The Legend of Ulenspiegel Volume I Part 31

The procession continued; Ulenspiegel remained alone with the landgrave.

"If thou hast the ill-luck," said the landgrave, "to err in one feature the pourtraying all these countenances, I shall have thy head cut off like a chicken's."

"Bereft of my head," thought Ulenspiegel, "quartered, chopped in pieces, or hanged at least, it will be much more comfortable to pourtray nothing at all. I will bethink me for it."

"Where," he asked the landgrave, "is the hall that I am to decorate with all these paintings?"

"Follow me," said the landgrave.

And showing him a great room with s.p.a.cious walls all bare and empty:

"This," he said, "is the hall."

"I should greatly like," said Ulenspiegel, "that they should set great curtains on these walls, so as to a.s.sure my paintings against the insults of flies and against dust."

"That shall be done," said the landgrave.

The curtains being put in place, Ulenspiegel asked for three apprentices, as he said, to make them prepare his colours.

For thirty days, Ulenspiegel and the apprentices did nothing but hold feast and revel, sparing neither the choice viands nor the old wines. The landgrave watched over all.

However, on the thirty-first day he came and put in his nose at the door of the room which Ulenspiegel had enjoined on him not to enter.

"Well, Thyl, where are thy portraits?"

"Far away," replied Ulenspiegel.

"Could not one see them?"

"Not yet."

The thirty-sixth day, he put his nose in at the door again.

"Well, Thyl?" he asked.

"Ah! sire Landgrave, they are travelling towards the end."

The sixtieth day, the landgrave became angry, and entering the room:

"Thou art immediately to show me the pictures," said he.

"Yea, great lord," replied Ulenspiegel, "but deign not to draw aside this curtain until you have summoned hither the lords and captains and ladies of your court."

"I consent to this," said the landgrave.

They all came at his command.

Ulenspiegel stood before the curtain closely drawn.

"Monseigneur Landgrave," said he, "Madame Landgravine, and you, Monseigneur de Lunebourg, and you other beauteous dames and valiant captains, I have pourtrayed as best I could your pretty or warlike faces behind this curtain. It will be easy to recognize each one of you there. You are curious to see yourselves, it is natural, but pray have patience and permit me to say a word or two to you. Beauteous ladies and valiant captains, who are all of n.o.ble blood, you can see and admire my painting; but if among you there is one of low origin, he will see nothing save the blank wall. And now deign to open your n.o.ble eyes."

Ulenspiegel pulled the curtain back.

"n.o.ble men alone see aught, alone they see aught there, the n.o.ble ladies, so shall men say ere long: 'blind in painting as a base fellow, clear seeing as a n.o.ble gentleman'!"

All opened their eyes to the widest, pretending to see, mutually pointing themselves out to one another, showing and recognizing each other, but seeing nothing in reality but the white wall, which made them grieved.

All at once the fool who was there bounded three feet into the air and shaking his bells:

"Let me be looked on as base," said he, "a base fellow full of basest baseness, but I will say and cry and proclaim with trumpets and flourish of trumpets that I see there a bare wall, a blank wall, a naked wall. So help me G.o.d and all His saints!"

Ulenspiegel replied:

"When fools begin to talk it is time for wise men to be off."

He was making to leave the palace when the landgrave staying him:

"Fool full of folly," said he, "that goest about the world praising things fine and good and mocking at things stupid with wide mouth, thou that hast dared before so many n.o.ble dames and most high and mighty lords to make a vulgar mock of pride of blasonry and lords.h.i.+p, thou wilt be hanged one day for thy over-free speech."

"If the rope be a golden rope," replied Ulenspiegel, "it will break with terror to see me coming."

"There," said the landgrave, giving him fifteen florins, "there is the first piece of it."

"All thanks, Monseigneur," answered Ulenspiegel, "every inn by the way shall have a strand of it, a strand all of gold that maketh Croesuses of all these thieving innkeepers."

And away he went on his a.s.s, his bonnet high, his plume streaming in the wind, merry and jolly.

LVIII

The leaves were yellowing on the trees and the autumn wind was beginning to blow. Katheline sometimes had her reason for an hour or two or three. And Claes then said that the spirit of G.o.d had visited her in His great compa.s.sion. At these moments she had power by pa.s.ses and by words to cast a spell upon Nele, who saw more than a hundred leagues away all that happened in city places, in the streets, or within the houses.

On this day then, Katheline, being in her wits, was eating olie koekjes well washed down with dobbel-cuyt in company with Claes, Soetkin, and Nele.

Said Claes:

"To-day is the day of the abdication of His Sacred Majesty the Emperor Charles the Fifth. Nele, my dear, could you see as far as Brussels in Brabant?"

"I could, if Katheline is willing," answered Nele.

Then Katheline made the girl sit upon a bench, and by her words and pa.s.ses, acting like a spell, Nele sank down all deep in slumber.

Katheline said to her:

"Go into the little house in the Park, which is the favourite abode of the Emperor Charles the Fifth."