And he seemed cheerful, and they came to the ship.
Ulenspiegel gave Lamme the keys of the cage, and he opened it; hetried to pull the monk out on the deck by the ear, but he could not;he tried to fetch him out sideways, he could not do that, either.
"We must break all; the capon is fattened," said he.
The monk then came forth, rolling about big daunted eyes, holdinghis paunch with both hands, and fell down on his seat because of agreat wave that passed beneath the ship.
And Lamme, speaking to the monk:
"Wilt thou still say, 'big man'? Thou art bigger than I. Who madethee seven meals a day? I. Whence cometh it, bawler, that now thouart quieter, milder towards the poor Beggars?"
And continuing further:
"If thou dost stay another year encaged, thou wilt not be able tocome out again: thy cheeks quiver like pork jelly when thou dost move:thou criest no longer already; soon thou wilt not be able to breathe."
"Hold thy peace, big man," said the monk.
"Big man," said Lamme, becoming furious; "I am Lamme Goedzak, thou artBroer Dikzak, Vetzak, Leugenzak, Slokkenzak, Wulpszak, the friar bigsack, grease sack, lying sack, cram sack, lust sack: thou hast fourfingers deep of fat under thy skin, thy eyes can be seen no longer:Ulenspiegel and I would both lodge comfortably within the cathedralof thy belly! Thou didst call me big man; wilt thou have a mirrorto study thy Bellyness? 'Tis I that fed thee, thou monument of fleshand bone. I have sworn that thou wouldst spit grease, sweat grease,and leave behind thee spots of grease like a candle melting in thesun. They say that apoplexy cometh with the seventh chin; thou hastfive and a half by now."
Then to the Beggars:
"Look at this lecher! 'tis Broer Cornelis Adriaensen Rascalsen,of Bruges: there he preached the new modesty. His grease is hispunishment; his grease is my work. Hear now, all ye sailors andsoldiers: I am about to leave you, to leave thee, thee, Ulenspiegel,to leave thee, too, thee, little Nele, to go to Flushing where I haveproperty, to live there with my poor wife that I have found again. Ofyore ye took an oath to grant me all that I might ask of you...."
"On the word of the Beggars," said they.
"Then," said Lamme, "look on this lecher, this Broer AdriaensenRascalsen of Bruges; I swore to make him die of fatness like a hog;construct a wider cage, force him to take twelve meals a day instead ofseven; give him a rich and sugared diet: he is like an ox already; seethat he be like an elephant, and ye will soon see him fill the cage."
"We shall fatten him," said they.
"And now," went on Lamme, speaking to the monk, "I bid thee also adieu,rascal, thee whom I cause to be fed monkishly instead of having theehanged: grow in grease and in apoplexy."
Then taking his wife Calleken in his arms:
"Look, growl or bellow, I take her from thee; thou shalt whip hernever more."
But the monk, falling in a fury and speaking to Calleken:
"Thou art going away then, carnal woman, to the bed of lust! Aye,thou goest without pity for the poor martyr for the word of God, thattaught thee the holy, sweet, celestial discipline. Be accursed! May nopriest give thee absolution; may earth be burning underneath thy feet;may sugar be salt to thee; may beef be as dead dog to thee; may thybread be ashes; may the sun be ice to thee, and the snow hell fire;may thy child-bearing be accursed; may thy children be detestable;may they have the bodies of apes, pigs' heads greater than theirbellies; mayst thou suffer, weep, moan in this world and in the other,in the hell that awaits thee, the hell of sulphur and bitumen kindledfor females such as thou art. Thou didst refuse my fatherly love:be thrice accursed by the Blessed Trinity, seven times accursed bythe candlesticks of the Ark; may confession be to thee damnation;may the Host to thee be mortal poison, and may every paving stone inthe church rise up to crush thee and say to thee: 'This woman is thefornicator, this woman is accursed, this woman is damned'."
And Lamme, rejoicing, jumping for joy, said:
"She was faithful; he said it, the monk: hurrah for Calleken!"
But she, weeping and trembling:
"Remove it," she said, "my man, remove this curse from over me. Isee hell! Remove the curse!"
"Take off the curse," said Lamme.
