“Pieter de Roose replied:
“‘The brother of a public baggage has no need to show such a lofty nose.’
“He lied. I am not public, and give myself only to whomsoever I please.’
“Michielkin, then, flinging his quart of cervoise ale in his face, told him he had lied like the filthy debauchee that he was, threatening, if he did not decamp, to make him eat his fist up to the elbow.
“The other would have talked more, but Michielkin did what he had said: he gave him two great blows on the jaw and dragged him by the teeth, with which he was biting, out on to the road, where he left him battered and bruised, without pity.
“Pieter de Roose, being healed, and unable to live a solitary life, went in ’t Vagevuur, a veritable purgatory and a gloomy tavern, where there were none but poor people. There also he was left to himself, even by all those ragamuffins. And no man spoke to him, save a few country folk to whom he was unknown, and a few wandering rogues, or deserters from some troop or other. He was even beaten there several times, for he was quarrelsome.
“The provost Spelle had come to Meulestee with two catchpolls, and Pieter de Roose followed them everywhere about like a dog, filling them up at his expense with wine, with meat, and many other pleasures that are bought with money. And so he became their companion and their comrade, and he began to do his wicked best to torment all he hated; which was all the inhabitants of Meulestee, but especially my poor brother.
“First of all he attacked Michielkin. False witnesses, gallows birds, greedy for florins, declared that Michielkin was a heretic, had uttered foulness about Notre Dame, and oftentimes blasphemed the name of God and the saints in the tavern of the Falcon, and that, besides all, he had full three hundred florins in a coffer.
“Notwithstanding that the witnesses were not of good life and conduct, Michielkin was arrested, and the proofs being declared by Spelle and the catchpolls good and sufficient to warrant putting the accused to the torture, Michielkin was hung up by the arms to a pulley fastened to the ceiling, and they put a weight of fifty pounds on each of his feet.
“He denied the charge, saying that if in Meulestee there was a rogue, a blackguard, a blasphemer and a lecherous brute, it was no other than Pieter de Roose, and not he.