Chapter III: Book I: I (3)

Ulenspiegel, seeing the upper part of her dress equipped with pieces of red cloth, and seeing the stone of justice with its iron chains, at her neck, perceived that this was a woman who had sold for gain the fresh young bodies of her daughters. They told him her name was Barbe, she was the wife of Jason Darue, and would be brought in this costume from place to place until she came back to the great marketplace, where she would be set up on a scaffold already erected for her. Ulenspiegel followed her with the crowd of shouting people. Once back in the great marketplace she was set on the scaffold, bound to a stake, and the executioner laid before her a bundle of grass and a clod, signifying the pit of the grave.

They told Ulenspiegel, too, that she had been whipped already in prison.

As he was going away, he met Henri le Marischal, a swashbuckling rogue who had been hanged in the castle-ward of West Ypres and still showed the track of the cord around his neck. "He had been delivered," he said, "while already hoisted into the air, by saying one only good prayer to Notre Dame of Hal, in such wise that, by a true miracle, the bailiffs and the judges having gone, the cords, already loosened, broke, he fell to earth, and was in this manner saved and sound."

But later Ulenspiegel learned that this rascal delivered from the rope was a counterfeit Henri Marischal, and that he was left to run about retailing his lie because he was bearer of a parchment signed by the dean of Notre Dame de Hal, who by reason of the tale of this Henri le Marischal saw flocking to his church and lavishly feeing him all those who smelled the gallows from near by or far off. And for a long time Our Lady of Hal was surnamed Our Lady of the Hanged.

XXXIV

At this time the inquisitors and theologians for the second time made representation to the Emperor Charles:

That the Church was going to ruin; that its authority was contemned; that if he had won so many glorious victories, he owed it to the prayers of Catholicism, which upheld the imperial power on its high throne.

A Spanish Archbishop asked him to have six thousand heads cut off or the same number of bodies burned, in order to root the malignant Lutheran heresy out of the Low Countries. His Sacred Majesty deemed this insufficient.

And so, everywhere the terrified Ulenspiegel went he saw nothing but heads on stakes, girls thrust into sacks and cast alive into the river; men stretched naked on the wheel and beaten with great blows of iron bars, women laid in shallow graves, with earth over them, and the executioner dancing on their breast to break it in. But the confessors of all, men and women, that had first repented, were richer by twelve sols a time.

He saw at Louvain the executioners burn thirty Lutherans at once, and light the pile with gunpowder. At Limburg he saw a family, men and women, daughters and sons-in-law, walk to the scaffold singing psalms. The man, who was old, cried out while he was a-burning.

And Ulenspiegel, full of fear and grief, journeyed on over the poor earth.

XXXV

In the fields, he shook himself like a bird or like a dog loosed from the lead, and his heart took comfort before the trees, the meadows, the clear sun.

Having walked for three days, he came to the neighbourhood of Brussels, in the powerful commune of Uccle. Passing before the hostelry of the Trumpet, he was enticed by a celestial fragrance of fricassees. He asked a little tramp who, nose in air, was regaling himself with the odour of the sauces, in whose honour this festival incense arose to heaven. The other replied that the Brothers of the Good Red Nose were to assemble after vespers to celebrate the deliverance of the commune by the women and girls in olden time.

Ulenspiegel, spying from far off a pole surmounted by a popinjay, and all around goodwives armed with bows, asked if women were becoming archers nowadays.

The tramp, sniffing up the odour of the sauces, replied that in the days of the Good Duke those same bows, in the hands of the women of Uccle, had laid low more than a hundred brigands.

Ulenspiegel, desiring to know more of this, the tramp told him that he would not say another word so hungry and so thirsty was he, unless he gave him a patard for food and drink. Ulenspiegel gave it him out of pity.

As soon as the tramp had his patard, he went into the Trumpet Inn, like a fox into a henroost, and came out in triumph with half a sausage and a great hunch of bread.

All at once Ulenspiegel heard a soft noise of tambourines and viols, and beheld a great troop of women dancing, and among them a comely matron with a gold chain about her neck.

The tramp, who laughed for joy at having had something to eat, told Ulenspiegel that this handsome young woman was the Queen of the Archery, was called Mietje, the wife of Messire Renonckel, the sheriff of the commune. Then he asked Ulenspiegel for six liards for drink: Ulenspiegel gave them to him. Thus having eaten and drunken, the tramp sat down in the sun and picked his teeth and trimmed his nails.

When the women archers caught sight of Ulenspiegel in his pilgrim's array, they set to work dancing about him in a ring, saying:

"Good morrow, handsome pilgrim; do you come from far away, youngling pilgrim?"

Ulenspiegel replied:

"I come from Flanders, a fine country rich in loving girls."

And he thought sadly of Nele.

"What was your crime?" they asked him, desisting from their dancing.

"I would not dare to confess it," said he, "so great a one it was. But I have other things that are not small."

They smiled at that and asked why he must travel in this wise with staff and scrip and oyster shell.

"Because," said he, lying a little, "I said that masses for the dead are of advantage to the priests."

"They bring them in good coin," replied they, "but they are of advantage to souls in purgatory."

"I wasn't there," rejoined Ulenspiegel.

"Will you eat with us, pilgrim?" said the prettiest of the archers.

"I will gladly eat with you," said he, "and eat you, and all the others turn about, for you are titbits for a king, more delicious than ortolans or thrushes or woodcocks."

"God give you food," said they, "this is game beyond price."

