“Courage, friends, he that smiteth sore but loves the more. To the hardest hitters the love of their fair ones! Our Lady of Rindisbels, ’tis here may be seen the true males!”
And the pilgrims fell to it with joyous heart.
Claes, meanwhile, had drawn near the hermit, while Ulenspiegel, laughing and shouting, applauded the blows.
“Father,” said Claes, “what crime, then, have these poor fellows committed to be forced so cruelly to strike one another?”
But the hermit, not giving ear to him, shouted:
“Lazybones! ye lose courage. If the fists are weary are the feet? God’s life! some of you have legs to run like hares! What makes fire leap from the flint? ’Tis the iron that beateth it. What blows up virility in old folk if not a goodly dish of blows well seasoned with male fury?”
At these words, the pilgrims continued to belabour one another with casque, with hands, with feet. ’Twas a wild mêlée where not Argus with his hundred eyes had seen aught but the flying dust or the peak of some casque.
Sudden the hermit clanked his bell. Fifes, drums, trumpets, bagpipes, shawms, and old iron ceased their din. And this was the signal for peace.
The pilgrims picked up their wounded. Among them were seen many tongues swollen with anger, protruding from the mouths of the combatants. But they returned of themselves to their accustomed palates. Most difficult of all it was to take off the casques of those who had thrust them down as far as their necks, and now were shaking their heads, but without making them fall, no more than green plums.
None the less the hermit said to them: