to stay more than half the night in a bed for the first seven days."
The following night he awaked his men at midnight again. Ulenspiegel,
who slept in the garret, took his bed on his back and thus laden came
down into the forge.
The baes said to him:
"Are you mad? Why do you not leave your bed in its place?"
"'Tis a custom I have," answered Ulenspiegel, "to spend for the
first seven days half the night on top of my bed and the other half
under it."
"Well, for me, it is a second custom I have to throw into the street my
impudent workmen with leave to pass the first week above the pavement
and the second below it."
"In your cellar, baes, if you please, beside the casks of bruinbier,"
replied Ulenspiegel.
LXIV
Having left the wheelwright and gone back to Flanders, he must hire
himself as apprentice to a shoemaker who liked better to stay in the
streets than to wield the awl in his workshop. Ulenspiegel, seeing
him for the hundredth time ready to go abroad, asked him how he must
cut the leather for vamps.
"Cut it," replied the baes, "for big feet and average feet, so that
all that lead big cattle and little cattle may get into them handily."
"So shall it be, baes," answered Ulenspiegel.
When the shoemaker had gone out, Ulenspiegel cut out vamps only good
to make shoes for fillies, asses, heifers, sows, and ewes.
Coming back to his workshop, the baes, seeing his leather in pieces:
"What have you done there, good-for-nothing botcher?" said he.
"What you bade me," Ulenspiegel made answer.
"I bade you," replied the baes, "cut me shoes in which might be put
handily everything that leads oxen, swine, and sheep, and you make
me shoes for the feet of the beasts."
Ulenspiegel replied:
"Baes, what leads the boar but the sow, the donkey but the ass, the
bull but the heifer, the ram but the ewe, in the season when all the
beasts are in love?"
Then he went away, and must needs remain outside.
LXV
At this time 'twas April, the air had been soft and sweet, then it
froze hard and the sky was gray as on All Souls' Day. The third year
of Ulenspiegel's banishment had long since run out and Nele awaited
her friend from day to day. "Alas!" said she, "it will snow on the
pear trees, on the flowering jasmine, on all the poor plants unfolded
confidingly in the genial warmth of an untimely springtide. Already
the little flakes are falling from the sky upon the roadways. And it
snoweth, too, upon my poor heart.
"Where are the bright rays playing on bright faces, on the roofs
they made still redder than their wont, on the window panes they
caused to flame? Where are they, warming earth and sky, bird and
insect? Alas! now night and day I am chilled to the bone with sadness
and my long waiting. Where art thou, Ulenspiegel, my dear?"
LXVI
Ulenspiegel, drawing near Renaix in Flanders, was hungry and thirsty,
but he would by no means complain, and endeavoured to make folk laugh
so they might give him bread. But he laughed not over well, and they
passed him by and gave him nothing.
It was cold: turn and turn about it snowed, rained, and hailed on the
back of the wanderer. If he passed through the villages, the water
came in his mouth only to see a dog gnawing a bone in the angle of
a wall. Fain and fain would he have earned a florin, but had no idea
how the florin could fall into his pouch.
Looking up, he saw the pigeons that from the roof of the dove cote
dropped white pieces on the highway, but they were not florins. He
searched on the ground along the causeways, but florins do not bloom
among the paving stones.
Looking to the right hand he saw a rascal cloud that moved onward into
the sky, like a great watering pot, but he knew that if aught were
to fall from this cloud it would not be a plump of florins. Looking
to the left hand he saw a great idle horse-chestnut tree, living and
doing nothing: "Ah!" he said to himself, "why are there no florin
trees? They would be splendid trees, indeed!"
Suddenly the big cloud burst asunder, and the hailstones fell thick
like pebbles on Ulenspiegel's back. "Alas," said he, "I feel it sure
enough, stones are never thrown but at wandering dogs." Then starting
to run: "It is not my fault," said he to himself, "if I have not a
palace nor even a tent to shelter my poor thin body. Ah! the cruel
hailstones: they are hard as cannon shot. No, it is not my fault if
I trail my wretched tatters about the world, it is only that such
was my good pleasure. Why am I not emperor? These hailstones would
fain force themselves into my ears like ill words." And he was still
running:--"Poor nose," he added, "you will soon be pierced through and
through like fretwork, and mayst serve as a pepperpot at the feasts
of the great folk of this world on whom it never hails." Then wiping
his cheeks:--"These," said he, "would do well for ladles for cooks
that are too hot at their ovens. Ah! far-off memory of the sauces
of long ago. I am hungry. Empty belly, complain not; sad entrails,
grumble no more. Where dost thou hide, propitious fortune? take me
to the place where the pasture is."
While he talked thus with himself, the sky cleared and grew bright
with a strong sun, the hail ceased, and Ulenspiegel said: "Good morrow,
sun, my one friend, that comest to dry me!"
But he still kept on running, being cold. Suddenly from afar he saw
coming along the road a black-and-white dog running straight before
him, tongue hanging out and the eyes bolting from his head.
"This brute," said Ulenspiegel, "has the madness in his belly!" He
hastily picked up a big stone and climbed upon a tree; as he reached
the first bough, the dog passed and Ulenspiegel launched the stone upon
his skull. The dog stopped, and wretchedly and stiffly tried to get up
the tree and bite Ulenspiegel, but he could not, and fell back to die.
Ulenspiegel was nowise glad at this, and still less when, coming
down from the tree, he perceived that the dog's mouth was not dry
and parched as is usual when these animals are smitten with the
hydrophobia. Then studying his skin, he saw it was fine and good to
sell, stripped him of it, washed it, hung it on his staff, let it
dry a little in the sun, and then put it away in his satchel.
Hunger and thirst tormented him more and more, and he went into many
farmhouses, not daring to offer his skin for sale, for fear that it
might have belonged to one of the farmers' dogs. He asked for bread,
and was refused it. Night came on. His limbs were weary, he went into
a little inn. There he beheld an ancient baesine caressing a wheezy
old dog whose skin was like a dead man's.
"Whence comest thou, traveller?" asked the aged baesine.
Ulenspiegel made answer:
"I come from Rome, where I healed the Pope's dog of a sorry rheum
that grieved him sore."
"Then thou hast seen the Pope?" said she to him, drawing him a glass
of beer.
"Alas!" said Ulenspiegel, emptying the glass, "I have but been
permitted to kiss his holy foot and his holy slipper."
All this while the baesine's old dog was coughing, but without
spitting.
"When didst thou do this?" asked the old woman.
"The month before the last," answered Ulenspiegel, "I arrived,
being looked for, and knocked at the door. 'Who is there?' asked the
chamberlain arch-cardinal, arch-privy, arch-extraordinary to His
Most Holy Holiness.' ''Tis I,' I answered, 'Monseigneur Cardinal,
come from Flanders expressly to kiss the Pope's foot and heal his dog
of his rheum.' 'Ah! 'tis thou, Ulenspiegel?' said the Pope, speaking
from the other side of a little door. 'I would rejoice to see thee,
but that is a thing for the moment impossible. I am forbidden by the
Holy Decretals to display my face to strangers when the holy razor is
being passed over it.' 'Alas!' said I, 'I am an unfortunate man, I that
am come from a land so far to kiss Your Holiness his foot and cure his
dog of the rheum. Must I indeed return without being satisfied?' 'Nay,'
said the Holy Father; and then I heard him call. 'Arch-chamberlain,
roll my chair as far as the door, and open the little wicket at the
foot of the door.' The which was done. And I beheld thrust through
the wicket a foot shod with a golden slipper, and I heard a voice,
speaking like a peal of thunder, saying: 'This is the redoubtable foot
of the Prince of Princes, King of Kings, Emperor of Emperors. Kiss it,
Christian man, kiss the holy slipper.' And I kissed the holy slipper,
and my nose was sweetly filled with the celestial perfume that was
exhaled from that foot. Then the wicket was shut again, and the same
formidable voice bade me to wait. The wicket opened once more, and
from it there issued, with all due respect, an animal bereft of its
hair, blear-eyed, coughing, swollen like a wine skin and forced to
walk with its legs straddling by reason of the hugeness of its belly.
"The Holy Father deigned to address me again: 'Ulenspiegel,' said he,
'thou dost look upon my dog; he was seized with a rheum and other
maladies through gnawing the bones of heretics that had been broken
for them. Cure him, my son; thou wilt have much good thereby.'"
"Drink," said the old woman.
"Pour out," answered Ulenspiegel. Continuing his tale: "I purged the
dog," said he, "by the aid of a wonder-working draught concocted by
myself. He made water through this for three days and three nights
without ceasing, and was cured."
"Jesus God en Maria!" said the old woman; "let me kiss thee, glorious
pilgrim, who hast seen the Pope and mayst also cure my dog."
But Ulenspiegel, recking little of the old woman's kisses, said to
her: "Those who have touched with their lips the holy slipper may not
within a space of two years receive the kisses of any woman. First
give me for supper some goodly carbonadoes, a black pudding or so,
and a sufficiency of beer, and I shall make your dog's voice so clear
that he will be able to chant the aves in e la in the rood-loft of
the great church."
"May it be true what thou sayest," whined the old woman, "and I shall
give thee a florin."
"I shall accomplish it," said Ulenspiegel, "but only after supper."
She served him all he had asked for. He ate and drank his fill, and
he would even have embraced the old woman for gratitude of his jaw,
had it not been for what he had said to her.
While he was eating, the old dog put his paws on his knee to have a
bone. Ulenspiegel gave him several; then he said to his hostess:
"If a man had eaten in your inn and not paid, what would you do?"
"I would have his best garment off that robber," answered the old
woman.
"'Tis well," replied Ulenspiegel; then he took the dog under his arm
and went into the stable. There he shut him up along with a bone,
took the dead dog's skin out of his satchel, and coming back to
the old woman, he asked her if she had said she would have his best
garment off the man who would refuse to pay for his meal.
"Well, then, your dog dined with me and did not pay: so I have,
following your own rede, taken his best and his only coat."
And he showed her the skin of the dead dog.
"Ah!" said the old woman, weeping, "it is cruel of thee, master
doctor. Poor old dog! he was my child to me, a poor widow. Why didst
thou take from me the only friend I had in the world? I have no more
now to do but to die."
"I will bring him to life again," said Ulenspiegel.
"Bring him to life!" said she. "And he will fawn on me again, and he
will look at me again, and he will lick me again, and he will wag his
poor old stump of a tail again when he looks at me! Do this, master
doctor, and thou shalt have dined here gratis, a most costly dinner,
and I shall give thee a florin still over and above the bargain."
"I will bring him to life again," said Ulenspiegel; "but I must have
hot water, syrup to glue the seams together, a needle and thread and
sauce from the carbonadoes; and I would be alone during the operation."
The old woman gave him what he asked for; he took up the skin of the
dead dog and went off to the stable.
There he smeared the old dog's muzzle with sauce, and the brute
submitted to it with delight; he drew a great stripe of syrup under
his belly, put syrup on his paws and sauce on his tail.
Then crying out loudly three times, he said: "Staet op! staet op! ik
bevel 't, vuilen hond!"
And then lightly putting the dead dog's skin in his satchel he fetched
the living dog a great kick and so pitched him into the inn chamber.
The old woman, seeing her dog alive and licking himself, was eager
to embrace him; but Ulenspiegel did not permit this.
"You may not," said he, "caress this dog until he has washed off with
his tongue all the syrup with which he is anointed; only then will the
seams in the skin be closed up. Count out to me now my ten florins."
"I said one," answered the old woman.
"One for the operation, nine for the resurrection," replied
Ulenspiegel.
She counted them out to him. Ulenspiegel went off, flinging into the
inn chamber the skin of the dead dog and saying:
"There, woman, keep his old skin: it will serve you to patch up the
new one when it will have holes in it."
LXVII
On that Sunday at Bruges was held the procession of the Blessed
Blood. Claes said to his wife and to Nele to go to see it and that
mayhap they might find Ulenspiegel in the town. As for himself,
said he, he would keep the cottage if the pilgrim should perchance
return thither.
The two women went off together; Claes, remaining at Damme, sate on
the doorstep and found the town very empty and deserted. He heard
nothing except the crystalline chime of some village bell, while from
Bruges there came to him by fits and starts the music of the carillons
and a great din of falconets and fireworks let off in honour of the
Blessed Blood.
Claes, looking pensively for Ulenspiegel along the roads, saw nothing,
only the sky pure and blue and cloudless, a few dogs lying tongue
out in the sun, bold sparrows bathing and twittering in the dust,
a cat spying after them, and the sunlight entering every house like
a friend and making the brass kettles and pewter tankards on every
dresser glisten and shine.
But Claes was downcast amid all this glee, and looking for his son
he sought to see him behind the gray mist along the meadows, to hear
him in the glad rustling of the leaves and the gay concert of the
birds in the trees. Suddenly he saw on the road from Maldeghem a man
of great stature, and knew it was not Ulenspiegel. He saw him pause
at the edge of a field of carrots and eat eagerly.
"There's a man mightily an-hungered," said Claes.
Having lost sight of him for a moment, he saw him reappear at the
corner of the street of the Heron, and he recognized the messenger
from Josse who had brought him the seven hundred gold carolus. He
went to him in the highway and said:
"Come to my house."
The man replied:
"Blessed are they that are kind to the wandering travelling man."
On the outer sill of the cottage window there was crumbled bread that
Soetkin kept for the birds of the neighbourhood. Here they came in the
winter to find their food. The man caught up these crumbs and ate them.
"You are hungry and thirsty," said Claes.
