XVIII

A sharp wind was blowing. The sun, bright as youth in the morning, was veiled and gray as an old man. A rain mixed with hail was falling.

The rain having ceased, Ulenspiegel shook himself, saying:

“The sky that drinks up so much mist must relieve itself sometimes.”

Another rain, still more mingled with hail than the former, beat down on the two companions. Lamme groaned:

“We were well washed, now we must needs be rinsed!”

The sun reappeared, and they rode on gaily.

A third rain fell, so full of hail and so deadly that like knives it chopped the dry twigs on the trees to mincemeat.

Lamme said:

“Ho! a roof! My poor wife! Where are ye, good fire, soft kisses, and fat soups?”

And he wept, the great fellow.

But Ulenspiegel:

“We bemoan ourselves,” said he, “is it not from ourselves none the less that our woes come on us? It is raining on our backs, but this December rain will make the clover of May. And the kine will low for pleasure. We are without a shelter, but why did we never marry? I mean myself, with little Nele, so pretty and so kind, who would now give me a good stew of beef and beans to eat. We are thirsty in spite of the water that is falling; why did we not make ourselves workmen steady in one condition? Those who are received as masters in their trade have in their cellars full casks of bruinbier.”

The ashes of Claes beat upon his heart, the sky became clear, the sun shone out in it, and Ulenspiegel said:

“Master Sun, thanks be unto you, you warm our loins again; ashes of Claes, ye warm our heart once more, and tell us that blessed are they that are wanderers for the sake of the deliverance of the land of our fathers.”

“I am hungry,” said Lamme.

XIX

They came into an inn, where they were served with supper in an upper chamber. Ulenspiegel, opening the windows, saw from thence a garden in which a comely girl was walking, plump, round bosomed, with golden hair, and clad only in a petticoat, a jacket of white linen, and an apron of black stuff, full of holes.

Chemises and other woman’s linen was bleaching on cords: the girl, still turned towards Ulenspiegel, was taking chemises down from the lines, and putting them back and smiling and still looking at him, and sat down on linen bands, swinging on the two ends knotted together.

Near by Ulenspiegel heard a cock crowing and saw a nurse playing with a child whose face she turned towards a man that was standing, saying:

“Boelkin, look nicely at papa!”

The child wept.

And the pretty girl continued to walk about in the garden, displacing and replacing the linen.

“She is a spy,” said Lamme.

The girl put her hands before her eyes, and smiling between her fingers, looked at Ulenspiegel.

Then pressing up her two breasts with her hands, she let them fall back, and swung again without her feet touching the ground. And the linen, unwinding itself, made her turn like a top, while Ulenspiegel saw her arms, bare to the shoulders, white and round in the pallid sunshine. Turning and smiling, she kept always looking at him. He went out to find her. Lamme followed him. At the hedge of the garden he searched for an opening to pass through, but found none.

The girl, seeing what he was doing, looked again, smiling between her fingers.

Ulenspiegel tried to break through the hedge, while Lamme, holding him back, said to him:

“Do not go there; she is a spy, we shall be burned.”

Then the girl walked about the garden, covering up her face with her apron, and looking through the holes to see if her chance friend would not be coming soon.

Ulenspiegel was going to leap over the hedge with a running jump, but he was prevented by Lamme, who caught hold of him by the leg and made him fall, saying:

“Rope, sword, and gallows, ’tis a spy, do not go there.”

Sitting on the ground, Ulenspiegel struggled against him. The girl cried out, pushing up her head above the hedge:

“Adieu, Messire, may Love keep your Longanimousness hanging!”

And he heard a burst of mocking laughter.

“Ah!” said he, “it is in my ears like a packet of pins!”

Then a door shut noisily.

And he was melancholy.

Lamme said to him, still holding him:

“You are counting over the sweet treasures of beauty thus lost to your shame. ’Tis a spy. You fall in luck when you fall. I am going to burst with laughing.”

