On the eighteenth of July, Nele said:
“My feet are wet; what is this?”
“Blood,” said Ulenspiegel.
At night the soldiers came again with their bread for six.
“Where the rope is no longer enough,” said they, “the sword does the work. Three hundred soldiers and twenty-seven burghers who tried to flee out of the town are now walking about the streets of hell with their heads in their hands.”
The next day the blood came again into the cloister; the soldiers came not to bring the bread, but merely to contemplate the prisoners, saying:
“The five hundred Walloons, Englishmen, and Scotsmen that were beheaded yesterday looked better. These are hungry, no doubt, but who then should die of hunger if not the Beggar!”
And indeed, they were like phantoms, all pale, haggard, broken, trembling with cold ague.
On the sixteenth of August, at five in the evening, the soldiers came in laughing and gave them bread, cheese, and beer. Lamme said:
“It is the feast of death.”