And with her finger she would point without ceasing to the place on her head where the flaming tow had burned her.
Katheline was very impoverished, but the neighbours helped her by sending in beans and bread and meat, according as they were able. The commune also gave her a certain amount of money, and Nele did sewing for the wealthy bourgeois, and went to their houses to mend their linen, earning in this way a florin or two every week. But Katheline kept on with her eternal “Make a hole! Let out my soul! She is knocking to be let out! And he will give me back the seven hundred caroluses!”
And Nele wept to hear her.
XX
In the meantime Ulenspiegel and Lamme continued their wanderings. Under the protection of their passports, they entered one day into a little tavern built against the rocks of the Sambre, the which rocks are covered with trees here and there, and on the sign of the tavern was written mine host’s name—MARLAIRE. When they had drunk many a flask of wine—wine of the Meuse, rather like Burgundy—and when they had eaten a large plate of fish, they fell talking to the innkeeper, who was a keen Papist but as talkative as he was pious because of the wine he had been drinking. And he kept on winking his eye maliciously. Ulenspiegel had a suspicion that all this winking portended something mysterious, and he made the fellow drink yet more, with the result that he fell to dancing and shouting with laughter, till at last he sat himself down at the table again, and, “Good Catholics,” says he, “I drink to you.”
“And to you we drink also,” answered Lamme and Ulenspiegel.
“And I drink to the extinction of all heresy and rebellion.”
“We will join you in that toast,” answered Lamme and Ulenspiegel, who kept on filling up the goblets which mine host could never suffer to remain full.
“You are good fellows,” said the innkeeper. “Let me drink to the health of your noble Generosities. For you must know that I derive some profit from all the wine that is drunk here. But where are your passports?”