The Legend of Ulenspiegel. Volume 2 of 2

The meesevangers were full ten in number, all red, bloated with wine and cervoise ale, with waggling heads, dragging their tottering legs and crying out in a voice so hoarse and so broken that it seemed to the timid girls that they were rather listening to wild beasts in a wood than men in a house.

However, as they never stopped saying, speaking singly or all at once: “I would have the one I love.” “We are his that pleaseth us. To-morrow to the rich in florins! To-day to the rich in love!” the meesevangers replied: “Florins we have and love as well; to us then the light ladies. He that draws back is a capon. These are tits, and we are sportsmen. Rescue! Brabant for the good duke!”

But the women said, laughing loudly: “Fie! the ugly muzzles that think to eat us! ’Tis not to swine that men give sherbets. We take whom we please and do not want you. Barrels of oil, bags of lard, thin nails, rusty blades, you stink of sweat and mud. Get out of here; you will be well and duly damned without our help.”

But the men: “The Frenchies are dainty to-day. Disgusted ladies, you can well give us what you sell to everybody.”

But the women: “To-morrow,” they said, “we will be slaves and dogs, and will accept you; to-day we are free women and we cast you out.”

The men: “Enough words,” they cried. “Who is thirsty? Let us pluck the apples!”

And so saying they threw themselves upon them, without distinction of age or beauty. The girls, resolute in their minds, threw at their heads chairs, quart pots, jugs, goblets, tankards, flasks, bottles, raining thick as hail, wounding them, bruising them, knocking out their eyes.

Ulenspiegel and Lamme came down at the tumult, leaving their trembling lovers above at the top of the ladder. When Ulenspiegel saw these men striking at the women, he took up a broom in the courtyard, tore away the twigs from the head, gave another to Lamme, and with them they beat the meesevangers without pity.

The game seemed hard to the drunkards; thus belaboured, they stopped for an instant, by which profited the thin girls who desired to sell themselves and not to give, even in this great day of love voluntary as Nature wills it. Like snakes they glided among the injured, caressed them, tended their wounds, drank wine of Amboise for them, and emptied so well their pouches of florins and other moneys, that they had left not a single liard. Then, as the curfew was ringing, they put them to the door through which Ulenspiegel and Lamme had already taken their way.

XXIX

Ulenspiegel and Lamme were marching towards Ghent and came at daybreak to Lokeren. The earth in the distance sweated dew; white cool mists glided along the meadows. Ulenspiegel, as he passed before a forge, whistled like the lark, the bird of liberty. And straightway appeared a head, tousled and white, at the door of the forge, and imitated the warlike clarion of the cock in a weak voice.

Ulenspiegel said to Lamme:

“This is the smitte Wasteele, who forges by day spades, mattocks, plough shares, hammering the iron when it is hot to fashion with it fine gratings for the choirs of churches, and oftentimes, at night, making and furbishing arms for the soldiers of freedom of conscience. He has not won the looks of health at this game, for he is pale as a ghost, sad as a damned soul, and so lean that his bones poke holes in his skin. He has not yet gone to rest, having doubtless toiled all night long.”

“Come in, both of you,” said the smitte Wasteele, “and lead your asses into the meadow behind the house.”

This being done, Lamme and Ulenspiegel being in the forge, the smitte Wasteele took down into a cellar of his house all the swords he had furbished and the lance heads he had cast during the night, and made ready the day’s work for his men.

Looking at Ulenspiegel with lack-lustre eye, he said to him:

“What news do you bring me from the Silent?”

“The prince has been driven out of the Low Countries with his army because of the misconduct of his mercenaries, who shout ‘Geld, Geld! money, money!’ when they ought to fight. He has gone away towards France with the faithful soldiers, his brother Count Ludovic and the Duke of Deux-Ponts, to help the King of Navarre and the Huguenots; from thence he passed over into Germany, to Dillenbourg, where many that have fled from the Low Countries are with him. You must send him arms and what money you have collected, while we, we shall ply the task of free men upon the sea.”

“I shall do what is to be done,” said the smitte Wasteele; “I have arms and nine thousand florins. But did you not come riding on asses?”

“Aye,” they said.

“And have you not, on your way, heard news of three preachers, slain and stripped and thrown into a hole among the rocks of the Meuse?”

