The Legend of Ulenspiegel Volume I Part 3

Claes now did not kiss him often, but loved him with a surly air so as not to spoil him.

When Ulenspiegel would come home, complaining of being beaten in some fray, Claes would beat him because he had not beaten the others, and thus educated Ulenspiegel became valiant as a young lion.

If Claes was from home, Ulenspiegel would ask Soetkin for a liard, to go play. Soetkin, angry, would say, "What need have you to go play? It would fit you better to stay at home to tie f.a.ggots."

Seeing that she would give him nothing, Ulenspiegel would cry like an eagle, but Soetkin would make a great clatter of pots and pans, which she was washing in a wooden tub, to pretend she did not hear him. Then would Ulenspiegel weep, and the gentle mother, dropping her feigned harshness, would come to him, petting him, and say, "Will a denier be enough for you?" Now take notice that a denier is worth six liards.

So she loved him overmuch, and when Claes was not there, Ulenspiegel was king in the house.

X

One morning Soetkin beheld Claes with head down wandering about the kitchen like a man lost in his own thought.

"What grieves thee, husband?" said she. "Thou art pale, wroth, and distraught."

Claes answered in a low tone, like a growling dog:

"They are going to renew the Emperor's cruel edicts. Death will hover once more over the soil of Flanders. Informers are to have the half of the victims' goods, if the goods exceed not a hundred florins carolus."

"We are poor folk," said she.

"Poor," said he, "but not poor enough. There are some of that vile crew, ravens and vultures living on corpses, who would denounce us to divide a basket of charcoal with His Majesty as well as a bag of carolus. What had poor Tanneken, the widow of Sis the tailor, who perished at Heyst, buried alive? A Latin Bible, three gold florins, and some pewter pans that her neighbour coveted. Johannah Martens was burned for a witch, being first flung into water, for her body had floated and they took it as a judgment of heaven. She had some poor bits of furniture, seven gold carolus in a purse, and the informer wanted half. Alas! I could tell thee the like until to-morrow, but come, goodwife, life is no longer worth the living in Flanders by reason of these edicts. Soon every night will the chariot of death pa.s.s through the town, and we shall hear the skeleton shaking in it with a dry clatter of bones."

"You must not frighten me, husband. The Emperor is the father of Flanders and Brabant, and like a father is endued with long-suffering gentleness, patience, and compa.s.sion."

"He would lose too much by that," said Claes, "for he inherits the goods that are confiscate."

Of a sudden sounded the trumpet and gnashed the cymbals of the town herald. Claes and Soetkin, carrying Ulenspiegel in their arms turn about, ran to the sound with the crowd.

They came to the Townhall, before which were the heralds upon horseback, blowing their trumpets and clashing their cymbals, the provost holding the wand of justice and the procurator of the commune on horseback, holding in both hands an edict of the Emperor and making ready to read it to the a.s.sembled throng.

Claes heard that it was thenceforward straightly forbidden, to all men in general and in particular, to print, read, have, or maintain the writings, books, or doctrine of Martin Luther, Johannes Wycliff, Johannes Huss, Marcilius de Padua, aecolampadius, Ulricus Zwinglius, Philippus Melancthon, Franciscus Lambertus, Joannes Pomera.n.u.s, Otto Brunselsius, Justus Jonas, Johannes Puperis et Gorcia.n.u.s, the New Testaments printed by Adrien de Berghes, Christopher de Remonda, and Joannes Zel, full of Lutheran and other heresies, banned and condemned by the Theological Faculty of the University of Louvain.

"In like manner neither to paint or pourtray, nor cause to be painted or pourtrayed either opprobrious figures of G.o.d and the Blessed Virgin or of their saints; nor to break, rend, or efface the images or pourtraitures made in honour, memory, or remembrance of G.o.d and of the Virgin Mary or of saints approved by the Church.

"Furthermore," said the proclamation, "no man, of whatever station, shall put himself forward to discuss or dispute upon Holy Writ, even upon matters that are held in doubt, if he is not a theologian renowned and approved by a great university."

His Sacred Majesty enacted among other penalties that suspected persons should ever after be incapable of holding honourable estate. As for persons fallen a second time into their error, or persons who were stubborn therein, they should be condemned to burn by a slow fire or quick, in an envelope of straw, or fastened to a stake, at the discretion of the judge. Other men should be executed by the sword if they were n.o.ble or reputable burgesses, churls by the gallows, and women by burying alive. Their heads, for a warning, should be planted on spikes. And there would be confiscation to the Emperor of the goods and chattels of all that lay within the limits of confiscation.

