Suddenly Soetkin became white as snow, shuddered in all her body without weeping, and pointed with her finger to the sky. A long narrow flame had just spouted up from the pyre and rose at moments above the roofs of the low houses. It was cruelly tormenting to Claes, for according to the whims of the wind it gnawed at his legs, touched his beard and made it frizzle and smoke, licked at his hair and burned it.
Ulenspiegel held Soetkin in his arms and would have dragged her away from the window. They heard a piercing cry, it came from Claes whose body was burning on one side only. But he held his tongue and wept, and his breast was all wet with his tears.
Then Soetkin and Ulenspiegel heard a great noise of voices. This was the citizens, women and children, crying out:
"Claes was not condemned to burn by a slow fire, but by a great one. Executioner, make the pyre burn up!"
The executioner did so, but the fire did not catch quickly enough.
"The flame! The great flame!" cried Soetkin.
In very deed, a red flame climbed up the sky in the midst of the smoke.
"He is about to die," said the widow. "Lord God, have pity upon the soul of the innocent. Where is the king, that I may rip out his heart with my nails?"
The bells of Notre Dame were tolling for the dead.
Soetkin heard Claes again utter a loud cry, but she saw not his body writhing from the torment of the flame, nor his face twisting, nor his head that he turned every way and beat against the wood of the stake. The people continued to cry out and to hiss; women and boys threw stones, and all heard Claes saying, from the midst of the flame and the smoke:
And his head fell forward on his breast like a head of lead.
And a lamentable shrill and piercing cry was heard coming from out of Katheline's cottage. Then none heard aught else, save the poor witless woman nodding her head and saying: "The soul would fain escape!"
Claes was dead. The pyre having burned out sank down at the foot of the stake. And the poor body, all blackened, stayed on it hanging by the neck.
And the bells of Notre Dame tolled for the dead.
Soetkin was in Katheline's standing against the wall, her head hanging low and her hands joined together. She was holding Ulenspiegel in her embrace, neither speaking nor weeping.