"I will not, big man," rejoined the monk.
And the woman remained all pale and swooning, and on her knees withhands folded she besought Broer Adriaensen.
And Lamme said to the monk:
"Take off thy curse, else thou shalt hang, and if the rope breaksbecause of thy weight, thou shalt be hanged again and again untildeath ensues."
"Hanged and hanged again," said the Beggars.
"Then," said the monk to Calleken, "go, wanton, go with this big man;go, I lift my curse from thee, but God and all the saints will havetheir eyes upon thee; go with this big man, go."
And he held his peace, sweating and puffing.
Suddenly Lamme cried out:
"He puffs, he puffs! I see the sixth chin; at the seventh 'tisapoplexy! And now," said he to the Beggars:
"I commend you to God, thou Ulenspiegel; to God, you all my goodfriends, to God, thou Nele; to God the holy inspirer of liberty:I can do no more for her cause."
Then having given all and taken from all the kiss of parting, he saidto his wife Calleken:
"Come, it is the hour for lawful loves."
While the boat was slipping over the water, carrying off Lamme andhis beloved, he in the stern, soldiers, sailors, and cabin boys allcalled out, waving their caps: "Adieu, brother; adieu, Lamme; adieu,brother, brother and friend."
And Nele said to Ulenspiegel, taking a tear from out the corner ofhis eye with her dainty finger:
"Thou art sad, my beloved?"
"He was a good fellow," said he.
"Ah!" said she, "this war will never end; shall we be forced to liveforever in blood and in tears?"
"Let us seek out the Seven," said Ulenspiegel: "it draws nigh, thehour of deliverance."
Following Lamme's behest, the Beggars fattened the monk in hiscage. When he was set at liberty, in consideration of ransom,he weighed three hundred and seventeen pounds and five ounces,Flemish weight.
And he died prior of his convent.
VIII
At this time the States General assembled at The Hague to passjudgment upon Philip, King of Spain, Count of Flanders, of Holland,etc., according to the charters and privileges consented to by him.
And the clerk of the court spake as follows:
"It is to all men of common knowledge that a prince of any land soever is established by God as sovereign and chief of his subjects thathe may defend them and preserve them from all wrong, oppression, andviolence, even as a shepherd is ordained for the defence and keeping ofhis sheep. It is in like manner known that subjects are not created byGod for the use of the prince, to be obedient unto him in whatsoeverhe commandeth, be it seemly or unseemly, just or unjust, nor to servein the manner of slaves. But the prince is a prince for his subjects,without which he could not be, to govern them in accordance with rightand reason, to maintain and love them as a father doth his children,as a shepherd doth his sheep, hazarding his life to defend them; if hedoth not so, he must needs be held for no prince but a tyrant. Philipthe king hath launched upon us, by calling up of soldiers, by bulls ofcrusade and of excommunication, four armies of foreigners. What shallbe his punishment, by virtue of the laws and customs of the country?"
"Let him be deposed," replied the States.
"Philip hath played false to his oaths: he hath forgot the serviceswe rendered him, the victories we aided him to win. Seeing that wewere rich, he left us to be pillaged and put to ransom by the Councilof Spain."
"Let him be deposed as ungrateful and a robber," replied the States.
"Philip," the clerk went on, "placed in the most powerful citiesof these countries new bishops, endowing and presenting them withthe goods of the greatest abbeys; and by the help of these men heintroduced the Spanish Inquisition."
"Let him be deposed as a murderer, the squande
rer of others' wealth,"replied the States.
"The nobles of these countries, seeing this tyranny, presented in theyear 1566 a request wherein they entreated the sovereign to moderatethe rigour of his edicts and in especial those which concerned theInquisition: he consistently refused this."
"Let him be deposed as a tiger abandoned and obstinate in his cruelty,"replied the States.
The clerk continued:
"Philip is strongly suspected of having, through the intermediaryof his Council of Spain, secretly inspired the image-breakings andthe sacking of churches, in order to be able, under the pretextof suppressing crime and disorder, to send foreign armies to marchagainst us."
"Let him be deposed as an instrument of death," replied the States.
