The bailiff said to him:
“Did no one ever ask thee to let him see thy toothed waffle iron?”
The fishmonger replied:
“It was seen like any other, save that it is pierced with holes in which I was wont to screw the iron teeth at dawn I took them out; the peasants prefer my waffles to those of the other sellers; and they call them ‘Waefels met brabandsche knoopen’, ‘waffles with brabant buttons’, because when the teeth are away, the empty holes make little half spheres like buttons.”
But the bailiff:
“When didst thou bite the poor victims?”
“By day and by night. By day I used to wander about the dunes and the highways, carrying my waffle iron, keeping in hiding, and especially on Saturday, the day of the great Bruges market. If I saw some rustic pass, wandering melancholy, I left him alone, judging that his trouble was a flux of the purse; but I used to walk along by him whom I saw journeying merrily; when he did not look for it I would bite him in the neck and take his satchel. And not only in the dunes, but on all the byways and highways of the flat country.”
The bailiff then said:
“Repent and pray unto God.”
“It is the Lord God that willed I should be what I am. I did all without my will, egged on by Nature’s will. Wicked tigers, ye will punish me unjustly. But do not burn me ... I did all without my will; have pity, I am poor and old; I shall die of my wounds; do not burn me.”