All went off wherever and however they could: the dean, still scratching, rescued the Holy Sacrament; the pious people carried the relics into the church; Saint Martin’s four bearers threw Pompilius roughly on the ground. There, not daring to scratch, move, or speak, the poor bellringer shut his eyes devoutly.
Two lads would have carried him away, but finding him too heavy, they stood him upright against a wall, and there Pompilius shed big tears.
The populace assembled round about him; the women had gone to fetch handkerchiefs of fine white linen and wiped his face to preserve his tears as relics, and said to him: “Monseigneur, how hot you are!”
The bellringer looked at them piteously, and in spite of himself, made grimaces with his nose.
But as the tears were rolling copiously from his eyes, the women said:
“Great Saint Martin, are you weeping for the sins of the town of Ypres? Is not that your honoured nose moving? Yet we have followed the counsel of Louis Vivès and the poor of Ypres will have wherewithal to work and wherewithal to eat. Oh! the big tears! They are pearls. Our salvation is here.”
The men said:
“Must we, great Saint Martin, pull down the Ketel-straat in our town? But teach us above all ways of preventing poor girls from going out at night and so falling into a thousand adventures.”
Suddenly the people cried out:
“Here is the beadle!”