Ulenspiegel and Lamme came to the place called Minne-Water, Love-Water; but the great doctors and Wysneusen Pedants say it is Minre-Water, Minim-Water. Ulenspiegel and Lamme sat down upon the brink, seeing pass by beneath the trees all leafy down to their very heads, like a low roof, men, women, girls, and boys, hand in hand, garlanded with flowers, walking hip to hip, looking tenderly in one another’s eyes, without seeing anything in this world but themselves.

Ulenspiegel, thinking of Nele, gazed at them. In his melancholy, he said:

“Let us go drink.”

But Lamme, not hearkening Ulenspiegel, also looked upon the pairs of lovers:

“In the old days we, too, used to pass, my wife and I, loving each other under the eyes of those who like you and me, on the edge of ditches, were stretched out solitary and without a woman.”

“Come and drink,” said Ulenspiegel, “we shall find the Seven at the bottom of a quart.”

“A drinker’s word,” answered Lamme: “you know the Seven are giants who could not stand upright under the big dome of the church of Saint Sauveur.”

Ulenspiegel, thinking wretchedly of Nele, and also that in some hostelry he might perchance find a good bed, good supper, a comely hostess, said yet again:

“Let us go and drink!”

But Lamme paid no heed, and said, looking at the tower of Notre Dame:

“Madame Holy Mary, patroness of lawful loves, grant me to see again her white bosom, that soft pillow.”

“Come and drink,” said Ulenspiegel, “you shall find her, displaying it to the drinkers, in a tavern.”

“Dost thou dare think so ill of her?” said Lamme.

“Let us go and drink,” said Ulenspiegel, “she is baesine somewhere, without a doubt.”

“Thirst talk,” said Lamme.

Ulenspiegel went on:

“Perchance keepeth she in reserve for poor travellers a dish of goodly stewed beef, whose spices perfume the air, not too rich, tender, succulent as rose leaves, and swimming like Shrove Tuesday fishes amid cloves, nutmeg, cocks’ combs, sweetbreads, and other celestial dainties.”

“Cruel!” said Lamme, “you mean to kill me for sure. Do you not know that for two days we have lived on nothing but dry bread and small beer?”

“Hunger talk,” answered Ulenspiegel. “You are weeping with appetite; come and eat and drink. I have here a fine half florin that will defray the cost of our feast.”

Lamme laughed. They went to find their cart and thus went about the town, seeking to know which was the best inn. But seeing several crabbed countenances on the baes and no wise pleasing on the baesines, they passed on, thinking that a sour face is a poor sign for a hospitable kitchen.

They arrived at the Saturday Market and went into the hostelry called de Blauwe-Lanteern, the Blue-Lantern. Here there was a baes of pleasant aspect.

They put up their cart and had the ass lodged in the stable, in company with a peck of oats. They ordered supper to be served, ate their fill, slept well, and rose to eat again. Lamme, bursting with comfort, said:

“I hear heavenly music in my stomach.”

When the time came to pay, the baes came to Lamme and said to him:

“Ten patards, if you please.”

“He has them,” said Lamme, pointing to Ulenspiegel who answered:

“I have not.”

“And the half florin?” said Lamme.

“I have not got it,” said Ulenspiegel.

“This is all very well,” said the baes: “I shall take the doublet and the shirt off both of you.”

Suddenly Lamme, plucking up bottle courage:

“And if I want to eat and drink, I,” exclaimed he, “to eat and drink, aye, drink for twenty-seven florins worth or more, I will do it. Dost thou think there is not a sou’s value in this belly of mine? Good God! it was never fed till now but on ortolans. Never didst thou carry the like under thy greasy girdle. For like an ill fellow thou hast thy tallow on the collar of thy doublet, and not like me, three inches of dainty fat on the paunch!”

The baes had fallen into an ecstasy of rage. A stammerer by nature, he wanted to speak quickly; the more he hurried, the more he sneezed and sputtered like a dog coming out of the water. Ulenspiegel threw little balls of bread at his nose. And Lamme, becoming hotter, went on:

“Aye, I have wherewith to pay for your three scraggy hens, your four mangy pullets, and that big idiot of a peacock dragging his dirty tail in your yard. And if your skin was not drier than an old cock’s, if your bones were not crumbling to dust in your breast, I would have still enough to eat you, yourself, your snot of a man, your one-eyed maid and your cook, who if he had itch would have arms too short to scratch himself.

