,

but it was merely to get rid of his headgear.

Suddenly Ulenspiegel shut the window, ran into the middle of the

room, jumped on chairs and tables, his hands stretched up to the

ceiling. Soetkin and Claes saw that all this energy was to catch a

pretty little bird that was crying out with fear, its wings fluttering,

cowering against a beam in a corner of the ceiling.

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

"What are you jumping for like that?"

"To catch it," answered Ulenspiegel, "and put it in a cage, and give

it seed and make it sing for me."

Meanwhile the bird, crying shrilly with terror, was flying about the

room and dashing its head against the windowpanes.

Ulenspiegel did not cease jumping after it: Claes laid his hand

weightily on the lad's shoulder:

"Catch it," he said, "put it in a cage, make it sing for you, do,

but I, too, will put you in a cage, shut in with stout iron bars,

and I will make you sing as well. You like to run, you will not

be able to run; you will be in the shade when you are cold, in the

sun when you are hot. Then one Sunday we shall go out, forgetting

to give you any food, and we shall only come back on the Thursday,

and returning we shall find Thyl dead of hunger and stark and stiff."

Soetkin wept, Ulenspiegel sprang forward.

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

"I am opening the window for the bird," he answered.

And indeed, the bird, which was a goldfinch, went out of the window,

uttered a cry of joy, shot up like an arrow in the air, then setting

itself in an apple tree close by, it sleeked its wings with its beak,

shook out its plumage, and becoming angry, hurled a thousand insults

at Ulenspiegel in its bird speech.

Then Claes said to him:

"Son, never take liberty from man nor beast for liberty is the greatest

boon in this world. Leave everyman to go in the sun when he is cold,

in the shade when he is hot. And may God judge His Sacred Majesty who,

having fettered freedom of belief in the land of Flanders, has now

put Ghent, the noble town, in a cage of slavery."

XXX

Philip had married Marie of Portugal, whose possessions he added

to the Spanish crown; he had by her a son, Don Carlos, the cruel

madman. But he did not love his wife!

The Queen was ill after the birth. She kept her bed and had with her

her ladies in waiting, among whom was the Duchess of Alba.

Philip often left her alone to go and see the burning of heretics,

and all the lords and ladies of the court the same. Likewise also

the Duchess of Alba, the Queen's noble nurse.

At this time the Official seized a Flemish sculptor, a Roman Catholic,

because when a monk had refused to pay the price agreed for a wooden

statue of Our Lady, he had struck the face of the statue with his

chisel, saying he would rather destroy his work than sell it for a

mean price.

He was denounced by the monk as an iconoclast, tortured mercilessly,

and condemned to be burned alive.

In the torture they had burned the soles of his feet, and as he walked

from prison to the stake, wearing the san-benito, he kept crying out,

"Cut off my feet, cut off my feet!"

And Philip heard these cries from afar off, and he was pleased,

but he did not laugh.

Queen Marie's ladies left her to go to the burning, and after them

went the Duchess of Alba, who, hearing the Flemish sculptor's cries,

wished to see the spectacle, and left the Queen alone.

Philip, his noble servitors, princes, counts, esquires, and ladies

being present, the sculptor was fastened by a long chain to a stake

planted in the middle of a burning circle made of trusses of straw

and of faggots that would roast him to death slowly, if he wished to

avoid the quick fire by hugging the stake.

And all looked curiously on him as he sought, naked or all but naked as

he was, to stiffen his will and courage against the heat of the fire.

At the same time Queen Marie was athirst on her bed of childbirth. She

saw half a melon on a dish. Dragging herself out of bed, she seized

this melon and left nothing of it.

Then by reason of the cold flesh of the melon, she fell into sweating

and trembling, lay on the floor, and could not move hand or foot.

"Ah," she said, "I might grow warm if someone could carry me to

my bed."

She heard then the poor sculptor crying:

"Cut off my feet!"

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

At this moment the sculptor, seeing about him none but the faces

of enemies and Spaniards, thought upon Flanders, the land of men,

folded his arms, and dragging his long chain behind him he went

straight to the straw and burning faggots and standing upright upon

them with arms still folded:

"Lo," said he, "how the Flemish can die before Spanish butchers. Cut

off their feet, not mine, but theirs, that they may run no more after

murder! Long live Flanders! Flanders for ever and evermore!"

