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Now one evening, as Ulenspiegel was coming back from a marauding foray, he heard close by, in a corner of the hedge, a sound of groaning. Stooping down, he saw a dog lying upon some stones.
“Hey,” said he, “miserable beastie, what dost thou there so late?”
Caressing the dog, he felt his back wet, thought that someone had tried to drown him, and took him up in his arms to warm him.
Coming home he said:
“I bring a wounded patient, what shall I do to him?”
“Heal him,” said Claes in reply.
Ulenspiegel set the dog down upon the table. Claes, Soetkin, and himself then saw by the light of the lamp a little red Luxembourg spaniel hurt on the back. Soetkin sponged the wounds, covered them with ointment, and bound them up with linen. Ulenspiegel took the little beast into his bed, though Soetkin wanted to have him in her own, fearing, as she said, lest Ulenspiegel, who tumbled about in bed like a devil in a holy water pot, should hurt the dog as he slept.
But Ulenspiegel had his own way, and tended him so well that after six days the patient ran about like his fellows full of doggish tricks.
And the school-meester christened him Titus Bibulus Schnouffius: Titus in memory of a certain good Emperor of Rome, who took pains to gather in lost dogs; Bibulus because the dog loved bruinbier with the love of a true tosspot, and Schnouffius because sniff-sniffing everywhere he was always thrusting his nose into rat-holes and mole holes.
XXIV
At the end of the Rue Notre Dame there were two willows planted face to face on the edge of a deep pond.
Ulenspiegel stretched a rope between the two willows and danced upon it one Sunday after vespers, so well that all the crowd of vagabonds applauded him with both hand and voice. Then he came down from his rope and held out to all the bystanders a bowl that was speedily filled with money, but he emptied it in Soetkin’s apron and kept only eleven liards for himself.
The next Sunday he would fain dance again on his rope, but certain good-for-nought lads, being jealous of his nimbleness, had made a nick in the rope, so that after a few bounds the rope broke in sunder and Ulenspiegel tumbled into the water.
Whilst he swam to reach the bank the little fellows that cut the rope shouted to him:
“How is your limber health, Ulenspiegel? Are you going to the bottom of the pond to teach the carps to dance, dancer beyond price?”
Ulenspiegel coming out from the water and shaking himself cried out to them, for they were making off from him for fear of his fists:
“Be not afraid; come back next Sunday, I will show you tricks on the rope and you will have a share in the proceeds.”
On Sunday, the lads had not sliced the cord, but were keeping watch round about it, for fear any one might touch it, for there was a great crowd of people.
Ulenspiegel said to them:
“Each of you give me one of your shoes, and I wager that however big or little they may be I will dance with every one of them.”
“What do you pay if you lose?” they asked.
“Forty quarts of bruinbier,” replied Ulenspiegel, “and ye shall pay me three patards if I win the wager.”
“Aye,” said they.
And they each gave him a shoe. Ulenspiegel put them all in the apron he was wearing, and thus laden he danced upon the rope, though not without trouble.
The cord slicers called out from below:
“Thou saidst thou wouldst dance with every one of our shoes; put them on then and hold thy wager!”
Ulenspiegel, all the while dancing, made reply:
“I never said I would put on your shoes, but that I would dance with them. Now I am dancing and everything in my apron is dancing with me. Do ye not see it with your frog’s eyes all staring out of your heads? Pay me my three patards.”
But they hooted at him, shouting that he must give them their shoes back.
Ulenspiegel threw them at them one after the other into a heap. Therefrom arose a furious affray, for none of them could clearly distinguish his own shoe in the heap, or lay hold of it without a fight.
Ulenspiegel then came down from the tree and watered the combatants, but not with fair water.
XXV
The Infante, being fifteen years of age, went wandering, as his way was, through corridors, staircases, and chambers about the castle. But most of all he was seen prowling about the ladies’ apartments, in order to brawl with the pages who like himself were like cats in ambush in the corridors. Others planting themselves in the court, would be singing some tender ditty with their noses turned aloft.
The Infante, hearing them, would show himself at a window, and so terrify the poor pages that beheld this pallid muzzle instead of the soft eyes of their fair ones.
Among the court ladies there was a charming Flemish woman from Dudzeele hard by Damme, plump, a handsome ripe fruit and marvellously lovely, for she had green eyes and red crimped hair, shining like gold. Of a gay humour and ardent temperament, she never hid from any one her inclination for the lucky lord to whom she accorded the divine right of way of love over her goodly pleasaunce. There was one at this moment, handsome and high spirited, whom she loved. Every day at a certain hour she went to meet him, and this Philip discovered.
Taking his seat upon a bench set close up against a window, he watched for her and when she was passing in front of him, her eye alight, her lips parted, amiable, fresh from the bath, and rustling about her all her array of yellow brocade, she caught sight of the Infante who said to her, without getting up from his seat:
“Madame, could you not stay a moment?”
Impatient as a filly held back in her career, at the moment when she is hurrying to the splendid stallion neighing in the meadow, she answered:
“Highness, everyone here must obey your princely will.”
“Sit down beside me,” said he.
Then looking at her luxuriously, stonily, and warily, he said:
“Repeat the Pater to me in Flemish; they have taught it to me, but I have forgotten it.”
The poor lady then must begin to say a Pater and he must needs bid her say it slower.
