I
One morning in September Ulenspiegel took his staff, three florins that had been given him by Katheline, a piece of pig’s liver and a slice of bread, and set out to go from Damme to Antwerp, seeking the Seven. Nele he left asleep.
On the way he met a dog who followed after him, smelling around because of the liver, and jumping up at his legs. Ulenspiegel would have driven off the dog, but seeing the persistence of the animal, he thus addressed him:
“My dear dog, you are certainly ill-advised to leave your home, where you would find awaiting you an excellent meal of patties and other fine remains (to say nothing of the marrow-bones), to follow, as you are now doing, a mere adventurer of the road, a vagabond that is like to lack so much as a root to give you for nourishment. Follow my advice, most imprudent little dog, and return to your innkeeper. And for the future, take good care to avoid the rain and snow, the hail, the drizzling mists, the glassy frosts and other such wretched fare as is alone reserved for the back of the poor wanderer. Keep close at home, rather, in a corner of the hearth, and warm yourself, curled up in front of the cheerful fire. But leave to me the long wandering in mud and dust, in cold and heat, to be roasted to-day, to-morrow frozen, plenished on Friday but on Sunday famished for want of food. For, trust me, little dog, the wise thing is to return at once like a sensible and experienced little dog to the place whence you came.”
But it would seem that the animal did not hear a single word of what Ulenspiegel was saying, for he continued to wag his tail and jump his highest, barking all the while, in his desire for food. Ulenspiegel imagined that all this was just a sign of friendliness, and gave no thought to the liver which he carried in his scrip.
So on and on he walked, with the dog following behind. And when they had gone in this way the better part of a league, they saw a cart on the roadside with a donkey harnessed thereto, holding his head down. On a bank, at the side of the road, between two clumps of thistles, reclined a man. He was very fat, and in one hand he held the knuckle-end of a leg of mutton, and in the other hand a bottle. He gnawed the knuckle-bone and drank from the bottle, but when he was doing neither of these things he would fall to weeping and groaning.
Ulenspiegel stopped on his way, and the dog stopped too, but quickly jumped up on to the bank, smelling doubtless a good odour of liver and mutton. There he sat on his hind legs by the fat man’s side, and began to paw at the stranger’s doublet, as much as to say, “Please give me a share of your meal!” But the man elbowed him off, and holding up the knuckle-bone in the air began to moan aloud most piteously. The dog did likewise in the eagerness of his desire, while the donkey (who was weary of being tied to the cart and thus prevented from getting at the thistles) set up, in his turn, a most piercing bray.
“What’s the matter now, Jan?” the man inquired of his donkey.
“Nothing,” said Ulenspiegel, answering for him, “except that he would fain make his breakfast off those thistles that grow there on either side of you, like the thistles that are carved on the rood-screen at Tessenderloo, below the figure of Our Lord. Nor would this dog here, I’m thinking, be any the less inclined to join his jaws together on the bone you have got there. But in the meanwhile I will give him a piece of this liver of mine.”
The man looked up at Ulenspiegel, who straightway recognized him as none other than his friend Lamme Goedzak of Damme.
“Lamme,” he cried, “you here? And what are you doing, eating and drinking and moaning? Has some soldier or other been so impertinent as to box your ears, or what’s the matter? Tell me.”
“Alas!” said Lamme, “my wife!”
And he would have emptied his bottle of wine there and then had not Ulenspiegel laid a hand on his arm and suggested that it were fairer that the drink should be given to him that had none. “Besides,” he added, “to drink thus distractedly profits naught but one’s kidneys.”
“Well said,” answered Lamme, handing his friend the bottle, “but will you drink, I wonder, to any better purpose?”
Ulenspiegel took the bottle, drank his fill, then handed it back again.
“Call me a Spaniard,” he said, “if I’ve left enough to make a minnow drunk!”
Lamme inspected the bottle. Then, without ever ceasing to groan, he rummaged in his wallet and produced another bottle, and another piece of sausage which he cut up in slices and began to munch in the most melancholy fashion.
“Do you never stop eating, Lamme?” asked Ulenspiegel.
“Often, my son,” he replied. “But now I am eating to drive away sad thoughts. Where are you, wife of mine?” And as he spoke, Lamme wiped away a tear. After which he cut himself ten slices of sausage.
“Lamme,” said Ulenspiegel, “you should not eat so quickly, taking no thought at all for the poor pilgrim.”
Lamme, who was still whimpering, gave four of the slices to Ulenspiegel, who ate them up immediately, and was much affected by their good flavour. But Lamme said, eating and crying all at the same time:
“O wife, O goodly wife of mine! How sweet she was, how beautiful she was! Light as a butterfly, nimble as the lightning, and with a voice like a skylark! For all that, she was overfond of fine clothes. Alas, but how well she looked in them! And surely, the flowers also, are they not fond of rich apparel? Oh, if you had seen her, my son—her little hands, so nimble to caress, such hands as you never could have suffered to come in contact with saucepan or frying-pan! And her complexion, which was clear as the day, would surely have been burnt by standing over the kitchen fire. And what eyes she had! Only to look at them was to be melted quite with tenderness. Alas, I have lost her! Go on eating, Tyl; it is good Ghent sausage.”
“But why has she left you?” asked Ulenspiegel.
“How should I know?” Lamme replied. “Alas! gone for ever are those days when I used to go to her home a-courting! Then, verily, she would fly away from me, half in love and half in fear! And her arms were bare, as like as not (beautiful arms they were, so round and white), but if she saw me looking at them she would cover them quickly with the sleeve of her gown.
“At other times, again, she would gladly lend herself to my caresses, and I would kiss her closed eyes, and that lovely neck of hers, so large and firm. She would shiver all over, uttering little cries of love, and then, leaning her head backwards, she would give me a playful slap upon my nose. Thereafter she would laugh and I would cry aloud, and we would wrestle together right amorously, and there was naught betwixt us but laughter and fun. But there, there. Is any wine left in the bottle, Tyl?”
Tyl gave him what remained.
“This ham does great good to my stomach,” he said.
“To mine also,” answered Lamme, “but I shall never see my dear one again. She has fled away from Damme. What say you, will you come with me in my cart to look for her?”
“That will I,” answered Ulenspiegel.
So they got up into the donkey-cart, and the donkey set up a most melancholy bray to celebrate their departure.
As for the dog, he had already made off, well filled, without a word to any one.