Ulenspiegel said not a word, and both got up on their asses once more.

XX

They went on their way each well astride his ass.

Lamme, chewing the cud of his last meat, sniffed up the cool air rejoicing. Suddenly Ulenspiegel fetched him a great stinging slash of his whip on his behind, which was like a cushion in the saddle.

“What are you doing?” cried Lamme, piteously.

“What!” answered Ulenspiegel.

“This lash with the whip?” said Lamme.

“What lash with the whip?”

“The one I got from you,” returned Lamme.

“On the left?” asked Ulenspiegel.

“Aye, on the left and on my behind. Why did you do that, scandalous vagabond?”

“In ignorance,” replied Ulenspiegel. “I know well enough what a whip is, and very well, too, what a behind of small compass is upon a saddle. But seeing this one wide, swollen, tight, and overflowing the saddle, I said to myself: ‘Since it could never be pinched with a finger, a stroke of the whip could not sting it either with the lash.’ I was wrong.”

Lamme smiling at this speech, Ulenspiegel went on in these terms:

“But I am not the only one in this world to sin through ignorance, and there is more than one past-master idiot displaying his fat on a donkey saddle who could give me points. If my whip sinned on your behind, you sinned much more weightily on my legs in preventing them from running after the girl who was coquetting in her garden.”

“Crow’s meat!” said Lamme, “so it was revenge then?”

“Just a little one,” replied Ulenspiegel.

XXI

At Damme Nele the unhappy lived alone with Katheline who still for love called the cold devil who never came.

“Ah!” she would say, “thou art rich, Hanske my darling, and mightest bring me back the seven hundred carolus. Then would Soetkin come back alive from limbo to this earth, and Claes would laugh in the sky: well canst thou do this. Take away the fire, the soul would fain come out; make a hole, the soul would fain come out.”

And without ceasing she pointed her finger to the place where the tow had been.

Katheline was very poor, but the neighbours helped her with beans, with bread and meat according to their means. The commune gave her some money. And Nele sewed dresses for rich women in the town; went to their houses to iron their linen, and in this way earned a florin a week.

And Katheline still repeated:

“Make a hole; take away my soul. It knocks to get out. He will give back the seven hundred carolus.”

And Nele, listening to her, wept.

XXII

Meanwhile, Ulenspiegel and Lamme, armed with their passes, came to a little inn backed up against the rocks of the Sambre, which in certain places are covered with trees. And on the sign there was written: Chez Marlaire.

Having drunk many a flask of Meuse wine of the fashion of Burgundy and eaten much fish, they gossiped with the host, a Papist of the deepest dye, but as talkative as a magpie through the wine he had drunk and all the time winking an eye cunningly. Ulenspiegel, divining some mystery under this winking, made him drink more, so much that the host began to dance and burst out into laughter, then returning to the table:

“Good Catholics,” he said, “I drink to you.”

“To you we drink,” replied Lamme and Ulenspiegel.

“To the extinction of all plague, of rebellion and heresy.”

“We drink,” replied Lamme and Ulenspiegel, who kept replenishing the goblet the host could never allow to stay full.

“You are good fellows,” said he. “I drink to your Generosities; I make a profit on wine drunk. Where are your passes?”

“Here they are,” answered Ulenspiegel.

“Signed by the duke,” said the host. “I drink to the duke.”

“To the duke we drink,” replied Lamme and Ulenspiegel. The host, continuing:

“How do we catch rats, mice, and field mice? In rat-traps, snares, and mouse-traps. Who is the field mouse? ’Tis the great heretic Orange as hellfire. God is with us. They are coming. Hé! hé! Something to drink! Pour out, I am roasting, burning. To drink! Most goodly little reforming preachers… I say little … goodly little gallants, stout troopers, oak trees… Drink! Will you not go with them to the great heretic’s camp? I have passes signed by him. Ye shall see their work.”

“We shall go to the camp,” answered Ulenspiegel.