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

And he died.

Queen Marie shivered from head to foot, she wept, her teeth chattered

with the cold of approaching death, and she said, stiffening her arms

and legs:

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

And she died.

Thus, even according to the prediction of Katheline, the good witch,

did Philip everywhere sow death, blood, and tears.

XXXI

But Ulenspiegel and Nele loved with surpassing love.

It was then in the end of April, with all the trees in flower; all

the plants, bursting with sap, were awaiting May, which cometh on

the earth with a peacock for companion, blossoming like a nosegay,

and maketh the nightingales to sing among the trees.

Often Ulenspiegel and Nele would wander down the roads alone

together. Nele hung upon Ulenspiegel's arm, and held to it with both

hands. Ulenspiegel, taking pleasure in this play, often passed his

arm about Nele's waist, to hold her the better, he would tell her. And

she was happy, though she did not speak a word.

The wind rolled softly along the roads the perfumed breath of the

meadows; far away the sea murmured to the sun, idle and at ease;

Ulenspiegel was like a young devil, full of spunk and fire, and Nele

like a little saint from Paradise, all shamefast at her delight.

She leaned her head on Ulenspiegel's shoulder, he took her hands,

and as they went, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her darling

mouth. But she did not speak.

After some hours, they were hot and thirsty, then they drank milk at

a peasant's cottage, but they were not refreshed.

And they sat down on the green turf beside a ditch. Nele was pale

and white, and pensive; Ulenspiegel looked at her, alarmed.

"You are sad?" she said.

"Ay," said he.

"Why?" she asked.

"I know not," he said, "but these apple trees and cherries all in

blossom, this warm soft air, as it were, charged with thunder fire,

these daisies opening and blushing upon the fields, the hawthorn there

beside us in the hedgerows, all white.... Who shall tell me why I feel

troubled and always ready to die or to sleep? And my heart beats so

hard when I hear the birds awaking in the trees and see the swallows

come back, then I long to go beyond the sun and the moon. And now I

am cold, and now hot. Ah! Nele! I would fain no more be in this low

world, or give a thousand lives to the one who would love me...."

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

XXXII

On the day of the Feast of the Dead, Ulenspiegel came away from Notre

Dame with some vagabonds of his own age. Lamme Goedzak was lost among

them, like a sheep in the midst of wolves.

Lamme freely paid for drink for everyone, for his mother gave him

three patards every Sunday and feast day.

He went then with his comrades In den rooden schildt, to the Red

Shield, whose landlord Jan Van Liebeke served them with the dobbele

knollaert of Courtrai.

The drink heated their wits, and talking of prayers Ulenspiegel

declared plumply that masses for the dead are good only for the

priests.

But there was a Judas in the band: he denounced Ulenspiegel as

a heretic. In spite of Soetkin's tears and Claes's entreaties,

Ulenspiegel was taken and cast into prison. There he remained in

a cellar behind bars for a month and three days without seeing any

one. The gaoler ate three quarters of his pittance. In the meanwhile,

inquiries were made into his good and bad reputation. It was found

merely that he was a sharp jester, flouting his neighbours continually,

but never having missaid Monseigneur God, or Madame Virgin or messieurs

the saints. And so the sentence was a light one, for he might have

been branded in the face with a red-hot iron, and whipped till the

blood came.

In consideration of his youth, the judges condemned him merely to

walk in his shirt behind the priests, bareheaded and barefooted,

and a candle in his hand, in the first procession that should go out

from the church.

That was on Ascension Day.

When the procession was returning, he must stand still under the

porch of Notre Dame and there cry aloud:

"Thanks to my Lord Jesu! Thanks to messieurs the priests! Their

prayers are sweet to souls in purgatory, yea, refreshing; for every

Ave is a bucket of water falling on their back, every Pater a cistern."

And the people hearkened most devoutly, not without laughing.

At the Feast of Pentecost, he must again follow the procession; he was

in his shirt, barefoot and bareheaded, candle in hand. Coming back,

standing beneath the porch, and holding his candle very reverently, not

without pulling a waggish face or two, he called in a loud clear voice:

"If the prayers of Christian men are a great ease and solace to souls

in purgatory, those of the dean of Notre Dame, that holy man perfect

in the practice of all the virtues, assuage so well the torments

of the fire that it is transformed to ices all at once. But the

devil-tormentors have not so much as one crumb."