"At Antwerp Philip caused the inhabitants to be massacred, ruinedthe Flemish merchants and the foreign merchants. He and his Councilof Spain gave a certain Rhoda, a notorious scoundrel, the right bysecret instructions to declare himself the head of the pillagers, toharvest the booty, to employ his name, the name of Philip the king, tocounterfeit his seals and counterseals, and to comport himself at hisgovernor and his lieutenant. The royal letters, which were interceptedand are in our hands, prove this to be the fact. All took place withhis consent and after deliberation in the Council of Spain. Read hisletters; therein he praises the feat of Antwerp, acknowledges that hehath received a signal service, promises to reward it, enjoins Rhodaand the other Spaniards to continue to walk in this path of glory."
"Let him be deposed as a robber, pillager, and murderer," repliedthe States.
"We ask for nothing more than the maintenance of our privileges, asincere and assured peace, a moderate freedom, especially with regardto religion which principally concerns God and man's own conscience:we had nothing from Philip but deceitful treaties serving to sowdiscord between the provinces, to subdue them one after another andto treat them in the same way as the Indies, by pillage, confiscation,executions, and the Inquisition."
"Let him be deposed as an assassin premeditating the murder of acountry," replied the States.
"He made the country bleed through the Duke of Alba and his catchpolls,through Medina-Coeli, Requesens, the traitors of the Councils of Stateand of the provinces; he enjoined a vigorous and bloody severity uponDon Juan and Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma (as may be seen by hisintercepted letters); he set the ban of the empire upon Monseigneurd'Orange, paid the hire of three assassins before paying a fourth;erected castles and fortresses among us; had men burned alive, womenand girls buried alive; inherited their goods, strangled Montigny,de Berghes, and other lords, despite his kingly word; killed hisson Carlos; poisoned the Prince of Ascoly, whom he made espouseDona Eufrasia, with child by himself, in order to enrich with hisestates the bastard that was to come; launched an edict against usthat declared us all traitors, that had forfeited our bodies andour wealth, and committed the crime unheard of in a Christian land,of confounding innocent and guilty."
"By all laws, rights, and privileges, let him be deposed," repliedthe States.
And the king's seals were broken.
And the sun shown on land and sea, gilding the ripened ears, mellowingthe grape, casting pearls on every wave, the adornment of the brideof the Netherlands, Liberty.
Then the Prince of Orange, being at Delft, was stricken down bya fourth assassin, with three bullets in his breast. And he died,following his motto: "Calm amid the wild waves."
His enemies said of him that to thwart King Philip, and not hopingto rule over the Southern Low Countries, which were Catholic, he hadoffered them by a secret treaty to Monseigneur Monsieur Sa GrandeAltesse of Anjou. But Anjou was not born to beget the babe Belgiumupon Liberty, who loveth not perverse amours.
And Ulenspiegel left the fleet with Nele.
And the fatherland Belgium groaned beneath the yoke, fast boundby traitors.
IX
They were then in the month of the ripened grain; the air was heavy,the wind was warm: the reapers, both men and women, could gather inat their ease in the fields, under the free sky, upon a free soil,the corn they had sown.
Frisia, Drenthe, Overyssel, Guelderland, North Brabant, North and SouthHolland, Walcheren, North and South Beveland; Duiveland and Schouwenthat make up Zealand; all the shores of the North Sea from Knokke toHelder; the islands of Texel, Vieland, Ameland, Schiermonk-Oog, were,from the western Scheldt to the eastern Ems, about to be freed from theSpanish yoke; Maurice, the son of the Silent, was continuing the war.
Ulenspiegel and Nele, having their youth, their strength, and theirbeauty, for the love and the spirit of Flanders grow never old, wereliving snugly in the tower of Neere, waiting till, after many hardtrials, they could come and breathe the air of freedom upon Belgiumthe fatherland.
Ulenspiegel had asked to be appointed commandant and warden of thetower, saying that having an eagle's eyes and a hare's ears, he couldsee if the Spaniard would not attempt to show himself once more inthe delivered countries, and that in that case he would sound wacharm,which is the alarm in the speech of Flanders.