The man replied:
"Since I was stripped by robbers a week past, I have lived only on
carrots from the fields and roots in the woods."
"It is then," said Claes, "time to indulge in feasting. And here," said
he, opening the cupboard, "here is a full bowlful of peas, eggs, black
puddings, hams, sausage of Ghent, waterzoey: hotchpotch of fish. Below,
in the cellar, sleeps Louvain wine, made in the manner of the wines
of Burgundy, red and clear as a ruby; it asks but the awakening of
glasses. Come, now, let us put a faggot on the fire. Do you hear the
black puddings sizzling on the grid? 'Tis the song of good feeding."
Claes, turning them over, said to the man:
"Have you not seen my boy Ulenspiegel?"
"Nay," he answered.
"Do you bring me any tidings of my brother Josse?" said Claes, putting
upon the table grilled puddings, an omelette of fat ham, cheese, and
great tankards, and red clear wine of Louvain sparkling in the flasks.
The man replied:
"Thy brother Josse died upon the rack at Sippenaken, near Aix. And
that was for having borne arms, being a heretic, against the Emperor."
Claes was as one beside himself, and said, trembling in every limb,
for his wrath was extreme:
"Evil murderers! Josse! my poor brother!"
The man said then in no gentle tone:
"Our joys and our woes are not of this world."
And he began to eat. Then he said:
"I gave thy brother help in his prison, passing myself off for a
countryman from Nieswiller, a relation of his. I have come hither
because he said to me: 'If thou dost not die for the faith as I do,
go to my brother Claes; enjoin upon him to live in the Lord's peace,
doing the works of mercy, rearing his son in secret in the law of
Christ. The money I gave him was taken from the poor and ignorant
people; let him use it to bring Thyl up in the knowledge of God and
the word.'"
Having said this, the messenger gave Claes the kiss of peace.
And Claes, lamenting:
"Died on the rack," said he, "my poor brother!"
And he could not recover himself out of his great sorrow. All the
same, as he saw that the man was thirsty and held out his glass,
he poured wine for him, but he ate and drank joylessly.
Soetkin and Nele were away during seven days; during this time the
messenger from Josse lived under Claes's roof.
Every night they heard Katheline crying terribly in the cottage:
"The fire, the fire! Make a hole: the soul would fain escape!"
And Claes would go to her, and calm her with soothing speech, then
come back into his own house.
At the end of seven days the man departed and would accept no more
from Claes but two carolus to feed and shelter him upon his way.
LXVIII
Nele and Soetkin being come back from Bruges, Claes, in his kitchen,
seated on the floor after the fashion of tailors, was putting
buttons on an old pair of breeches. Nele was close by him tarring on
against the stork Titus Bibulus Schnouffius who, dashing at the bird
and retreating by turns, was yelping in the shrillest voice. The
stork standing on one foot, looking at him gravely and pensively,
withdrew her long neck into the feathers on her breast. Titus Bibulus
Schnouffius, seeing her so pacific, yelped more and more terribly. But
all of a sudden the bird, tired and sick of this music, lashed out
her bill like an arrow on the back of the dog, who fled yelling:
"Help, help!"
Claes laughed, Nele, too, and Soetkin never ceased looking into the
street, seeking if she could not see Ulenspiegel coming.
Suddenly she said:
"Here is the provost and four constables. It cannot surely be us they
want. There are two of them turning behind the cottage."
Claes lifted his nose from his task.
"And two that are stopping in front," went on Soetkin.
Claes got up.
"Who are they going to arrest in this street?" said she. "Jesus
God! my husband, they are coming in here."
Claes leaped from the kitchen into the garden, followed by Nele.
He said to her:
"Save the carolus, they are behind the chimney-back."
Nele understood, then seeing that he was making through the hedge,
that the constables seized him by the collar, that he was fighting
to get loose from them, she cried and wept:
"He is innocent! he is innocent! do not hurt Claes, my
father! Ulenspiegel, where art thou? Thou wouldst kill both of them!"
And she threw herself upon one of the constables and tore his face
with her nails. Then crying out "They will kill him!" she fell down
on the sward of the garden and rolled about on it, distraught.
Katheline had come at the noise, and standing straight and motionless,
was contemplating the sight, saying as she shook her head from side
to side: "The fire! the fire! Make a hole! the soul would fain escape!"
Soetkin saw nothing, and speaking to the constables that had come
into the cottage:
"Sirs, whom seek ye in our poor dwelling? If it is my son, he is far
away. Are your legs long ones?"
Saying so, she was full of mirth.
At this moment Nele, crying out for help, Soetkin ran into the garden,
saw her husband seized by the collar and struggling on the highway
close to the hedge.
"Strike!" she said. "Kill! Where art thou, Ulenspiegel?"
And she would have gone to help her husband, but one of the constables
seized her round the body, not without peril.
Claes struggled and struck so hard that he might well have escaped,
if the two constables to whom Soetkin had spoken had not come to the
help of the two that were holding him.
They brought him with both his hands tied into the kitchen where
Soetkin and Nele were weeping and sobbing.
"Messire provost," said Soetkin, "what hath my poor man done then,
that you should bind him thus with ropes?"
"Heretic," said one of the constables.
"Heretic?" returned Soetkin, "thou a heretic, thou? These devils
have lied."
Claes answered:
"I place myself in God's keeping."
He went out; Nele and Soetkin followed him weeping and believing that
they also were to be brought before the judge. Men and women came to
them; when they knew that Claes was going thus bound because he was
suspect of heresy, they were so sore afraid that they went back into
their homes in haste, and shut all the doors behind them. Only a few
girls dared go to Claes and say to him:
"Whither goest thou thus bound, coal man?"
"To the grace of God, my girls," he replied.
They brought him to the prison of the commune; Soetkin and Nele sat
down upon the threshold. Towards evening, Soetkin bade Nele leave
her and go to see if Ulenspiegel was not coming back.
LXIX
Soon the news ran abroad through the villages round about that a
man had been cast into prison for heresy and that the inquisitor
Titelman, the dean of Renaix, nicknamed the Inquisitor Pitiless,
would conduct the interrogatories. Ulenspiegel was then living at
Koolkerke, in the most private favours of a pretty farmer, an amiable
widow that denied him nothing that was hers. There he was very well
off, spoiled and caressed until the day when a treacherous rival,
the sheriff of the commune, lay in wait for him one morning as he
came out of the tavern and would fain have rubbed him down with an
oaken towel. But Ulenspiegel, to cool his anger, cast him in a pond
whence the sheriff crept out as best he could, green as a toad and
steeped full as a sponge.
Ulenspiegel for this high feat, must leave Koolkerke and set off with
all speed towards Damme, fearing the sheriff's vengeance.
The evening was falling cool, Ulenspiegel ran swiftly; fain would
he have been at home already, in his mind's eye he saw Nele sewing,
Soetkin preparing supper, Claes binding faggots, Schnouffius gnawing
on a bone and the stork knocking with her bill on the housewife's
front to have some scraps of food.
A pedlar afoot said to him as he passed:
"Whither away in such hurry?"
"To Damme, to my own home," replied Ulenspiegel.
The pedlar answered:
"The town is not safe now by reason of the folk of the reformed faith
that are being arrested there."
And he went on his way.
Arrived before the inn of the Roode-Schildt, Ulenspiegel went in to
drink a glass of dobbel-cuyt. The baes said to him:
"Are not you the son of Claes?"
"I am," answered Ulenspiegel.
"Make haste, then," said the baes, "for the ill hour has struck for
your father."
Ulenspiegel asked what he meant.
The baes replied that he would know all too soon.
And Ulenspiegel continued to run.
As he was at the entrance to Damme, the dogs that were on the doorsteps
jumped out at his legs yelping and barking. The goodwives came out
at the noise and said to him, all talking at once:
"Whence come you?" "Have you news of your father?" "Where is your
mother?" "Is she with him in prison, too?" "Alas! if only they do
not burn him!"
Ulenspiegel ran the harder.
He met Nele, who said to him:
"Thyl, do not go to your house: the town governors have put a guard
in it on behalf of His Majesty."
Ulenspiegel stopped.
"Nele," said he, "is it true that my father Claes is in prison?"
"Yea," said Nele, "and Soetkin weeps on the threshold."
Then the heart of the prodigal son was swollen with anguish and he
said to Nele:
"I am going to see them."
"That is not what you should do," said she, "but you should obey
Claes instead, who said to me before he was taken: 'save the carolus,
they are behind the chimney-back.' They are what you must save first
and foremost, for it is the inheritance of Soetkin, the poor woman."
Ulenspiegel, listening no whit, ran to the gaol. There he saw Soetkin
seated on the threshold; she embraced him with tears, and they wept
together.
The people assembling, because of these two, in a crowd in front of
the gaol, the constables came and told Ulenspiegel and Soetkin that
they were to be off out of that and at the speediest possible.
Mother and son went away to Nele's cottage, next door to their own
home, before which they saw one of the lansquenet troopers summoned
from Bruges through fear of the troubles that might arise during
the trial and during the execution. For the folk of Damme loved
Claes greatly.
The trooper was sitting on the pavement, before the door, busy sucking
the last drop of brandy out of a flask. Finding nothing more in it,
he flung it some paces away, and drawing his dagger, he amused himself
in digging up the paving stones.
Soetkin, all tears, entered Katheline's house.
And Katheline shaking her head: "The fire! Make a hole, the soul
would fain escape," said she.
LXX
The bell that is called Borgstorm--the storm of the burg--having
summoned the judges to the tribunal, they met in the Vierschare,
at the stroke of four, about the linden tree of judgment.
Claes was brought before them and saw seated beneath the canopy
the bailiff of Damme, and beside him and opposite him the mayor,
the aldermen, and the clerk.
The people flocked up at the sound of the bell in great multitude. Many
said:
"The judges are not there to do the works of justice, but of imperial
serfdom."
The clerk announced that the tribunal having first met in the
Vierschare, around the linden tree, had decided that, considering
the denunciations and testimonies before it, there had been good
ground for seizing the body of Claes, coal vendor, native of Damme,
husband of Soetkin, the daughter of Joostens. They would now, he added,
proceed to the hearing of the witnesses.
Hans Barbier, a neighbour of Claes, was the first heard. Having taken
the oath, he said: "Upon my soul's salvation, I affirm and asseverate
that Claes, present before this court, has been known to me for almost
seventeen years, that he has always lived honestly and decently,
and according to the laws and rules of our holy mother the Church,
has never spoken opprobriously of her, nor to my knowledge harboured
any heretic, nor hidden Luther's book, nor spoken of the said book,
nor done anything that could bring him into suspicion of having
transgressed the laws and regulations of the empire. So help me God
and all His saints."
Jan Van Roosebekke was next heard, and said "that during the absence
of Soetkin, Claes's wife, he had often thought he heard in the
accused man's house the voices of two men, and that often at night,
after the curfew, he had seen in a small chamber beneath the roof a
light, and two men, one of them was Claes, conversing together. As for
saying whether the other man was heretic or no, he could not, having
only seen him at a distance. As for what concerns Claes," he added,
"I will say, speaking in all truth, that since I have known him,
he always kept his Easter regularly, communicated on the principal
feast days, went to mass every Sunday, except that of the Blessed
Blood and those following. And I know nothing further but this. So
help me God and all His saints."
Questioned if he had not seen Claes in the tavern of the Blauwe Torre
selling indulgences and mocking at purgatory, Jan Van Roosebekke
replied that in fact Claes had sold indulgences, but without contempt
or mockery, and that he, Jan Van Roosebekke, had bought even as also
was fain to do Josse Grypstuiver, the dean of the fishmongers, who
was there present among the crowd.
Thereafter the bailiff said he would proclaim the actions and conduct
for the which Claes was brought before the court of the Vierschare.
"The informer," said he, "having, as it happened, remained at Damme,
so as not to go to Bruges to spend his money in riot and revelry,
as is too often done at these holy times, was soberly taking the air
on his own doorstep. Being there he saw a man walking in the street
of the Heron. Claes, perceiving this man, went to him and saluted
him. The man was arrayed in black cloth. He went into Claes's house,
and the door of the cottage was left ajar. Curious to know what this
man might be, the informer went into the porch, heard Claes speaking
in the kitchen with the stranger, of a certain Josse, his brother,
who having been taken prisoner among the reformed troops, had been
for this put to death on the rack not far from Aix. The stranger
said to Claes that the money he had received from his brother being
money gained through the ignorance of poor folk, he was to employ
it in bringing up his son in the reformed religion. He had enjoined
Claes also to leave the bosom of our Mother Holy Church, and uttered
other impious words to which Claes made answer only with these words:
'Cruel murderers! my poor brother!' And the accused thus blasphemed
against our Holy Father the Pope and his Royal Majesty, accusing them
of cruelty because they most justly punished heresy as a crime, being
treason divine and human. When the man had made an end of eating,
the informer heard Claes cry aloud: 'Poor Josse, may God have thee
in His glory, they were cruel to thee!' Thus he even accused God of
impiety, deeming that He may receive heretics into His heaven. And
Claes ceased not to say 'My poor brother!' The stranger, then entering
into frenzy like a preacher in his preaching, cried: 'She shall fall,
great Babylon the Romish whore, and she shall become the habitation
of demons and the haunt of every obscene bird!' Claes said: 'Cruel
murderers! My poor brother!' The stranger, continuing his discourse,
said: 'For the angel will take up that stone which is as great as
a millstone. And it shall be cast into the sea, and he will say:
'Thus great Babylon shall be cast out, and she shall no more be
found.' 'Messire,' said Claes, 'your mouth is filled with anger, but
tell me when shall come the reign when they that are meek and lowly
of heart shall be able to live in peace upon the earth?' 'Never,'
replied the stranger, 'so long as Antichrist, which is the Pope and
the enemy of truth, reigneth.' 'Ah,' said Claes, 'you speak of our
Holy Father without respect. Assuredly he knoweth naught of the cruel
torments with which the poor reformers are punished.' The stranger
made answer: 'He is not ignorant of these, for it is he that issueth
the edicts, hath them enforced by the Emperor, now by the king,
who hath the profit of confiscations, inherits from the dead, and
readily brings suit for heresy against the rich.' Claes replied:
'These things are told in the country of Flanders, I must needs
believe them; man's flesh is weak, even when it is royal flesh. My
poor Josse!' And Claes by this signified that it was through base
desire of lucre that His Majesty punished heresiarchs. The stranger,
wishing to harangue further, Claes replied: 'Be so good, messire, as
to hold no more such discourses with me, for if they were overheard,
they would stir up some grievous suit against me.'