“Do you see,” he went on, “do you see this fine bird that, for half a florin, wants to seize our doublets and our shirts? Tell me what your wardrobe is worth, tattered impertinence, and I will give you three liards for it.”

But the baes, becoming angrier and angrier, puffed and blew the more.

And Ulenspiegel flung balls in his face.

Lamme, like a roaring lion, said:

“How much do you think, scrawny face, a fine ass is worth, with a fine muzzle, long ears, wide chested, with legs of iron? Eighteen florins at the least, is not that so, miserable baes? How many old nails have you in your coffers to pay for so fine a beast?”

The baes sputtered more and more, but dared not budge.

Lamme said:

“How much do you think a fine cart is worth, all made of ash painted red, and equipped all over with Courtrai canvas against the sun and the showers? Twenty-four florins at least, hey? And how much is twenty-four florins and eighteen florins? Answer that, leper devoid of arithmetic. And as it is a market day, and as there are farming folk in your miserable hostelry, I am going to sell cart and donkey to them at once.”

And so it was done, for all knew Lamme. And in fact he got for his ass and his cart forty-four florins and ten patards. Then, clinking the gold under the nose of the baes, he said to him:

“Dost thou smell in that the savour of feasting to come?”

“Aye,” replied the host.

And he said under his breath:

“When you are selling your skin, I will buy a liard’s worth to make a charm against prodigality with it.”

In the meantime, a pretty, taking woman who was in the dark of the yard had come again and again to look at Lamme through the window, and drew back every time he might have caught sight of her pretty face.

That night, on the staircase, as he was going up without a light, tottering a little from the wine he had drunk, he felt a woman who flung her arms about him, kissed him on the cheek, the mouth, even on the nose, gluttonously, and wetting his face with amorous tears, then left him.

Lamme, all sleepy from his drink, went to bed, fell asleep, and next day went off to Ghent with Ulenspiegel.

XIII

There he sought for his wife in all the kaberdoesjen, musicos, tafelhooren, and taverns. At night, he rejoined Ulenspiegel in den zingende Zwaan, at the Singing Swan. Ulenspiegel went wherever he could, spreading alarm and rousing the people against the butchers of the land of their fathers.

Finding himself in the Friday Market, near the Dulle-Griet, the Great Cannon, Ulenspiegel lay down flat on his face on the pavement.

A coalman came and said to him:

“What are you doing there?”

“I am damping my nose to know which way the wind blows,” replied Ulenspiegel.

A carpenter came along.

“Do you take the pavement,” said he, “for a mattress?”

“There are some,” replied Ulenspiegel, “who will soon take it for a quilt.”

A monk stopped.

“What is this moon calf doing there?” he asked.

“He is on his face begging for your blessing, Father,” replied Ulenspiegel.

The monk having bestowed it, went on his way.

Ulenspiegel then lay with his ear against the ground. A peasant came by.

“Dost thou hear any noise from below?” he said.

“Aye,” replied Ulenspiegel, “I hear the wood growing, the wood whose faggots will serve to burn poor heretics.”

“Dost thou hear naught else?” said a constable of the commune to him.

“I hear,” said Ulenspiegel, “the gendarmerie coming from Spain; if thou hast aught to keep, bury it, for soon the towns will be safe no longer by reason of robbers.”

“He is mad,” said the constable.

“He is mad,” repeated the townsfolk.

XIV

Meanwhile, Lamme could not eat, thinking of the sweet vision of the stairs at the Blauwe-Lanteern. His heart turning to Bruges, he was led perforce by Ulenspiegel to Antwerp, where he continued his sorrowful searchings.