“Aye,” said Ulenspiegel, with the utmost boldness, “these three preachers were three spies of the duke’s, assassins, paid to kill the prince of freedom. Together we two, Lamme and I, sent them from life to death. Their money is ours and their papers likewise. We shall take what we need from it for our journey; the rest we shall give to the prince.”

And Ulenspiegel, opening his own doublet and Lamme’s, pulled out from them papers and parchments. The smitte Wasteele having read them:

“They contain,” he said, “plans of battle and conspiracy. I will have them sent to the prince, and he will be told that Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak, his trusty vagabonds, saved his noble life. I will have your asses sold that you may not be recognized from your mounts.”

Ulenspiegel asked the smitte Wasteele if the sheriff’s court at Namur had already set their catchpolls on their track.

“I will tell you what I know,” replied Wasteele. “A smith of Namur, a stout reformer, passed through here the other day, under pretext of asking me to help him with the screens, weathercocks, and other ironwork of a castle that is to be built near the Plante. The usher of the sheriff’s court told him that his masters had already met, and that a tavern keeper had been summoned, because he lived a few hundred fathom from the place where the murder had taken place. Asked if he had seen the murderers or not, or any he might suspect as such, he had replied: ‘I saw country folk men and women travelling on donkeys, asking me for something to drink and staying seated on their mounts, or getting down to drink in my house, beer for the men, hydromel for the women and girls. I saw two bold rustics that talked of shortening Messire of Orange by a foot.’ And so saying, the host, whistling, imitated the sound of a knife going into the flesh of the neck. ‘By the Steel-wind,’ he said, ‘I will speak with you in private, being empowered to do so.’ He spoke and was released. From that time the councils of justice have without doubt sent despatches to their subordinate councils. The host said he had seen only country men and country women riding upon asses; it will therefore follow that pursuit will be directed against all persons that may be found bestriding a donkey. And the prince hath need of you, my children.”

“Sell the asses,” said Ulenspiegel, “and keep the price for the prince’s treasury.”

The asses were sold.

“You must now,” said Wasteele, “have each a trade free and independent of the guilds; do you know how to make bird cages and mouse traps?”

“I have made such long ago,” said Ulenspiegel.

“And thou?” asked Wasteele of Lamme.

“I will sell eete-koeken and olie-koeken; these are pancakes and balls of flour cooked in oil.”

“Follow me; here are cages and mouse traps all ready; the tools and copper filigree work also which are needed to mend them and to make others. They were brought me by one of my spies. This is for you, Ulenspiegel. As for you, Lamme, here is a little stove and a bellows; I will give you flour, butter, and oil to make the eete-koeken and the olie-koeken.”

“He will eat them,” said Ulenspiegel.

“When shall we make the first ones?” asked Lamme.

Wasteele replied:

“First ye shall help me for a night or two; I cannot finish my great task alone by myself.”

“I am hungry,” said Lamme, “can one eat here?”

“There is bread and cheese,” said Wasteele.

“No butter?” asked Lamme.

“No butter,” said Wasteele.

“Have you beer or wine?” asked Ulenspiegel.

“I never drink them,” he answered, “but I will go in het Pelicaen, close by here, and fetch some for you if you wish.”

“Aye,” said Lamme, “and bring us some ham.”

“I will do as you wish,” said Wasteele, looking at Lamme with great disdain.

All the same he brought dobbel-clauwert and a ham. And Lamme, full of joy, ate enough for five.

And he said:

“When do we set to work?”

“To-night,” said Wasteele; “but stay in the forge and do not be afraid of my workmen. They are of the Reformed faith like yourselves.”

“That is well,” said Lamme.

By night, the curfew having rung and the doors being shut, Wasteele, making Ulenspiegel and Lamme help him, going down and bringing up from his cellar heavy bundles of weapons:

“Here,” he said, “are twenty arquebuses to mend, thirty lance heads to furbish, and lead for fifteen hundred bullets to melt down; you shall help me with it.”

“With all my hands,” said Ulenspiegel, “and why have I not four to serve you?”

“Lamme will help us,” said Wasteele.

“Aye,” replied Lamme, piteously, and falling with drowsiness through excess of drink and food.

“You shall melt the lead,” said Ulenspiegel.

“I will melt the lead,” said Lamme.