"Claes arose to go to the cellar and came up thence with a jug of
beer. 'I will shut the door,' said he then, and the informer heard no
more, for he must needs lightly leave the house. The door that had
been shut was nevertheless opened again at nightfall. The stranger
came out, but went back speedily and knocked at it saying: 'Claes,
I am cold, I have nowhere to lodge: give me shelter, no one has seen
me come in, the town is deserted and empty.' Claes received him in
his house, lighted a lantern, and was seen preceding the heretic,
mounting the stairs and bringing the stranger underneath the roof to
a little chamber whose window looked towards the country...."
"Who, then," cried Claes, "who can have recounted all if not thou,
vile fishmonger, whom I saw on that Sunday upon thy threshold, stiff as
a post, hypocritically watching the swallows flying through the air?"
And with his finger he pointed to Josse Grypstuiver, the dean of the
fishmongers, who showed his ugly face amid the crowd of the people.
The fishmonger smiled cruelly, seeing Claes betray himself in this
fashion. All the people, men, women, and girls, said one to the other:
"The poor fellow, his words will past doubt cause his death."
But the clerk continued his announcement:
"The heretic and Claes," said he, "conversed together for long that
night, and also during other nights, during which the stranger could
be seen making many gestures of threatening or blessing, and lifting
his arms to heaven as the manner is of his fellows in heresy. Claes
seemed to approve of his words.
"Certes, during these days, evenings and nights, they talked
opprobriously of the mass, of confession, of indulgences, and of His
Royal Majesty...."
"No man hath heard it," said Claes, "and I cannot be accused thus
without proofs!"
The clerk continued:
"Another thing was heard. When the stranger came out from thy house,
on the seventh day at the tenth hour, the night being fallen already,
thou didst walk in the way with him as far as close to the boundary of
the field of Katheline. There he asked what thou hadst done with the
wicked idols"--and at that the bailiff crossed himself--"of Madame
Virgin, Master Saint Nicholas, and Master Saint Martin. Thou didst
answer that thou hadst broken them to pieces and cast them into the
well. And they were in fact found in thy well last night, and the
fragments are in the torture-chamber."
At this word Claes appeared overwhelmed. The bailiff asked him if
he had nothing to say in answer: Claes made a sign with his head to
say no.
The bailiff asked him if he did not wish to retract the evil thought
that had made him break up the images and the impious error that by
reason whereof he had uttered words opprobrious to His Divine Majesty
and His Royal Majesty.
Claes answered that his body was His Royal Majesty's but that his
conscience was Christ's, whose law he meant to follow. The bailiff
asked him if this law was that of our Mother Holy Church. Claes
made answer:
"It is contained in the holy Gospel."
Called upon to answer the question whether the Pope is the
representative of God upon earth:
"No," said he.
Asked if he believed it was forbidden to worship the images of
Madame the Virgin and Messieurs the Saints, he replied that it was
idolatry. Questioned on the point as to whether auricular confession
be a good and salutary thing, he replied:
"Christ said: 'Confess yourselves one to another'."
He was valiant and stout in his answers, though he seemed sorely
troubled and affrighted at the bottom of his heart.
Eight o'clock having struck, and the night falling, the members of
the court withdrew, deferring till the morrow their final judgment.
LXXI
In Katheline's cottage Soetkin wept distraught with anguish. And she
said over and over again:
"My husband! my poor husband!"
Ulenspiegel and Nele embraced her with utmost tenderness. Then taking
them into her arms she wept in silence. And then she signed to them
to leave her alone. Nele said to Ulenspiegel:
"Let us leave her there, it is her own wish: let us save the carolus."
They went away together; Katheline kept moving round Soetkin, saying:
"Make a hole: the soul would fain escape!"
And Soetkin, with fixed eyes, looked at her without seeing her.
The cottages of Claes and Katheline touched, that of Claes set back
with a little garden in front, Katheline's had a patch of ground
planted with beans giving upon the street. This patch was surrounded
with a green hedge in which Ulenspiegel to get to Nele's and Nele to
get to Ulenspiegel's, had made a big hole in their childish days.
Ulenspiegel and Nele came into this garden patch, and from there saw
the trooper who with head wagging spat into the air, but the spittle
fell back on his doublet. A wicker flask lay by his side:
"Nele," said Ulenspiegel, in a whisper, "this drunken trooper has not
drunk out his thirst; he must drink more still. We shall then be his
master. Let us take his flask."
At the sound of their voices, the lansquenet turned his heavy head in
their direction, hunted for his flask, and not finding it, he went
on spitting into the air and tried to see his spittle falling back
in the moonlight.
"He is full of brandy to the teeth," said Ulenspiegel; "do you hear
how he can hardly spit?"
However, the trooper, having spit and stared in the air a long while,
put out his arm again to get his hand on the flask. He found it,
put his mouth to its neck, threw his head back, turned the flagon
upside down, tapped on it to make it give up all its juice and sucked
at it like a babe at its mother's breast. Finding nothing in it,
he resigned himself, put the flask down beside him, swore a little
in high German, spat again, waggled his head to right and left, and
went to sleep muttering inarticulate and unintelligible paternosters.
Ulenspiegel, knowing that this sleep would not last, and that it must
be thickened further, slipped through the hole in the hedge, took
the trooper's flask, and gave it to Nele, who filled it with brandy.
The trooper did not cease to snore; Ulenspiegel passed again through
the hole in the hedge and put the full flask between his legs, came
back into Katheline's bean patch and waited behind the hedge with Nele.
Because of the chill of the newly drawn liquor the trooper awoke a
little, and with his first movement sought what was making him cold
under the doublet.
Judging with drunken intuition that this might well be a full flask,
he put his hand to it. Ulenspiegel and Nele saw him, in the light of
the moon, shake the flask to hear the lap of the liquor, taste it,
laugh, marvel that it should be so full, drink a mouthful, then a good
gulp, put it down on the ground, take it up again and drink once more.
Then he sang:
When Seigneur Maan comes up the way
To bid good e'en to lady Zee,
To high Germans, dame Zee, which is the sea, is the wife of Seigneur
Maan, which is the moon and the master of women. And so he sang:
When Seigneur Maan comes up the way
To bid good e'en to lady Zee,
The lady Zee will straight purvey
A cup of wine spiced daintily,
When Seigneur Maan comes up the way.
With him she then will sup that day
And give of kisses a relay:
And when he's cleared the supper tray
Within her bed to slumber lay
When Seigneur Maan comes up the way.
Just so, my dear, provide for me,
Good food and wine spiced daintily
Just so, my dear, provide for me
When Seigneur Maan comes up the way.
Then drinking and singing a quatrain turn and turn about, he went to
sleep. And he could not hear Nele saying: "They are in a pot behind
the chimney-back"; nor see Ulenspiegel go through the stable into
Claes's kitchen, lift the slab of the chimney-back, find the pot and
the carolus, come back into Katheline's garden, hide the carolus there
beside the well wall, knowing full well that if they were searched
for it would be inside and not outside.
Then they returned to Soetkin and found the sad wife weeping and
saying:
"My husband! My poor husband!"
Nele and Ulenspiegel watched by her until morning.
LXXII
On the morrow, the Borgstorm summoned with loud peals the judges to
the court of the Vierschare.
When they were seated on the four benches, about the tree of justice,
they interrogated Claes afresh and asked him if he wished to recant
his errors.
Claes raised his hand towards heaven:
"Christ, my Lord, seeth me from on high," said he, "I looked upon
his sun when my boy Ulenspiegel was born. Where is he now, the
runagate? Soetkin, my gentle goodwife, wilt thou be brave against
ill fortune?"
Then looking at the linden tree, he said, cursing it:
"Storm winds and drought! make all the trees of the land of our father
die as they stand rather than see freedom of conscience condemned
to death under their shade. Where art thou, my son Ulenspiegel? I
was hard to thee. Messieurs, have pity upon me and judge me as Our
Compassionate Lord would judge me."
All that heard him wept, save the judges.
Then he asked if there was no pardon for him, saying:
"I toiled all my days, earning but little; I was good to the poor and
comfortable to all men. I left the Romish Church to obey the spirit
of God that spoke to me. I ask for no other boon than to commute the
penalty of the fire into that of perpetual banishment for life from
the land of Flanders, a penalty already full grievous."
All that were present cried aloud:
"Pity, sirs! Mercy!"
But Josse Grypstuiver did not cry with them.
The bailiff signed to the people there to be silent and said that
the edicts contained an express prohibition against asking mercy
for heretics; but that if Claes would abjure his error, he should be
executed by the rope instead of by fire.
And among the people ran the word:
"Fire or rope, it is death."
And the women wept, and the men growled sullen and low.
Then said Claes:
"I will not abjure. Do with my body as your mercy pleases."
The dean of Renaix, Titelman, cried out:
"It is intolerable to see such heretic vermin lift up its head before
its judges; to burn their bodies is but a fleeting pain; we must
save their souls and force them by the torment to deny their errors,
that they may not give the people the dangerous spectacle of heretics
dying in final impenitence."
At this word the women wept more and more and the men said:
"Where confession is made, there is penalty, but no torture."
The court decided that, torture not being laid down in the Ordinances,
there was no ground for making Claes undergo it. Once more called
upon to abjure he replied:
"I cannot."
He was, in accordance with the edicts, declared guilty of simony,
because of the sale of the indulgences, a heretic, harbourer of
heretics, and as such, condemned to be burned alive until death ensued
before the doors of the Townhall.
His body would be left for two days' space fastened to the stake
to serve as an example and warning, and thereafter interred in that
place where the bodies of executed criminals are wont to be buried.
The court awarded to the informer, Josse Grypstuiver, who was not
named, fifty florins on the first hundred florins of the inheritance,
and a tenth part of the remainder.
Having heard this sentence, Claes said to the dean of the fishmongers:
"Thou shalt come to an ill death and a bad end, thou man of evil,
who for wretched pelf dost make a widow of a happy wife, and an
unhappy orphan of a lighthearted son."
The judges had allowed Claes to speak, for they also, all but
Titelman, held in scorn and loathing the informing of the dean of
the fishmongers.
The latter appeared all livid with shame and rage.
And Claes was taken back to gaol.
LXXIII
On the morrow, which was the day before Claes was to die, the sentence
was made known to Nele, to Ulenspiegel, and to Soetkin.
They asked the judges for permission to enter the prison, which was
granted, but not to Nele.
When they went in, they saw Claes fastened to the wall with a long
chain. A little wood fire was burning in the fireplace because of
the dampness. For it is ordained by law and justice, in Flanders,
to be indulgent with those that are to die, and to give them bread,
meat or cheese, and wine. But the greedy gaolers often violate the
law, and many of them eat the greater part and the best of the poor
prisoners' food.
Claes embraced Ulenspiegel and Soetkin weeping, but he was the first
to dry his eyes, because such was his will, being a man and head of
a family.
Soetkin wept and Ulenspiegel said:
"I will break these cruel irons."
Soetkin wept, saying:
"I will go to King Philip, he will grant pardon."
Claes replied:
"The king inherits the goods of the martyrs." Then he added:
"Beloved wife and son, I am about to go sadly and dolorously out of
this world. If I have some fear of suffering for my body, I am sore
troubled also thinking that, when I am no more, ye will both be poor
and in need, for the king will take all your goods."
Ulenspiegel answered, speaking in a whisper:
"Nele saved all yesterday with me."
"I am full glad of it," replied Claes; "the informer will not laugh
over my spoils."
"Rather let him die first," said Soetkin, her eye full of hate and
without weeping.
But Claes, thinking of the carolus, said:
"Thou wast cunning, Thylken my dear boy; she will not be hungry then
in her old age, Soetkin my widow."
And Claes embraced her, pressing her body tightly to his breast, and
she wept more, thinking that soon she must lose his sweet protection.
Claes looked at Ulenspiegel and said:
"Son, thou didst often sin as thou didst run upon the highways, as do
wicked lads; thou must do so no more, my child, nor leave the afflicted
widow alone in her house, for thou owest her protection and defence,
thou the male."
"Father, this I shall do," said Ulenspiegel.
"O my poor husband!" said Soetkin, embracing him. "What great crime
have we committed? We lived by us two peaceably, an honest simple
life, loving one another well, Lord God, thou knowest it. We arose
betimes to labour, and at night, giving thee thanks, we ate our daily
bread. I will go to the king and rend him with my nails. Lord God,
we were not guilty folk!"
But the gaoler came in and they must needs depart.
Soetkin begged to remain. Claes felt her poor face burn his own,
and Soetkin's tears, falling in floods, wetting his cheeks, and all
her poor body shivering and trembling in his arms. He begged that
she might stay with him.