Ulenspiegel being in the taverns, in the midst of good Flemings of the reformed faith, or even Catholics that were lovers of liberty, would say to them about the proclamations: “They bring us the Inquisition under pretext of purging us from heresy, but it is meant for our purses, this rhubarb. We have no love to be physicked save at our own will and as we choose; we shall be wroth, we shall rebel and take arms in our hands. The king knew this well beforehand. Seeing that we have no mind to rhubarb, he will advance the syringes, to wit the great guns and the little guns, serpents, falconets, and mortars with their big mouths. A kingly clyster! There will not be left a single rich Fleming in all Flanders physicked in this fashion. Happy is our land to have so royal a physician.”

But the townsfolk could only laugh.

Ulenspiegel would say: “Laugh to-day, but flee or arm on that day when something is broken at Notre Dame.”

XV

On the 15th of August, the great feast of Mary and of the blessing of herbs and roots, when filled with corn the hens are deaf to the bugle of the cock imploring love, a great stone crucifix was broken at one of the gates of Antwerp by an Italian in the pay of the Cardinal de Granvelle, and the procession of the Virgin, preceded by fools in green, in yellow, and in red, came forth out of the church of Notre Dame.

But the Virgin’s statue, having been insulted on the way by men whom no one knew, was hastily taken back into the choir of the church, the iron gates of which were shut.

Ulenspiegel and Lamme went into Notre Dame. Young beggars and ragamuffins, and some grown men among them, that nobody knew were in front of the choir, making certain signs and grimaces one to another. They were making a great din with feet and tongues. No one had seen them before in Antwerp, no one ever saw them again. One of them, with a face like a burned onion, asked if Mieke, that was Our Lady, had been afraid that she had gone back to the church in such a hurry.

“It is not of thee that she is afeared, ugly blackamoor,” replied Ulenspiegel.

The young man to whom he spoke went up to him, to beat him, but Ulenspiegel, gripping him by the collar:

“If you strike me,” said he, “I will make you spew out your tongue.”

Then turning towards certain men of Antwerp that were present:

“Signorkes and pagaders,” said he, pointing out the ragged young men, “be cautious, these are spurious Flemings, traitors paid to bring us to ill, to misery, and to ruin.”

Then speaking to the strangers:

“Hey,” said he, “donkey faces, withered with want, whence have ye the money that chinks to-day in your pouches? Have ye perchance sold your skins beforehand for drumheads?”

“Look at the sermonizer!” said the strangers.

Then they all began to shout together with one accord speaking of Our Lady:

“Mieke has a fine robe. Mieke has a fine crown! I will give them to my doxy.”

They went away, while one of them had got up into a pulpit to proclaim insulting and outrageous things from it, and they came back crying:

“Come down, Mieke, come down before we go and fetch you. Perform a miracle, that we may see if you can walk as well as you can have Mieke carried about, the lazy thing!”

But Ulenspiegel cried in vain: “Workers of ruin, have done with your vile talk; all pillage is a crime!” They ceased not at all from their talk; and some spoke even of breaking into the choir to force Mieke to come down.

Hearing this, an old woman, who sold candles in the church, flung in their faces the ashes of her foot warmer; but she was beaten and flung down on the floor, and then the riot began.

The markgrave came to the church with his sergeants. Seeing the populace assembled, he exhorted them to leave the church, but so feebly that only a few went away; the others said:

“First we want to hear the canons singing vespers in honour of Mieke.”

The markgrave replied:

“There shall be no singing.”

“We will sing ourselves,” answered the ragged strangers.

Which they did in the naves and near the porch of the church. Some played at Krieke-steenen, at cherry-stones, and said: “Mieke, you never game in paradise and you are bored there; play with us.”

And insulting the statue without ceasing, they cried out, hooted and whistled.

The markgrave pretended to be afraid and departed. By his orders all the doors of the church were shut save one.

Without the populace having any hand in it, the ragtag and bobtail of the strangers became bolder and shouted more and more. And the roofs reëchoed as though to the din of a hundred cannon.

