“Hail pilgrim, hail! Do you come from far away, you handsome pilgrim boy?”
Ulenspiegel, thinking sadly of Nele, thus made answer:
“I come from Flanders, a lovely land and filled with lovesome girls.”
“What crime have you committed?” asked the women, stopping in their dance.
“I dare not confess it, so great it was,” said he.
They asked him the reason why it was needful for him to journey thus with a pilgrim’s staff and wallet, and those scalloped oysters that are the sign of the pilgrim.
“The reason is,” he replied, not quite truthfully, “that I said that Masses for the dead are advantageous to the priests.”
“True, they bring many a sounding denier to the priests,” they answered; “but are they not also of advantage to the souls in purgatory!”
“I have never been there,” answered Ulenspiegel.
“Will you come dine with us?” said the prettiest of the archers.