Speaking to the executioner, the bailiff said:
"Make the woman sit in the chair and put the baguettes on her hands and her feet."
"Oh, do not do that, Messieurs Judges!" cried Ulenspiegel. "Bind me in her place, break my fingers and my toes, but spare the widow."
"The fishmonger," said Soetkin. "I have hate and force."
Ulenspiegel seemed livid pale, trembling, beside himself, and held his peace.
The baguettes were little rods of boxwood, placed between each finger and toe, touching the bone, and joined together with strings by an instrument so craftily designed that the executioner could, at the behest of the judge, squeeze all the fingers together, strip the bones of their flesh, grind them terribly, or give the victim only a slight pain.
He put the baguettes on Soetkin's hands and feet.
Then the bailiff, addressing himself to Soetkin:
"Discover to me," said he, "the place where the carolus are hidden."
"I do not know it," she replied, groaning.
Ulenspiegel twisted his arms that were bound behind his back to be rid of the rope and so come to Soetkin's aid.
"Do not tighten them, messieurs judges," said he, "do not tighten them, these be but woman's bones, thin and brittle. A bird could break them with its beak. Do not tighten them, sirs--master executioner, I do not speak to you, for you must needs be obedient to these gentlemen's orders. O do not bid him tighten them; have pity!"
However, seeing that the executioner was locking the baguettes tighter still, he cried out again:
"Pity, sirs!" he said. "Ye are breaking the widow's fingers that she needeth to work withal. Alas! her feet! Will she never walk again now? Pity, sirs!"
"Thou shalt come to an ill end, fishmonger," cried Soetkin.
And the bones crackled and the blood from her feet fell in little drops.
Ulenspiegel looked at all this, and trembling with anguish and with rage, he said:
"A woman's bones, do not break them, sirs!"
And her voice was low and stifled like the voice of a ghost.
"Master judges, her hands are bleeding and her feet, too. The widow's bones are broken, broken!"
The barber surgeon touched them with his finger, and Soetkin uttered a loud scream.
"Confess for her," said the bailiff to Ulenspiegel.
But Soetkin looked at him with eyes like the eyes of the dead, wide open and staring. And he knew he could not speak, and he wept and said nothing.