“This man is mine; I take him for my husband.”
And the people applauded and the women cried out:
“Long live, long live the girl who is Ulenspiegel’s saviour!”
“What is this?” asked Messire de Lumey.
Tres-Long answered:
“After the use and custom of the town, it is by right and law that a young maiden and unmarried woman can save a man from the rope by taking him for husband at the foot of the gallows.”
“God is with him,” said de Lumey; “untie him.”
Then riding up to the scaffold, he saw the girl prevented from cutting Ulenspiegel’s ropes and the executioner seeking to oppose her efforts and saying:
“If you cut them, who will pay for them?”
But the girl paid no heed to him.