The gaoler said again that they must go, and took Soetkin from out
of Claes's arms.
Claes said to Ulenspiegel:
"Watch over her."
Ulenspiegel said he would do this. Then he went away with Soetkin,
the son supporting the mother.
LXXIV
On the morrow, which was the day of execution, the neighbours came and
in pity shut up Ulenspiegel, Soetkin, and Nele, in Katheline's house.
But they had not thought that they could hear from afar the cries of
the victim, and through the windows see the flame of the fire.
Katheline went roaming about the town, nodding her head and saying:
"Make a hole, the soul would fain come forth!"
At nine o'clock Claes was brought out from the prison, in his shirt,
his hands bound behind his back. In accordance with the sentence,
the pyre was prepared in the street of Notre Dame around a stake
set up before the doors of the Townhall. The executioner and his
assistants had not yet made an end of piling up the wood.
Claes, in the midst of his gaolers, waited patiently till this task
was finished, while the provost, on horseback, and the liveried men
of the bailiwick, and the nine lansquenets summoned from Bruges, could
barely keep within bounds of respect the people growling and unruly.
All said, it was sheer cruelty to murder thus in his old age,
unjustly, a poor fellow so kind hearted, compassionate, and stout
hearted in toil.
Suddenly they all knelt down and prayed. The bells of Notre Dame were
tolling for the dead.
Katheline also was in the crowd of the common people, in the first
row, and all beside herself. Looking at Claes and the pyre, she said,
nodding her head:
"The fire! the fire! Make a hole; the soul would fain escape!"
Soetkin and Nele, hearing the bells tolling, both crossed
themselves. But Ulenspiegel did not, saying that he would no longer
worship God after the fashion of murderers. And he ran about the
cottage, seeking to break down doors and to leap out through windows;
but all were guarded.
Suddenly Soetkin cried out, hiding her face in her apron:
"The smoke!"
The three afflicted ones saw indeed in the sky a great whirl of
smoke, all black. It was the smoke of the pyre on which was Claes
bound to a stake, and which the executioner had just set fire to in
three places in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the
Holy Ghost. Claes looked about him, and not perceiving Soetkin and
Ulenspiegel in the crowd, he was glad, thinking they would not behold
him suffering.
No other sound was to be heard but the voice of Claes praying, the
wood crackling, men growling, women weeping, Katheline saying:--"Take
away the fire, make a hole: the soul would fain escape."--and the
bells of Notre Dame tolling for the dead.
Suddenly Soetkin became white as snow, shuddered in all her body
without weeping, and pointed with her finger to the sky. A long narrow
flame had just spouted up from the pyre and rose at moments above
the roofs of the low houses. It was cruelly tormenting to Claes, for
according to the whims of the wind it gnawed at his legs, touched his
beard and made it frizzle and smoke, licked at his hair and burned it.
Ulenspiegel held Soetkin in his arms and would have dragged her away
from the window. They heard a piercing cry, it came from Claes whose
body was burning on one side only. But he held his tongue and wept,
and his breast was all wet with his tears.
Then Soetkin and Ulenspiegel heard a great noise of voices. This was
the citizens, women and children, crying out:
"Claes was not condemned to burn by a slow fire, but by a great
one. Executioner, make the pyre burn up!"
The executioner did so, but the fire did not catch quickly enough.
"Strangle him," they cried.
And they cast stones at the provost.
"The flame! The great flame!" cried Soetkin.
In very deed, a red flame climbed up the sky in the midst of the smoke.
"He is about to die," said the widow. "Lord God, have pity upon the
soul of the innocent. Where is the king, that I may rip out his heart
with my nails?"
The bells of Notre Dame were tolling for the dead.
Soetkin heard Claes again utter a loud cry, but she saw not his body
writhing from the torment of the flame, nor his face twisting, nor
his head that he turned every way and beat against the wood of the
stake. The people continued to cry out and to hiss; women and boys
threw stones, and all heard Claes saying, from the midst of the flame
and the smoke:
"Soetkin! Thyl!"
And his head fell forward on his breast like a head of lead.
And a lamentable shrill and piercing cry was heard coming from out of
Katheline's cottage. Then none heard aught else, save the poor witless
woman nodding her head and saying: "The soul would fain escape!"
Claes was dead. The pyre having burned out sank down at the foot of
the stake. And the poor body, all blackened, stayed on it hanging by
the neck.
And the bells of Notre Dame tolled for the dead.
LXXV
Soetkin was in Katheline's standing against the wall, her head hanging
low and her hands joined together. She was holding Ulenspiegel in
her embrace, neither speaking nor weeping.
Ulenspiegel also remained silent; he was terrified to feel the fire
of fever with which his mother's body burned.
The neighbours, being back from the place of execution, said that
Claes had ended his sufferings.
"He is in glory," said the widow.
"Pray," said Nele to Ulenspiegel: and she gave him her rosary; but
he would by no means make use of it, because, said he, the beads had
been blessed by the Pope.
Night having fallen, Ulenspiegel said to the widow: "Mother, we must
put you in bed: I shall watch beside you."
But Soetkin: "I have no need," said she, "that you should watch;
sleep is good for young men."
Nele made ready a bed for each in the kitchen, then she went away.
They stayed together as long as the remains of a fire of roots burned
in the chimney place.
Soetkin went to bed, Ulenspiegel likewise, and heard her weeping
beneath the coverlets.
Outside, in the silence of night, the wind made the trees by the
canal complain with a sound as of the sea, and, harbinger of autumn,
flung dust in whirlwinds against the cottage windows.
Ulenspiegel saw as it might be a man coming and going; he heard as
it might be a sound of feet in the kitchen. Looking, he saw no man;
hearkening, he heard nothing now but the wind soughing in the chimney
and Soetkin weeping under her bedclothes.
Then he heard steps again, and behind him, at his head, a sigh.... "Who
is there?" he said.
None answered, but three knocks were given on the table. Ulenspiegel
grew afraid, and trembling: "Who is there?" he said again. He received
no answer but three knocks on the table and he felt two arms clasp
and strain him, and a body lean upon his face, a body whose skin
was wrinkled and that had a great hole in its breast and a smell
of burning:
"Father," said Ulenspiegel, "is it thy poor body that weighs thus
upon me?"
He got no answer, and although the shade was beside him, he heard a cry
without: "Thyl! Thyl!" Suddenly Soetkin rose and came to Ulenspiegel's
bed, "Dost thou hear naught?" said she.
"Aye," said he, "the father calling on me."
"I," said Soetkin, "I felt a cold body beside me in my bed; and the
mattresses moved, and the curtains were shaken and I heard a voice
saying: Soetkin; a voice low as a breath, and a step light as the sound
of a gnat's wings." Then speaking to Claes's spirit:--"Husband," she
said, "if thou desirest aught in heaven where God keeps thee in his
glory, thou must tell us what it is, that we may carry out thy will."
Suddenly a blast blew the door open impetuously, filling the chamber
with dust, and Ulenspiegel and Soetkin heard the far-off croakings
of ravens.
They went out together and came to the pyre.
The night was black, save when the clouds, driven away by the sharp
north wind and galloping like stags across the sky, left the face of
the moon clear and shining.
A constable of the commune was patrolling, keeping guard on the
pyre. Ulenspiegel and Soetkin heard the sound of his steps upon
the hard ground and the voice of a raven, doubtless calling others,
for from afar croakings answered him.
Ulenspiegel and Soetkin having drawn near to the dead fire, the raven
alit upon Claes's shoulder; they heard the blows of his beak upon
the body, and soon other ravens arrived.
Ulenspiegel would have leaped upon the pyre and struck at the ravens:
the constable said to him:
"Wizard, seekest thou hands of glory? Know that the hands of men
burned do not render invisible, but only the hands of men hanged as
thou shalt be one day."
"Messire Constable," answered Ulenspiegel, "I am no wizard, but the
orphaned son of him who is there fastened, and this woman is his
widow. We were but minded to kiss him once again and to have a little
of his ashes in memory of him. Give us leave for this, messire, who
art no trooper from a foreign country, but a very son of this land."
"Be it as thou wouldst," replied the constable.
The orphan and the widow, going over the burnt wood, came to the body;
both kissed with tears the face of Claes.
Ulenspiegel took from the place of the heart, where the flames had
made a great hole, a little of the dead man's ashes. Then kneeling,
Soetkin and he prayed. When the dawn appeared pallid in the heavens,
they were both there still; but the constable drove them away for
fear of being punished because of his good-will.
Returning, Soetkin took a piece of red silk and a piece of black silk;
with these she made a sachet, and then put the ashes in it, and to
the sachet sewed two ribbands, so that Ulenspiegel could always wear
it on his neck. When she was putting the sachet in its place on him,
she said to him:
"Let these ashes, that are the heart of my man, this red that is
his blood, this black that is our mourning, be ever on thy breast,
like the fire of vengeance upon the murderers."
"I would have it even so," said Ulenspiegel.
And the widow embraced the orphan, and the sun arose.
LXXVI
On the morrow came the constables and criers of the commune to Claes's
house to set all its plenishing in the street and proceed to the
sale by law appointed. Soetkin from Katheline's saw them bring down
the brass and iron cradle which from father to son had always been
in the house of Claes where the poor dead man had been born, where
Ulenspiegel also had been born. Then they brought down the bed where
Soetkin had conceived her son and where she had spent such good nights
on her husband's shoulder. Then came, too, the cupboard where she put
away her bread, the press in which, in good times, meats were kept,
pans, kettles, and cooking pots no longer shining and scoured as in
the good days of happiness, but sullied with the dust of neglect. And
they recalled to her the family feasts when the neighbours used to
come drawn to the good savours.
Then came, too, a cask and a little cask of simpel and dobbel-cuyt,
and, in a basket, flasks of wine, of which there were at least thirty;
and all was set down upon the street, down to the last nail the poor
widow heard them dragging noisily out of the walls.
Sitting, she looked on without uttering cry or complaint, and all
heartbroken, beholding these humble riches carried off. The crier
having lighted a candle, the things were sold by auction. The candle
was near its end when the dean of the fishmongers had bought all for
a miserable price to sell again; and he seemed to be as pleased as
a weasel sucking the brain of a hen.
Ulenspiegel said in his heart: "Thou shalt not laugh long, murderer."
The sale ended, meanwhile, and the constables who were searching
everywhere did not find the carolus. The fishmonger exclaimed:
"Ye search ill: I know that Claes had seven hundred six months ago."
Ulenspiegel said in his heart: "Thou shalt not be the heir to them,
murderer."
Suddenly Soetkin turning towards him:
"The informer!" said she, showing him the fishmonger.
"I know that," said he.
"Would you suffer him," said she, "to inherit from the father's blood?"
"Rather would I endure a whole day on the torture bench," replied
Ulenspiegel.
Quoth Soetkin:
"I, too, but do not give me away for pity, whatever torment you may
see me enduring."
"Alas! you are a woman," said Ulenspiegel.
"Poor lad," said she, "I brought you into the world, and know how to
suffer. But you, if I saw you...." Then growing pale: "I will pray
Madame the Virgin, who saw her son upon the cross."
And she wept, caressing Ulenspiegel.
And thus was made between them a pact of hate and force.
LXXVII
The fishmonger need pay only one half of the price of his purchase,
the other half serving to pay him the reward of his informing, until
they should have recovered the seven hundred carolus that had impelled
him to his villainy.
Soetkin spent the nights in weeping and the day in the tasks of
housekeeping. Often Ulenspiegel heard her talking all alone and saying:
"If he inherits, I shall kill myself."
Knowing that she would indeed do as she said, Nele and he did all
they could to get Soetkin to retire to Walcheren, where she had
kinsfolk. Soetkin would by no means do this, saying she had no need
to run away from the worms that would soon eat her widowed bones.
In the meanwhile, the fishmonger had gone afresh to the bailiff and
had told him that the defunct had inherited seven hundred carolus but
a few months before, that he was a niggardly man and living on little,
and therefore had not spent all that large amount, which was doubtless
hidden away in some corner.
The bailiff asked him what harm had Ulenspiegel and Soetkin done
him that having robbed one of a father and the other of her husband,
he still racked his wits to harass them cruelly.
The fishmonger replied that being a leading burgess of Damme, he
desired to have the laws of the empire respected and thus to deserve
His Majesty's clemency.
Having said so much, he deposited in the bailiff's hands a written
charge, and brought forward witnesses who, speaking in all truth and
sincerity, must certify reluctantly that the fishmonger was no liar.
The members of the Chamber of Aldermen, having heard the testimony
of the witnesses, declared the indications of guilt sufficient to
warrant the application of torture. They sent, therefore, to have
the house thoroughly searched once again by sergeants who had full
powers to fetch the mother and the son to the town gaol, where they
were detained until the executioner should come from Bruges, whither
they sent to summon him immediately.
When Ulenspiegel and Soetkin passed along the street, their hands tied
behind them, the fishmonger was posted on the threshold of his house,
to look at them.
And the citizens of Damme, men and women, were on the thresholds of
their houses also. Mathyssen, a near neighbour of the fishmonger,
heard Ulenspiegel say to the informer:
"God will curse thee, tormentor of widows!"
And Soetkin saying to him:
"Thou wilt come to an ill end, persecutor of orphans!"
The folk of Damme having thus learned that it was upon a second
denunciation by Grypstuiver that the widow and the orphan were thus
being haled off to prison, hooted the fishmonger, and that night
flung stones through his windows. And his door was covered with filth.