"Like all of you, dear ones," he answered.

"Aye, verily," said they, "but we are not for sale."

"And for the giving?" he asked.

"Ay," said they, "of blows to the overbold. And if you need it, we will thrash you like a sheaf of corn."

"I abstain therefrom," said he.

"Come eat," said they.

He followed them into the court of the inn, happy to see these fresh faces about him. Suddenly he beheld entering the court with high ceremony, with banner and trumpet and flute and tambourine, the Brothers of the Good Red Nose, wearing in fatness the jolly name of their fellowship. As they looked curiously upon him, the women told them it was a pilgrim they had picked up by the way and that finding him a true Red Nose, and matching their husbands and betrotheds, they had been minded to make him share their feast.

The men approved their tale, and one said:

"Pilgrim on pilgrimage, wouldst thou pilgrimage through sauces and fricassees?"

"I shall have seven-leagued boots for that," said Ulenspiegel.

As he was on the point of entering the hall of the feasting with them, he descried on the road to Paris twelve blind men trudging along. When they passed before him, complaining of hunger and of thirst, Ulenspiegel said to himself that they would sup that night like kings, at the charge of the dean of Uccle, in memory of the masses for the dead. He went to them and said:

"Here be nine florins, come and eat. Do ye smell the good fragrance of the fricassees?"

"Alas!" said they, "for the last half of a league, and no hope."

"You shall eat," said Ulenspiegel, "now you have nine florins." But he did not give them.

"A blessing on thee," said they.

And guided by Ulenspiegel, they sat down around a small table, while the Brothers of the Good Red Nose sate at a great one with their goodwives and sweethearts.

Speaking with full assurance of nine florins:

"Host," said the blind men, proudly, "give us to eat and drink of your best."

The host, who had heard a mention of the nine florins, believed them to be in their pouches, and asked what they wished to have.

Then all of them, speaking at once, cried out:

"Peas with bacon, a hotchpotch of beef, veal, mutton, and fowl."--"Are sausages meant for dogs?"--"Who ever smelled the passing of black puddings and white, without seizing them by the collar? I used to see them, alas! when my poor eyes were candles to me."--"Where are the koekebakken au beurre of Anderlecht? They sing in the pan, succulent and crisp, mother of quart draughts."--"Who will bring under my nose ham and eggs or eggs and ham, those tender brothers and close friends in the mouth?"--"Where are ye, divine choesels, swimming, proud viands that you are, in the midst of kidneys, of cockscombs, of riz de veau, of oxtails, sheep's trotters, and abundant onions, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, all in the stew and three quarts of white wine for sauce?"--"Who will bring you to me, divine andouilles, so good that ye say no word when ye are swallowed? Ye came ever straight from Luy-leckerland, the rich country of the happy do-naughts, the lickers up of never-ending sauces. But where are ye, withered leaves of bygone autumns!"--"I want a leg of mutton with beans."--"I want pigs' plumes, their ears."--"For me a rosary of ortolans, with woodcocks for the Paters on it and a fat capon for the Credo."

The host answered sedately:

"You shall have an omelette of sixty eggs, and for guiding posts for you spoons, fifty black puddings, planted smoking hot on this mountain of nourishment, and dobbel peterman to wash all down with: that will be the river."

The water came into the mouths of the poor blind men and they said:

"Serve us the mountain, the guideposts, and the river."

And the Brothers of the Good Red Nose and their goodwives already at table with Ulenspiegel said that this day was for the blind the day of invisible junketing, and that the poor men thus lost the half of their pleasure.

When the omelette arrived, all decked with parsley and nasturtium, and borne by the host and four cooks, the blind men would fain have thrown themselves upon it and already were haggling in it, but the host served them separately, not without difficulty, to each his share in his own dish.

The archer women were touched to see them eating and heaving sighs of content, for they were mightily hungered and swallowed down the black puddings like oysters. The dobbel peterman flowed down into their bellies like cascades falling from mountain tops.

When they had cleaned their dishes, they asked again for koekebakken, for ortolans and fresh fricassees. The host only served them a great dish of bones of beef and veal and mutton swimming in a good sauce. He did not give each his portion.

When they had dipped their bread and their hands up to the elbows in the sauce, and only brought up bones of every kind, even some ox jaw bones, everyone thought his neighbour had all the meat, and they beat each other's faces furiously with the bones.

The Brothers of the Good Red Nose, having laughed their fill, charitably conveyed part of their own feast into the poor fellows' dish, and he who groped in the plate for a bone for a weapon would set his hand on a thrush, a chicken, a lark or two, while the goodwives, pulling their heads back, would pour Brussels wine down their throats in a flood, and when they groped about blindly to feel whence these streams of ambrosia were coming to them, they caught nothing but a petticoat, and would fain have held it, but it would whisk away from them suddenly.

And so they laughed, drank, ate, and sang. Some scenting out the pretty goodwives, ran all about the hall beside themselves, bewitched by love, but teasing girls would mislead them, and hiding behind a Good Red Nose would say "kiss me." And they would, but instead of a woman, they kissed the bearded face of a man, and not without rebuffs.

The Good Red Noses sang, the blind men, too. And the jolly goodwives smiled kindly seeing their glee.

When these rich and sappy hours were over, the baes said to them:

"You have eaten well and drunk well, I want seven florins."