Lamme, melting his lead and running his bullets, kept looking with a savage eye at the smitte Wasteele who was driving him to keep awake when he was dropping with sleep. He ran his bullets with a wordless fury, having a great longing to pour the molten lead on the head of Wasteele the smith. But he controlled himself. Towards midnight, his rage getting the better of him at the same time as excess of fatigue, he addressed him thus in a hissing voice, while the smitte Wasteele with Ulenspiegel was patiently furbishing musket barrels, muskets, and lance heads:

“There you are,” said Lamme, “meager, pale, and wretched, believing in the good faith of princes and the great ones of the earth, and disdaining, in an excessive zeal, your body, your noble body that you are leaving to perish in misery and humiliation. It was not for this that God made it with Dame Nature. Do you know that our soul which is the breath of life, needs, that it may breathe, beans, beef, beer, wine, ham, sausages, chitterlings, and rest; you, you live on bread, water, and watching.”

“Whence have you this talkative flow?” asked Ulenspiegel.

“He knows not what he says,” answered Wasteele, sadly.

But Lamme growing angry:

“I know better than you. I say that we are mad, I, you, and Ulenspiegel, to wear out our eyes for all these princes and great ones of the earth, who would laugh loudly at us if they saw us dying of weariness, losing our sleep to furbish up arms and cast bullets for their service while they drink French wine and eat German capons from golden tankards and dishes of English pewter; they will never ask whether, while we are seeking in the open wild the God by whose grace they have their power, their enemies are cutting off our limbs with their scythes and casting us into the well of death. They, in the meanwhile, who are neither Reformed, nor Calvinists, nor Lutherans, nor Catholics, but sceptics and doubters entirely, will buy or conquer principalities, will devour the wealth of the monks, abbeys, and convents, and will have all: virgins, wives, women and bona robas, and will drink from their gold cups to their perpetual jollity, and to our everlasting foolishness, simplicity, stupidity, and to the seven deadly sins which they commit, O smitte Wasteele, under the starveling nose of thy enthusiasm. Look upon the fields, the meads, look on the harvest, the orchards, the kine, the gold rising out of the earth; look at the wild things in the woods, the birds of the skies, delicious ortolans, delicate thrushes, wild boars’ heads, haunches of buck venison; all is theirs, hunting, fishing, earth, sea, everything. And you, you live on bread and water, and we are killing ourselves here for them, without sleep, without eating, and without drinking. And when we shall be dead they will fetch our carrion a kick and say to our mothers: ‘Make us more of these; those ones can do us no service now.’”

Ulenspiegel laughed and said nothing. Lamme breathed hard with indignation, but Wasteele, speaking in a gentle voice:

“Thou speakest but lightly,” said he. “I live not for ham, for beer, or for ortolans, but for the victory of freedom of conscience. The prince of freedom does even as I do. He sacrifices his wealth, his sleep and his happiness to drive out from the Low Countries the butchers and tyranny. Do as he does and try to grow thinner. ’Tis not by the belly that peoples can be saved, but by proud courage and fatigues endured even unto death without a murmur. And now go and lie down, if thou art sleepy.”

But Lamme would not, being ashamed.

And they furbished arms and cast bullets until it was morning, and thus for three days.

Then they departed for Ghent, by night, selling bird cages, mouse-traps, and olie-koekjes.

And they stopped at Meulestee, the little town of the mills, whose red roofs are seen everywhere, and there they agreed to carry on their trades apart and to meet each other at night before curfew in de Zwaen, at the Swan Inn.

Lamme wandered about the streets of Ghent selling olie-koekjes getting a liking for this trade, seeking for his wife, emptying many a quart pot and eating continually. Ulenspiegel had delivered letters from the prince to Jacob Scoelap, licentiate in medicine; to Lieven Smet, cloth seller; to Jan Wulfschaeger, to Gillis Coorne, the scarlet dyer, and to Jan de Roose, tile maker, who gave him the money harvested by them for the Prince, and bade him wait some days longer at Ghent and in the neighbourhood, and he would be given still more.

Those men having been hanged later on the New Gibbet for heresy, their bodies were buried in the Gallows Field, near the Bruges Gate.

XXX

Meanwhile, the provost Spelle le Roux, armed with his red wand, was hurrying from town to town on his lean horse, everywhere setting up scaffolds, lighting fires of execution, digging graves to bury poor women and girls alive in them. And the King inherited.

Ulenspiegel being at Meulestee with Lamme, under a tree, found himself full of weary lassitude. It was cold although the month was June. From the skies, laden with gray clouds, there fell a fine hail.

