“I will do so,” said the man.
And he went away, while Soetkin went to bring wherewithal to feast propitious fortune. The stork that day had for supper two gudgeons and a cod’s head.
The news spread swiftly through Damme that Claes the poor had become Claes the rich through the act of his brother Josse, and the dean said that Katheline had doubtless cast a spell on Josse, since Claes had received from him a sum of money, a very great sum, beyond a doubt, and had not given the poorest robe to Our Lady.
Claes and Soetkin were happy, Claes working in the fields or selling his coal, and Soetkin showing herself a brave housekeeper at home.
But Soetkin, always sad, sought unceasingly with her eyes for Ulenspiegel along the highway.
LII
That day the Emperor Charles received from England a letter in which his son said to him:
Sir and Father:
It displeases me to have to live in this land where the accursed heretics breed like fleas and caterpillars and locusts. Fire and sword would not be amiss to lop them from off the trunk of the life-giving tree our mother Holy Church. As if this grief were not enough for me, still it must needs be that they will not look on me as their king, but as their queen’s husband, and having no authority apart from her. They make game of me, saying in malicious pamphlets, whose authors and printers none can discover, that the Pope pays me to trouble and harm the realm with impious hangings and burnings, and when I would raise some urgent levy from them, for oftentimes they leave me without money, out of mere malice, they reply in evil lampoons that I have but to ask money from Satan whose work I do. The men of the Parliament make excuses and hunch up their backs in fear lest I should bite, but they grant nothing.