And the people once more hearkened devoutly, not without laughter,

and the dean, well pleased, smiled ecclesiastically.

Then Ulenspiegel was banished from the land of Flanders for three

years, under condition of making pilgrimage to Rome and returning

thence with absolution from the Pope.

Claes must pay three florins for this sentence; but he gave still

another to his son and furnished him with the habiliments of a pilgrim.

Ulenspiegel was brokenhearted on the day of departing, when he embraced

Claes and Soetkin, who was all in tears, the unhappy mother. They

convoyed him a long long way on his road, in company of several

townsfolk, both men and women.

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

"Goodwife, it is exceeding harsh, for a few mad words, to condemn so

young a lad to so heavy a penalty in this fashion."

"Thou art weeping, my husband," said Soetkin. "Thou dost love him

more than thou showest, for thou art breaking into man's sobs, which

be lion's tears."

But he made no answer.

Nele had gone to hide in the barn that none might see that she also

wept for Ulenspiegel. A long way off she followed Soetkin and Claes

and the townsfolk; when she saw her friend disappearing alone, she

ran to him and leaping on his neck:

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

"Beautiful," replied Ulenspiegel, "I cannot tell; but fresh as you,

no, for the sun has roasted them all."

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

and then would say:

"I'll make them pay their masses for the dead."

"What masses, and who will pay?" asked Nele.

Ulenspiegel replied:

"All the deans, curates, clerks, beadles, and other bigwigs high

or low that feed us on windy trash. If I were a stout workman, they

would have robbed me of the fruit of three years' toil by making me

go pilgrimaging. But it is poor Claes who pays. They shall repay me

my three years an hundredfold, and I will chant them as well the mass

for their dead money."

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

"I am pure asbestos," answered Ulenspiegel.

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

XXXIII

Passing through Bruges on the Wednesday market, there he saw a woman

led along by the executioner and his knaves, and a great crowd of

other women around her crying and howling a thousand vile insults.

Ulenspiegel, seeing the upper part of her dress equipped with pieces

of red cloth, and seeing the stone of justice with its iron chains,

at her neck, perceived that this was a woman who had sold for gain the

fresh young bodies of her daughters. They told him her name was Barbe,

she was the wife of Jason Darue, and would be brought in this costume

from place to place until she came back to the great marketplace, where

she would be set up on a scaffold already erected for her. Ulenspiegel

followed her with the crowd of shouting people. Once back in the

great marketplace she was set on the scaffold, bound to a stake,

and the executioner laid before her a bundle of grass and a clod,

signifying the pit of the grave.

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

prison.

As he was going away, he met Henri le Marischal, a swashbuckling rogue

who had been hanged in the castle-ward of West Ypres and still showed

the track of the cord around his neck. "He had been delivered," he

said, "while already hoisted into the air, by saying one only good

prayer to Notre Dame of Hal, in such wise that, by a true miracle,

the bailiffs and the judges having gone, the cords, already loosened,

broke, he fell to earth, and was in this manner saved and sound."

But later Ulenspiegel learned that this rascal delivered from the

rope was a counterfeit Henri Marischal, and that he was left to run

about retailing his lie because he was bearer of a parchment signed

by the dean of Notre Dame de Hal, who by reason of the tale of this

Henri le Marischal saw flocking to his church and lavishly feeing

him all those who smelled the gallows from near by or far off. And

for a long time Our Lady of Hal was surnamed Our Lady of the Hanged.

XXXIV

At this time the inquisitors and theologians for the second time made

representation to the Emperor Charles:

That the Church was going to ruin; that its authority was contemned;

that if he had won so many glorious victories, he owed it to the

prayers of Catholicism, which upheld the imperial power on its

high throne.

A Spanish Archbishop asked him to have six thousand heads cut off

or the same number of bodies burned, in order to root the malignant

Lutheran heresy out of the Low Countries. His Sacred Majesty deemed

this insufficient.