“My son,” said Lamme, “you are for the past four nights shamelessly running wild, gadding after the bona robas, you go to sleep in de Zoeten Inval, at the Sweet Fall; you will do like the man on the sign, falling head foremost into a hive of bees. Vainly do I wait for you in de Zwaen, and I draw evil forebodings from this liquorish living. Why do you not take a wife virtuously?”

“Lamme,” said Ulenspiegel, “he to whom one woman is all women, and to whom all women are one in this gentle combat that they call love, must not lightly rush upon his choice.”

“And Nele, do you not think at all on her?”

“Nele is at Damme, far away,” said Ulenspiegel.

While he was in this posture and the hail was falling thick, a young and pretty woman passed by, running and covering up her head in her petticoat.

“Eh,” said she, “dreamy one, what dost thou under that tree?”

“I am dreaming,” said Ulenspiegel, “of a woman that should make me a roof against the hail with her petticoat.”

“Thou hast found her,” said the woman. “Rise up.”

“Wilt thou leave me alone again?” said Lamme.

“Aye,” said Ulenspiegel, “but go in de Zwaen, eat a leg of mutton or two, drink a dozen tankards of beer; you will sleep and you will not be forlorn then.”

“I will do that,” said Lamme.

Ulenspiegel went up to the woman.

“Pick up my skirt on one side,” said she, “I will lift it on the other, and now let us run.”

“Why run?” asked Ulenspiegel.

“Because,” she said, “I am fain to flee from Meulestee; the provost Spelle is in it with two catchpolls and he has sworn to have all the light ladies whipped if they will not pay him five florins each. That is why I am running: run, too, and stay with me to defend me.”

“Lamme,” cried Ulenspiegel, “Spelle is in Meulestee. Go off and away to Destelberg, to the Star of the Wise Men.”

And Lamme, getting up affrighted, took his belly in both hands and began to run.

“Whither is this fat hare going?” said the girl.

“To a burrow where I shall find him again,” replied Ulenspiegel.

“Let us run,” said she, beating the ground with her foot like a restive filly.

“I would fain be virtuous without running,” said Ulenspiegel.

“What does that mean?” asked she.

Ulenspiegel made answer:

“The fat hare wants me to renounce good wine, cervoise ale, and the fresh skin of women.”

The girl looked at him with an ugly eye.

“Your breath is short; you must rest,” said she.

“Rest myself? I see no shelter,” replied Ulenspiegel.

“Your virtue,” said the girl, “will serve for a quilt.”

“I like your petticoat better,” said he.

“My petticoat,” said the girl, “would not be worthy to cover a saint such as you would fain be. Take yourself off that I may run alone.”

“Do you not know,” replied Ulenspiegel, “that a dog goes swifter with four feet than a man with two? And so, having four feet, we shall run better.”

“You have a lively tongue for a virtuous man.”

“Aye,” said he.

“But,” said she, “I have always observed that virtue is a quiet, sleepy, thick, and chilly quality. It is a mask to hide grumbling faces, a velvet cloak on a man of stone. I like men that have in their breast a stove well lighted with the fire of virility, which exciteth to valiant and gay enterprises.”

“It was ever thus,” replied Ulenspiegel, “that the lovely she-devil spake to the glorious Saint Anthony.”

There was an inn a score of paces from the road.

“You have spoken well,” said Ulenspiegel, “now you must drink well.”

“My tongue is still cool and fresh,” said the girl.

They went in. On a chest there slumbered a big jug nicknamed “belly,” because of its wide paunch.

Ulenspiegel said to the baes:

“Dost thou see this florin?”

“I see it,” said the baes.

“How many patards would thou extract from it to fill up that belly there with dobbel-clauwert?”

The baes said to him:

“With negen mannekens (nine little men), you will be clear.”

“That,” said Ulenspiegel, “is six Flanders mites, and overmuch by two mites. But fill it, anyhow.”

Ulenspiegel poured out a goblet for the woman, then rising up proudly and applying the beak of the belly to his mouth, he emptied it all every drop into his throat. And it was as the noise of a cataract.

The girl, dumbfounded, said to him:

“How did you manage to put so big a belly into your lean stomach?”

Without replying, Ulenspiegel said to the baes:

“Bring a knuckle of ham and some bread, and another full belly, that we may eat and drink.”

Which they did.

While the girl was munching a piece of the rind he took her so subtly, that she was startled, charmed, and compliant all at once.