Each one swore he had no purse, and accused his neighbour. Hence arose yet another fray in which they sought to strike one another with foot and fist and head, but they could not, and struck out wildly, for the Good Red Noses, seeing the play, kept man away from man. And blows hailed upon the empty air, save one that by ill chance fell upon the face of the baes, who, in a rage, searched them all and found on them nothing but an old scapular, seven liards, three breeches buttons, and their paternosters.

He wanted to fling them into the swinehouse and leave them there on bread and water until someone should pay what they owed for them.

"Do you," said Ulenspiegel, "want me to go surety for them?"

"Ay," replied the baes, "if someone will be surety for you."

The Good Red Noses were about to do it, but Ulenspiegel stopped them, saying:

"The dean will be surety, I am going to find him."

Thinking of the masses for the dead, he went to the deanery and told him how that the baes of the Trumpet, being possessed of the devil, spoke of nothing but pigs and blind men, the pigs devouring the blind and the blind eating the pigs under divers unholy guises of roasts and fricassees. During these fits, said he, the baes broke everything in the house, and he begged the dean to come and deliver the poor man from this wicked fiend.

The dean promised, but said he could not go immediately, for at that moment he was casting up the accounts of the chapter, and endeavouring to derive some profit out of them.

Seeing him impatient, Ulenspiegel said he would come back with the wife of the baes and that the dean could speak to her himself.

"Come both of you," said the dean.

Ulenspiegel came back to the baes, and said to him:

"I have just seen the dean, he will stand surety for the blind men. While you keep guard over them, let the hostess come with me to the dean, he will repeat to her what I have just told you."

"Go, goodwife," said the baes.

She went off with Ulenspiegel to the dean, who was still figuring to find his profit. When she came in with Ulenspiegel, he impatiently waved her away, saying:

"Be easy, I shall come to your husband's help in a day or two."

And Ulenspiegel, returning to the Trumpet, said to himself, "He will pay seven florins, and that will be my first mass for the dead."

And he went on his way, and the blind men likewise.

XXXVI

Finding himself, on the morrow, upon a highway in the midst of a great crowd of folk, Ulenspiegel went with them, and soon knew that it was the day of the pilgrimage of Alsemberg.

He saw poor old women marching backwards, barefooted, for a florin and for the expiation of the sins of certain great ladies. On the edge of the highway, to the sound of rebecks, viols, and bagpipes, more than one pilgrim was holding a frying feast and junketing of bruinbier. And the smoke of delicious stews mounted towards heaven like a suave incense of food.

But there were other pilgrims, low fellows, needy and starveling, who, paid by the Church, were walking backwards for six sols.

A little man, completely bald, with staring eyes and a savage look, was skipping along backwards behind them reciting paternosters.

Ulenspiegel, wishing to know why he was mimicking the crayfishes in this fashion, planting himself before him and smiling, jumped in step with him. The rebecks, fifes, viols, and bagpipes, and the groans of the pilgrims made the music for the dance.

"Jan van den Duivel," said Ulenspiegel, "is it that you may more certainly fall that you run in this wise?"

The man made no answer and went on mumbling his paternosters.

"Perhaps," said Ulenspiegel, "you want to know how many trees there are along the road. But are you not counting the leaves also?"

The man, who was reciting a Credo, signed to Ulenspiegel to hold his tongue.

"Perhaps," said the latter, still skipping before him and imitating him, "it is the result of some sudden madness that you should thus be going the contrary way to everybody else. But he who would have a wise answer from a madman is not wise himself. Is not this true, master of the peeled poll?"

As the man still made no answer, Ulenspiegel went on skipping, but making so much noise with his boot-soles that the road reechoed like a wooden box.

"Maybe," said Ulenspiegel, "you might be dumb, good sir?"

"Ave Maria," said the other, "gratia plena et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesu."

"Maybe you are deaf as well?" said Ulenspiegel. "We shall see that: they say deaf men hear neither praises nor insults. Let us see if the drums of your ears are skin or brass: thinkest thou, lantern without candle, simulacrum of a foot-goer, that thou dost resemble a man? That will be when men are made of rags. Where has such jaundiced visnomy been ever seen, that peeled head, save on the gallows field? Wast thou not hanged of yore?"

And Ulenspiegel went on dancing, and the man, who was entering on the ways of wrath, was running backwards angrily still mumbling his paternosters.

"Maybe," said Ulenspiegel, "thou comprehendest but high Flemish, I will speak to thee in the low: if thou art no glutton, thou art a drunkard, if no drunkard, but a water bibber, thou art foully choked elsewhere; if not constipated, thou art jerry-go-nimble; if not a lecher, a capon; if there be temperance, it was not that that filled the tun of thy belly, and if in the thousand million men that people the earth there were but one only cuckold, it would be thou."

At this word Ulenspiegel sat down upon his seat, legs in air, for the man had fetched him such a blow with his fist under the nose that he saw more than a hundred candles. Then cunningly falling upon him, despite the weight of his belly, he struck him everywhere, and blows rained like hail upon the thin frame of Ulenspiegel, whose cudgel fell to the ground.

"Learn by this lesson," said the man, "not to pester honest folk going on pilgrimage. For you may know that I go thus to Alsemberg according to custom to implore Madam Holy Mary to cause to miscarry a child my wife conceived when I was on my travels. To win so great a boon, a man must needs walk and dance backward from the twentieth step from his home to the foot of the church steps, without speaking. Alas! now I must begin all over again."

Ulenspiegel having picked up his cudgel said:

"I shall help you, rascal, you who would have Our Lady serve to kill babes in their mothers' womb."