“They will get there all right, and by night if an opportunity offers” (and the host, whistling, made the gesture of a man cutting a throat). “Steel-wind will stop the blackbird Nassau from ever whistling again. Come on, something to drink, hey!”

“You are a gay fellow, even though you are married,” replied Ulenspiegel.

Said the host:

“I neither was nor am. I hold the secrets of princes. Drink up! My wife would steal them from my pillow to have me hanged and to be a widow sooner than Nature means it. Vive Dieu! they are coming … where are the new passes? On my Christian heart. Let us drink! They are there, three hundred paces along the road, at Marche-les-Dames. Do ye see them? Let us drink!”

“Drink,” said Ulenspiegel. “I drink to the king, to the duke, to the preachers, to Steel-wind; I drink to you, to me; I drink to the wine and to the bottle. You are not drinking.” And at every health Ulenspiegel filled up his glass and the host emptied it.

Ulenspiegel studied him for some time; then rising up:

“He is asleep,” said he; “let us go, Lamme.”

When they were outside:

“He has no wife to betray us… The night is about to come down… You heard clearly what this rogue said, and you know who the three preachers are?”

“Aye,” said Lamme.

“You know they are coming from Marche-les-Dames, along by the Meuse, and it will be well to wait for them on the way before Steel-wind blows.”

“Aye,” said Lamme.

“We must save the prince’s life,” said Ulenspiegel.

“Aye,” said Lamme.

“Here,” said Ulenspiegel, “take my musket; go there into the underwoods between the rocks; load it with two bullets and fire when I croak like a crow.”

“I will,” said Lamme.

And he disappeared into the undergrowth. And Ulenspiegel soon heard the creak of the lock of the musket.

“Do you see them coming?” said he.

“I see them,” replied Lamme. “They are three, marching like soldiers, and one of them overtops the others by the head.”

Ulenspiegel sat down on the road, his legs out in front of him, murmuring prayers on a rosary, as beggars do. And he had his bonnet between his knees.

When the three preachers passed by, he held out his bonnet to them, but they put nothing in.

Then rising, Ulenspiegel said piteously:

“Good sirs, refuse not a patard to a poor workman, a porter who lately cracked his loins falling into a mine. They are hard folk in this country, and they would give me nothing to relieve my wretched plight. Alas! give me a patard, and I will pray for you. And God will keep Your Magnanimities in joy throughout all their lives.”

“My son,” said one of the preachers, a fine robust fellow, “there will be no joy more for us in this world so long as the Pope and the Inquisition reign therein.”

Ulenspiegel sighed also, saying:

“Alas! what are you saying, my masters! Speak low, if it please Your Graces. But give me a patard.”

“My son,” replied a preacher who had a warrior-like face, “we others, poor martyrs, we have no patards beyond what we need to sustain life on our journey.”

Ulenspiegel threw himself on his knees.

“Bless me,” said he.

The three preachers stretched out their hands over Ulenspiegel’s head with no devoutness.

Remarking that they were lean men, and yet had fine paunches, he got up again, pretended to fall, and striking his forehead against the tall preacher’s belly, he heard therein a gay clink and tinkle of money.

Then drawing himself up and drawing his bragmart:

“My goodly fathers,” said he, “it is chilly weather and I am lightly clad; you are clad overly much. Give me your wool that I may cut myself a cloak out of it. I am a Beggar. Long live the Beggars!”

The tall preacher replied:

“My Beggar-cock, you carry your comb too high; we shall cut it for you.”

“Cut it!” said Ulenspiegel, drawing back, “but Steel-wind shall blow for you before ever it blows for the prince. Beggar I am; long live the Beggars!”

The three preachers, dumbfounded, said one to another:

“Whence does he know this news? We are betrayed! Slay! Long live the Mass!”

And they drew from under their hose fine bragmarts, well sharpened.

But Ulenspiegel, without waiting for them, gave ground towards that side of the brushwood where Lamme was hidden. Judging that the preachers were within musket range, he said:

“Crows, black crows, Lead-wind is about to blow. I sing for your finish.”