The magistrate did as Ulenspiegel wished: because of his good servicehe was given a florin a day, two quarts of beer, beans, cheese,biscuit, and three pounds of beef every week.
Thus Ulenspiegel and Nele lived very well by themselves two: seeingfrom afar, with rejoicing, the free isles of Zealand: near at hand,woods, castles, fortresses, and the armed ships of the Beggars guardingthe coasts.
At night they often climbed up on the tower, and there, sitting on theplatform, they talked of hard battles and goodly loves past and tocome. Thence they beheld the sea, which in this time of heat surgedand broke upon the shore in luminous waves, casting them upon theislands like phantoms of fire. And Nele was affrighted to see thejack o'lanterns in the polders, for, said she, they are the soulsof the poor dead. And all these places had been battle-fields. Thewill o' the wisps swept out from the polders, ran along the dykes,then came back into the polders as though they had no mind to abandonthe bodies whence they had issued.
One night Nele said to Ulenspiegel:
"See how thick they are in Duiveland and how high they fly: 'tis by theisle of birds I see the most. Wilt thou come thither, Thyl? We shalltake the balsam that discloseth things hid from the eyes of mortals."
Ulenspiegel answered her:
"If it is the same balsam that wafted me to that great sabbath,I trow in it no more than a hollow dream."
"Thou must not," said Nele, "deny the potency of charms. Come,Ulenspiegel."
"I shall come."
The next day he asked the magistrate that a clear-sighted and trustysoldier should take his place, to guard the tower and keep watch overthe country.
And with Nele he went his way to the isle of birds.
Going across fields and dykes, they beheld little green lush islets,between which ran the sea water; and upon the slopes of green swardthat came down to the very dunes an immense concourse of plovers, ofsea mews and sea swallows, that stayed motionless and made the isletsall white with their bodies; overhead circled and flew thousandsof the same. The ground was full of nests: Ulenspiegel, stoopingto pick up an egg upon the way, saw a sea mew come flitting to him,uttering a cry. At his appeal there came more than a hundred others,crying with grief and fear, hovering above Ulenspiegel and over theneighbour nests, but they did not venture to come close to him.
"Ulenspiegel," said Nele, "these birds beg grace for their eggs."
Then falling a-tremble, she said:
"I am afeared; there is the sun setting; the sky is white, the starsawaken; 'tis the spirits' hour. See these red exhalations, glidingalong the earth; Thyl, my beloved, what monster of hell is thus openinghis fiery mouth in the mist? See from the side of Philip's land, wherethe butcher king twice for his cruel ambition slaughtered so many poormen, see the dancing will-o'-the-wisps: 'tis the night when the soulsof poor folk slain in battle quit the cold limbo of purgatory to comeand be warmed again in the soft air of the earth: 'tis the hour whenthou mays
t ask aught of Christ, who is the God of good magicians."
"The ashes beat upon my heart," said Ulenspiegel. "If Christ couldshow me these Seven whose ashes cast to the wind were to make Flandersand the whole world happy!"
"Man of little faith," said Nele, "thou wilt see them by virtue ofthe balsam."
"Perchance," said Ulenspiegel, pointing to Sirius with a finger,"if some spirit descends from the cold star."
At his movement a will-o'-the-wisp flitting about him perched on hisfinger, and the more he sought to be rid of it, the tighter it clung.
Nele trying to set Ulenspiegel free, she, too, had her will-o'-the-wispon the tip of her hand.
Ulenspiegel, striking at his, said:
"Answer! art thou the spirit of a Beggar or of a Spaniard? If thou bethe soul of a Beggar, depart into paradise; if the soul of a Spaniard,return into hell whence thou comest."
Nele said to him:
"Do not insult souls, were they even the souls of butchers."
And making the will-o'-the-wisp dance on her finger tip:
"Wisp," said she, "dear wisp, what tidings dost thou bring us fromthe country of souls? What are they employed in over there? Do theyeat and drink, since they have no mouths? for thou hast none, darlingwisp! or do they indeed take human shape only in the blessed paradise?"
"Canst thou," said Ulenspiegel, "waste time in this fashion conversingwith this wretched flame that hath neither ears to hear thee withnor mouth to answer thee withal?"