More than ever did the innkeeper puff and blow, yet dared not budge an inch from where he stood. And Lamme said again:
“And what is the value, think you, of a fine cart of ash-wood, finely painted in crimson, and furnished with a hood of Courtrai cloth for protection from sun and rain? Twenty-four florins at the least, is it not so? And how much is twenty-four florins added to twenty-eight florins? Answer that, you miser that cannot even count! And now, since it is market day, and since your paltry tavern happens to be full of peasants that are come to market, behold I will put up my cart to auction and my donkey too, and I will sell them here, now, and at once!”
Which, in very truth, he did. For all they that were there knew very well who Lamme was. And he actually realized from the sale of his donkey and cart as much as forty-four florins and ten patards. And he jingled the money under the innkeeper’s nose, and said to him:
“Scent you not the savour of festivities to be?”
“Yea,” answered mine host. But under his breath he swore that if ever Lamme came to him and offered to sell him his very skin, he would buy it for a liard and make of it an amulet for a charm against extravagance.
Meanwhile there was a sweet and gentle-looking young woman that stood in the yard without, and she came up oftentimes to the window and looked at Lamme, but withdrew her pretty face each time that he might have seen her. And the same evening, when Lamme was going up to bed, stumbling about on the staircase without any light (for he had been drinking not wisely), he was aware of a woman that put her arms round him, and greedily kissed his cheek and mouth and his nose even, and moistened his face with amorous tears, and then left him.
But Lamme, who was thoroughly drowsed by all that he had been drinking, lay down straightway and went to sleep; and on the morrow he departed to Ghent together with Ulenspiegel. There he went seeking his wife in all the cabarets and taverns of the town. But at nightfall he rejoined Ulenspiegel at the sign of the Singing Swan.
V
Now King Philip was obstinate as a mule, and he thought that his own will ought to dominate the entire world as if it had been the will of God himself. And his will was this: that our country, little accustomed as it was to obedience, should now curb itself under an ancient yoke without obtaining any reforms at all. And the be-all and the end-all of his desire was the aggrandizement of that Holy Mother of his, the Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman, One, Entire, Universal, changeless and unalterable, and this was his will for no other reason at all than just the fact that it was his will. And in this he was like some woman without sense, that tosses about all night upon her bed as though it were a bed of thorns, endlessly tortured by her own imaginings.