Scarcely had he spoken than he clapped his hand to his face, for two tartlets had flattened themselves, one on his eye, the other on his cheek. The gay girls who had thrown them laughed aloud, but Ulenspiegel made answer:
“Many thanks, my pretties, many thanks for thus embracing me with this jammy accolade.”
Nevertheless the tartlets had fallen to the ground.
And then suddenly the drums began to beat, the fifes screamed, and the soldiers fell in again.
Monsieur de Beauvoir ordered Ulenspiegel to come down from his tree and to march by the side of the soldiers. Ulenspiegel would willingly have been parted from them by a hundred leagues, for he had gathered from the remarks let fall by certain thin-faced foot-soldiers that he was already under suspicion, and that he ran danger of being arrested for a spy; and if this was so, he knew that they would most certainly search his pockets, and have him hanged when they found the letters which he carried. So in a little while he purposely let himself stumble into the ditch which ran by the wayside, and as he fell he cried out loudly:
“Mercy, soldiers, mercy! My leg is broken, and now I cannot walk any more. You must let me get up into the cart with the girls!”
But to this he knew that the jealous sergeant would never consent.
The girls, meanwhile, cried out from the carts:
“Come, come, jolly pilgrim, and we will succour you, and caress and make much of you, and cure you all in a day.”
“I know it,” said Ulenspiegel, “for a woman’s hand is balm celestial for all and every wound.”