And he no longer dared to leave his own house.
LXXVIII
Towards ten o'clock in the forenoon Ulenspiegel and Soetkin were
brought into the torture chamber.
There were the bailiff, the clerk and the sheriffs, the executioner
from Bruges, his assistant and a barber surgeon.
The bailiff asked Soetkin if she was not holding back goods that
belonged to the Emperor. She replied that having nothing, she could
hold back nothing.
"And thou?" asked the bailiff, speaking to Ulenspiegel.
"Seven months since," said he, "we inherited seven hundred carolus;
some of these we ate. As for the others, I cannot tell where they are;
I think indeed that the traveller on foot that stayed in our house, for
our undoing, took the rest away, for I have seen nothing since then."
The bailiff asked again if both persisted in declaring themselves
innocent.
They answered that they were holding back nothing that belonged to
the Emperor.
The bailiff then said gravely and sadly:
"The charges against you being serious and the accusation well
sustained, you must needs, if you do not confess, undergo the
question."
"Spare the widow," said Ulenspiegel. "The fishmonger has bought
up everything."
"Poor lad," said Soetkin, "men cannot endure pain as women can."
Seeing Ulenspiegel pale as the dead because of her, she said again:
"I have hate and force."
"Spare the widow," said Ulenspiegel.
"Take me in his stead," said Soetkin.
The bailiff asked the executioner if he had in readiness the implements
and all things needful to discover the truth.
The executioner replied:
"They are all here."
The judges, having consulted, decided that, in order to come at the
truth, they should begin with the woman.
"For," said one of the sheriffs, "there is no son so cruel or hard
hearted as to see his mother suffer without making confession of the
crime and so to deliver her; the same will do any mother, were she
a tigress at heart, for her offspring."
Speaking to the executioner, the bailiff said:
"Make the woman sit in the chair and put the baguettes on her hands
and her feet."
The executioner obeyed.
"Oh, do not do that, Messieurs Judges!" cried Ulenspiegel. "Bind me
in her place, break my fingers and my toes, but spare the widow."
"The fishmonger," said Soetkin. "I have hate and force."
Ulenspiegel seemed livid pale, trembling, beside himself, and held
his peace.
The baguettes were little rods of boxwood, placed between each finger
and toe, touching the bone, and joined together with strings by an
instrument so craftily designed that the executioner could, at the
behest of the judge, squeeze all the fingers together, strip the
bones of their flesh, grind them terribly, or give the victim only
a slight pain.
He put the baguettes on Soetkin's hands and feet.
"Tighten," said the bailiff.
He did so cruelly.
Then the bailiff, addressing himself to Soetkin:
"Discover to me," said he, "the place where the carolus are hidden."
"I do not know it," she replied, groaning.
"Harder," said he.
Ulenspiegel twisted his arms that were bound behind his back to be
rid of the rope and so come to Soetkin's aid.
"Do not tighten them, messieurs judges," said he, "do not tighten them,
these be but woman's bones, thin and brittle. A bird could break them
with its beak. Do not tighten them, sirs--master executioner, I do
not speak to you, for you must needs be obedient to these gentlemen's
orders. O do not bid him tighten them; have pity!"
"The fishmonger," said Soetkin.
And Ulenspiegel held his peace.
However, seeing that the executioner was locking the baguettes tighter
still, he cried out again:
"Pity, sirs!" he said. "Ye are breaking the widow's fingers that she
needeth to work withal. Alas! her feet! Will she never walk again
now? Pity, sirs!"
"Thou shalt come to an ill end, fishmonger," cried Soetkin.
And the bones crackled and the blood from her feet fell in little
drops.
Ulenspiegel looked at all this, and trembling with anguish and with
rage, he said:
"A woman's bones, do not break them, sirs!"
"The fishmonger," groaned Soetkin.
And her voice was low and stifled like the voice of a ghost.
Ulenspiegel trembled and cried out:
"Master judges, her hands are bleeding and her feet, too. The widow's
bones are broken, broken!"
The barber surgeon touched them with his finger, and Soetkin uttered
a loud scream.
"Confess for her," said the bailiff to Ulenspiegel.
But Soetkin looked at him with eyes like the eyes of the dead, wide
open and staring. And he knew he could not speak, and he wept and
said nothing.
But the bailiff said next:
"Since this woman is gifted with a man's fortitude, we must try her
courage before the torments of her son."
Soetkin heard nothing, for she had lost her senses by reason of the
great agony she had suffered.
They brought her back to consciousness with much vinegar. Then
Ulenspiegel was stripped naked before the widow's eyes. The executioner
shaved his head and his whole body, so as to spy that he had no wicked
spell on him. Then he perceived on his back the little black mark
he carried from his birth. He thrust a long needle into it several
times; but as the blood came, he decided that there was no sorcery
in the mark. At the bailiff's order, the hands of Ulenspiegel were
tied with two cords running over a pulley fixed to the roof so that
the executioner at the judges' pleasure could hoist him up and let
him drop with a brutal jerk; which he did nine times, having first
hung a weight of twenty-five pounds on each foot.
At the ninth time, the skin of his wrists and ankles tore, and the
bones of his legs began to come out of their sockets.
"Confess," said the bailiff.
"No," replied Ulenspiegel.
Soetkin looked at her son and could find no strength either to cry out
or to speak; only she stretched forth her arms, fluttering her bleeding
hands and showing thus that they must make an end of this torment.
The executioner ran Ulenspiegel up and down yet again. And the skin
of his wrists and ankles was torn still more; and the bones of his
legs came out of their sockets further still; but he uttered no cry.
Soetkin wept and fluttered her bleeding hands.
"Confess the concealment," said the bailiff, "and you shall have
pardon for it."
"The fishmonger hath need of pardon," answered Ulenspiegel.
"Wilt thou mock thy judges?" said one of the sheriffs.
"Mock? Alas!" replied Ulenspiegel, "I but feign to mock, believe me."
Soetkin then saw the executioner, who, at the bailiff's order, was
blowing up a brazier of red coals, and an assistant who was lighting
two candles. She would fain have risen up on her murdered feet,
but fell back to a sitting posture, and exclaiming:
"Take away that fire!" she cried. "Ah! master judges, spare his poor
youth. Take away the fire!"
"The fishmonger!" cried Ulenspiegel, seeing her weakening.
"Raise Ulenspiegel a foot above the ground," said the bailiff;
"set the brazier underneath his feet and a candle under either armpit."
The executioner obeyed. What hair was left in his armpits crackled
and smoked in the flame.
Ulenspiegel cried out, and Soetkin, weeping, said:
"Take the fire away!"
The bailiff said:
"Confess the concealment and thou shalt be set at liberty. Confess
for him, woman."
And Ulenspiegel said: "Who will throw the fishmonger into the fire
that burneth for ever?"
Soetkin made sign with her head that she had nothing to
say. Ulenspiegel ground and gnashed his teeth, and Soetkin looked at
him with haggard eyes and all in tears.
Nevertheless, when the executioner, having blown out the candles,
set the burning brazier under Ulenspiegel's feet, she cried:
"Master judges, have pity upon him: he knows not what he saith."
"Why doth he not know what he saith?" asked the bailiff, craftily.
"Do not question her, master judges; ye see full well that she is
out of her wits with torment. The fishmonger lied," said Ulenspiegel.
"Wilt thou say the same as he, woman?" asked the bailiff.
Soetkin made sign with her head to say yes.
"Burn the fishmonger!" cried Ulenspiegel.
Soetkin held her peace, raising her clenched fist into the air as
though to curse.
Yet seeing the brazier burn up more fiercely under her son's feet,
she cried:
"O Lord God! Madame Mary that art in heaven, put an end to this
torment! Have pity! Take the brazier away!"
"The fishmonger!" groaned Ulenspiegel again.
And he vomited blood in great gushes through nose and mouth, and
letting his head fall, hung suspended above the coals.
Then Soetkin cried:
"He is dead, my poor orphan! They have killed him! Ah! him, too. Take
away this brazier, master judges! Let me take him into my arms
to die also, I, too, to die with him. Ye know I cannot flee on my
broken feet."
"Give the widow her son," said the bailiff.
Then the judges deliberated together.
The executioner unbound Ulenspiegel, and laid him all naked and
covered with blood upon Soetkin's knees, while the barber surgeon
put back his bones in their sockets.
All the while Soetkin embraced Ulenspiegel, and said, weeping:
"Son, poor martyr! If the judges will, I shall heal thee, I; but
awaken, Thyl, my son! Master judges, if ye have killed him on me,
I shall go to His Majesty; for ye have done contrary to all laws
and justice, and ye shall see what one poor woman can do against
wicked men. But, sirs, leave us free together. We have nothing but
our two selves in the world, poor wretches on whom the hand of God
has been heavy."
Having deliberated, the judges gave out the following sentence:
"Inasmuch as you, Soetkin, lawful widow of Claes, and you, Thyl, son
of Claes, and called Ulenspiegel, having been accused of fraudulently
withholding the goods that by confiscation were the property of His
Majesty the King, maugre all privileges contrary to this, despite
severe torture and adequate ordeal, have confessed to nothing:
"The court, considering the absence of sufficient proofs, and in
you, woman, the piteous condition of your members, and in you, man,
the harsh torment you have undergone, declares you both at liberty,
and accords you permission to take up your abode in the house of him
or her who may please to give you lodging, in spite of your poverty.
"Thus decreed at Damme, the three and twentieth day of October in
the year of Our Lord 1558."
"Thanks be to you, master judges," said Soetkin.
"The fishmonger!" groaned Ulenspiegel.
And mother and son were taken to the house of Katheline in a cart.
LXXIX
In this year, which was the fifty-eighth of the century, Katheline
went into Soetkin's house, and said:
"Last night, having anointed myself with a balsam, I was carried
to the tower of Notre Dame, and I beheld the spirits of the element
passing on to the angels the prayers of men who flying towards the
farthest heavens, bore them to the throne. And the sky was all over
sprinkled with radiant stars. Suddenly there rose up from a fire pile
a shape that seemed all black and climbed up to set himself beside
me on the tower. I recognized Claes as he was in life, clad in his
coalman's attire. 'What dost thou,' said he, 'on the tower of Notre
Dame?' 'But thyself,' I replied, 'whither goest thou, flying through
the air like a bird?' 'I go,' he said, 'to the judgment, dost thou not
hear the angel's trump?' I was quite close to him, and felt that his
spiritual body was not solid like the bodies of living men; but so
tenuous that moving forward against him, I entered into it as into
a hot vapour. At my feet, in all the land of Flanders, there shone
a few lights, and I said to myself: 'Those who rise early and work
late are the blessed of God.'
"And all the while I heard the angel's trumpet sounding through the
night. And I saw then another shade that mounted, coming out of Spain;
this one was old and decrepit, had a chin like a slipper and preserve
of quince on its lips. It wore on its back a cloak of crimson velvet
lined with ermine, on its head a crown imperial, in one hand an
anchovy which it was munching, in the other a tankard full of beer.
"It came, doubtless for weariness, and sate down on the tower of Notre
Dame. Kneeling down, I said to it: 'Crowned Majesty, I revere you,
but I know you not. Whence come you and what do you in the world?' 'I
come,' it said, 'from Saint Just in Estramadura, and I was the Emperor
Charles the Fifth.' 'But,' said I, 'whither go you as now on this
cold night, through these clouds laden with hail?' 'I go,' it said,
'to the judgment.' Just as the Emperor was fain to finish his anchovy
and to drink his beer from his tankard, the angel's trumpet sounded,
and he flew up into the air growling and grumbling at being thus
interrupted in his meal. I followed His Sacred Majesty. He went through
space, hiccoughing with fatigue, wheezing with asthma, and sometimes
vomiting, for death had come on him during a spell of indigestion. We
mounted continually, like arrows sped from a bow of cornelwood. The
stars glided beside us, tracing lines of fire in the sky; we saw
them break loose and fall. And still the trumpet of the angel kept
a-sounding. What a mighty and sonorous blare! At every flourish,
as it beat against the mists of the air, they opened up as though
some hurricane blast had blown upon them from near at hand. And so
was our path marked out for us. Having been borne away for a thousand
leagues and more, we beheld Christ in his glory, seated on a throne of
stars, and on his right hand was the angel that inscribes the deeds
of men upon a brazen register, and on his left hand Mary his mother,
entreating him without ceasing for sinners.
"Claes and the Emperor Charles knelt down before the throne.
"The angel cast the crown from off Charles's head: 'There is but one
emperor here,' said he, 'that is Christ.'
"His Sacred Majesty seemed angry; nevertheless, speaking humbly:
'Might I not,' said he, 'keep this anchovy and this tankard of beer,
for this long journey made me hungry.'
"'As thou wast all thy life long,' rejoined the angel; 'but eat and
drink none the less.'
"The Emperor drained the tankard of beer and munched at the anchovy.
"Then Christ spake and said:
"'Dost thou offer a cleansed soul for judgment?'
"'I hope as much, my sweet Lord, for I confessed myself,' replied
the Emperor Charles.
"'And thou, Claes?' said Christ, 'thou dost not tremble as doth
this emperor.'
"'My Lord Jesus,' answered Claes, 'there is no soul that is clean;
I am not, therefore, afraid of Thee who art the supreme good and the
supreme justice, but withal I fear for my sins that were many.'
"'Speak, carrion,' said the angel, addressing the Emperor.
"'I, Lord,' replied Charles in an embarrassed voice, 'being anointed
by the finger of Thy priests, I was consecrated King of Castile,
Emperor of Germany, and King of the Romans. I had ever at heart the
preservation of the power that cometh from Thee, and to that end
I wrought by the rope, by the steel, by the pit, and by the fire
against all them of the reform."
