Volume I Part 23 (1/2)

”You must depart, my son, although you have come to look well in this house. Listen to that c.o.c.k crowing, it is two o'clock of the afternoon, it is a presage of rain. I would fain not turn you out of doors in this ill weather that is about to come upon us; but consider, my son, that la Sanginne by her frica.s.sees is the warden of my life; I cannot, without risking a speedy death, allow her to leave me. Go, then, my boy, with G.o.d's grace, and to enliven your way take these three florins and this string of saveloys.”

And Ulenspiegel went away grieving, regretting Lamme and his fleshpots.

XLIV

November came to Damme and elsewhere, but the winter was tardy. No snow, no rain, nor cold weather; the sun shone from morning to evening without dimming: the children rolled about in the dust of the streets and the highways; at the hour of repose, after supper, the merchants, shopkeepers, goldsmiths, wheelwrights, and artisans came out upon their doorsteps to look on the sky that was always blue, the trees whose leaves were still not falling, the storks standing up on the ridges of the roofs, and the swallows that had not yet gone away. The roses had flowered thrice, and for the fourth time were in bud; the nights were warm, the nightingale had not ceased to sing.

The folk of Damme said:

”Winter is dead, let us burn winter.”

And they built a giant figure with a bear's face, a long beard of shavings, a thick shock head of flax. They clothed him in white garments and burned him with great ceremony.

Claes was steeped in melancholy, he blessed not the sky that was ever blue, nor the swallows that would not depart. For now n.o.body in Damme was burning charcoal save for cooking, and each having enough did not go to buy from Claes, who had disbursed all his savings to pay for his stock.

So, if standing on his doorstep, the coalman felt the tip of his nose grow chilly in some puff of sharpish wind:

”Ah!” he would say, ”it is my bread coming to me!”

But the sharp wind would not continue to blow, and the sky stayed always blue, and the leaves would not fall. And Claes refused to sell his stock at half price to the miser Grypstuiver, the dean of the fishmongers. And soon bread began to lack in the cottage.

XLV

But King Philip was not hungry, and ate pastries by the side of his wife, ugly Mary, of the royal house of the Tudors. He did not love her for love, but hoped by begetting a child on this miserable creature to give the English nation a Spanish monarch.

He loathed this union which was a union of a paving stone and of a burning coal. Still, they were sufficiently united to have poor Protestants burned and drowned by hundreds.

When Philip was not away from London, or slipped out in disguise to wallow in some evil haunt, the bedtime hour brought the wedded pair together.

Then Queen Mary, attired in fine linen of Tournai and Irish lace, would lie down supine upon the nuptial couch, while Philip would stand before her rigid as a post, and look if he could not see in his wife some sign or symptom of motherhood; but seeing none he was wroth, said no word, and stared at his nails.

Then the barren ghoul spoke tenderly and with her eyes, which she sought to make soft, begged the frosty Philip for love. Tears, cries, entreaties, she spared nothing to win a lukewarm caress from him who loved her not at all.

Vainly, joining her hands, she dragged herself at his feet; in vain, like a woman out of her wits, she wept and laughed together to soften him; nor the laugh nor the tears melted the stone of that hard heart.

In vain, like an amorous snake, she coiled her thin arms about him and clasped against her flat breast the narrow cage in which dwelt the stunted soul of the b.l.o.o.d.y king; he budged no more than if he had been stock or stone.

She tried, poor ugly thing, to make herself alluring; she called him by all the sweet names that women wild with love give the lover of their choice; Philip still stared at his nails.

Sometimes he answered:

”Will you not have any children?”