Then questioning him:

“Whence,” she said, “have they come to your virtue, this thirst like a sponge, this wolf’s hunger, and these amorous audacities?”

Ulenspiegel replied:

“Having sinned a hundred ways, I swore, as you know, to do penance. That lasted a whole long hour. Thinking during that hour upon my life that was to come, I saw myself fed meagrely on bread, dully refreshed with water; sadly fleeing from love; daring neither to move nor sneeze, for fear to commit wickedness; esteemed by all, feared by each; alone like a leper; sad as a dog orphaned of his master, and after fifty years of martyrdom, ending by undergoing my death in melancholy fashion on a pallet. The penance was long enough: so kiss me, my darling, and let us go out from purgatory together.”

“Ah!” said she, obeying cheerfully, “what a good sign virtue is to put on the end of a pole!”

Time passed in these amorous doings; nevertheless they must needs rise and go, for the girl feared to see in the midst of their pleasure the provost Spelle suddenly appear with his catchpolls.

“Truss up thy petticoat then,” said Ulenspiegel.

And they ran like stags towards Destelberg, where they found Lamme eating at the Star of the Three Wise Men.

XXXI

Ulenspiegel often saw at Ghent, Jacob Scoelap, Lieven Smet, and Jan de Wulfschaeger, who gave him news of the good or bad fortune of the Silent.

And every time that Ulenspiegel came back to Destelberg, Lamme said to him:

“What do you bring? Good luck or bad luck?”

“Alas!” said Ulenspiegel, “the Silent, his brother Ludwig, the other chiefs and the Frenchmen were determined to go farther into France and join with the Prince of Condé. Thus they would save the poor Belgian fatherland and freedom of conscience. God willed it otherwise; the German reiters and landsknechts refused to go farther, and said their oath was to go against the Duke of Alba and not against France. Having vainly entreated them to do their duty, the Silent was forced to take them through Champagne and Lorraine as far as Strasbourg, whence they went back into Germany. All has gone awry through this sudden and obstinate departure: the King of France, despite his contract with the prince, refuses to give over the money he promised; the Queen of England would have sent him money to get back the town and the district of Calais; her letters were intercepted and despatched to the Cardinal at Lorraine, who forged an answer in the contrary sense.

“Thus we see melt away, like ghosts at the crowing of the cock, that goodly army, our hope; but God is with us, and if the earth fail us, the water will do its work. Long live the Beggar!”

XXXII

The girl came one day, all weeping, to say to Lamme and to Ulenspiegel:

“Spelle is allowing murderers and robbers in Meulestee to escape for money. He is putting the innocent to death. My brother Michielkin is among them. Alas! Let me tell you, ye will avenge him, being men. A vile and infamous debauchee, Pieter de Roose, an habitual seducer of children and girls, does all the harm. Alas! my poor brother Michielkin and Pieter de Roose were one evening, but not at the same table, in the tavern of the Valck, where Pieter de Roose was avoided by every one like the plague.

“My brother, not willing to see him in the same room as himself, called him a lecherous blackguard, and ordered him to purge the chamber of his presence.

“Pieter de Roose replied:

“‘The brother of a public baggage has no need to show such a lofty nose.’

“He lied. I am not public, and give myself only to whomsoever I please.’

“Michielkin, then, flinging his quart of cervoise ale in his face, told him he had lied like the filthy debauchee that he was, threatening, if he did not decamp, to make him eat his fist up to the elbow.

“The other would have talked more, but Michielkin did what he had said: he gave him two great blows on the jaw and dragged him by the teeth, with which he was biting, out on to the road, where he left him battered and bruised, without pity.

“Pieter de Roose, being healed, and unable to live a solitary life, went in ’t Vagevuur, a veritable purgatory and a gloomy tavern, where there were none but poor people. There also he was left to himself, even by all those ragamuffins. And no man spoke to him, save a few country folk to whom he was unknown, and a few wandering rogues, or deserters from some troop or other. He was even beaten there several times, for he was quarrelsome.

“The provost Spelle had come to Meulestee with two catchpolls, and Pieter de Roose followed them everywhere about like a dog, filling them up at his expense with wine, with meat, and many other pleasures that are bought with money. And so he became their companion and their comrade, and he began to do his wicked best to torment all he hated; which was all the inhabitants of Meulestee, but especially my poor brother.