The Legend of Ulenspiegel Volume I Part 55

Ulenspiegel, having laid down snares, whistled to call the birds down, in order to catch and cook any that might come. A nightingale settled on a leafy branch close to Nele; she did not catch it, for she wished to leave it to sing; a warbler came, and she had pity on it, because it was so pretty and proud in its air; then came a lark, but Nele told it it would do better to fly away into the heights of the sky and sing a hymn to Nature, than to come stupidly to struggle on the murderous point of a spit.

And she said the truth, for in the meantime Ulenspiegel had lighted a clear fire and cut a wooden spit that only awaited its victims.

But no more birds came now, except a few evil ravens that croaked a long way up over their heads.

And so Ulenspiegel did not eat at all.

Now the time had come when Nele must go away and return to Katheline. And she went weeping, and Ulenspiegel from afar off watched her go.

But she came back, and flinging herself on his neck:

"I am going," she said.

Then she went a few steps, came back again, saying once more:

"I am going."

And thus twenty times and more over and over.

Then she went indeed, and Ulenspiegel remained alone. He set off then to go and find Lamme.

When he came up with him, he found him sitting at the foot of the tower, with a great pot of bruinbier between his legs and nibbling most melancholy-wise at a hazel wand.

"Ulenspiegel," said he, "I think you but sent me here that you might be alone with the damsel; I smote as you bade me, seven times with the hazel wand on each wall of the tower, and though the wind is blowing like the devil, the hinges have not made a sound."

"Without doubt, then, they must have been oiled," replied Ulenspiegel.

Then they went away in the direction of the Duchy of Brabant.

V

King Philip, dark and gloomy, dabbled with paper with no respite all day long, and even by night, and scribbled over papers and parchments. To them he confided the thoughts of his hard heart. Loving no man in his life, knowing that no man loved him, fain to bear his immense empire alone, a dolorous Atlas, he bowed beneath the burden. Phlegmatic and melancholy of temperament, his excessive toil devoured his weak body. Detesting every bright or merry face, he had conceived hatred for our country because of its gaiety; for our traders because of their wealth; for our n.o.bles because of their free speech, frank ways and manners, the sanguine mettlesomeness of their gallant joviality. He knew, for he had been told, that long before Cardinal de Cousa had indicted the abuses of the Church and preached the need for reforms, the revolt against the Pope and the Romish Church, having been manifested throughout our country under different kinds of sect, was in every head like boiling water in a tight shut kettle.

Obstinate and mulish, he thought that his will ought to lie heavy on the whole world like the will of G.o.d; he desired that our countries, little used to ways of servile obedience, should bow beneath the old yoke without obtaining any reform. He wanted his Holy Mother the Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman, to be one, entire and universal with neither modification nor change, and with no other grounds for wanting this except that he did want it so. Acting in this like an unreasonable woman, tossing and turning by night on his bed as though a couch of thorns, incessantly tormented by his thoughts.

"Yea, Master Saint Philip, yea, Lord G.o.d, were I to be forced to make of the Low Countries a common grave and throw into it all the inhabitants, they shall come back to you, my blessed patron, and to you, Madame Virgin Mary, and to you, all ye Saints of Paradise."

And he sought to do even as he said, and thus he was more Roman than the Pope and more Catholic than the councils.

And Ulenspiegel and Lamme, and the people of Flanders and the Low Countries, full of anguish, imagined that they could see from far within the gloomy haunt of the Escurial, that crowned spider, with long legs and open claws, spreading out his web to entangle them around and suck the best of their heart's blood.

Although the Papal Inquisition had, under the reign of Charles, killed at the stake, by burying alive, and by the rope, a hundred thousand Christians; though the goods of the poor condemned folk had found their way into the coffers of the Emperor and the King, as the rain flows into the drain, Philip deemed that it was insufficient; he imposed new bishops upon the country and proposed to introduce into it the Spanish Inquisition.

And the town heralds everywhere read out to the sound of trump and tambourine proclamations decreeing to all heretics, men and women and girls, death by fire to those who did not abjure their error, by the rope to those who should abjure. Women and girls would be buried alive, and the executioner should dance upon their bodies.

And the flame of resistance ran throughout the whole land.

VI

The fifth of April, before Easter Day, the lords Count Louis of Na.s.sau, Culembourg, and Brederode, the Drinking Hercules, entered with three hundred other gentlemen of birth into the Court of Brussels, to the d.u.c.h.ess of Parma, the Lady Governor. Going in ordered ranks of four, they went in this way up the great stair of the palace.

Being in the chamber where Madame was they presented to her a request in which they asked her to seek to obtain from King Philip the rescinding of the proclamations touching upon religion and also of the Spanish Inquisition, declaring that within our roused and discontented country there could result from it only troubles, ruins, and universal distress.

And this request was termed The Compromise.

Berlaymont, who later was so treacherous and so cruel to the land of his fathers, was standing beside Her Highness, and said to her, mocking at the poverty of certain of the confederated n.o.bles:

"Madame, fear nothing, they are nothing but beggars."

Meaning thus that these n.o.bles had ruined themselves in the king's service or else in trying to match the Spanish lords by their sumptuous display.

To turn to scorn the speech of the Sieur de Berlaymont, the lords declared afterwards that they "held it an honour to be esteemed and called beggars for the king's service and the good of these lands."

They began to wear a gold medallion about their neck, having the king's effigy on one side and on the other two hands locked and pa.s.sing through a beggar's wallet, with these words: "Faithful to the king even unto the beggar's wallet." They wore also in their hats and bonnets little gold jewels in the shape of beggars' bowls and beggars' hats.

Meanwhile, Lamme was taking his paunch throughout the whole town, looking for his wife and not finding her.

VII

Ulenspiegel said to him one morning:

"Follow me: we are going to pay our respects to a high, n.o.ble, powerful, and redoubted personage."

"Will he tell me where my wife is?" asked Lamme.

"If he knows," answered Ulenspiegel.

And they went to call on Brederode, the Drinking Hercules. He was in the courtyard of his house.

"What wouldst thou with me?" he asked of Ulenspiegel.

"To speak with you, Monseigneur," answered Ulenspiegel.

"Speak," replied Brederode.

"You," said Ulenspiegel, "are a goodly, valiant, and mighty lord. You strangled, once long ago, a Frenchman within his cuira.s.s like a mussel in its sh.e.l.l: but if you are mighty and valiant, you are also of good counsel. Why, then, do you wear this medal on which I read 'Faithful to the king even unto the beggar's wallet?'"