V
Now King Philip was obstinate as a mule, and he thought that his own will ought to dominate the entire world as if it had been the will of God himself. And his will was this: that our country, little accustomed as it was to obedience, should now curb itself under an ancient yoke without obtaining any reforms at all. And the be-all and the end-all of his desire was the aggrandizement of that Holy Mother of his, the Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman, One, Entire, Universal, changeless and unalterable, and this was his will for no other reason at all than just the fact that it was his will. And in this he was like some woman without sense, that tosses about all night upon her bed as though it were a bed of thorns, endlessly tortured by her own imaginings.
“Yes,” he would say, “O most Holy Saint Philip, and you, O my Lord God, if only I could turn the Low Countries into a common grave, and cast therein all the inhabitants of that country, then surely they would return to Thee, my most blessed Patron, and to Thee, my Lady Virgin Mary, and to ye, my good masters, the saints and saintesses of Paradise!”
And he really tried to do as he said; so that he was more Roman than the Pope and more Catholic than the Councils!
And the people of Flanders and of the Low Countries began to grow anxious again, and to think that they could discern in the distance this crowned spider, working in the sombre house of the Escurial, reaching out his long claws with their nippers open, and spreading wide the web in which he might enwrap them all and suck them white of their blood.
Ulenspiegel, for his part, went spreading the alarm wherever he could, and stirring up the people against the ravishers of his country and the murderers of his parents.
One day, therefore, when he was in the Marché du Vendredi, near by the Dulle-Griet—the Great Canon—Ulenspiegel lay flat down on his stomach in the middle of the road. A charcoal-burner who happened to be passing came up and asked him what he was doing there.
“I am giving my nose a wetting,” Ulenspiegel told him, “so that I may discover where this great wind is coming from.”
Next a carpenter came along.
“Do you take the pavement for a mattress?” he asked.
“Before long,” said Ulenspiegel, “there are some that will be taking it for a counterpane.”
A monk came up and stopped by his side.
“What does this booby here?”
“He entreats your blessing, lying flat at your feet,” said Ulenspiegel. The monk gave his blessing and went away. But Ulenspiegel continued where he was with his head pressed to the earth, till at last a peasant came along and asked him what he was listening for. “Do you hear some noise or other?” he said.
“Yes,” replied Ulenspiegel. “I hear the wood beginning to grow, that wood whence many a faggot shall be made for the burning of poor heretics.”
“Do you hear aught else?” inquired a sergeant of the commune.
“Yes,” said Ulenspiegel, “I hear the men-at-arms that are on their way from Spain. If you have anything you wish to save, bury it now, for in a little while our cities will not be safe from thieves any more.”
“The man is mad,” said the sergeant.
And the people of the town thought so too.