The Legend of Ulenspiegel. Volume 1 of 2

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.