One of them, he of the face like a burned onion, appearing to have some authority among them, got up into a pulpit, made a sign with his hand to them, and began to preach:

“In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” said he: “the three making but one, and the one making three, God keep us in paradise from arithmetic; this day the twenty-ninth of August, Mieke went forth in great pomp of array to show her wooden face to the signorkes and pagaders of Antwerp. But Mieke, in the procession met the devil Satanas. And Satanas said to her, mocking her: ‘There you are, high and mighty, prinked up like a queen, Mieke, and borne by four signorkes, and you will not look now at the poor pagader Satanas that makes his way on foot.’ And Mieke answered: ‘Begone, Satanas, or I bruise thy head still more than ever, foul serpent!’ ‘Mieke,’ said Satanas, ‘that is the task in which you have been spending your time for fifteen hundred years, but the Spirit of the Lord, your master, hath delivered me. I am stronger than you are; you shall not walk over my head any more, and I am going to make you dance now.’ Satanas took a great whip, sharp and cutting, and started to flog Mieke, who dared not cry out for fear of showing her terror, and then she began to run as hard as she could, forcing the signorkes that were carrying her to run, too, so as not to let her fall with her gold crown and her jewels among the poor common folk. And now Mieke stays as stiff and as still as a frightened mouse in her niche, watching Satan, who is seated up at the top of the pillar under the little dome, and who says to her, still grasping his whip and grinning, ‘I will make you pay for the blood and tears that flow in your name! Mieke, how goes your virgin birth? This is the time to flit. You shall be cut in twain, evil statue of wood, for all the statues of flesh and bone that were burned in your name, burned, hanged, buried alive without pity.’ So spake Satanas; and he spoke well. And thou must come down from thy niche, bloody Mieke, Mieke the cruel, that wast in no way like thy son Christus.”

And all the band of the strangers, hooting and crying out, shouted: “Mieke! Mieke! it is time to come out! Are you wetting your linen for fear in your niche? Up Brabant for the good Duke. Away with the wooden saints! Who will have a bath in the Scheldt! Wood swims better than fishes.”

The populace listened to them without saying a word.

But Ulenspiegel, getting up into the pulpit, threw down the stair by main force the one that was haranguing.

“Fools fit to tie,” he said, speaking to the populace; “lunatic fools, idiot fools, who see no further than the end of your dirty noses, do ye not see that all this is the work of traitors? They mean to make you commit sacrilege and pillage that they may declare you rebels, empty your coffers, cut off your heads, and burn you alive! And the king will inherit. Signorkes and pagaders, do not believe in the speeches of these artificers of woes: leave Notre Dame in her niche, live stoutly, working happily, spending your earnings and profits. The black devil of ruin has his eye upon you, and it is through sackings and destruction that he will call up the army of your foes to treat you as rebels and make Alba reign over you with dictatorship, inquisition, confiscation, and death.”

“And he will inherit!”

“Alas,” said Lamme, “do not pillage anything, signorkes and pagaders; the king is already very angry. The daughter of the embroideress told my friend Ulenspiegel so. Do not indulge in pillage, sirs!”

But the populace would not give ear to them.

The unknown kept shouting:

“Sack and turn out! Sack Brabant for the good Duke! To the river with wooden saints! They swim better than fishes!”

Ulenspiegel, still in the pulpit, cried in vain:

“Signorkes and pagaders do not suffer pillage! Do not call down ruin upon the town!”

He was plucked away from there all torn, face, doublet, and breeches, though he avenged himself with both feet and hands. And all bleeding he never ceased to cry out:

“Do not suffer pillage!”

But it was in vain.

The unknown and the ragtag and bobtail of the city flung themselves on the iron grille of the choir, which they broke through, crying:

“Long live the Beggar!”

They all set to work to break, sack, destroy. Before midnight this great church, in which there were seventy altars, every kind of noble paintings and precious things, was empty as a nut. The altars were broken, the images flung down, and all the locks smashed.

This being done, the same unknown set off to treat like Notre Dame, the Minor Brothers, the Franciscans, Saint Peter, Saint Andrew, Saint Michael, Saint Pierre-au-Pot, the Bourg, the Fawkens, the White Sisters, the Gray Sisters, the Third Order, the Preachers, and all the churches and chapels in the city. They took candles and torches out of them and ran around everywhere in this manner.

Among them there was no quarrel nor dispute; not one of them was hurt in that great demolishing of wood and other materials.

They betook themselves to The Hague to proceed there to the overthrow of statues and altars, without the reformed lending them any aid either there or elsewhere.