And so, everywhere the terrified Ulenspiegel went he saw nothing

but heads on stakes, girls thrust into sacks and cast alive into the

river; men stretched naked on the wheel and beaten with great blows

of iron bars, women laid in shallow graves, with earth over them,

and the executioner dancing on their breast to break it in. But the

confessors of all, men and women, that had first repented, were richer

by twelve sols a time.

He saw at Louvain the executioners burn thirty Lutherans at once,

and light the pile with gunpowder. At Limburg he saw a family, men

and women, daughters and sons-in-law, walk to the scaffold singing

psalms. The man, who was old, cried out while he was a-burning.

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

poor earth.

XXXV

In the fields, he shook himself like a bird or like a dog loosed from

the lead, and his heart took comfort before the trees, the meadows,

the clear sun.

Having walked for three days, he came to the neighbourhood of Brussels,

in the powerful commune of Uccle. Passing before the hostelry of the

Trumpet, he was enticed by a celestial fragrance of fricassees. He

asked a little tramp who, nose in air, was regaling himself with the

odour of the sauces, in whose honour this festival incense arose to

heaven. The other replied that the Brothers of the Good Red Nose were

to assemble after vespers to celebrate the deliverance of the commune

by the women and girls in olden time.

Ulenspiegel, spying from far off a pole surmounted by a popinjay,

and all around goodwives armed with bows, asked if women were becoming

archers nowadays.

The tramp, sniffing up the odour of the sauces, replied that in the

days of the Good Duke those same bows, in the hands of the women of

Uccle, had laid low more than a hundred brigands.

Ulenspiegel, desiring to know more of this, the tramp told him that

he would not say another word so hungry and so thirsty was he, unless

he gave him a patard for food and drink. Ulenspiegel gave it him out

of pity.

As soon as the tramp had his patard, he went into the Trumpet Inn,

like a fox into a henroost, and came out in triumph with half a

sausage and a great hunch of bread.

All at once Ulenspiegel heard a soft noise of tambourines and viols,

and beheld a great troop of women dancing, and among them a comely

matron with a gold chain about her neck.

The tramp, who laughed for joy at having had something to eat,

told Ulenspiegel that this handsome young woman was the Queen of the

Archery, was called Mietje, the wife of Messire Renonckel, the sheriff

of the commune. Then he asked Ulenspiegel for six liards for drink:

Ulenspiegel gave them to him. Thus having eaten and drunken, the

tramp sat down in the sun and picked his teeth and trimmed his nails.

When the women archers caught sight of Ulenspiegel in his pilgrim's

array, they set to work dancing about him in a ring, saying:

"Good morrow, handsome pilgrim; do you come from far away, youngling

pilgrim?"

Ulenspiegel replied:

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

And he thought sadly of Nele.

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

"I would not dare to confess it," said he, "so great a one it was. But

I have other things that are not small."

They smiled at that and asked why he must travel in this wise with

staff and scrip and oyster shell.

"Because," said he, lying a little, "I said that masses for the dead

are of advantage to the priests."

"They bring them in good coin," replied they, "but they are of

advantage to souls in purgatory."

"I wasn't there," rejoined Ulenspiegel.

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

"I will gladly eat with you," said he, "and eat you, and all the

others turn about, for you are titbits for a king, more delicious

than ortolans or thrushes or woodcocks."

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

"Like all of you, dear ones," he answered.

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

"And for the giving?" he asked.

"Ay," said they, "of blows to the overbold. And if you need it,

we will thrash you like a sheaf of corn."

"I abstain therefrom," said he.

"Come eat," said they.

He followed them into the court of the inn, happy to see these

fresh faces about him. Suddenly he beheld entering the court with

high ceremony, with banner and trumpet and flute and tambourine, the

Brothers of the Good Red Nose, wearing in fatness the jolly name of

their fellowship. As they looked curiously upon him, the women told

them it was a pilgrim they had picked up by the way and that finding

him a true Red Nose, and matching their husbands and betrotheds,

they had been minded to make him share their feast.

The men approved their tale, and one said:

"Pilgrim on pilgrimage, wouldst thou pilgrimage through sauces and

fricassees?"

