The Legend of Ulenspiegel Volume Ii Part 11

"What are you doing?" cried Lamme, piteously.

"What!" answered Ulenspiegel.

"This lash with the whip?" said Lamme.

"What lash with the whip?"

"The one I got from you," returned Lamme.

"On the left?" asked Ulenspiegel.

"Aye, on the left and on my behind. Why did you do that, scandalous vagabond?"

"In ignorance," replied Ulenspiegel. "I know well enough what a whip is, and very well, too, what a behind of small compa.s.s is upon a saddle. But seeing this one wide, swollen, tight, and overflowing the saddle, I said to myself: 'Since it could never be pinched with a finger, a stroke of the whip could not sting it either with the lash.' I was wrong."

Lamme smiling at this speech, Ulenspiegel went on in these terms:

"But I am not the only one in this world to sin through ignorance, and there is more than one past-*master idiot displaying his fat on a donkey saddle who could give me points. If my whip sinned on your behind, you sinned much more weightily on my legs in preventing them from running after the girl who was coquetting in her garden."

"Crow's meat!" said Lamme, "so it was revenge then?"

"Just a little one," replied Ulenspiegel.

XXI

At Damme Nele the unhappy lived alone with Katheline who still for love called the cold devil who never came.

"Ah!" she would say, "thou art rich, Hanske my darling, and mightest bring me back the seven hundred carolus. Then would Soetkin come back alive from limbo to this earth, and Claes would laugh in the sky: well canst thou do this. Take away the fire, the soul would fain come out; make a hole, the soul would fain come out."

And without ceasing she pointed her finger to the place where the tow had been.

Katheline was very poor, but the neighbours helped her with beans, with bread and meat according to their means. The commune gave her some money. And Nele sewed dresses for rich women in the town; went to their houses to iron their linen, and in this way earned a florin a week.

And Katheline still repeated:

"Make a hole; take away my soul. It knocks to get out. He will give back the seven hundred carolus."

And Nele, listening to her, wept.

XXII

Meanwhile, Ulenspiegel and Lamme, armed with their pa.s.ses, came to a little inn backed up against the rocks of the Sambre, which in certain places are covered with trees. And on the sign there was written: Chez Marlaire.

Having drunk many a flask of Meuse wine of the fas.h.i.+on of Burgundy and eaten much fish, they gossiped with the host, a Papist of the deepest dye, but as talkative as a magpie through the wine he had drunk and all the time winking an eye cunningly. Ulenspiegel, divining some mystery under this winking, made him drink more, so much that the host began to dance and burst out into laughter, then returning to the table:

"Good Catholics," he said, "I drink to you."

"To you we drink," replied Lamme and Ulenspiegel.

"To the extinction of all plague, of rebellion and heresy."

"We drink," replied Lamme and Ulenspiegel, who kept replenis.h.i.+ng the goblet the host could never allow to stay full.

"You are good fellows," said he. "I drink to your Generosities; I make a profit on wine drunk. Where are your pa.s.ses?"

"Here they are," answered Ulenspiegel.

"Signed by the duke," said the host. "I drink to the duke."

"To the duke we drink," replied Lamme and Ulenspiegel. The host, continuing:

"How do we catch rats, mice, and field mice? In rat-traps, snares, and mouse-traps. Who is the field mouse? 'Tis the great heretic Orange as h.e.l.lfire. G.o.d is with us. They are coming. He! he! Something to drink! Pour out, I am roasting, burning. To drink! Most goodly little reforming preachers.... I say little ... goodly little gallants, stout troopers, oak trees.... Drink! Will you not go with them to the great heretic's camp? I have pa.s.ses signed by him. Ye shall see their work."

"We shall go to the camp," answered Ulenspiegel.

"They will get there all right, and by night if an opportunity offers" (and the host, whistling, made the gesture of a man cutting a throat). "Steel-wind will stop the blackbird Na.s.sau from ever whistling again. Come on, something to drink, hey!"

"You are a gay fellow, even though you are married," replied Ulenspiegel.

Said the host:

"I neither was nor am. I hold the secrets of princes. Drink up! My wife would steal them from my pillow to have me hanged and to be a widow sooner than Nature means it. Vive Dieu! they are coming ... where are the new pa.s.ses? On my Christian heart. Let us drink! They are there, three hundred paces along the road, at Marche-les-Dames. Do ye see them? Let us drink!"

"Drink," said Ulenspiegel. "I drink to the king, to the duke, to the preachers, to Steel-wind; I drink to you, to me; I drink to the wine and to the bottle. You are not drinking." And at every health Ulenspiegel filled up his gla.s.s and the host emptied it.

Ulenspiegel studied him for some time; then rising up:

"He is asleep," said he; "let us go, Lamme."

When they were outside:

"He has no wife to betray us.... The night is about to come down.... You heard clearly what this rogue said, and you know who the three preachers are?"

"Aye," said Lamme.

"You know they are coming from Marche-les-Dames, along by the Meuse, and it will be well to wait for them on the way before Steel-wind blows."

"Aye," said Lamme.

"We must save the prince's life," said Ulenspiegel.