At The Hague, the magistrate asked them where was their commission.

“It is here,” said one of them, striking upon his heart.

“Their commission, hear you, signorkes and pagaders?” said Ulenspiegel, having been informed of this. “So then there is someone who deputes them to this work of sacrilege. Let some robber thief come into my cottage; I will do as did the magistrate of The Hague, I will say, taking off my bonnet: ‘Gentle robber, gracious rogue, worshipful rascal, show me your commission.’ He will reply that it is in his heart that is greedy for my goods. And I shall give him the keys of everything. Seek, seek out who it is that profits by this pillage. Beware of the Red Dog. The great stone crucifix is flung down. Beware of the Red Dog!”

The Great Sovereign Council of Malines having given orders through its president Viglius, not to put any obstacle in the way of image breaking: – “Alas!” said Ulenspiegel, “the harvest is ripe for the Spanish reapers. The Duke! the Duke is marching upon you. Flemings, the sea rises, the sea of vengeance. Poor women and girls, flee the living grave! Poor men, flee the gallows, the fire, and the sword! Philip means to finish the bloody work of Charles. The father sowed death and exile, the son hath sworn that he would rather rule over a cemetery than over a heretic folk. Flee; here be the executioner and the gravediggers.”

The populace hearkened to Ulenspiegel, and families left the cities by hundreds, and the roads were encumbered with carts laden with the household stuff of those that were going into exile.

And Ulenspiegel went everywhere, followed by Lamme grieving and looking for his beloved.

And at Damme Nele wept by the side of Katheline the madwife.

XVI

Ulenspiegel being at Ghent in the barley month which is October, saw Egmont returning from revelling and feasting in the noble company of the Abbot of Saint Bavon. Being in a singing humour, he was absentmindedly allowing his horse to go at a foot pace. Suddenly he saw a man who, carrying a lighted lantern, was walking alongside him.

“What wouldst thou of me?” asked Egmont.

“Good,” replied Ulenspiegel, “the good of a lantern when it is lit.”

“Begone and leave me,” replied the Count.

“I will not begone,” rejoined Ulenspiegel.

“Wouldst thou have a stroke of the whip then?”

“I would willingly have ten, if I can put in your head such a lantern that you might see clear from here to the Escurial.”

“I take no stock in thy lantern nor in the Escurial,” replied the Count.

“Well, for my part,” answered Ulenspiegel, “it burns in me to give you a good advice.”

Then taking by the bridle the Count’s horse, rearing and kicking:

“Monseigneur,” said he, “think that now you dance well on your horse and that your head dances also very well upon your shoulders; but the king, they say, means to interrupt this fine dance, to leave you your body, but to take your head and make it dance in a land so far away that you will never be able to overtake it. Give me a florin, I have earned it.”

“The whip, if thou wilt not be off, evil newsmonger.”

“Monseigneur, I am Ulenspiegel, the son of Claes, that was burned alive for his belief and of Soetkin that died of sorrow. The ashes beating upon my breast tell me that Egmont, the gallant soldier, might with the gendarmerie in his command oppose the thrice-victorious troops of the Duke of Alba.”

“Begone,” replied Egmont, “I am no traitor.”

“Save the countries; you alone can save them,” said Ulenspiegel.

The Count would have beaten Ulenspiegel; but he had not waited for this and fled away, crying:

“Eat lanterns, eat lanterns, Messire Count. Save the countries.”

Another day, Egmont being athirst had stopped in front of the inn In ’t bondt verken, the Piebald Pig – kept by a woman of Courtrai, a pretty piece, called Musekin, the Little Mouse.

The Count, rising up in his stirrups, cried out:

“Bring me to drink!”

Ulenspiegel, who was in Musekin’s service, came up to the Count holding a pewter tankard in one hand and in the other a flask of red wine.

The Count, seeing him:

“Are you there,” said he, “ill-omened raven?”

“Monseigneur,” answered Ulenspiegel, “if my omens are black, ’tis because they are ill washen; but will you tell me which is the redder, the wine that goes down the throat or the blood that leaps out of the neck? That is what my lantern asked.”

The Count made no answer, but paid and departed.