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

As he was on the point of entering the hall of the feasting with

them, he descried on the road to Paris twelve blind men trudging

along. When they passed before him, complaining of hunger and of

thirst, Ulenspiegel said to himself that they would sup that night

like kings, at the charge of the dean of Uccle, in memory of the

masses for the dead. He went to them and said:

"Here be nine florins, come and eat. Do ye smell the good fragrance

of the fricassees?"

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

"You shall eat," said Ulenspiegel, "now you have nine florins." But

he did not give them.

"A blessing on thee," said they.

And guided by Ulenspiegel, they sat down around a small table, while

the Brothers of the Good Red Nose sate at a great one with their

goodwives and sweethearts.

Speaking with full assurance of nine florins:

"Host," said the blind men, proudly, "give us to eat and drink of

your best."

The host, who had heard a mention of the nine florins, believed them

to be in their pouches, and asked what they wished to have.

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

"Peas with bacon, a hotchpotch of beef, veal, mutton, and fowl."--"Are

sausages meant for dogs?"--"Who ever smelled the passing of black

puddings and white, without seizing them by the collar? I used to see

them, alas! when my poor eyes were candles to me."--"Where are the

koekebakken au beurre of Anderlecht? They sing in the pan, succulent

and crisp, mother of quart draughts."--"Who will bring under my

nose ham and eggs or eggs and ham, those tender brothers and close

friends in the mouth?"--"Where are ye, divine choesels, swimming,

proud viands that you are, in the midst of kidneys, of cockscombs,

of riz de veau, of oxtails, sheep's trotters, and abundant onions,

pepper, cloves, nutmeg, all in the stew and three quarts of white wine

for sauce?"--"Who will bring you to me, divine andouilles, so good

that ye say no word when ye are swallowed? Ye came ever straight from

Luy-leckerland, the rich country of the happy do-naughts, the lickers

up of never-ending sauces. But where are ye, withered leaves of bygone

autumns!"--"I want a leg of mutton with beans."--"I want pigs' plumes,

their ears."--"For me a rosary of ortolans, with woodcocks for the

Paters on it and a fat capon for the Credo."

The host answered sedately:

"You shall have an omelette of sixty eggs, and for guiding posts

for you spoons, fifty black puddings, planted smoking hot on this

mountain of nourishment, and dobbel peterman to wash all down with:

that will be the river."

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

"Serve us the mountain, the guideposts, and the river."

And the Brothers of the Good Red Nose and their goodwives already at

table with Ulenspiegel said that this day was for the blind the day

of invisible junketing, and that the poor men thus lost the half of

their pleasure.

When the omelette arrived, all decked with parsley and nasturtium,

and borne by the host and four cooks, the blind men would fain have

thrown themselves upon it and already were haggling in it, but the

host served them separately, not without difficulty, to each his

share in his own dish.

The archer women were touched to see them eating and heaving sighs

of content, for they were mightily hungered and swallowed down the

black puddings like oysters. The dobbel peterman flowed down into

their bellies like cascades falling from mountain tops.

When they had cleaned their dishes, they asked again for koekebakken,

for ortolans and fresh fricassees. The host only served them a great

dish of bones of beef and veal and mutton swimming in a good sauce. He

did not give each his portion.

When they had dipped their bread and their hands up to the elbows in

the sauce, and only brought up bones of every kind, even some ox jaw

bones, everyone thought his neighbour had all the meat, and they beat

each other's faces furiously with the bones.

The Brothers of the Good Red Nose, having laughed their fill,

charitably conveyed part of their own feast into the poor fellows'

dish, and he who groped in the plate for a bone for a weapon would set

his hand on a thrush, a chicken, a lark or two, while the goodwives,

pulling their heads back, would pour Brussels wine down their throats

in a flood, and when they groped about blindly to feel whence these

streams of ambrosia were coming to them, they caught nothing but a

petticoat, and would fain have held it, but it would whisk away from

them suddenly.

And so they laughed, drank, ate, and sang. Some scenting out the

pretty goodwives, ran all about the hall beside themselves, bewitched

by love, but teasing girls would mislead them, and hiding behind a

Good Red Nose would say "kiss me." And they would, but instead of a

woman, they kissed the bearded face of a man, and not without rebuffs.

The Good Red Noses sang, the blind men, too. And the jolly goodwives

smiled kindly seeing their glee.

