The Legend of Ulenspiegel Volume Ii Part 19

In this wise they came to Stockem.

XXVIII

About nightfall, having left their a.s.ses at Stockem, they entered into the city of Antwerp.

And Ulenspiegel said to Lamme:

"Lo this great city; here the whole world piles up its riches: gold, silver, spices, gilded leather, Gobelin tapestry cloth, stuffs of velvet, wool, and silk; beans, peas, grain, meat, and flour, salted hides, Louvain wines, wines of Namur, of Luxembourg, Liege, Landtwyn from Brussels and from Aerschot, Buley wines whose vineyard is beside the Plante gate at Namur, Rhine wines, wines from Spain and Portugal; grape oil from Aerschot that they call Landolium; wines of Burgundy, Malvoisie and so many more. And the quays are c.u.mbered with merchandise.

"These riches of earth and of human toil bring into this place the most beautiful light ladies that are."

"You are growing dreamy," said Lamme.

Ulenspiegel answered:

"I shall find the Seven among them. It was told me:

In ruins, blood and tears, seek!

What then is there that causeth more of ruin than light wenches? Is it not in their company that poor witless men lose their goodly carolus, shining and c.h.i.n.king; their jewels, chains, and rings, and come away without a doublet, ragged and despoiled, even without their linen; while the girls grow fat upon their spoils? Where is the red clear blood that used to course in their veins? 'Tis leek juice now. Or else, indeed, to enjoy their sweet and lovely bodies do they not fight with knife, with dagger, with sword, without pity? The corpses borne away, pale, and b.l.o.o.d.y, are corpses of the love-distraught. When the father scolds and remains on his chair with forbidding looks; when his white hairs seem whiter and stiffer; when from his dry eyes, wherein burns the grief at a son's loss, the tears refuse to flow; when the mother, silent and pale as a dead woman, weeps as if she saw nothing before her now save all the sorrows that this world holdeth, who is it makes those tears to fall? The gay ladies that love but themselves and money, and hold the world, thinking or working or philosophizing, fastened to the end of their golden girdle. Aye, it is there the Seven are, and we shall go, Lamme, among the girls. Perchance thy wife is among them; that will be a double sweep of the net."

"I am willing," said Lamme.

It was then in the month of June, towards the end of the summer, when the sun was already reddening the leaves on the chestnuts, when the little birds sing in the trees and there is never a mite so small that he does not chirp for pleasure to be so warm in the gra.s.s.

Lamme wandered beside Ulenspiegel through the streets of Antwerp, hanging his head and dragging his body along like a house.

"Lamme," said Ulenspiegel, "you are plunged in melancholy; do you not know that nothing is worse for the skin; if you persist in your grief, you will lose it in strips. And it will be a fine word to hear when they say of you: 'Lamme the flayed.'"

"I am hungry," said Lamme.

"Come and eat," said Ulenspiegel.

And they went together to the Old Stairs, where they ate choesels and drank dobbel-cuyt as much as they could carry.

And Lamme wept no more.

And Ulenspiegel said:

"Blessed be the good beer that maketh thy soul all sunny! Laughest and shakest thy big paunch. How I love to see thee dance of the merry entrails."

"My son," said Lamme, "they would dance far more if I had the good luck to find my wife again."

"Let us go and seek for her," said Ulenspiegel.

They came thus to the quarter of the Lower Scheldt.

"Look," said Ulenspiegel to Lamme, "see that little house all made of wood, with handsome windows, well opened and glazed with little square panes; consider these yellow curtains and that red lamp. There, my son, behind four casks of bruinbier, of uitzet, of dobbel-cuyt, and Amboise wine, sits a beauteous baesine of fifty years or upwards. Every year she lived gave her a fresh layer of bacon. Upon one of the casks shines a candle, and there is a lantern hung to the beams of the roof. It is bright and dark there, dark for love, bright for payment."

"But," said Lamme, "this is a convent of the devil's nuns, and this baesine is its abbess."

"Aye," said Ulenspiegel, "'tis she that leadeth in Beelzebub's name, down the path of sin fifteen lovely girls of amorous life, which find with her shelter and food, but it is forbidden to them to sleep there."

"Do you know this convent?" said Lamme.

"I am going to look for your wife therein. Come."

"No," said Lamme, "I have taken thought and will not go in."

"Wilt thou let thy friend expose himself all alone in the midst of these Astartes?"

"Let him not go there," said Lamme.

"But if he must go in to find the Seven and your wife?" replied Ulenspiegel.

