The Legend of Ulenspiegel. Volume 1 of 2. de Coster Charles

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СКАЧАТЬ Highness from the Indies to delight him with its youthful antics. At the foot of this stake faggots still red were smoking, and in the closet there was a foul stench of burnt hair.

      The little beast had suffered so much dying in this fire that its little body seemed to be not an animal that ever had life, but a fragment of some wrinkled twisted root, and in its mouth, open as though to cry out on death, bloody foam was visible, and the water of its tears made its face wet.

      “Who did this?” asked the Emperor.

      The governor did not dare to reply, and both men remained silent, sad, and wrathful.

      Suddenly in this silence there was heard a low little sound of a cough that came from a corner in the shadow behind them. His Majesty, turning about, received the Infante Philip, all clad in black and sucking a lemon.

      “Don Philip,” said he, “come and salute me.”

      The Infante, without budging, looked at him with his timid eyes in which there was no affection.

      “Is it thou,” asked the Emperor, “that hast burned this little beast in this fire?”

      The Infante hung his head.

      But the Emperor:

      “If thou wert cruel enough to do it, be brave enough to confess it.”

      The Infante made no answer.

      His Majesty plucked the lemon out of his hands and flung it on the ground, and he was about to beat his son melting away with fright, when the archbishop, stopping him, whispered in his ear:

      “His Highness will be a great burner of heretics one day.”

      The Emperor smiled, and the two men went away, leaving the Infante alone with his monkey.

      But there were others that were no monkeys and died in the flames.

      XXIII

      November had come, the month of hail in which coughing folk give themselves up wholehearted to the music of phlegm. In this month also the small boys descend in bands on the turnip fields, pilfering what they can from them, to the great rage of the peasants, who vainly run after them with sticks and forks.

      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.

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