“He feigns not to be,” answered Ulenspiegel. “Nevertheless, he is giving harbourage all the time to the Prince’s ships at Emden.” And then he added: “We are on the way to Maestricht.”
“You cannot go there,” said the farmer. “The Duke’s army is camped in front of the town and all round it.”
With that he conducted his visitors up into the loft, whence they could see the standards of enemy cavalry and infantry moving about in the distance over the plain.
Ulenspiegel said:
“I have a plan to get through, if only they who have authority in this place would give me leave to get married. But for wife I should need a sweet and a gentle and comely lass who would be willing to marry me—if not for always, then for a week at least.”
Lamme gasped with astonishment.
“Don’t do it, my son,” he cried. “She will only leave you, and then, all alone, you will burn with the fire of love; and the bed where now you sleep so sweetly will seem to you nothing better than a bed of prickly holly leaves, and gentle sleep will shun you for evermore.”
“Still I must marry,” replied Ulenspiegel. And then to Thomas Utenhove: “Come now, find me a wife; rich or poor, I don’t care which! And I will take her to church, and our marriage shall be blessed by the priest. And he shall give us our marriage lines. Though, to be sure, we shall not hold them valid as being given by the hand of a Papist and an Inquisitor. Nevertheless they will be good enough for our purpose, and we will prepare ourselves, as is the custom, for our wedding trip.”
“But what about the wife?”
“That’s your look-out,” answered Ulenspiegel. “But when you have found her I shall take two wagons and decorate them with wreaths of fir branches and holly and paper flowers, and in the wagons themselves I shall dispose the men whom you wish to be conveyed to the Prince of Orange.”