And he fell to beating the wretched cuckold so cruelly that he left him for dead on the road.

All this while there rose to heaven the groans of pilgrims, the sounds of fifes, viols, rebecks, and bagpipes, and, like a pure incense, the savour of frying.

XXXVII

Claes, Soetkin, and Nele were gossiping together about the ingle, and talked of the pilgrim on his pilgrimage.

"Daughter," said Soetkin, "why cannot you, by the might of the spell of youth, keep him always with us?"

"Alas!" said Nele, "I cannot."

"'Tis because," said Claes, "he hath a counter charm that drives him to run without ever resting save for the work of his teeth."

"The cruel, ugly fellow!" sighed Nele.

"Cruel," said Soetkin, "I admit, but ugly, no. If my son Ulenspiegel has not a Greek or a Roman countenance, he is all the better for that; for they are of Flanders his agile feet, of the Frank of Bruges his keen brown eye, and his nose and his mouth made by two past masters in the science of humour and sculpture."

"Who, then," asked Claes, "made him his lazy arms and his legs too prone to run to pleasure?"

"His heart that is over young," replied Soetkin.

XXXVIII

In these days Katheline by her simples cured an ox, three sheep, and a pig belonging to Speelman but could not cure a cow that belonged to Jan Beloen. The latter accused her of sorcery. He averred that she had cast a spell on the beast, inasmuch as, while giving his simples, she caressed and talked to it, doubtless in a diabolical speech, for an honest Christian should not talk to a beast.

The said Jan Beloen added that he was a neighbour of Speelman's, whose ox, sheep, and pig she had healed, and if she had killed his cow, it was doubtless at the instigation of Speelman, jealous to see that his, Beloen's, land was better tilled than his own. Upon the testimony of Peter Meulemeester, a man of good life and conduct, and also of Jan Beloen, certifying that Katheline was reputed a witch in Damme, and had doubtless killed the cow, Katheline was arrested and condemned to be tormented until she should have confessed her crimes and misdeeds.

She was questioned by a sheriff who was always in a rage, for he drank brandy all day long. He had Katheline put upon the first bench of torment in his presence and before the Vierschare.

The executioner stripped her naked, then shaved her hair and all her body, looking everywhere to see if she concealed a charm.

Finding nothing, he fastened her with cords to the bench. Then she spake:

"I am all shamed to be naked thus before these men, Madam Mary, grant that I may die!"

Then the executioner put wet cloths upon her breast, her belly, and her legs, and raising the bench, he poured hot water into her stomach in such quantities that she was all swelled up. Then he lowered the bench again.

The sheriff asked Katheline if she would confess her crime. She made sign that she would not. The executioner poured more hot water into her, but she vomited all of it out again.

Then at the chirurgeon's bidding she was untied. She did not speak, but struck on her breast to say the hot water had burned her. When the sheriff perceived that she had recovered from this first torment he said to her:

"Confess thou art a witch, and that thou didst cast a spell upon the cow."

"I will not confess," said she. "I love all dumb beasts, as much as my poor heart may, and I would harm myself rather than them, who cannot defend themselves. I used the needful simples to cure the cow."

But the sheriff:

"Thou didst give her poison," said he, "for the cow is dead."

"Master sheriff," answered Katheline, "I am here before you, in your power. I dare say to you, nevertheless, that a beast can die of sickness, like a man, in spite of the assistance of the surgeons and the doctors. And I swear by my Lord Christ who died on the cross for our sins, that I have wished no harm to this cow, but sought to cure her by simple remedies."

Then said the sheriff, enraged:

"This devil's hag will not always deny, let her be put on another bench for the torment!"

And therewith he drank a great glass of brandy.

The executioner made Katheline sit on the lid of an oaken coffin placed upon trestles. The said lid, shaped like a roof, was sharp as a blade. A great fire was burning in the fireplace, for it was then November.

Katheline, seated upon the coffin and a spit of sharpened wood, was shod with tight shoes of new leather and set before the fire. When she felt the sharp wooden edge of the coffin and the pointed spit entering her flesh, and when the fire heated and shrank the leather of her shoes, she cried:

"I suffer a thousand pangs! Who will give me black poison?"

"Put her nearer the fire," said the sheriff. Then questioning Katheline:

"How often," said he, "didst thou bestride a broom to go to the Sabbath? How often didst thou blast the corn in the ear, the fruit upon the tree, the babe in the mother's womb? How often didst thou turn two brothers to sworn foes, and two sisters into rivals filled with hatred?"

Katheline would have spoken, but could not, and moved her arms as though to say no. The sheriff then:

"She will only speak when she feels all her witch fat melt in the fire. Put her nearer."

Katheline cried out. The sheriff said:

"Pray to Satan that he may cool thee."

She made a movement as though she would take off her shoes that were smoking in the fierceness of the fire.

"Pray to Satan that he pull off thy shoes," said the sheriff.

The clock was striking ten, the furious creature's dinner hour; he went away with the executioner and the clerk, leaving Katheline alone before the fire, in the torture chamber.

At eleven they came back and found Katheline seated stiff and motionless. The clerk said:

"She is dead, I think."

The sheriff ordered the executioner to take Katheline down from the coffin and the shoes from off her feet. Not being able to pull them off, he cut them away, and the feet of Katheline were disclosed red and bleeding.