"But the angel:
"'Belly-aching liar,' said he, 'thou wouldst fain deceive us. Thou
didst tolerate the reformers in Germany, because thou wast afeard of
them, and had them beheaded, burned, hanged, and buried alive in the
Low Countries, where thou hadst no fear save not to inherit enough from
these toiling bees so rich in plenteous honey. A hundred thousand souls
perished by thy doing, not because thou didst love Christ, monseigneur,
but because thou wast a despot, tyrant, devourer of countries, loving
but thyself, and after thyself, meats, fishes, wines, and beers,
for thou wast as great a glutton as any dog, and thirsty as a sponge.'
"'And thou, Claes, speak,' said Christ.
"But the angel, standing up:
"'This one hath naught to say. He was good, hard-working like the
poor Flanders folk, willing to toil and willing to laugh, keeping the
faith he owed his princes and believing that his princes would keep
the faith they owed to him. He had money, he was accused, and as he
had harboured one of the reformed, he was burned alive.'
"'Ah,' said Mary, 'poor martyr, but there are in heaven cool springs,
fountains of milk, and choice wine that will refresh thee, and I will
myself lead thee to them, coalman!'
"The trumpet of the angel sounded again, and I saw arising from
the depths of the abyss a man naked and beautiful, with a crown
of iron. And on the round of the crown were inscribed these words:
'Dark until the day of doom!'
"He drew near to the throne and said to Christ:
"'I am thy slave until I am thy master.'
"'Satan,' said Mary, 'a day shall come when there will be no more
slaves or masters, and when Christ who is love, Satan who is pride,
will signify: Might and Knowledge.'
"'Woman,' said Satan, 'thou art fair and kind.'
"Then speaking to Christ, and pointing to the Emperor:
"'What is to be done with this one?' said he.
"Christ replied:
"'Thou shalt put the crowned worm in a chamber where thou shalt
collect all the implements of torment used during his reign. Each
time a wretched, innocent man endureth the torment of the water, which
bloweth men up like bladders; of the candles, that burneth the soles
of the feet and the armpits; the strappado, which breaketh the limbs;
the riving asunder by four galleys; every time a free soul gives up
its last breath on the fire, he must undergo all these deaths in turn,
all these tortures, that he may learn what evil may be wrought by an
unjust man that hath at command millions of his fellow men: let him
rot in gaols, die upon scaffolds, groan in exile far from his own
country; let him be dishonoured, shamefully entreated, scourged;
let him be rich and harried by the treasury; let informers bring
accusations against him, and confiscations ruin him. Thou shalt
make of him an ass, that he may be meek, ill treated, and ill fed;
a poor man, that he may ask for alms and be greeted with insults;
a worker that he may toil too much and eat too little; then when he
shall have suffered sorely in his man's body and soul, thou shalt turn
him into a dog, that he may be friendly, and be beaten; a slave in
the Indies, that he may be sold by auction; a soldier, that he may
fight for another man and be slain without knowing wherefore. And
when, at the end of three hundred years, he will thus have gone
through every form of suffering, every distress, thou shalt make a
free man of him, and if in this condition he is good as was Claes,
thou shalt give his body eternal repose, in a spot shaded at noon,
visited by the sun in the morning, under a goodly tree, and covered
by a cool verdant sward. And his friends will come to shed their tears
of grief upon his tomb, and sow violets, the blossoms of remembrance.'
"'Pardon, my son,' said Mary, 'he knew not what he did, for power
hardeneth the heart.'
"'There is no pardon,' said Christ.
"'Ah!' said His Sacred Majesty, 'if only I had a glass of Andalusian
wine!'
"'Come,' said Satan, 'past is the time of wine, of meats and fowls.'
"And he bore away to the uttermost deeps of hell the soul of the poor
emperor, still munching his fragment of anchovy.
"Satan for pity left it to him. Then I saw Madame the Virgin leading
Claes to the highest height of heaven, there where was naught but
stars hanging like clusters of grapes to the vaulted roof. And there
angels laved him and he became handsome and young. Then they gave
him rystpap to eat, in silver spoons. And heaven closed again."
"He is in glory," said the widow.
"The ashes beat against my heart," said Ulenspiegel.
LXXX
During the next three and twenty days Katheline grew white, and thin,
drying up as though she were devoured by a fire within more consuming
than the fire of madness.
She said no longer: "The fire! Make a hole: the soul would fain
escape," but ever in ecstasy and delight she would say to Nele:
"Spouse am I: spouse thou art to be. Handsome; long hair; hot love;
knees cold and cold arms!"
And Soetkin looked on her grieving, for she thought this some new
madness.
Katheline continued:
"Thrice three make nine, the sacred number. He that in the night hath
eyes shining as a cat's alone seeth the mystery."
One night Soetkin, hearing her, made a movement of doubting.
But Katheline:
"Four and three," said she, "misfortune under Saturn; under Venus,
the marriage number. Cold arms! Cold knees! Heart of fire!"
Soetkin made answer:
"It is not well to speak of wicked heathen idols."
Hearing which Katheline made the sign of the cross and said:
"Blessed be the gray horseman. Nele must have a husband, a handsome
husband carrying a sword, a black husband with a shining face."
"Aye," said Ulenspiegel, "a fricassee of husbands for which I shall
make the sauce with my knife."
Nele looked at her friend with eyes all moist for the pleasure of
seeing him so jealous.
"I want no husband," said she.
Katheline replied:
"When he that is clad in gray shall come, ever booted and spurred in
another fashion."
Soetkin said:
"Pray to God for the poor madwife."
"Ulenspiegel," said Katheline, "go fetch us four quarts of dobbel-cuyt
whilst I go to prepare the heete-koeken"; which are pancakes in the
land of France.
Soetkin asked why she made feast on Saturday like the Jews.
Katheline answered:
"Because the dough is ready."
Ulenspiegel was standing holding in his hand the great pewter pot,
which held the exact measure.
"Mother, what must I do?"
"Go," said Katheline.
Soetkin would not answer, not being mistress in the house: she said
to Ulenspiegel, "Go, my son."
Ulenspiegel ran up to the Scaeck, whence he brought back the four
quarts of dobbel-cuyt.
Soon the perfume of the heete-koeken spread throughout the kitchen,
and all were hungry, even the sorrow-stricken widow.
Ulenspiegel ate heartily. Katheline had given him a great tankard
saying that being the only male, and head in the house, he must drink
more than the others and sing afterwards.
Saying this, she had a crafty look; but Ulenspiegel drank and did
not sing. Nele wept, looking at Soetkin all pale and huddled down;
only Katheline was gay.
After the meal Soetkin and Ulenspiegel went up to the garret to go
to bed; Katheline and Nele remained in the kitchen where the beds
were prepared.
Towards two in the morning, Ulenspiegel had long been asleep by
reason of the heavy drink; Soetkin, with eyes open even as she had
every night, was praying to Madame the Virgin to send her sleep,
but Madame did not give ear.
Suddenly she heard the cry of a sea eagle and from the kitchen a like
cry in answer; then from afar in the country, other cries resounded,
and always she deemed that there was an answer from the kitchen.
Thinking that these were night birds, she paid no heed to them. She
heard the neighing of horses and the clatter of iron-shod hoofs
striking on the causeway; she opened the window of the garret and saw
indeed two horses, saddled, pawing the ground, and browsing on the
grass of the roadside. Then she heard the voice of a woman crying out,
a man's voice threatening, blows struck, fresh cries, the banging of
a door, and an agonized foot climbing the steps of the stair.
Ulenspiegel snored and heard nothing at all; the garret door opened;
Nele came in all but naked, out of breath, panting, weeping, and
sobbing, against the door she thrust a table, chairs, an old stove,
all she could find in the shape of furniture. The last stars were
nearly extinguished, the cocks were beginning to crow.
Ulenspiegel, at the noise that Nele had made, had turned in his bed,
but still continued to sleep.
Nele then, flinging herself on Soetkin's neck: "Soetkin," she said,
"I am afraid, light the candle."
Soetkin did so; and Nele still groaned the while.
The candle being lit, Soetkin looked at Nele and saw the girl's
chemise torn at the shoulder and on her forehead, her cheek, and her
neck bloody scratches such as might be made by fingernails.
"Nele," said Soetkin, embracing her, "whence come you wounded in
this fashion?"
The girl, still trembling and moaning, said: "Do not have us burned,
Soetkin."
In the meantime, Ulenspiegel awaked and was blinking in the
candlelight. Soetkin said: "Who is below there?"
Nele replied:
"Hold thy peace, it is the husband she wants to give me."
Soetkin and Nele all at once heard Katheline cry out, and their limbs
gave way under both of them.
"He is beating her, he is beating her on my account," said Nele.
"Who is in the house?" cried Ulenspiegel, leaping out of his bed. Then
rubbing his eyes, he went searching about the chamber until he had
got his hands on a weighty poker lying in a corner.
"No one," said Nele, "nobody at all; do not go down, Ulenspiegel!"
But he, paying no heed to anything, ran to the door, flinging aside
chairs, tables, and stove. Katheline ceased not to cry out below;
Nele and Soetkin clung to Ulenspiegel on the landing, one with her
arms about his body, the other holding by his legs, saying: "Do not
go down, Ulenspiegel, they are devils."
"Aye," he replied, "devil-husband of Nele, I will join him in wedlock
with my poker. Betrothal of iron and flesh! Let me go down."
But still they would not let go, for they were strong by reason of
their holding on the balusters. He dragged them down the steps of
the staircase, and they were afraid at thus drawing nearer to the
devils. But they could do nothing against him. Descending by leaps and
bounds like a great snowball from the top of a mountain, he went into
the kitchen, saw Katheline worn out and wan in the light of the dawn,
and heard her saying: "Hanske, why dost thou leave me alone? It is
not my fault if Nele is bad."
Ulenspiegel, without staying to listen to her, opened the stable
door. Finding no one within, he dashed out into the garden and from
thence into the highway; far off he saw two horses galloping and
losing themselves in the mist. He ran to catch them up, but could not,
for they went like the storm winds sweeping up the withered leaves.
Vexed and wild with anger and despair, he came back again, saying
between his teeth: "They have violated her! they have violated
her!" And with an ill flame burning in his eyes he looked on Nele,
who, all shuddering, standing before the widow and Katheline, said:
"No Thyl, no, my beloved, no!"
Saying so, she looked into his eyes so seriously and so candidly
that Ulenspiegel well perceived that she spoke the truth. Then
questioning her:
"Whence came these cries?" said he; "where were those men going? Why
is thy chemise torn at the shoulder and the back? Why hast thou on
thy cheek and forehead the marks of fingernails?"
"Listen," said she, "but do not have us burned, Ulenspiegel. Katheline,
may God preserve her from hell! has now for three and twenty days a
devil for lover, clad in black, booted and spurred. His face shines
with the fire seen in summertime upon the waves of the sea when it
is hot."
"Why art thou gone, Hanske, my darling?" said Katheline. "Nele is bad."
But Nele, going on with her tale, said: "He cries like a sea eagle
to announce his presence. My mother sees him in the kitchen every
Saturday. She says that his kisses are cold and his body like snow. He
beats her when she does not do all that he would have her do. He once
brought her some florins, but he took all the others from her."
During this tale, Soetkin, clasping her hands, prayed for
Katheline. Katheline said, rejoicing:
"Mine is my body no longer, mine no longer is my spirit, but
his. Hanske, my darling, bring me to the sabbath again. There is only
Nele that never hath mind to come; Nele is bad."
"At daybreak he was wont to depart," continued the girl; "and on the
morrow my mother would tell me a hundred marvels.... But there is no
need to look on me with such cruel eyes, Ulenspiegel. Yesterday she
told me that a fine seigneur, clothed in gray and called Hilbert,
desired to have me in marriage and would come here to show himself
to me. I answered that I had no mind for any husband, neither ugly
nor handsome. By her maternal authority she forced me to remain up
to wait their coming; for she loses none of her wits when it is a
matter of her amours. We were half undressed, ready to go to bed;
I was sleeping upon yonder chair. When they came within I did not
wake. Suddenly I felt someone embracing me and kissing me on the
neck. And by the light of the shining moon I beheld a face as bright
as the crests of the waves of the sea in July, when it is like to
thunder, and I heard one saying to me in a whispering voice: 'I am
Hilbert, thy husband; be mine and I shall make thee rich.' The face of
him that spake had a smell as of fish. I repulsed him; he would have
taken me by force, but I had the strength of ten men like him. Even
so he tore my chemise, wounded my face, and went on saying, 'Be mine,
I shall make thee rich.' 'Aye,' I said, 'like my mother, from whom
thou wilt take her last liard.' Then he redoubled his violence, but
could avail naught against me. Then as he was uglier than a corpse,
I gave him my nails in his eyes so hard that he screamed for the pain
and I could break loose and come hither to Soetkin."
Katheline kept repeating:
"Nele is bad. Why hast thou gone so quickly, Hanske, my darling?"
"Where wast thou, ill mother," said Soetkin, "while they would have
taken away thy child's honour?"
"Nele is bad," said Katheline. "I was with my black lord, when the
gray devil came to us, his face all bloody, and said: 'Come away, lad:
the house is a bad house; the men in it would beat us to the death,
and the women have knives at their fingertips.' Then they ran to
their horses and disappeared in the mist. Nele is bad!"
