"Catch the bird if you can," said he, "put it in a cage, make it sing for your pleasure; but I also will put you in a cage that is fastened with strong bars of iron, and I will make you sing too. Then you, who like nothing better than to run about, will be able to do so no more; and you will be kept standing in the shade when you are chilly, and in the sun when you are hot. And, one Sunday, we shall all go out and forget to give you your food, and we shall not return again till Thursday, and then maybe we shall find our Tyl all stiff and starved to death." Soetkin was crying at this picture, but Ulenspiegel started forward. "What are you going to do?" asked Claes. "Open the window for the bird to fly out," he answered. And in fact the bird, which was a goldfinch, flew straight out through the window, and with a cry of joy mounted up into the air like an arrow, and then alighted upon a neighbouring apple-tree, smoothing its wings with its beak, ruffling its plumage. And all kinds of abuse did it sing in its bird language, all directed against Ulenspiegel. Then Claes said: "O son of mine, take care that you never take away its liberty from either man or beast, for liberty is the greatest good in the world. Let every one be free, free to go out into the sun when it is cold, and into the shade when it is hot. And let God give judgment on His Sacred Majesty, he who, not content with denying freedom of belief to the people of Flanders, has now put all the noble city of Ghent into a cage of slavery." XXI Now Philip was married to Marie of Portugal, and with her he acquired her lands for the crown of Spain; and together they had a son, Don Carlos, he who was afterwards called "the mad" and "the cruel." And Philip had no love for his wife. The Queen was lying-in. She kept her bed, and by her side were the maids of honour, the Duchess of Alba among them. Oftentimes did Philip leave his wife to go and see the burning of heretics. And all the gentlemen and ladies of the Court did likewise. And thus also did the Duchess of Alba and the other noble ladies whose duty it was to watch by the Queen in her childbed. Now at that time the ecclesiastical judges had seized a certain sculptor of Flanders, a good Roman Catholic, on the following charge: He had been commissioned, it seems, by a certain monk to carve a wooden statue of Our Lady for a certain sum, and on the monk refusing to pay the price which had been agreed between them, the sculptor had slashed at the face of the image with his chisel, saying that he would rather destroy his work than let it go at the price of a piece of dirt. He was straightway denounced by the monk as an iconoclast, tortured most piteously and condemned to be burnt alive. During the torture they had scalded the soles of his feet, so that he cried out as he passed along from the prison to the stake: "Cut my feet off! For God's sake cut my feet off!"