And in this way he forced the poor thing to say as many as ten Paters, she that thought the hour had come to go through other orisons.
Then covering her with praises and flatteries, he spoke of her lovely hair, her bright colour, her shining eyes, but did not venture to say a word to her either of her plump shoulders or her smooth round breast or any other thing.
When she thought she could get away and was already looking out into the court where her lord was waiting for her, he asked her if she knew truly what are the womanly virtues.
As she made no answer for fear of saying the wrong thing, he spoke for her and preaching at her, he said:
“The womanly virtues, these be chastity, watchfulness over honour, and sober living.”
He counselled her also to array herself decently and to hide closely all that pertained to her.
She made sign of assent with her head saying:
That for His Hyperborean Highness she would much sooner cover herself with ten bearskins than with an ell of muslin.
Having put him in ill humour with this retort, she fled away rejoicing.
However, the fire of youth was lit up in the Infante’s bosom, but it was not that hot burning flame that incites strong souls to high deeds, but a dark, sinister flame come out of hell where Satan had without doubt kindled it. And it shone in his gray eyes like the wintry moon upon a charnel-house, and it burned him cruelly.
XXVI
The beautiful and sweet lady on a day left Valladolid to go to her Château of Dudzeele in Flanders.
Passing through Damme attended by her fat seneschal, she saw sitting against the wall of a cottage a boy of fifteen blowing into a bagpipe. In front of him was a red dog that, not liking this music, howled in a melancholy fashion. The sun shone bright. Standing beside the lad there was a pretty girl laughing loudly at each fresh pitiful burst of howling from the dog.
The beautiful dame and the fat seneschal, as they passed by the cottage, looked at Ulenspiegel blowing, Nele laughing, and Titus Bibulus Schnouffius howling.
“Bad boy,” said the dame, addressing Ulenspiegel, “could you not cease from making that poor red beast howl in that way?”
But Ulenspiegel, with his eyes on her, blew up his bagpipe more stoutly still. And Bibulus Schnouffius howled still more melancholily, and Nele laughed the more.
The seneschal, growing angry, said to the dame, pointing to Ulenspiegel:
“If I were to give this beggar’s spawn a dressing with my scabbard, he would stop making this impudent hubbub.”
Ulenspiegel looked at the seneschal, called him Jan Papzak, because of his belly, and continued to blow his bagpipe. The seneschal went up to him with a threatening fist, but Bibulus Schnouffius threw himself on the man and bit him in the leg, and the seneschal tumbled down in affright crying out:
“Help!”
The dame said to Ulenspiegel, smiling:
“Could you not tell me, bagpiper, if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not been changed?”
Ulenspiegel, without stopping his playing, nodded his head and looked still at the dame.
“Why do you look so steadily at me?” she asked.
But he, still playing, stretched his eyes wide as though rapt in an ecstasy of admiration.
She said to him:
“Are you not ashamed, young as you are, to stare at ladies so?”
Ulenspiegel reddened slightly, went on blowing, and stared harder.
“I asked you,” she went on, “if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not altered?”
“It is not green now since you deprived it of the joy of carrying you,” replied Ulenspiegel.
“Wilt thou guide me?” said the dame.
But Ulenspiegel remained seated, still never taking his eyes from her. And she, seeing him so roguish, and knowing that it was a mere trick of youth, forgave him easily. He got up, and turned to go into his home.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To put on my best clothes,” he replied.
“Go then,” said the dame.
She sat down then on the bench beside the doorstep; the seneschal did the same. She would have talked to Nele, but Nele did not answer her, for she was jealous.
Ulenspiegel came back carefully washed and clad in fustian. He looked well in his Sunday garb, the little man.
“Art thou verily going with this beautiful lady?” Nele asked him.
“I shall be back soon,” replied Ulenspiegel.
“If I were to go instead of you?” said Nele.
“Nay,” he said, “the roads are full of mire.”
“Why,” said the dame, angry and jealous together, “why, little girl, do you want to keep him from coming with me?”
Nele made her no answer, but big tears welled up from her eyes and she gazed on the dame in sadness and in anger.
They started on their way, four all told, the dame sitting like a queen on her white hackney caparisoned with black velvet; the seneschal whose belly shook to his walking; Ulenspiegel holding the dame’s hackney by the bridle, and Bibulus Schnouffius walking alongside him, tail in air proudly.
They rode and strode thus for some time, but Ulenspiegel was not at his ease; dumb as a fish he breathed in the fine odour of benjamin wafted from the dame, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at all her fine tags and rare jewels and furbelows, and also at her soft mien, her bright eyes, her bared bosom, and her hair that the sun made to shine like a golden cap.
“Why,” said she, “why do you say so little, my little man?”
He made no reply.
“Your tongue is not so deep down in your shoes that you could not manage a message for me?”
“Right,” said Ulenspiegel.
“You must,” said the dame, “leave me here and go to Koolkercke, on the other way of the wind, and tell a gentleman clad particoloured in black and red, that he must not look for me to-day, but to come on Sunday at ten at night, into my castle by the postern.”
“I will not go,” said Ulenspiegel.
“Why not?” asked the dame.
“I will not go, no!” said Ulenspiegel again.
The dame said to him:
“What is it then, little ruffled cock, that inspires thee with this fierce mind?”
“I will not go!” said Ulenspiegel.
“But if I gave thee a florin?”
