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

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “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 hoary 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.”

      “My son,” the monk would reply, “we never carry money.”

      “’Tis then the money carries thee,” would Ulenspiegel answer, “for I know thou dost put it between two soles under thy feet. Give me thy sandal.”

      But the monk:

      “My son, ’tis the property of the Convent; I will none the less take from it, if I must, two patards for thy trouble.”

      The monk gave them. Ulenspiegel received them graciously.

      Thus showed he their mirror to the folk of Damme, of Bruges, of Blankenberghe, nay, even as far away as Ostend.

      And instead of saying to them in his Flemish speech: “Ik ben u lieden Spiegel,” “I am your mirror,” he said to them, shortening it, “Ik ben ulen spiegel,” even as it is still said to-day in East and West Flanders.

      And from thence there came to him his surname of Ulenspiegel.

      XXI

      As he grew up, he conceived a liking for wandering about through fairs and markets. If he saw there any one playing on the hautbois, the rebeck, or the bagpipes, he would, for a patard, have them teach him the way to make music on these instruments.

      He became above all skilled in playing on the rommel-pot, an instrument made of a pot, a bladder, and a stout straw. This is how he arranged them: he damped the bladder and strained it over the pot, fastened with a string the middle of the bladder round the knot on the straw, which was touching the bottom of the pot, on the rim of which he then fixed the bladder stretched to bursting point. In the morning, the bladder, being dried, gave the sound of a tambourine when it was struck, and if the straw of the instrument was rubbed it hummed better than a viol. And Ulenspiegel, with his pot booming and sounding like a mastiff’s barking, went singing carols at house doors in company with youngsters, one of whom carried the shining star made out of paper on Twelfth Night.

      If any master painter came to Damme to pourtray, on their knees on canvas, the companions of some Guild, Ulenspiegel, desiring to see how he wrought, would ask to be allowed to grind his colours, and for all salary would accept only a slice of bread, three liards, and a pint of ale.

      Applying himself to the grinding, he would study his master’s manner. When the master was away, he would try to paint like him, but put vermilion everywhere. He tried to paint Claes, Soetkin, Katheline, and Nele, as well as quart pots and sauce-pans. Claes prophesied to him, seeing his works, that if he would be bold and persevering, he might one day earn florins by the score, painting inscriptions on the speel-wagen, which are pleasure carts in Flanders and in Zealand.

      He learned, too, from a master mason how to carve wood and stone, when the man came to make, in the choir of Notre Dame, a stall so constructed that when it was necessary the aged dean could sit down on it while still seeming to remain standing.

      It was Ulenspiegel who carved the first handle for the knife used by the Zealand folk. This handle he made in the shape of a cage. Within there was a loose death’s head; above it a dog in a lying posture. These emblems taken together signify “Blade faithful to the death.”

      And in this wise Ulenspiegel began to fulfil the prediction of Katheline, showing himself painter, sculptor, clown, noble, all at once and together, for from father to son the Claes bore for arms three quart pots argent on a field of bruinbier.

      But Ulenspiegel was constant to no trade, and Claes told him if this game went on, he would turn him away from the cottage.

      XXII

      The Emperor being returned from war, asked why his son Philip had not come to greet him.

      The Infante’s archbishop-governor replied that he had not desired to do so, for, so he said, he cared for nothing but books and solitude.

      The Emperor enquired where he was at that moment.

      The governor answered that they must seek him in every place where it was dark. They did so.

      Having gone through a goodly number of chambers, they came at last to a kind of closet, unpaven, and lit by a skylight. There they saw stuck in the earth a post СКАЧАТЬ