"I would rather sleep," said Lamme.

"Come on then," said Ulenspiegel, opening the door and thrusting Lamme in front of him. "See, the baesine stays behind her casks, between two candles; the chamber is large, with a roof of blackened oak with smoked beams. All around reign benches, lame-legged tables covered with gla.s.ses, quart pots, goblets, tankards, jugs, flasks, bottles, and other implements of drinking. In the middle are still more tables and chairs whereon are enthroned odds and ends, the which are women's capes, gilded belts, velvet shoes, bagpipes, fifes, shawms. In a corner is a ladder leading to the upper story. A little bald hunchback plays on a clavecin mounted on gla.s.s feet that make the sound of the instrument grating. Dance, my fat lad. Fifteen lovely ladies are sitting, some on the tables, some on the chairs, a leg here, a leg there, bending, upright, leaning on an elbow, thrown back, lying on their back or on their side, at their pleasure, clad in white, in red, their arms bare like their shoulders, too, and their bosom down to the waist. There are some of every kind; choose! For some the light of the candles, caressing their fair hair, leaves in the shadow their blue eyes, of which nothing can be seen but the gleaming of their liquid fire. Others, looking at the ceiling, sigh to the viol some German ballade. Some round, brown, plump, brazen-faced, are drinking from full tankards Amboise wine, and show their round arms, bare to the shoulder, their half-opened dress, whence come out the apples of their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and shamelessly talk with their mouths full, one after the other or all at once. Listen to them."

"A straw for money to-day! it is love we must have, love at our own choice," said the lovely ladies, "child's love, youth's love, whoever pleases us, and no paying."--"Yesterday was the day when one paid, to-day is the day when one loves!" "Who so would fain drink at our lips, they are still moist from the bottle. Wine and kisses, it is a whole feast!" "A straw for widows that lie all alone!" "We are girls! 'Tis the day of charity to-day. To the young, the strong, and the comely, we will open our arms. Something to drink!" "Darling, is it for the battle of love that your heart is beating the tambourine in your breast! What a pendulum! 'Tis the clock of kisses. When will they come, full hearts and empty purses? Do they not scent out dainty adventures? What is the difference between a young Beggar and Monsieur the Markgrave? Monsieur pays in florins and the young Beggar in caresses. Long live the Beggar! Who will go and wake up the graveyards?"

Thus spake the good, the ardent, and the gay among the ladies of amorous life.

But there were others of them with narrow faces, lean shoulders, who made of their bodies a shop for savings, and liard by liard harvested the price of their thin flesh. And these were fuming among themselves: "It is very foolish for us to refuse payment in this fatiguing trade, for these ridiculous whimsies running in the heads of girls that are wild over men. If they have a cantle of the moon in their heads, we have none, and prefer not to have to drag around in our old age like them, in rags in the gutter, but to be paid since we are for sale. A straw for this gratis! Men are ugly, stinking, grumbling, greedy, drunken. It is nothing but them that turns poor women to ill!"

But the young and beautiful ones did not hear these speeches, and all in their pleasure and drinkings said: "Do you hear the pa.s.sing bells ringing in Notre Dame? We are on fire! Who will go and waken the graveyards?"

Lamme seeing so many women all at once, brunette and fair, fresh and withered, was ashamed; lowering his eyes he cried out: "Ulenspiegel, where are you?"

"He is dead and gone, my friend," said a great stout girl taking hold of his arm.

"Dead and gone?" said Lamme.

"Aye," said she, "three hundred years ago, in the company of Jacobus de Coster van Maerlandt."

"Let me go," said Lamme, "and do not pinch me. Ulenspiegel, where are you? Come and save your friend! I am going away immediately if you do not let me go."

"You will not go away," they said.

"Ulenspiegel," said Lamme, again, piteously, "where are you, my son? Madame, do not pull my hair in this way; it is not a wig, I a.s.sure you. Help! Do you not think my ears red enough, without your bringing the blood to them besides? There is that other one filliping me all the time. You are hurting me! Alas! what are they rubbing my face with now? A looking gla.s.s! I am black as the jaws of an oven. I will be angry in a minute if you do not stop; it is ill done of you to torment a poor man like this. Let me go! When you have tugged me by my breeches to right, to left, from all sides, and have made me go like a shuttle, will you be any the fatter for it? Aye, I shall get angry without a doubt."

"He will get angry," said they, mocking; "he will get angry, the good man. Laugh rather, and sing us a love lay."