When these rich and sappy hours were over, the baes said to them:

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

Each one swore he had no purse, and accused his neighbour. Hence arose

yet another fray in which they sought to strike one another with foot

and fist and head, but they could not, and struck out wildly, for the

Good Red Noses, seeing the play, kept man away from man. And blows

hailed upon the empty air, save one that by ill chance fell upon the

face of the baes, who, in a rage, searched them all and found on them

nothing but an old scapular, seven liards, three breeches buttons,

and their paternosters.

He wanted to fling them into the swinehouse and leave them there on

bread and water until someone should pay what they owed for them.

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

"Ay," replied the baes, "if someone will be surety for you."

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

saying:

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

Thinking of the masses for the dead, he went to the deanery and told

him how that the baes of the Trumpet, being possessed of the devil,

spoke of nothing but pigs and blind men, the pigs devouring the blind

and the blind eating the pigs under divers unholy guises of roasts and

fricassees. During these fits, said he, the baes broke everything in

the house, and he begged the dean to come and deliver the poor man

from this wicked fiend.

The dean promised, but said he could not go immediately, for at that

moment he was casting up the accounts of the chapter, and endeavouring

to derive some profit out of them.

Seeing him impatient, Ulenspiegel said he would come back with the

wife of the baes and that the dean could speak to her himself.

"Come both of you," said the dean.

Ulenspiegel came back to the baes, and said to him:

"I have just seen the dean, he will stand surety for the blind

men. While you keep guard over them, let the hostess come with me to

the dean, he will repeat to her what I have just told you."

"Go, goodwife," said the baes.

She went off with Ulenspiegel to the dean, who was still figuring to

find his profit. When she came in with Ulenspiegel, he impatiently

waved her away, saying:

"Be easy, I shall come to your husband's help in a day or two."

And Ulenspiegel, returning to the Trumpet, said to himself, "He will

pay seven florins, and that will be my first mass for the dead."

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

XXXVI

Finding himself, on the morrow, upon a highway in the midst of a great

crowd of folk, Ulenspiegel went with them, and soon knew that it was

the day of the pilgrimage of Alsemberg.

He saw poor old women marching backwards, barefooted, for a florin

and for the expiation of the sins of certain great ladies. On the

edge of the highway, to the sound of rebecks, viols, and bagpipes,

more than one pilgrim was holding a frying feast and junketing of

bruinbier. And the smoke of delicious stews mounted towards heaven

like a suave incense of food.

But there were other pilgrims, low fellows, needy and starveling,

who, paid by the Church, were walking backwards for six sols.

A little man, completely bald, with staring eyes and a savage look,

was skipping along backwards behind them reciting paternosters.

Ulenspiegel, wishing to know why he was mimicking the crayfishes in

this fashion, planting himself before him and smiling, jumped in step

with him. The rebecks, fifes, viols, and bagpipes, and the groans of

the pilgrims made the music for the dance.

"Jan van den Duivel," said Ulenspiegel, "is it that you may more

certainly fall that you run in this wise?"

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

"Perhaps," said Ulenspiegel, "you want to know how many trees there

are along the road. But are you not counting the leaves also?"

The man, who was reciting a Credo, signed to Ulenspiegel to hold

his tongue.

"Perhaps," said the latter, still skipping before him and imitating

him, "it is the result of some sudden madness that you should thus

be going the contrary way to everybody else. But he who would have

a wise answer from a madman is not wise himself. Is not this true,

master of the peeled poll?"

As the man still made no answer, Ulenspiegel went on skipping, but

making so much noise with his boot-soles that the road reechoed like

a wooden box.

"Maybe," said Ulenspiegel, "you might be dumb, good sir?"

"Ave Maria," said the other, "gratia plena et benedictus fructus

ventris tui Jesu."

"Maybe you are deaf as well?" said Ulenspiegel. "We shall see that:

they say deaf men hear neither praises nor insults. Let us see if the

drums of your ears are skin or brass: thinkest thou, lantern without

candle, simulacrum of a foot-goer, that thou dost resemble a man? That

will be when men are made of rags. Where has such jaundiced visnomy

been ever seen, that peeled head, save on the gallows field? Wast

thou not hanged of yore?"