His Sacred Majesty granted to informers the half of all possessed by the condemned, provided their goods did not amount in all to one hundred pounds in Flanders money. As for the Emperor's portion, he reserved to himself the right to employ it in works of piety and alms, as he did at the sack of Rome.

And Claes went sadly away, with Soetkin and Ulenspiegel.

XI

The year had been a good one, and Claes bought a donkey and nine measures of peas for seven florins and one morning he mounted on the beast, and Ulenspiegel clung to the crupper behind him. They were going in this fashion to salute their uncle and elder brother, Josse Claes, who lived not far from Meyborg in Germany.

Josse, who had been simple and kind in his youth, having suffered various wrongs, became crotchety and malicious, his blood turned to bile in his veins, he became misanthropic and lived solitary and alone.

His delight then was to make two so-called faithful friends fight each other, and he would give three patards to the one that gave the other the hardest drubbing.

He loved also to bring together in a well-heated room a great many old gossips, the oldest and crabbedest that could be found, and he would give them toasted bread to eat and hypocras to drink.

Those who were more than sixty years old he gave wool to knit in a corner, recommending them to let their nails always grow long. And it was a marvel to hear all the gurgling, the tongue clacking, the ill-natured tattle, the thin coughings and spittings of these old hags, who, with their knitting needles under their armpits, sat all together nibbling at their neighbours' good name.

Now when he saw them all animated and lively, Josse would throw a hank of hair into the fire, and as it flared up the air would all at once be poisoned.

The gossips then, all talking together, would accuse each other of making the stench; all denying it, they would very soon have each other by the hair, and Josse would go on throwing more hair on the fire, and chopped up horsehair on the floor. When he could see no longer, by reason of the fury of the melee, the thick smoke and the flying dust, he would fetch two of his men disguised as constables, who would drive the old women out of the hall, beating them soundly with long switches, like a troop of angry geese.

And Josse would examine the battlefield, finding strips of clothes, fragments of shoes, pieces of chemises, and old teeth.

And filled with melancholy he would say to himself:

"My day is wasted, never a one of them has left her tongue behind in the melee."

XII

Claes, being in the bailiwick of Meyborg, was going through a little wood: the donkey as he travelled was browsing on the thistles; Ulenspiegel was throwing his bonnet after the b.u.t.terflies and picking it up without leaving the beast's back. Claes was eating a hunch of bread, meaning to wash it down at the next tavern. Far off he heard a bell clinking and the noise of a great crowd of men all speaking together.

"'Tis some pilgrimage," said he, "and the pilgrims will doubtless be numerous. Hold on well, my son, to the donkey, so that they may not knock you over. Come and let us see. Now, then, a.s.s, stick to my heels."

And the a.s.s began to run.

Leaving the fringe of the wood, he descended towards a wide plateau bordered by a stream at the foot of its western slope. On the eastern slope was a little chapel with a gable surmounted by the image of Our Lady and at her feet two little figures each representing a bull. Upon the chapel steps, grinning with glee, were a hermit shaking his bell, fifty flunkeys holding lighted candles, players, blowers, bangers of drums, clarions, fifes, shawms, and bagpipes, and a knot of jolly companions holding with both hands iron boxes full of old metal, but all silent at the moment.

Five thousand pilgrims and more went along seven by seven in close ranks, casques on their heads, cudgels of green wood in their hands. If there came fresh arrivals helmeted and armed in like fashion, they ranged themselves tumultuously behind the others. Then pa.s.sing seven by seven before the chapel they had their cudgels blessed, received each man a candle from the hands of the flunkeys, and in exchange paid a demi-florin to the hermit.

And so long was the procession that the candles of the first were burnt down to the end of the wick while those of the latest were all but choking with too much tallow.

Claes, Ulenspiegel, and the donkey, astonished, saw thus pa.s.sing before them an immense variety of bellies, broad, long, high, pointed, proud, firm, or falling ign.o.bly upon their natural props. And all the pilgrims had casques on their heads.

Some of these casques had come from Troy, and were like Phrygian caps, or surmounted by aigrettes of red horsehair; some of the pilgrims, though they were fat-faced and paunchy, wore helms with outspread wings, but had no notion of flying; then came those who had on their heads salades that snails would have disdained for their lack of greenery.

But the greater part had casques so old and rusty that they seemed to date from the days of Gambrinus, the King of Flanders and of beer, the which monarch lived nine hundred years before Our Lord and wore a quart pot for a hat, so that he need never have to refrain from drinking for lack of a cup.

All at once rang, droned, thundered, thumped, squealed, brayed, clattered bells, bagpipes, shawms, drums, and ironmongery.