The Legend of Ulenspiegel Volume I Part 5

Pa.s.sing by Liege, Claes learned that the poor Rivageois were starving and that they had been placed under the jurisdiction of the Official, a tribunal composed of ecclesiastical judges. They made a riot demanding bread and lay judges. Some were beheaded or hanged, and the rest banished out of the country, such at that time was the clemency of Monseigneur de la Marck, the gentle archbishop.

Claes saw by the way the banished folk, fleeing from the pleasant vale of Liege, and on the trees near to the town the bodies of men hanged for being hungry. And he wept over them.

XIV

When he came home, riding upon his donkey, and provided with a bag full of patards his brother Josse had given him and a goodly tankard of pewter, there were in the cottage Sunday good cheer and daily feasts, for every day they had meat and beans to eat.

Claes filled often the great pewter tankard with dobbel-cuyt and emptied it as often.

Ulenspiegel ate for three and paddled in the dishes like a sparrow in a heap of corn.

"Look," said Claes, "he's eating the saltcellar, too!"

Ulenspiegel answered:

"When the saltcellar, as in our house, is made of a hollow piece of bread, it must be eaten now and then, lest the worms might come in it as it gets old."

"Why," said Soetkin, "do you wipe your greasy hands on your breeches?"

"So that I may never have my thighs wet," replied Ulenspiegel.

At this moment Claes drank a deep draught from his tankard. Ulenspiegel said to him:

"Why have you so big a cup, I have only a poor little mug?"

Claes answered:

"Because I am your father and the baes of this house."

Ulenspiegel retorted:

"You have been drinking for forty years, I for nine only; your time to drink is pa.s.sed, mine is come; it is therefore for me to have the tankard and for you to take the mug."

"Son," said Claes, "he that would pour a hogshead into a keg would throw his beer into the gutter."

"You will then be wise to pour your keg into my hogshead, for I am bigger than your tankard," replied Ulenspiegel.

And Claes, delighted, gave him his tankard to drain. In this wise Ulenspiegel learned how to talk for his drink.

XV

Soetkin carried beneath her girdle the signs of renewed maternity; Katheline, too, was with child, but for fear dared not stir out of her house.

When Soetkin went to see her:

"Ah!" said she, lamenting, "what shall I do with the poor fruit of my womb? Must I strangle it? I would rather die. But if the constables take me, for having a child without being married, they will make me pay twenty florins, like a girl of loose life, and I shall be whipped on the marketplace."

Soetkin then said some soothing word to console her, and having left her, went home pondering. Then one day she said to Claes:

"If instead of one child I had two, would you beat me, husband?"

"I don't know that," replied Claes.

"But," said she, "if this second were not born of me, and like Katheline's were the offspring of an unknown, of the devil, mayhap?"

"Devils," replied Claes, "engender fire, death, and foul smoke, but not children. I will hold as mine the child of Katheline."

"You would do this?" she said.

"I have said," replied Claes.

Soetkin went to tell Katheline.

Hearing it, the latter cried out, overjoyed.

"He has spoken, good man, spoken for the sake of my poor body. He will be blessed by G.o.d, and blessed of the devil, if it is a devil,"

she said, shuddering, "that hath made thee, poor babe that movest in my bosom."

Soetkin and Katheline brought into the world one a lad, the other a girl. Both were borne to baptism, as son and daughter of Claes. Soetkin's son was named Hans, and did not live, Katheline's daughter was named Nele and throve well.

She drank the wine of life from four flagons, two of Katheline and two of Soetkin. And the two women quarrelled softly which should give the babe to drink. But against her desire Katheline must needs allow her milk to dry up, so that none might ask whence it came without her having been a mother.

When little Nele, her daughter, was weaned, she took her home and only let the child go to Soetkin's when she had called her her mother.

The neighbours said it was well done of Katheline, who was well to do, to feed the child of the Claes, who for the most part lived in poverty their toilsome life.

XVI

Ulenspiegel found himself alone one morning at home, and for want of something better to do, he began to cut up one of his father's shoes to make a little ship. Already he had planted the mainmast in the sole and bored the toe for the bowsprit, when at the half door he saw pa.s.sing the bust of a horseman and the head of a horse.

"Is any one within?" asked the horseman.

"There are," replied Ulenspiegel, "a man and a half and a horse's head."

"How so?" asked the horseman.