And he croaked.

A musket shot, from out of the brushwood, knocked over the tallest of the preachers with his face to the ground, and was followed by a second shot which stretched the second on the road.

And Ulenspiegel saw amid the brush Lamme’s good visage, and his arm up hastily recharging his arquebus.

And a blue smoke rose up above the black brushwood.

The third preacher, furious with rage, would fain by main force have cut down Ulenspiegel, who said:

“Steel-wind or Lead-wind, thou art about to go over from this world to the other, foul artificer of murders!”

And he attacked him, and he defended himself bravely.

And they both remained standing face to face stiffly upon the highway, delivering and parrying blows. Ulenspiegel was all bloody, for his opponent, a tough soldier, had wounded him in the head and the leg. But he attacked and defended like a lion. As the blood that flowed from his head blinded him, he broke ground continually with great strides, wiped it off with his left hand and felt himself grow weak. He was like to be killed had not Lamme fired on the preacher and brought him down.

And Ulenspiegel saw and heard him belch forth blasphemy, blood, and deathfoam.

And the blue smoke rose up above the black brushwood, amidst of which Lamme showed his good face once more.

“Is that all over?” said he.

“Aye, my son,” answered Ulenspiegel. “But come…”

Lamme, coming out of his niche, saw Ulenspiegel all covered with blood. Then running like a stag, in spite of his belly, he came to Ulenspiegel, seated on the earth beside the slain men.

“He is wounded,” said he, “my friend, wounded by that murdering rascal.” And with a kick from his heel he broke in the teeth of the nearest preacher.

“You do not answer, Ulenspiegel! Are you going to die, my son? Where is that balsam? Ha! in the bottom of his satchel, under the sausages. Ulenspiegel, do you not hear me? Alas! I have no warm water to wash your wound, nor any way to have it. But the water of the Sambre will serve. Speak to me, my friend. You are not so terribly wounded, in any case. A little water, there, very cold water, is it not? He awakes. ’Tis I, thy friend: they are all dead! Linen! linen to tie up his hurts. There is none. My shirt then.” He took off his doublet. And Lamme continuing his discourse: “In pieces, shirt! The blood is stopping. My friend will not die.”

“Ha!” he said, “how cold it is, bareback in this keen air. Let us reclothe ourselves. He will not die. ’Tis I, Ulenspiegel, I thy friend Lamme. He smiles. I shall despoil the assassins. They have bellies of florins. Gilded entrails, carolus, florins, daelders, patards, and letters! We are rich. More than three hundred carolus to share. Let us take the arms and the money. Steel-wind will not blow as yet for Monseigneur.”

Ulenspiegel, his teeth chattering from the cold, rose up.

“There you are on your feet,” said Lamme.

“That is the might of the balsam,” replied Ulenspiegel.

“The balsam of valiancy,” answered Lamme.

Then taking the bodies of the three preachers one by one, he cast them into a hole among the rocks, leaving them their weapons and their clothes, all save their cloaks.

And all about them in the sky croaked the ravens, awaiting their food.

And the Sambre rolled along like a river of steel under the gray sky.

And the snow fell, washing the blood away.

And they were nevertheless troubled. And Lamme said:

“I would rather kill a chicken than a man.”

And they mounted their asses again.

At the gates of Huy the blood was still flowing; they pretended to fall into quarrel together, got down from their asses, and fenced and foined with their daggers most cruelly to behold; then having brought the combat to an end, they mounted again and entered into Huy, showing their passes at the gates of the city.

The women seeing Ulenspiegel wounded and bleeding, and Lamme playing the victor upon his ass, they looked on Ulenspiegel with pity and showed their fists at Lamme saying: “That one is the rascal that wounded his friend.”

Lamme, uneasy, only sought among them whether he did not see his wife.

It was in vain, and he was plunged in melancholy.