LXXXI
On the morrow, while they were drinking hot milk, Soetkin said to
Katheline:
"Thou seest that sorrow is driving me already out of this world,
wouldst thou drive me to flee from it through thy damned witchcrafts?"
But Katheline kept saying:
"Nele is bad. Come back, Hanske, my darling."
On the next Wednesday the devils came back together. Since the Saturday
Nele slept at the house of the widow Van den Houte, saying that she
could not stay at Katheline's by reason of the presence of Ulenspiegel,
a young bachelor.
Katheline received her black lord and his friend in the keet,
which is the wash house and the bakery appurtenant to the main
dwelling. And then they held feast and revel with old wines and
smoked ox tongues, that were always there awaiting them. The black
devil said to Katheline:
"We have need," said he, "for an important task that is to be done,
of a heavy sum of money; give us what thou canst."
Katheline, being unwilling to give more than a florin, they threatened
to kill her. But they let her off with two gold carolus and seven
deniers.
"Come no more on the Saturday," she told them. "Ulenspiegel knows
that day and will await you with weapons to kill you, and I should
die after you."
"We shall come next Tuesday," said they.
On that day Ulenspiegel and Nele slept without fear of the devils,
for they believed that they came only on Saturday.
Katheline rose and went into the keet, to see if her friends had come.
She was sorely impatient, because since she had seen Hanske again,
her madness had greatly lessened, for folk said it was love-madness.
Not seeing them, she was brokenhearted; when she heard the sea eagle
cry from the direction of Sluys, in the country, she went towards
the cry. Going in the meadow at the foot of a dyke of faggots and
green sod, she heard from the other side of the dyke the two devils
talking together. One said:
"I shall have the half of it."
The other replied:
"Thou shalt have none of it; what is Katheline's is mine."
Then they cursed and blasphemed like madmen, disputing between them who
should have to himself alone the money and the loves of Katheline and
Nele together. Transfixed with fear, daring neither to speak nor budge,
Katheline presently heard them fighting, then one of them saying:
"This steel is cold." Then a rattling breath and the fall of a
heavy body.
Affrighted, she walked back to her cottage. At two o'clock in the
night she heard again, but now in her garden, the cry of the sea
eagle. She went to open and saw before the door her lover devil
alone. She asked him:
"What hast thou done with the other?"
"He will not come again," he answered.
Then embracing her he caressed her. And he seemed to her colder than
usual. And Katheline's spirit was well awaked. When he went away,
he asked her for twenty florins, all she had: she gave him seventeen.
On the morrow, being curious, she went along by the dyke; but she
saw nothing, save at a spot as big as a man's coffin blood upon the
turf that was less solid under foot. But that night rain washed away
the blood.
The next Wednesday she heard the cry of the sea eagle once more in
her garden.
LXXXII
Each time he needed money to pay their share of expenses at Katheline's
Ulenspiegel went by night to lift the stone from the hole dug beside
the well, and took out a carolus.
One night the three women were spinning; Ulenspiegel was carving with
his knife a box that the bailiff had entrusted to him, and on which
he was skilfully graving a goodly chase, with a pack of Hainaut dogs,
mastiffs from Crete, the which are most savage beasts; Brabant dogs
going in pairs and called ear biters, and other dogs, straight-legged,
crook-legged, short-legged, and greyhounds.
Katheline being present, Nele asked Soetkin if she had hidden her
treasure well. The widow answered without any misgivings that it
could not be better than in the side of the well wall.
Towards the midnight, being Thursday, Soetkin was awakened by Bibulus
Schnouffius, barking very sharply, but not for long. Deeming that it
was some false alarm, she went to sleep again.
Friday morning, early, Soetkin and Ulenspiegel, having risen, did not
see Katheline as usual in the kitchen, nor the fire lit, nor the milk
boiling on the fire. They were dumbfounded and looked to see if she
was not perchance in the garden. They saw her there, though it was
misty rain, dishevelled, in her body linen all soaked and chilled,
but not daring to enter.
Ulenspiegel, going to her, said:
"What dost thou there, half naked, when it rains?"
"Ah," she said, "aye, aye, a great portent!"
And she showed the dog with his throat cut and lying stiff.
Ulenspiegel thought at once of the treasure; he ran to it. The hole
was empty and the earth strewed far about.
Leaping on Katheline and beating her:
"Where are the carolus?" he said.
"Aye, aye, a great portent!" replied Katheline.
Nele, defending her mother, cried out:
"Mercy and pity, Ulenspiegel!"
He ceased to strike. Soetkin then showed herself and asked what was
the matter.
Ulenspiegel showed her the dog killed and the hole empty. Soetkin
went white and said:
"Thou dost smite me cruelly, Lord God. My poor feet!"
And she said that because of the agony she had in them and the torment
borne in vain for the gold carolus. Nele, seeing Soetkin so gentle,
fell in despair and wept; Katheline, waving a piece of parchment, said:
"Aye, a great portent. Last night he came, kindly and goodly. No
longer was there on his face that livid glow that gave me so much
affright. He spoke to me with a great tenderness. I was ravished
with joy, my heart melted within me. He said to me, 'Now I am rich,
and will before long bring thee a thousand florins.' 'Aye,' said I,
'I am more glad for thy sake than for mine, Hanske, my darling.' 'But
hast thou not here,' he asked, 'some other person thou lovest and
whom I might make rich?' 'Nay,' I replied, 'those that be here have
no need of thee.' 'Thou art proud,' said he, 'are then Soetkin and
Ulenspiegel rich?' 'They live with no help from their neighbours,' I
replied. 'In spite of the confiscation?' said he. To which I answered
that you had endured the torture rather than allow your money to be
taken. 'I was not without knowledge of that,' said he. And he began,
laughing quiet and low, to jeer at the bailiff and the sheriffs,
for that they had not been able to make you confess. Then I laughed
equally. 'They had not been so silly,' said he, 'as to hide their
treasure in their house.' I laughed. 'Nor in the cellar, here.' 'No,
no,' said I. 'Nor in the garden?' I made no reply. 'Ah,' said he,
'it would be too much of an imprudence.' 'Not much,' said I, 'for
neither the water nor the wall will speak.' And he continued to laugh.
"Last night he went away sooner than usual, after giving me a powder
with which, said he, I could go to the finest of sabbaths. I brought
him, in my linen, to the garden gate, and I was all overcome with
sleep. I went, as he had said, to the sabbath, and came back only at
daybreak, when I found myself here, and saw the dog dead and the hole
empty. That is a very heavy blow for me, who loved him so tenderly
and gave him my soul. But you shall have all I have, and I shall work
with my feet and my hands to maintain you."
"I am the corn under the millstone: God and a robber devil strike me
at the same time," said Soetkin.
"Robber, do not say so," rejoined Katheline; "he is a devil, a
devil. And for proof, I will show you the parchment he left in the
yard; there is written upon it: 'Never forget to do my service. In
thrice two weeks and five days I shall return thee the twofold of
the treasure. Have no doubt, else thou shalt die.' And he will keep
his word, I am convinced and sure."
"Poor witless one!" said Soetkin.
And that was her last word of reproach.
LXXXIII
The two weeks having thrice passed by and the five days as well,
the lover devil never came back. And still Katheline lived without
despairing of it.
Soetkin, never working now, remained continually in front of the fire,
coughing and bent. Nele gave her the best and most fragrant herbs:
but no remedy had power upon her. Ulenspiegel never left the cottage,
fearing that Soetkin might die while he was abroad.
Then it came that the widow could neither eat nor drink without
vomiting. The barber surgeon came and bled her; the blood being taken
from her, she was so weak that she could not leave her stool. At
length, withered up with sorrow and pain, she said one evening:
"Claes, my husband! Thyl, my son! I thank thee, God who takest
me away!"
And she died on a sigh.
Katheline not daring to watch by her, Ulenspiegel and Nele did it
together, and all night long they prayed for the dead woman.
At dawn there entered by the open window a swallow.
Nele said:
"The bird of souls, 'tis a good omen: Soetkin is in heaven."
The swallow flew round the chamber thrice and went off with a cry.
Then there entered a second swallow, bigger and blacker than the
other. It circled around Ulenspiegel, and he said:
"Father and Mother, the ashes beat against my breast, I shall do what
ye ask."
And the second went away crying shrill like the first. The day showed
brighter; Ulenspiegel saw thousands of swallows skimming the meadows,
and the sun arose.
And Soetkin was buried in the field of the poor.
LXXXIV
After Soetkin's death, Ulenspiegel, dreamy, sorrowful, or angry,
wandered about the kitchen, hearing nothing, taking what food or
drink was given him, without choosing. And he often rose at night.
In vain did Nele with her soft voice exhort him to hope. Vainly
did Katheline tell him that she knew Soetkin was in paradise with
Claes. To all Ulenspiegel replied:
"The ashes are beating."
And he was as a man distraught, and Nele wept to see him in this
plight.
Meanwhile, the fishmonger remained in his house alone like a parricide,
and dared not go forth save by night; for men and women, passing near
him, hooted him and called him murderer, and children fled before him,
for they had been told that he was the executioner. He wandered alone
and solitary, not daring to go into any of the three taverns of Damme;
for he was pointed at in them, and if he merely remained standing
for a minute inside, the drinkers went away.
Hence it came that the baesen wished not to see him again, and if he
presented himself, shut their door to him. Then the fishmonger would
offer a humble remonstrance: they would reply that it was their right
and not their obligation to sell.
Tired of the struggle, the fishmonger used to go to drink in 't Roode
Valck, at the Red Falcon, a little wine shop away from the town on
the edge of the Sluys Canal. There they served him; for they were
grubbing folk to whom any money was welcome. But the baes of the
Roode Valck never spoke a word to him nor did his wife. There were
two children and a dog in the house: when the fishmonger would have
caressed the children, they ran away; and when he called the dog,
the dog tried to bite him.
One evening Ulenspiegel stood on the threshold: Mathyssens the cooper,
seeing him so pensive and dreaming, said to him:
"You should work with your hands and forget this sad blow."
Ulenspiegel answered:
"The ashes of Claes beat against my breast."
"Ah," said Mathyssens, "he leads a sadder life than thou, the wretched
fishmonger. No man speaks to him, and everyone flees from him, so that
he is driven to go among the poor ragamuffins at the Roode Valck to
drink his quart of bruinbier by himself. 'Tis a sore punishment."
"The ashes beat!" said Ulenspiegel again.
That same evening, while the clock on Notre Dame was striking the
ninth hour, Ulenspiegel went towards the Roode Valck, and seeing that
the fishmonger was not there, he went wandering under the trees on
the edge of the canal. The moon was shining bright and clear.
He saw the murderer coming.
As he passed before him, he could see him near at hand, and heard
him say, speaking aloud like those who live alone:
"Where have they hidden these carolus?"
"Where the devil has found them," answered Ulenspiegel striking him
full in the face with his fist.
"Alas!" said the fishmonger, "I know thee who thou art, thou art the
son. Have pity, I am old and weak. What I did, it was not for hate,
but to serve His Majesty. Deign to pardon me. I wilt give thee back the
furniture I purchased, thou wilt not have to pay me one single patard
for it. Is not that enough? I paid seven gold florins for them. Thou
shalt have all and a demi-florin to boot, for I am not rich, it must
not be imagined."
And he would have gone on his knees before him.
Ulenspiegel, seeing him so ugly, so trembling, and so cowardly and
mean, flung him into the canal.
And he went away.
LXXXV
On the doomfires smoked the fat of the victims. Ulenspiegel, thinking
of Claes and Soetkin, wept in solitude.
One night he went to find Katheline and ask her for a remedy and
for vengeance.
She was alone with Nele sewing beside the lamp. At the noise he made
on coming within, Katheline dully lifted up her head like a woman
awakened out of a heavy slumber.
He said to her:
"The ashes of Claes beat upon my breast; I would fain save the land
of Flanders. I asked the Great God of heaven and earth, but He gave
me no answer."
Katheline said:
"The Great God could not hear you: first you must address yourself
to the spirits of the elemental world, which being of double nature,
celestial and terrestrial, receive the complaints of poor humankind,
and transmit them to the angels, which after bear them to the throne."
"Help me," said he, "in my design; I will pay thee with my blood if
need be."
Replied Katheline:
"I will help thee, if a girl that loveth thee would bring thee with
her to the sabbath of the Spirits of the Springtide, which is the
Easter of the Sap."
"I will bring him," said Nele.
Katheline poured into a crystal goblet a grayish coloured mixture
of which she gave them both to drink; with this mixture she rubbed
their temples, their nostrils, palms of the hand and wrists, made them
swallow a pinch of a white powder, and bade them look at the other,
that their two souls might become as but one.
Ulenspiegel looked at Nele, and the kind soft eyes of the girl lit
up a great fire within him; then by reason of the mixture he felt as
it might have been a thousand crabs tearing at him.
Then they took off their clothes, and they were beautiful thus in
the lamplight, he in his proud strength, she in her delicious grace;
but they could not see one another, for already they were as though
in sleep. Then Katheline laid Nele's neck upon Ulenspiegel's arm,
and taking his hand put it upon the maiden's heart.
And they remained thus naked and lying one beside the other.
It seemed to them twain that their bodies touching each other were
of fire soft as the sun in the month of roses.
They rose up, as they told later, mounted upon the window sill,
launched themselves thence into void space, and felt the air bear
them up as the water bears the ships.
Then they perceived nothing any more, neither the earth where poor
men were sleeping, nor the heavens where but now the clouds were
rolling beneath their feet. And they set their feet on Sirius, the
Cold Star. Then from there they were cast upon the pole.
