"I shall die soon enough," answered Ulenspiegel.

And the dwarfish spirits of the woods that carried Nele said to her also: "Why are you not a spirit like us that we might take you?"

And Nele answered: "Only have patience."

So they came at length before the throne of the King, and when they saw his golden axe and his crown of iron they began to tremble with fear. And he asked them:

"Wherefore have you come to see me, poor little things?"

But they answered him not at all.

"I know you," added the King, "you bud of a witch, and you also, shoot of a charcoal-burner. By power of sorcery have you penetrated into this laboratory of Nature, yet now your lips are closed like capon stuffed with bread-crumbs!"

Nele trembled as she gazed upon the awful aspect of that spirit. But the manly courage of Ulenspiegel revived, and he made answer bravely:

"The ashes of Claes beat upon my breast. For, Most Divine Highness, Death now goes gathering his harvest through all the land of Flanders, mowing down the bravest of her men and the sweetest of her women in the name of His Holiness the Pope. And the privileges of my country are broken, her charters annulled, she is wasted by famine, her weavers and cloth-workers abandon her to look for work in other lands. And soon must she die if none comes to her aid. Your Highness, I am naught indeed but a poor little chit of a man that has come into the world like any other, and I have lived as I was able, imperfect, limited on every side, ignorant, neither virtuous nor chaste, and most unworthy of any grace, human or divine. Yet my mother Soetkin died as the result of torture and grief, and Claes was burned in a terrible fire, and I have sworn to avenge them. Once I have been able to do this. But now I long to see the miserable soil of my native land made happy, the soil where the bones of my parents lie scattered; and I have asked of G.o.d the death of our persecutors, but not yet has He heard my prayer. This is why, all weary of my complaining, I have evoked your presence by the power of Katheline's charm, and this is why we are come to you, I and my trembling comrade here, to fall at your feet and to beg you, Most Divine Highness, to save our poor land!"

To this the King and his ill.u.s.trious companion as with one voice made answer:

By battle and fire, By death and sword, Seek the Seven.

In death and blood, Ruin and tears, Find the Seven.

Ugly, cruel, wicked, deformed, Very scourge of the whole earth, Burn the Seven.

Listen now, attend and see, Tell us, poor thing, are you not glad?

Find the Seven.

And all the spirits sang now together:

In death and blood, In ruin and tears, Find the Seven.

Listen now, attend and see, Tell us, poor thing, are you not glad?

Find the Seven.

But Ulenspiegel only said:

"Your Highness, and you my Lords Spirits, I understand nothing of your language. You are mocking me, without a doubt."

But the spirits, without listening to him at all, went on with their singing:

When the North Shall kiss the West, Then shall be the end of ruin.

Find the Seven, And the Cincture.

And they sang with such an effect of unanimity and such a terrifying force of sound that the very earth trembled and the heavens shuddered. And the birds twittered, the owls hooted, the sparrows chirruped with fear, the sea-eagles wailed aloud, flying hither and thither in their dismay. And all the animals of the earth, lions, snakes, bears, stags, roe-bucks, wolves, dogs, and cats, roared, hissed, belled, howled, barked, and miawed most terribly.

And the spirits kept on singing:

Listen now, attend and see, Love the Seven, And the Cincture.

And the c.o.c.ks crowed, and all the spirits vanished away, excepting only one wicked lord of the mines, who took Nele and Ulenspiegel each in one of his arms, and cast them most roughly into the void.

Then they awoke and found themselves lying by each other, as if they had been asleep, and they s.h.i.+vered in the chill morning air.

And Ulenspiegel beheld the sweet body of Nele, all golden in the light of the rising sun.

HERE BEGINS THE SECOND BOOK OF THE LEGEND OF THE GLORIOUS JOYOUS AND HEROIC ADVENTURES OF TYL ULENSPIEGEL AND LAMME GOEDZAK IN THE LAND OF FLANDERS AND ELSEWHERE

I

One morning in September Ulenspiegel took his staff, three florins that had been given him by Katheline, a piece of pig's liver and a slice of bread, and set out to go from Damme to Antwerp, seeking the Seven. Nele he left asleep.

On the way he met a dog who followed after him, smelling around because of the liver, and jumping up at his legs. Ulenspiegel would have driven off the dog, but seeing the persistence of the animal, he thus addressed him:

"My dear dog, you are certainly ill-advised to leave your home, where you would find awaiting you an excellent meal of patties and other fine remains (to say nothing of the marrow-bones), to follow, as you are now doing, a mere adventurer of the road, a vagabond that is like to lack so much as a root to give you for nourishment. Follow my advice, most imprudent little dog, and return to your innkeeper. And for the future, take good care to avoid the rain and snow, the hail, the drizzling mists, the gla.s.sy frosts and other such wretched fare as is alone reserved for the back of the poor wanderer. Keep close at home, rather, in a corner of the hearth, and warm yourself, curled up in front of the cheerful fire. But leave to me the long wandering in mud and dust, in cold and heat, to be roasted to-day, to-morrow frozen, plenished on Friday but on Sunday famished for want of food. For, trust me, little dog, the wise thing is to return at once like a sensible and experienced little dog to the place whence you came."

But it would seem that the animal did not hear a single word of what Ulenspiegel was saying, for he continued to wag his tail and jump his highest, barking all the while, in his desire for food. Ulenspiegel imagined that all this was just a sign of friendliness, and gave no thought to the liver which he carried in his scrip.

So on and on he walked, with the dog following behind. And when they had gone in this way the better part of a league, they saw a cart on the roadside with a donkey harnessed thereto, holding his head down. On a bank, at the side of the road, between two clumps of thistles, reclined a man. He was very fat, and in one hand he held the knuckle-end of a leg of mutton, and in the other hand a bottle. He gnawed the knuckle-bone and drank from the bottle, but when he was doing neither of these things he would fall to weeping and groaning.

Ulenspiegel stopped on his way, and the dog stopped too, but quickly jumped up on to the bank, smelling doubtless a good odour of liver and mutton. There he sat on his hind legs by the fat man's side, and began to paw at the stranger's doublet, as much as to say, "Please give me a share of your meal!" But the man elbowed him off, and holding up the knuckle-bone in the air began to moan aloud most piteously. The dog did likewise in the eagerness of his desire, while the donkey (who was weary of being tied to the cart and thus prevented from getting at the thistles) set up, in his turn, a most piercing bray.

"What's the matter now, Jan?" the man inquired of his donkey.

"Nothing," said Ulenspiegel, answering for him, "except that he would fain make his breakfast off those thistles that grow there on either side of you, like the thistles that are carved on the rood-screen at Tessenderloo, below the figure of Our Lord. Nor would this dog here, I'm thinking, be any the less inclined to join his jaws together on the bone you have got there. But in the meanwhile I will give him a piece of this liver of mine."

The man looked up at Ulenspiegel, who straightway recognized him as none other than his friend Lamme Goedzak of Damme.

"Lamme," he cried, "you here? And what are you doing, eating and drinking and moaning? Has some soldier or other been so impertinent as to box your ears, or what's the matter? Tell me."

"Alas!" said Lamme, "my wife!"

And he would have emptied his bottle of wine there and then had not Ulenspiegel laid a hand on his arm and suggested that it were fairer that the drink should be given to him that had none. "Besides," he added, "to drink thus distractedly profits naught but one's kidneys."