And the sheriff, thinking of his meal, looked at her without a word; but presently she recovered her senses, and falling on the ground and unable to rise for all her efforts, she said to the sheriff:

"Once on a time wouldst fain have had me to wife, but now thou shalt not have me. Four times three it is the sacred number, and the thirteenth is the husband."

Then as the sheriff would have spoken, she said to him:

"Stay silent, he has hearing finer than the archangel that in heaven counts the heart beats of the just. Why dost thou come so late? Four times three it is the sacred number, he slayeth those that desire me."

The sheriff said:

"She receives the devil in her bed."

"She is out of her wits with the anguish of the torment," said the clerk.

Katheline was taken back to prison. Three days after, the sheriff's court being assembled in the Vierschare, Katheline after deliberation was condemned to the fire.

The executioner and his assistants brought her to the marketplace of Damme where there was a scaffold on which she mounted. In the marketplace were the provost, the herald, and the judges.

The trumpets of the town herald sounded three times, and turning to the people he announced:

"The magistrate of Damme, having had compassion on the woman Katheline, has been pleased not to exact punishment according to the extreme rigour of the law of the town, but in order to bear witness that she is a witch, her hair shall be burned, she shall pay twenty gold carolus by way of fine, and shall be banished for three years from the precincts of Damme under pain of losing one limb."

And the people applauded this harsh lenity.

The executioner thereupon bound Katheline to the stake, set a wig of tow upon her shaven head and set it on fire. And the tow burned long and Katheline cried out and wept.

Then she was unbound and taken without the boundaries of Damme upon a cart, for her feet were burned.

XXXIX

Ulenspiegel being now at Bois-le-Duc in Brabant, the magnates of the town would fain have appointed him their fool, but he would none of this dignity. "Pilgrim on pilgrimage cannot play fool as a permanency, but only at inns and on the highways."

At this same time Philip, who was King of England, came to visit the countries of his future inheritance, Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, Holland, and Zealand. He was then in his twenty-ninth year; in his grayish eyes dwelt sour melancholy, savage dissimulation, and cruel resolution. Cold was his countenance, and stiff his head covered with tawny hair; stiff, too, his meagre torso and spindle limbs. Slow was his speech and thick as though he had wool in his mouth.

Amid tourneys, jousts, and feastings, he visited the joyous duchy of Brabant, the rich county Flanders, and his other seignories. Everywhere he swore to observe and confirm the privileges; but when at Brussels he took oath upon the Testament to observe the Golden Bull of Brabant his hand clenched so tight that he must needs take it away from the sacred book.

He went to Antwerp, where they put up twenty-three triumphal arches to receive him. The city disbursed two hundred and eighty-seven thousand florins to pay for these arches and for the costumes of eighteen hundred and seventy-nine merchants all clad in crimson velvet and for the rich livery of four hundred and sixteen lackeys and the brilliant silk trappings of four thousand burgesses, all clad alike. Many feasts were given by the rhetoricians of all the cities in the Low Countries, or nearly all.

There were seen, with their fools male and female, the Prince of Love, of Tournai, mounted upon a sow that was called Astarte; the King of Fools, of Lille, who led a horse by the tail and walked behind; the Prince of Pleasure, of Valenciennes, who amused himself counting how many times his donkey broke wind; the Abbot of Mirth, of Arras, who drank Brussels wine from a flask shaped like a breviary, and that was gay reading; the Abbot of the Paux-Pourvus, of Ath, who was provided with linen full of holes and boots down at heel, but had a sausage with which he made good provision for his belly; the Provost of Madcaps, a young man mounted on a shy goat, and who trotting in the crowd got many a thwack because of her; the Abbot of the Silver Dish, from Quesnoy, who mounted on his horse pretended to be sitting in a dish, saying "there is no beast so big that fire cannot cook him."

And they played all kinds of harmless foolery, but the King remained sad and severe.

That same evening, the Markgrave of Antwerp, the burgomasters, captains and deans, assembled together to find out some game or play that might win Philip the King to laughter.

Said the Markgrave:

"Have ye not heard tell of a certain Pierkin Jacobsen, the town-fool of Bois-le-Duc, and far renowned for his merry tricks?"

"Yes," said the others.

"Well!" said the Markgrave, "let us summon him to come hither, and bid him do us some nimblewitted turn, since our own fool has his boots stuffed with lead."

"Let us summon him hither," said they.

When the messenger from Antwerp came to Bois-le-Duc, they told him that the fool Pierkin had snuffed out his candle with over-much laughing, but that there was in the town another fool, a bird of passage, called Ulenspiegel. The messenger went to look for him in a tavern where he was eating a fricassee of mussels and making a petticoat for a girl with the shells.

Ulenspiegel was delighted when he knew that it was for him the courier of the commune had come all the way from Antwerp, mounted upon a fine horse of Vuern-Ambacht and leading another by the bridle.

Without setting foot to ground, the courier asked him if he knew where to find a new trick to make King Philip laugh.

"I have a mine of them under my hair," answered Ulenspiegel.

They went away together. The two horses galloping loose-reined brought Ulenspiegel and the courier to Antwerp.

Ulenspiegel made his appearance before the Markgrave, the two burgomasters, and the officials of the commune.

"What do you intend to do?" asked the Markgrave.

"Fly in the air," replied Ulenspiegel.

"How will you set about this?" asked the Markgrave.

"Do you know," asked Ulenspiegel, "what is worth less than a burst bladder?"

"I do not know," said the Markgrave.

"A secret that has been let out," replied Ulenspiegel.

