The Legend of Ulenspiegel Volume I Part 7

The boy wept.

"Do not so," said he, "I have a pain in my loins, monseigneur my father."

"But," said Charles, "you have a pain everywhere then?"

"I would not be ill at all if I were left in peace," replied the child.

"Dost thou think," rejoined the Emperor, impatiently, "to pa.s.s thy royal life in brooding as do clerks? For them, if it must be, in order that they may soil their parchments with ink, from the silence, solitude, and retirement; for thee, son of the sword, there needs hot blood, the eye of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the strength of Hercules. Why dost thou make the holy sign? G.o.d's blood! 'tis not for the lion's cub to ape paternoster-mongering females."

"Hark, the Angelus, monseigneur my father," replied the child.

XIX

This year May and June were verily the months of flowers. Never did any see in Flanders hawthorn so fragrant, never in the gardens so many roses, such heaps of jasmine and honeysuckle. When the wind that blew up out of England drove the incense of this flowery land towards the east, every man, and specially in Antwerp, nose in air with delight, would say:

"Do you smell the sweet wind that comes from Flanders?"

In like wise the busy bees sucked the flowers' honey, made wax, laid their eggs in hives too small to harbour their swarms. What music of labour under the blue sky that covered the rich earth with its dazzling tent!

Men made hives out of rushes, of straw, of osiers, of plaited hay. Basketmakers, tubmakers, coopers were wearing out their tools over the work. As for the wood carvers, for a long time they had been unequal to the task.

The swarms were of full thirty thousand bees and two thousand seven hundred drones. The honeycombs were so delicious that because of their rare quality, the dean of Damme sent eleven to the Emperor Charles, by way of thanks for having through his edicts restored the Holy Inquisition to all its full vigour. It was Philip that ate them, but they did him no good.

Tramps, beggars, vagabonds, and all that ragtag and bobtail of idle rogues that parade their laziness about the roads, preferring to be hanged rather than to work, enticed by the taste of the honey, came to get their share of it. And they prowled about by night, in crowds.

Claes had made hives to attract the swarming bees to them; some were full and others empty, awaiting the bees. Claes used to watch all night to guard this sugared wealth. When he was tired, he used to bid Ulenspiegel take his place. And the boy did so with a good will.

Now one night Ulenspiegel, to avoid the cold air, had taken shelter in a hive, and, all huddled up, was looking through the openings, of which there were two, in the top of the hive.

As he was on the point of falling asleep, he heard the little trees and bushes of the hedge crackling and heard the voices of two men whom he took to be robbers. He looked out through one of the openings in the hive, and saw that they both had long hair and a long beard, though the beard was the mark and sign of n.o.ble rank.

They went from hive to hive, and came to his own, and picking it up, they said:

"Let us take this one: it is the heaviest."

Then they carried it off, using their sticks to do it. Ulenspiegel took no pleasure in being thus carted in a hive. The night was clear and bright, and the thieves walked along without uttering a word. Every fifty paces they stopped, clean out of breath, to go on their way again presently. The one in front grumbled furiously at having so heavy a weight to bear, and the one behind whimpered melancholy-wise. For in this world there are two kinds of idle cowards, those who grow angry with work, and those that whine when there is work to be done.

Ulenspiegel, having nothing else to do, pulled the hair of the robber who went in front, and the beard of the one behind, so that growing tired of this game, the angry one said to the snivelling one:

"Stop pulling my hair, or I will give you such a wallop on the head with my fist that it will sink down into your chest and you will look through your ribs like a thief through the bars of his prison."

"I wouldn't dare, my friend," said the sniveller, "but it is you that are pulling me by the beard."

The angry one answered:

"I don't go hunting vermin in beggar fellows' fur."

"Sir," replied the sniveller, "do not make the hive jump about so much; my poor arms are nearly breaking in two."

"I'll have them off altogether," answered the angry fellow.

Then, putting off his leathern gear he set the hive down on the ground, and leaped upon his comrade. And they fought with each other, the one cursing and swearing, the other crying for mercy.

Ulenspiegel, hearing the blows pattering down, came out of the hive, dragged it with him as far as the nearest wood so as to find it there again, and went back to Claes's house.

And thus it is that in quarrellings sly folk find their advantage.

XX

When he was fifteen, Ulenspiegel erected a little tent at Damme upon four stakes, and he cried out that everyone might see within, represented in a handsome frame of hay, his present and future self.

When there came a man of law, haughty and puffed up with his own importance, Ulenspiegel would thrust his head out of the frame, and mimicking the face of an old ape, he would say:

"An old mug may decay, but never flourish; am I not your very mirror, good sir of the doctoral phiz?"

If he had a stout soldier for client, Ulenspiegel would hide and show in the middle of the frame, instead of his face, a dishful of meat and bread, and say:

"Battle will make hash of you; what will you give me for my prophecy, O soldier beloved of the big-mouthed sakers?"

When an old man, wearing ingloriously his h.o.a.ry head, would bring Ulenspiegel his wife, a young woman, the boy, hiding himself as he had done for the soldier, and showing in the frame a little tree, on whose branches were hung knife handles, caskets, combs, inkhorns, all made of horn, would call out:

"Whence come all these fine nicknacks, Messire? Is it not from the hornbeam that groweth within the garden of old husbands? Who shall say now that cuckolds are folk useless in a commonweal?"

And Ulenspiegel would display his young face in the frame alongside the tree.

The old man, hearing him, would cough with masculine anger, but his dear wife would soothe him with her hand, and smiling, come up to Ulenspiegel.

"And my mirror," she would say, "wilt thou show it to me?"

"Come closer," Ulenspiegel would answer.

She would obey, and he then, kissing her wherever he could:

"Thy mirror," he would say, "is stark youth with proud codpiece."

And the darling would go away also, but not without giving him florins one or two.

To the fat, blear-eyed monk who would ask to see his present and future self, Ulenspiegel would answer:

"Thou art a ham cupboard, and so thou shalt be a still room for cervoise ale; for salt calleth upon drinking, is not this true, great belly? Give me a patard for not having lied."