The folk of Damme having thus learned that it was upon a second denunciation by Grypstuiver that the widow and the orphan were thus being haled off to prison, hooted the fishmonger, and that night flung stones through his windows. And his door was covered with filth.
And he no longer dared to leave his own house.
LXXVIII
Towards ten o’clock in the forenoon Ulenspiegel and Soetkin were brought into the torture chamber.
There were the bailiff, the clerk and the sheriffs, the executioner from Bruges, his assistant and a barber surgeon.
The bailiff asked Soetkin if she was not holding back goods that belonged to the Emperor. She replied that having nothing, she could hold back nothing.
“And thou?” asked the bailiff, speaking to Ulenspiegel.
“Seven months since,” said he, “we inherited seven hundred carolus; some of these we ate. As for the others, I cannot tell where they are; I think indeed that the traveller on foot that stayed in our house, for our undoing, took the rest away, for I have seen nothing since then.”
The bailiff asked again if both persisted in declaring themselves innocent.