XXXV
As she fell, Nele rubbed her eyes but she could see nothing save the sun that was rising, wreathed in a golden mist. And then the tips of the grass all golden too, in that radiance which was soon to tinge with gold the plumage of the sea-gulls who slept as yet, but were about to awaken.
Nele looked downwards at herself, and seeing that she was naked she put on her clothes with all haste. Then it was that she noticed the body of Ulenspiegel where it lay there, naked also, and him also she covered with his clothes. He seemed to be still asleep and she gave him a shake, but he remained quite motionless like one dead. Then was Nele seized with fear. “Have I killed him?” she cried. “Have I killed my love with this balm of vision? Would that I too might die! Ah, Tyl, wake up! But he is as cold as marble!”
Ulenspiegel did not awake, and two nights passed and a day, and Nele still watched by his side in a fever of grief and fear.
It was at the dawn of the second day of her vigil that Nele heard the sound of a little bell in the distance, and saw presently a peasant approaching with a shovel in his hand. Behind him came a burgomaster with two aldermen carrying candles, and then the curé of Stavenisse with a beadle holding a parasol over his head. It appeared that they were going to administer the Holy Sacrament of Unction to one Jacobsen, a brave Beggarman, who had adopted the new religion by compulsion, but being about to die had returned to the bosom of the Holy Roman Church.
When they came opposite to Nele they found her still crying, and they saw the body of Ulenspiegel laid out on the grass in front of her, covered with clothes. Nele fell upon her knees in front of the little procession.
“My girl,” said the burgomaster, “what are you doing by this corpse?”
Without daring to raise her eyes, Nele made answer:
“I am praying for the soul of my beloved, he that has fallen dead as if struck by lightning. I am alone now, and I am fain to die.”
But already the curé was puffing with pleasure.
“Ulenspiegel the Beggarman dead!” he cried. “Praise be to God! Be quick there, peasant, and dig a grave, and take his clothes off before you bury him.”
“No,” said Nele, getting up from the ground. “No, you shall not take his clothes, he would be cold there in the cold earth.”
“Quick!” cried the curé, addressing himself again to the peasant with the shovel.
“You may bury him,” said Nele, all in tears. “I give you leave; for this sand is full of lime, so that his body will keep for ever whole and beautiful, the body of my beloved.”
And half mad with anguish as she was, Nele bent over the body of Ulenspiegel, kissing him through her tears.
Now the burgomaster, the aldermen, and even the peasant had compassion on the girl, but not so the curé, who ceased not to cry out most joyfully: “The great Beggarman is dead! God be praised!”
Then the peasant dug the grave, and Ulenspiegel was placed therein, and covered all over with sand.
And over the grave the curé said the prayers for the dead, and the others knelt all round. Suddenly there was a great commotion in the sand, and Ulenspiegel arose, sneezing and shaking the sand from his hair, and he seized the curé by the throat.
“Inquisitor!” he cried. “I was asleep, and you buried me alive! Where is Nele? Have you buried her also? Who are you?”
The curé began to cry out in terror:
“The great Beggarman returns to this world! Lord God have mercy on my soul!”
And away he fled like a stag before the hounds.
Nele came to Ulenspiegel: “Kiss me, dearest,” she said.
Then Ulenspiegel looked about him once more. The two peasants had run off like the curé, and that they might run the faster they had thrown to the ground both shovel and parasol. As for the burgomaster and the aldermen, they lay groaning on the grass, stopping up their ears in their fright.
Ulenspiegel went to them and gave them a good shaking.
“Think you that they can be buried in the ground,” he asked them, “Ulenspiegel and Nele? Nele that is the heart of our Mother Flanders, and Ulenspiegel that is her soul? She can sleep too, forsooth, but die—never! Come, Nele.”
And they twain departed, Ulenspiegel singing his sixth song. But no man knoweth where he sang his last.
The Sixth Song