So much of physical prowess, I repeat, one has the fair and ancient right to expect of any national hero. Quite another facet of the jewel is the roguish, not at all "heroic" Tyl of elder legends, who delights in perpetrating jokes not always pre-eminent for delicacy. These thimble-rigging and cloacinal jeux d'esprit De Coster, to be sure, has for the most part omitted, with here and there just a bland indication. For another matter, although Tyl is devotedly attached to the fair Nele, and their marriage at the end of his wanderings is a conclusion such as the erudite describe as foregone, nobody can expect a rogue meticulously to emulate Joseph. The national hero of Belgium, be it repeated, is a rogue.... So there came about inevitably that affair of the beautiful gay-hearted dame whom Tyl escorted to Dudzeel: in all her dealings with young men, howsoever impudent, she abhorred in particular the sin of cruelty, and could not be pricked into it. And there was the Walloon maiden into whose home Tyl went one night, to take part in organ practise of the right accompaniment to some Flemish love-songs. And there was the Comtesse de Meghen, another lovely and benevolent lady, who offered Ulenspiegel, in the beginning, hospitality, and in the end, her sincerest compliments upon the fact that he did not in anything resemble her elderly and flabby husband.... In fine, Tyl Ulenspiegel marches, in the pride of his youth, about a world of brightly-colored and generous women, and graces a world wherein he displays as much continence as appears consistent with politeness; and wherein Joseph in the final outcome could not manage to combine these two virtues. So likewise this rogue marches, with chance for guide, about a world which--then also,--was ruled by folly and bigotry; and he goes with jauntiness, as befits "a master of the merry words and frolics of youth," even in the shadowed places where over-head his betrayed and gibbeted kindred fester between him and the sun. His is Hamlet's heritage, but the Fleming wears his rue with a marked difference; since the ashes of a martyred father lie upon Tyl's breast without at all oppressing a heart whose core is roguishness. And in the presence of injustice Tyl Ulenspiegel does not shrink, not even into drawing morals: instead, with chance for guide, he marches. For those who would wrong him his eye and tongue and sword stay keen; and the rogue knows these weapons to be in the long run sufficient: meanwhile, that one should now and then encounter over-troublesome fellows needing to be killed, is as naturally a part of wandering at adventure as that one should find everywhere girls to be assisted out of virginity and flagons to be emptied, and songs to be made beyond any numbering, but never the last song.... So the rogue marches, and puts all things to their proper uses. And the heart of the reader, given something better than the heart of a flea, goes out to the resistless rogue.