And Ulenspiegel went on dancing, and the man, who was entering on

the ways of wrath, was running backwards angrily still mumbling his

paternosters.

"Maybe," said Ulenspiegel, "thou comprehendest but high Flemish,

I will speak to thee in the low: if thou art no glutton, thou art a

drunkard, if no drunkard, but a water bibber, thou art foully choked

elsewhere; if not constipated, thou art jerry-go-nimble; if not a

lecher, a capon; if there be temperance, it was not that that filled

the tun of thy belly, and if in the thousand million men that people

the earth there were but one only cuckold, it would be thou."

At this word Ulenspiegel sat down upon his seat, legs in air, for

the man had fetched him such a blow with his fist under the nose that

he saw more than a hundred candles. Then cunningly falling upon him,

despite the weight of his belly, he struck him everywhere, and blows

rained like hail upon the thin frame of Ulenspiegel, whose cudgel

fell to the ground.

"Learn by this lesson," said the man, "not to pester honest folk going

on pilgrimage. For you may know that I go thus to Alsemberg according

to custom to implore Madam Holy Mary to cause to miscarry a child

my wife conceived when I was on my travels. To win so great a boon,

a man must needs walk and dance backward from the twentieth step from

his home to the foot of the church steps, without speaking. Alas! now

I must begin all over again."

Ulenspiegel having picked up his cudgel said:

"I shall help you, rascal, you who would have Our Lady serve to kill

babes in their mothers' womb."

And he fell to beating the wretched cuckold so cruelly that he left

him for dead on the road.

All this while there rose to heaven the groans of pilgrims, the sounds

of fifes, viols, rebecks, and bagpipes, and, like a pure incense,

the savour of frying.

XXXVII

Claes, Soetkin, and Nele were gossiping together about the ingle,

and talked of the pilgrim on his pilgrimage.

"Daughter," said Soetkin, "why cannot you, by the might of the spell

of youth, keep him always with us?"

"Alas!" said Nele, "I cannot."

"'Tis because," said Claes, "he hath a counter charm that drives him

to run without ever resting save for the work of his teeth."

"The cruel, ugly fellow!" sighed Nele.

"Cruel," said Soetkin, "I admit, but ugly, no. If my son Ulenspiegel

has not a Greek or a Roman countenance, he is all the better for that;

for they are of Flanders his agile feet, of the Frank of Bruges his

keen brown eye, and his nose and his mouth made by two past masters

in the science of humour and sculpture."

"Who, then," asked Claes, "made him his lazy arms and his legs too

prone to run to pleasure?"

"His heart that is over young," replied Soetkin.

XXXVIII

In these days Katheline by her simples cured an ox, three sheep, and

a pig belonging to Speelman but could not cure a cow that belonged

to Jan Beloen. The latter accused her of sorcery. He averred that she

had cast a spell on the beast, inasmuch as, while giving his simples,

she caressed and talked to it, doubtless in a diabolical speech,

for an honest Christian should not talk to a beast.

The said Jan Beloen added that he was a neighbour of Speelman's, whose

ox, sheep, and pig she had healed, and if she had killed his cow, it

was doubtless at the instigation of Speelman, jealous to see that his,

Beloen's, land was better tilled than his own. Upon the testimony of

Peter Meulemeester, a man of good life and conduct, and also of Jan

Beloen, certifying that Katheline was reputed a witch in Damme, and

had doubtless killed the cow, Katheline was arrested and condemned to

be tormented until she should have confessed her crimes and misdeeds.

She was questioned by a sheriff who was always in a rage, for he

drank brandy all day long. He had Katheline put upon the first bench

of torment in his presence and before the Vierschare.

The executioner stripped her naked, then shaved her hair and all her

body, looking everywhere to see if she concealed a charm.

Finding nothing, he fastened her with cords to the bench. Then

she spake:

"I am all shamed to be naked thus before these men, Madam Mary,

grant that I may die!"

Then the executioner put wet cloths upon her breast, her belly, and

her legs, and raising the bench, he poured hot water into her stomach

in such quantities that she was all swelled up. Then he lowered the

bench again.

The sheriff asked Katheline if she would confess her crime. She made

sign that she would not. The executioner poured more hot water into

her, but she vomited all of it out again.