In the meanwhile, the heralds of the games, mounted upon their handsome steeds caparisoned with crimson velvet, rode through all the main streets, squares, and carfaxes of the city, sounding clarions and with beat of drum. In this fashion they announced to the signorkes and the signorkinnes that Ulenspiegel, the fool of Damme, would fly in the air at the quay, there being present upon a staging King Philip and his high illustrious and distinguished company.

Over against the staging there was a house built in the Italian fashion, with a gutter running along the whole length of the roof. A garret window opened upon the gutter.

Ulenspiegel on this day went through the city everywhere riding upon an ass. A footman ran alongside him. Ulenspiegel had donned the fine robe of crimson silk the magnates of the commune had given him. His headgear was a hood, crimson as well, on which were seen two asses' ears with a bell on the tip of each. He wore a necklace of copper medallions embossed with the shield of Antwerp. On the sleeves of the robe there tinkled at each pointed elbow a gilt bell. He had shoes with gilt soles, and a bell at the tip of each.

His ass was caparisoned with crimson silk and on each thigh carried the shield of Antwerp broidered in fine gold.

The footman brandished a donkey's head in one hand and in the other a branch at the end of which chimed a cowbell from a forest-bred cow.

Ulenspiegel, leaving his ass and his footman in the street, climbed up into the gutter.

There, shaking his bells, he opened out his arms as if he was on the point of flying. Then leaning down towards King Philip, he said:

"I thought there was no fool in Antwerp save only me, but I perceive the town is full of them. If you had told me you were going to fly, I should not have believed you; but let a fool come and tell you he will do it, and you believe him. How would you have me fly, since I have no wings?"

Some laughed, others swore, but all said:

"This fool says what is none the less quite true."

But King Philip remained stiff as a king of stone.

And the magnates of the commune said softly one to the other:

"There was no need to make such great festival for such a sour-face."

And they gave three florins to Ulenspiegel, who departed, first perforce restoring to them the robe of crimson silk.

"What are three florins in the pouch of a young man but a snowball before a fire, a full bottle in front of you, wide-throated drinkers? Three florins! The leaves fall from the trees and sprout again upon them, but florins leave pouches and return thither no more: the butterflies flitter away with the summer time, and the florins, too, although they weigh two estrelins and nine as."

So saying, Ulenspiegel contemplated his three florins closely.

"What a haughty mien," murmured he, "hath the Emperor Charles upon the obverse, cuirassed and helmeted, holding a sword in one hand and in the other the globe of this poor earthly world! He is by the grace of God Emperor of the Romans, King of Spain, and so forth, and he is most gracious towards these our countries, this emperor in the cuirass. And here on the reverse is a shield on which are graven and displayed the arms of a duke, count, etc., pertaining to his divers possessions, with this goodly device: Da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos: 'Give me strength against thy enemies.' He was valiant indeed against those of the reformed that have goods to confiscate, and he inheriteth them. Ah! were I the Emperor Charles, I would have florins minted for everybody, and each man being rich, no one should work more."

But Ulenspiegel looked in vain at the lovely money; it was gone towards the land of ruin to the clinking of quart pots and the chiming of bottles.

XL

While he displayed himself on the gutter all clad in crimson silk, Ulenspiegel had not seen Nele who from the crowd was looking on him smiling. She was living at this time at Borgerhout near Antwerp, and thought that if some fool was to fly before King Philip, it could only be her friend Ulenspiegel.

As he marched along the way, plunged in reverie, he did not hear a sound of hastening steps behind him, but felt two hands that were laid flat upon his eyes. Guessing Nele instinctively:

"Are you there?" said he.

"Aye," she said, "I have been running behind you ever since you came out of the city. Come with me."

"But where," said he, "where is Katheline?"

"Thou dost not know it," said she, "that she was tortured unjustly for a witch, then banished out of Damme for three years, and that they burned her feet and burned tow upon her head. I tell thee this that thou mayest have no fear of her, for she is out of her wits because of the cruel torment. Often she spends whole hours looking at her feet and saying: 'Hanske, my sweet devil, see what they did to thy dear. And her poor feet are like two wounds.' Then she weeps, saying: 'Other women have a husband or a lover, but I live at this moment as a widow.' I tell her then that Hanske will hate her if she speaks of him before other folk than me. And she obeys me like a child save when she sees a cow or an ox, the cause of her torture; then she flees running without stay, and nothing can stop her, fences, streams, or ditches, till she falls for weariness in some corner of the wayside or against the wall of a farm, whither I go and take her up and dress her poor feet that are by then all bleeding. And I deem that in burning the hank of tow they burned also her brain in her head."

And both were grieved thinking upon Katheline.

They came to her and saw her sitting upon a bench in the sun against the wall of a house. Ulenspiegel said to her:

"Do you know me?"

"Four times three," quoth she, "it is the sacred number, and the thirteenth is Thereb. Who art thou, child of this wicked world?"

"I am Ulenspiegel," he answered, "the son of Soetkin and of Claes."

She shook her head and knew him; then beckoning him close with her finger and bending to his ear:

"If thou see him whose kisses are as snow, tell him to come back to me, Ulenspiegel."

Then showing her burned hair:

"I am ill," she said; "they have taken my wits, but when he comes he will fill my head again, which now is all empty. Hearest thou? it sounds like a bell; it is my soul knocking at the door to depart, because it burns. If Hanske comes and has no mind to fill me my head again, I will tell him to make a hole in it with a knife: the soul that is there, ever knocking to come out, grieveth me cruelly, and I shall die, yea. And now I never sleep, and I look for him always, and he must fill me my head again, yea."