There they saw, not without fear, a naked giant, the Giant Winter,
with tawny hair, seated upon ice mounds and against a wall of ice. In
shallow pools bears and seals were moving hither and thither, a
bellowing flock, all about him. In a hoarse voice, he called up hail
and snow and cold floods and gray clouds and red and foul-smelling
fogs, and the winds, among which the bitter north wind hath the
strongest blast. And all raged together at once in this deadly place.
Smiling upon these horrors, the giant was lying upon a bed of flowers
faded by his hand, upon leaves withered at his breath. Then leaning
over and scratching the earth with his nails, biting it with his teeth,
he delved a hole to seek for the heart of the earth; to devour it,
and also to put black coal in the place where shady forests were,
straw where the corn was, sand in the room of the fertile earth. But
the heart of the earth being of fire, he dared not touch it and
recoiled abashed and afraid.
He was throned like a king, draining his cup of oil, in the midst
of his bears and his seals, and of the skeleton bones of all those
whom he had killed upon the sea, upon land, and in the cottages of
poor folk. He listened with delight to the roaring of the bears,
the bellowing of the seals, and the dry rattling of the bones of the
skeletons of men and beasts under the claws of vultures and ravens
seeking a last rag of flesh on them, and the sound of ice lumps dashed
one against the other by the gloomy water.
And the voice of the giant was like the roar of hurricanes, the
clamour of wintry storms, and the wind howling in chimneys.
"I am acold and am afeard," said Ulenspiegel.
"He hath no power against spirits," answered Nele.
Suddenly there was a great stir among the seals, which dashed in haste
into the water, the bears, which laying their ears flat with fright,
roared lamentably, and the ravens, which lost themselves in the clouds
with agonized croakings.
And lo, Nele and Ulenspiegel heard the dull thudding blows of a ram
upon the wall of ice that served as a support to the Giant Winter. And
the wall split and cracked and shook to and fro on its foundations.
But the Giant Winter heard nothing, and he went on howling and shouting
in glee, filling and draining his cup of oil; and he went on searching
for the heart of the earth to freeze it, and not daring to lay hold
of it.
Meantime, the blows reechoed louder and harder, and the wall cracked
more and more, and the rain of icicles flying in splintered pieces
ceased not to fall about him.
And the bears roared lamentably and without ceasing, and the seals
complained in the leaden gloomy water.
The wall crumbled and fell, and it became light in the sky; a man
descended therefrom, naked and beautiful, leaning one hand upon a
golden axe. And this man was Lucifer, King Springtide.
When the giant beheld him, he flung far away his cup of oil, and
implored him not to slay him.
And at the warm breath of King Springtide, the Giant Winter lost all
strength. Then the king took chains of diamonds, bound him with these,
and tied him to the pole.
Then staying, he uttered a cry, but a tender, amorous cry. And from
the sky came down a blonde woman, naked and beautiful. Placing herself
beside the king, she said to him:
"Thou art my vanquisher, mighty man."
He made answer:
"If thou art an-hungered, eat; if thou art athirst, drink; if thou
art afraid, come close to me: I am thy male and thy mate."
"I am," said she, "hungry and athirst only for thee."
The king shouted yet again seven times terribly. And there was a mighty
din of thunder and lightning, and behind him there took shape a canopy
of suns and of stars. And the twain sat them down upon thrones.
Then the king and the woman, without a movement of their noble faces,
and without a gesture impairing their might and their calm majesty,
cried aloud.
At these cries there was an undulating movement in the earth, the
hard stone and the ice floes. And Nele and Ulenspiegel heard a noise
such as might be made by gigantic birds seeking to break the shell
of enormous eggs with blows of their beak.
And in this huge movement of the earth which rose and fell like the
waves of the sea there were shapes like the shape of an egg.
Suddenly from everywhere came forth trees with their dry branches
dovetailed and interlocked together, while their boles moved, swaying
like drunken men. Then they drew apart, leaving between them a huge
void space. From the stirring soil came forth the genii of the earth;
from the deeps of the forest the woodland spirits; from the sea near
by the genii of the water.
Ulenspiegel and Nele saw there the dwarfs that are the wardens of
treasure, hunchbacked, hairy, clumsy-foot, ugly and grinning, princes
of the stones, men of the woods living like trees, and, by way of mouth
and stomach, having a tuft of roots at the lower part of their face,
thus to suck up their food from the bosom of the earth; the emperors
of mines, who cannot speak, have neither heart nor entrails, and move
like bright automatons. There, too, were dwarfs of flesh and bone,
with lizard tails, toads' heads, and lantern for headgear, who leap
by night upon the shoulders of drunken men afoot or timid travellers,
leap down again and waving their lantern, lead into pools and bogholes
the poor devils who imagine that this lantern is the candle burning
in their homes.
There, too, were the flower-maidens, flowers of feminine strength
and haleness, naked and not blushing, proud of their beauty, having
for their only cloak their hair.
Their eyes shone with the wet lustre of mother of pearl in water;
the flesh of their bodies was firm, white, and gilded by the light;
from their red mouths partly open came a breath more sweet and fragrant
than jasmine.
These are they that wander by eventide in parks and gardens, or in the
deeps of the woods, in shady bridle ways, amorous and seeking some
human soul to enjoy it. So soon as passeth before them a young man
and a young maid, they seek to slay the maid, but when they cannot,
they breathe into the sweetling, still reluctant, desires of love so
that she may yield herself to the lover; for then the flower-maiden
hath half of the kisses.
Ulenspiegel and Nele saw also coming down from the high heavens the
guardian spirits of the stars, the genii of the winds, of the breeze
and the rain, winged young men that make the earth fertile.
Then in every quarter of the sky appeared the birds of souls,
the dear swallows. When they were come, the light appeared
stronger. Flower-maids, princes of the stones, emperors of the mines,
men of the woods, spirits of the water, of fire, and of the earth
all cried out in unison: "Light! Sap! Glory to King Springtide!"
Although the sound of their unanimous outcry was greater than that of
the raging sea, the thunder, and the unleashed tempest, it sounded
as solemn music in the ears of Nele and of Ulenspiegel, who, silent
and motionless, remained huddled together behind the rugged trunk of
an oak tree.
But they were still more affrighted when the spirits, thousands upon
thousands, took their places upon seats that were immense spiders,
toads with elephants, trunks, interlacing serpents, crocodiles
standing up on their tails and holding a band of spirits in their jaws,
serpents carrying more than thirty dwarfs, both men and women, seated
astraddle on their undulating bodies, and full a hundred thousand
insects bigger than Goliaths, armed with swords, spears, jagged
scythes, forks with seven tines, and every other kind of dreadful
murdering implements. They fought together with tremendous din, the
strong devouring the weak, growing fat upon them, and showing thus
that Death is made from Life and that Life is made from Death.
And from among this crowd of spirits, swarming, shifting, dense,
confused, there arose a noise like low thunder and a hundred weavers'
looms, fullers and locksmiths all working together.
Suddenly appeared the spirits of the sap, short, squat, round about
the loins as big as the great Heidelberg tun, with thighs as big as
hogsheads, and muscles so marvellously strong and powerful that one
would have said their bodies were made up of large eggs and small
eggs joined to one another and covered with a red, oily skin, shining
like their sparse beard and their red hair; and they carried enormous
tankards filled with a strange liquor.
When the other spirits beheld them coming, a great tremor of joy ran
among them; trees and plants moved and shook, and the earth opened
up in cracks to drink.
And the spirits of the sap poured out the wine: and all things
incontinently budded, were green, flourished; the sward was full of
whispering insects, and the sky of birds and butterflies; the spirits
poured on and on, and those below received the wine as best they might:
the flower-maids, opening their mouths or leaping up upon their red
cupbearers, and kissing them to have more; some, clasping their hands
in sign of entreaty; others who, in ecstasy, let it rain over them;
but all greedy or parched, flying, standing, running or motionless,
seeking to have the wine, and more intensely alive with every drop
they attained to receiving. And there were no oldsters there, but
ugly or goodly, all were full of prime strength and keenest youth.
And they laughed, shouted, sang, pursuing one another upon the trees
like squirrels, in the air like birds, every male seeking his female
and under the skies of God falling to the holy deed of kind.
And the spirits of the sap brought to the king and the queen the
great cup full of their wine. And the king and the queen drank and
embraced one another.
Then the king, holding the queen in his arm, cast upon the trees,
the flowers and the spirits, the dregs of his cup and cried aloud:
"Glory to Life! Glory to the free Air! Glory to Force!"
And all shouted:
"Glory to Nature! Glory to Force!"
And Ulenspiegel took Nele into his arms. Thus enlaced, a dance began:
a round circling dance like a dance of leaves that a whirlwind
swings together, where all was in motion, trees, plants, insects,
butterflies, heaven and earth, king and queen, flower-maidens, emperors
of mines, princes of stones, spirits of the waters, hunchback dwarfs,
men of the woods, lantern bearers, guardian spirits of the stars,
and the hundred thousand horrific insects mingling their spears,
their saw-edged scythes, their seven-pronged forks; a giddy dance,
swaying about in space and filling it, a dance in which the sun,
the moon, the planets, the stars, the wind, the clouds, all took part.
And the oak to which Nele and Ulenspiegel were clinging rolled with
the whirl, and Ulenspiegel said to Nele:
"Dear one, we are about to die."
A spirit heard them and saw that they were mortals:
"Mankind," he bawled, "mankind in this place!"
And he wrenched them from the tree and flung them in the crowd.
And Ulenspiegel and Nele fell soft and limp on the backs of the
spirits, which bandied them about from one to another, saying:
"Hail to mankind! Welcome be the earth worms! Who would have the lad
and lass? They come to visit us, the puny things."
And Ulenspiegel and Nele flew from one to another, crying:
"Mercy!"
But the spirits paid no heed, and both went fluttering, legs in air,
head down, turning and circling like feathers in the winter winds,
while the spirits said:
"Glory to the manlings male and female, let them dance like us!"
The flower-maidens, wishing to sever Nele from Ulenspiegel, smote
her and would have killed her, had not King Springtide, staying the
dance with a gesture, cried out:
"Let these two lice be brought before me!"
And they were separated one from the other; and each flower-maiden
said, endeavouring to take Ulenspiegel from her rivals:
"Thyl, wouldst thou not die for me?"
"I will do so in a moment," said Ulenspiegel.
And the dwarf wood sprites that were carrying Nele said:
"Why art thou not a spirit like us, that we might take thee to us!"
Nele answered:
"Have patience."
Thus they arrived before the king's throne; and they trembled sore
seeing his golden axe and his iron crown.
And he said to them:
"What are ye come hither to do, ye puny things?"
They made no answer.
"I know thee, witches' shoot," added the King, "and thee too, sprout
of the coalman; but having by the power of spells achieved the deed
of penetrating to this laboratory of Nature, why have ye now your
beaks locked like capons stuffed with crumb?"
Nele trembled, looking at the terrible demon; but Ulenspiegel,
recovering his manly hardihood, replied:
"The ashes of Claes beat upon my heart. Divine Highness, death goeth
throughout the land of Flanders, mowing down, in the Pope's name,
the strongest men, the sweetest women; her privileges are destroyed,
her charters abolished, famine gnaweth her, her weavers and cloth
merchants leave her to go to the foreigner seeking freedom for their
work. She will die soon if no one comes to her help. Highness, I
am but a poor mean fellow come into the world like any other, who
have lived as I could, imperfect, limited, ignorant, not virtuous,
in no wise chaste or deserving of any favour human or divine. But
Soetkin died of the effects of the torture and her grief, but Claes
burned in a terrible fire, and I was minded to avenge them, and did
so once; I was minded also to see this poor soil happier, this poor
soil in which their bones are sown, and I asked God for the death of
the persecutors, but he did not hearken to me nor heed me. Weary and
sick of complaints, I evoked thee by the potency of Katheline's spell,
and we come, I and my trembling she-comrade, to thy feet, to ask you,
Divine Highnesses, to save this poor earth."
The king and his spouse replied together:
"Through war and through fire
Through death, through the sword.
Seek the Seven.
"In death and blood
In ruin and tears,
Find the Seven.
"Foul, cruel, bad, deformed,
Mere Scourge of the poor earth.
Burn the Seven.
"Wait, hear and see!
Say, wretch, art thou not glad?
Find the Seven."
And all the spirits fell to chanting in unison:
"In death and blood,
In ruin and tears
Find the Seven.
"Wait, hear and see!
Say, wretch, art thou not glad?
Find the Seven."
"But," said Ulenspiegel, "Highness, and ye, spirits, I understand
not your talk. Ye make a mock of me, sans doubt."
But without heeding him they said:
"When the North
Shall kiss the West
Ruin shall end;
Find thou the Seven
The Girdle find!"
And that with so tremendous a chorus and so terrifically loud, strong,
and sonorous that the earth trembled and the heavens shivered. And
the birds whistling, the owls bubbling, the sparrows twittering in
affright, the sea eagles complaining, all flew round aghast. And the
beasts of the earth, lions, serpents, bears, stags, bucks, wolves,
dogs, and cats roared, hissed, belled, howled, barked, and mewed
terribly.
And the spirits chanted:
"Wait, hear and see,
Love thou the Seven
The Girdle love."
And the cocks crowed, and all the spirits vanished save one malicious
emperor of mines who seizing Ulenspiegel and Nele each by an arm,
hurled them brutally out into the void.
They found themselves lying beside each other, as though for sleep,
and they shivered in the keen wind of the morning.
And Ulenspiegel saw the delicious body of Nele all gilded in the sun
that was then rising.