"Even so," answered the woman. "But, alas! the hour of noon has
already struck for my beauty." And she looked very sorrowful.
But now Lamme jumped down from the ship into a little skiff, which
was straightway brought alongside of the boat wherein was his wife.
"What have you been doing?" he asked her. "What has been happening
to you? Why did you leave me? And why now do you make as though you
would have none of me?"
Then Calleken told him, in a voice that oftentimes trembled with tears,
how that she had entrusted the care of her soul to a monk, one Brother
Cornelis Adriaensen, and how he had warned her against her husband
for that he was a heretic and a consorter with heretics. How also by
his eloquence he had persuaded her that a life of celibacy was most
pleasing unto God and his saints, albeit he oftentimes profaned the
holy confessional with many a penance that was most distressful to
her modesty. "Nevertheless," she ended, "I swear before God that I
remained ever faithful to you, my husband, for I loved you."
But Lamme gazed upon her sadly and reproachfully, so that Nele said
to him:
"If Calleken has been faithful as she says, it behoves her now to
leave you in very deed, as a punishment for your unkindness."
"He knows not how I love him," said Calleken.
"Is this the truth?" cried Lamme. And then seeing that it was so:
"Then come, wife," he cried, "the winter is over!"
Thereafter, having given and received from all the kiss of peace:
"Come now," cried Lamme, "come, wife, with me. For now is the hour
of lawful loves!"
And together they sailed away in their little boat.
Meanwhile the soldiers, the sailors, and the ship's boys that
stood around, all waved their caps in the air and shouted: "Adieu,
brother! Adieu, Lamme! Adieu, brother--brother and friend!"
And Nele removed with the tip of her sweet finger a tear that had
settled in the corner of the eye of Ulenspiegel.
"You are sad, my love?" she asked him.
"He was good," Tyl said.
Nele sighed.
"Ah! This war--will it never end? Must we live for ever thus, in the
midst of blood and tears?"
"Let us seek the Seven," said Ulenspiegel. "The hour of deliverance
is at hand."