And sinking down again, she groaned.

And the peasants that were coming back from the fields to go to dinner, while the church bell called them to it, passed before Katheline saying:

"There is the madwife."

And they made the sign of the cross.

And Nele and Ulenspiegel wept, and Ulenspiegel must needs go on upon his pilgrimage.

XLI

At this time as he pilgrimaged he entered into the service of one Josse, surnamed the Kwaebakker, the cross baker, because of his vinegar face. The Kwaebakker gave him three stale loaves every week for his food, and for lodging a sloping garret under the roof, where the rain rained and the wind blew marvellously.

Seeing himself so evilly entreated, Ulenspiegel played him different tricks and this among them. When they bake in the early morning, the flour must be bolted over night. One night, then, when the moon was shining, Ulenspiegel asked for a candle to see to work and had this answer from his master:

"Bolt the flour in the light of the moon."

Ulenspiegel, obeying him, bolted the flour upon the earth, where the moonlight was shining.

In the morning the Kwaebakker, coming to see how much work Ulenspiegel had done, found him still bolting and said to him:

"Does flour now cost nothing at all that it should be bolted on the ground like this?"

"I bolted the flour in the moonlight as you had bidden me," answered Ulenspiegel.

The baker replied:

"Pack-donkey, it was in a sieve you should have done it."

"I thought the moon was a new-fangled kind of sieve," replied Ulenspiegel. "But there will be no great loss, I will scrape up the flour."

"It is too late," answered the Kwaebakker, "to get ready the dough and to bake it."

Ulenspiegel rejoined:

"Baes, our neighbour's dough is ready in the mill; shall I go and take that?"

"Go to the gallows," replied the Kwaebakker, "and fetch what is on that."

"I go, baes," answered Ulenspiegel.

He ran to the gallows field, found there the dried hand of a robber, brought it to the Kwaebakker, and said:

"Here is a hand of glory that maketh invisible all those that carry it. Wilt thou henceforward conceal thy evil disposition?"

"I shall inform the commune against you," replied the Kwaebakker, "and you will see that you have infringed upon the rights of the overlord."

When they were both before the burgomaster, the Kwaebakker, wishing to tell the whole rosary of Ulenspiegel's misdeeds and delinquencies, saw that he was opening his eyes to their widest. He became so angry at this that interrupting his deposition he said to him:

"What do you want?"

Ulenspiegel replied:

"You told me you would accuse me in such wise that I 'would see.' I am trying to see, that is why I look."

"Out of my eyes," cried the baker.

"If I was in your eyes," answered Ulenspiegel, "I could only come out, seeing that you shut them, through your nostrils."

The burgomaster, seeing that this day was the day for the fair of japes, would listen to them no longer.

Ulenspiegel and the Kwaebakker went away together, the Kwaebakker raised his cudgel on him; Ulenspiegel dodged it, saying:

"Baes, since it is with blows my flour is to be sifted, you take the bran of it--it is your anger: I keep the white--it is my gaiety."

Then showing him his nether face:

"And here," he added, "is the door of the oven, if you want to bake."

XLII

Ulenspiegel as he pilgrimaged would gladly have turned highway robber, but he found the stones too heavy to carry.

He was trudging by chance on the road to Audenaerde where there was then a garrison of Flemish reiters charged with the defence of the town against the French bands that ravaged the country like locusts.

The reiters had at their head a certain captain, a Frisian born, by name Kornjuin. They also overran the low country and pillaged the peoples, who were thus, as usual, devoured on both sides.

Everything was good in their eyes: hens, chickens, ducks, pigeons, calves, and pigs. One day, as they were coming back laden with plunder, Kornjuin and his lieutenants saw at the foot of a tree Ulenspiegel lying asleep and dreaming of fricassees.

"What do you do for a living?" asked Kornjuin.

"I'm dying of hunger," replied Ulenspiegel.

"What is your trade?"

"To go on pilgrimage for my sins, look on at others toiling, dance on the rope, paint pretty faces, carve knife handles, play the rommel-pot, and blow the trumpet."

Now if Ulenspiegel spoke so bold of trumpets, it was because he had learned that the post of watchman to the Castle of Audenaerde was vacant after the death of an old man who had held it.

Kornjuin said to him:

"You shall be trumpeter to the town."

Ulenspiegel went with him and was posted on the tallest tower on the ramparts, in a little box of a cell well ventilated by the four winds, all except the south wind that fanned it only with one wing.

He was enjoined to sound the trumpet as soon as he might see an enemy coming and, to that end, to keep his head clear and his eyes keen; and so they did not give him overmuch either to eat or to drink.

The captain and his soldiers stayed in the tower and feasted there all day long at the expense of the low country. There was killed and eaten there more than one capon whose one crime was to be plump. Ulenspiegel, always forgotten and forced to be satisfied with his meagre soup, found no pleasure in the smell of the sauces. The French came and carried off a great deal of cattle; Ulenspiegel did not sound his trumpet.

Kornjuin climbed up to his cell and said to him:

"Why did you not sound the trumpet?"

Ulenspiegel said to him:

"I give you no thanks for your provender."

The next day, the captain ordered a great feast for himself and his soldiers, but Ulenspiegel was still forgotten. They were on the point of beginning to gorge, when Ulenspiegel blew his trumpet.

Kornjuin and his soldiers, thinking it was the French, left their wines and meats, leapt upon their horses, rode hastily out of the town, but found nothing in the country but an ox chewing the cud in the sun, and brought him back with them.

Meanwhile, Ulenspiegel had filled himself with wines and meats. The captain as he returned saw him standing, smiling, and his legs tottering at the door of the feast hall. He said to him:

"It is traitor's work to sound the alarm when you do not see the enemy, and not to sound it when you do see them."

"Master captain," said Ulenspiegel, "I am in my tower so puffed out and swollen up with the four winds that I could float like a bladder if I had not blown in my trumpet to ease me. Have me hanged now, or another time when you need an ass's skin for your drums."

Kornjuin went away without a word.

Meanwhile, news came to Audenaerde that the gracious Emperor Charles was about to come to the town, with a most noble company. On this occasion the sheriffs gave Ulenspiegel a pair of spectacles that he might the better discern His Sacred Majesty's coming. Ulenspiegel was to blow three blasts on the trumpet as soon as he saw the Emperor marching upon Luppeghem, which is a quarter of a league away from the Borg-poort.

Thus the townsfolk would have time to ring their bells, to make ready fireworks, to put the meats in the oven, and to broach the hogsheads.

One day, towards noon, the wind was blowing from Brabant and the sky was clear: Ulenspiegel saw on the road leading to Luppeghem a great band of horsemen mounted on caracoling steeds, the long feathers in their caps streaming in the wind. Some carried banners. He who rode proudly at their head wore a bonnet of cloth of gold with great plumes. He was arrayed in brown velvet broidered with brocatel.

Ulenspiegel put on his spectacles and saw it was the Emperor Charles the Fifth who was coming to give the folk of Audenaerde permission to serve him their choicest wines and their choicest viands.

His whole band was moving leisurely, snuffing up the fresh air that awakens appetite, but Ulenspiegel thought that they made good cheer by custom and might very well fast for one day without perishing. So he looked on at them as they came and did not blow his trumpet.

They came on laughing and talking freely, whilst His Sacred Majesty looked into his stomach to see if there was enough room for the dinner of the Audenaerde folk. He appeared surprised and displeased that no bell rang to announce his coming.

At this juncture a peasant entered the town running, to announce that he had seen a French band riding in the neighbourhood and marching upon the town to devour and pillage everything.

At this word the porter fastened the gate and sent a servant of the commune to warn the other porters of the town. But the reiters feasted without knowing anything.

His Majesty was still coming on, annoyed not to hear bells and cannon and arquebuses sounding and thundering and volleying. Straining his ears in vain, he heard nothing but the chime marking the half hour. He arrived before the gate, found it shut and beat on it with his fist to have it opened.

And the lords in his retinue, angry like him, muttered sour speeches. The porter who was on the summit of the ramparts cried out to them that if they did not put an end to this hubbub he would spray them with grapeshot to cool their impatience.

But His Majesty in a fury:

"Blind hog," said he, "dost thou not know thy Emperor?"

The porter answered:

That the least hoggish are not always the most gilded; that he knew, besides, that the French were good mockers by their nature, since the Emperor Charles, at this moment waging war in Italy, could not be at the gates of Audenaerde.

Thereupon Charles and the lords cried out the more, saying:

"If thou dost not open, we shall roast thee on the point of a spear. And thou shalt eat thy keys first and foremost."

At the noise they were making, an old man-at-arms came out from the artillery room and showing his nose above the wall:

"Porter," said he, "you are all wrong, it is our Emperor yonder; I know him well, though he has aged since he took Maria van der Gheynst from here to the Castle of Lallaing."

The porter fell down stiff as death with terror, and the man-at-arms seized his keys and went to open the gate.

The Emperor asked why he had been forced to wait so long: the man-at-arms having told him, His Majesty ordered him to shut the gate again, and to fetch him the reiters of Kornjuin, whom he commanded to march before him beating their tambourines and playing their fifes.

Soon one by one the bells awoke to sound full peal. Thus preceded, His Majesty came with an imperial din to the Great Marketplace. The burgomasters and sheriffs were all assembled there; the sheriff Ian Guigelaar came out at the noise. He went back into the council chamber saying:

"Keyser Karel is alhier! The Emperor Charles is here!"

Sorely affrighted to hear these tidings, the burgomasters, sheriffs, and councillors came out from the Townhall to go in a body to greet the Emperor, while their men ran throughout the whole town to have the fireworks got ready, to put the chickens to the fire, and to broach the casks.

Men, women, and children ran everywhere crying:

"Keyser Karel is op't groot marckt! The Emperor is in the Great Market!"

Ere long great was the crowd in the square.

The Emperor, in deep anger, asked the two burgomasters if they did not deserve to be hanged for thus failing in respect to their sovereign.

The burgomasters replied that they deserved hanging indeed, but that Ulenspiegel, the trumpeter of the tower, deserved it much more, seeing that upon the rumour of His Majesty's coming he had been stationed there, equipped with a good pair of barnacles, with express instructions that he should sound his trumpet three times as soon as he should see the imperial convoy approaching. But he had done nothing of this.

The Emperor, still angry, asked them to send for Ulenspiegel.

"Why," said he, "having such clear spectacles, didst thou not blow a point on the trumpet at my coming?"

So saying, he passed his hand over his eyes, because of the brightness of the sun, and looked at Ulenspiegel.