“Comrades,” said Ulenspiegel, pointing to the fat old woman, the two monks, and the melancholy donkey, “since the masters play so well, let us also make the donkey dance.”
And so saying he went to a stall close by and purchased six liards’ worth of pepper. Then he lifted up the tail of the donkey, and placed the pepper underneath it.
When the donkey began to feel the sting of the pepper, he cast his eye backwards under his tail, endeavouring to discover the cause of the unaccustomed heat. Thinking that it must be at the least some fiery devil from hell, the donkey conceived the not unnatural desire to run away and escape him; so he began to bray as loud as he could, and to kick up his heels, and to shake the post with all his strength. At the first shock, the tub hanging between the two poles tipped over, and the holy water ran about over the tent and over those that were inside. And soon the tent itself collapsed, covering with a dripping mantle all those who were listening to the wondrous tale of St. Mary of Egypt. And Ulenspiegel and his comrades could hear a mighty noise issuing from beneath the tent, a noise of moaning and lamentation. For the devout folk that were within began to accuse one another of having overturned the tub, and presently grew red with rage, and fell upon each other with many furious blows. The tent began to bulge here and there above the frantic efforts of the combatants. And each time that Ulenspiegel descried some rounded form outlined through the cloth of the tent, he went and gave it a prick with a pin. This was the signal for new and louder cries, and for fiercer and more general fisticuffs.
Ulenspiegel was delighted, and soon he was to become even more so, when he saw the donkey begin to run away, dragging behind him tent, tub, tent-posts and all, while the master of the tent, with his wife and daughter, hung on behind the baggage. At last the donkey, being able to go no farther, raised his nose in the air, and gave vent to bray after bray, a music that only ceased at those moments when he was looking back under his tail to see if the fire that still raged there would not soon go out.
All this time, the devout assembly in the tent were still a-fighting. But the two monks, without troubling at all about what was going on inside, began to gather up the money that had fallen from the collection-plate, and Ulenspiegel assisted them devotedly, but not without some profit to himself....
XI
Now all this time that the vagabond son of the charcoal-burner was growing up in merriment and mischief, the moody scion of His Sacred Majesty the Emperor was vegetating like a weed in moody melancholy. The Lords and Ladies of the Court used to watch him as he mouched along the rooms and passages of the palace at Valladolid, a frail, pitiful specimen of humanity, with legs that shook and scarce seemed able to support the weight of the big head that was covered with stiff blond hair.
He loved to haunt dark corridors, and he would stay sitting there whole hours together, with his legs stretched out in front of him, hoping that some valet or other might trip over them by mistake; then he would have the fellow flogged; for he took pleasure in listening to his cries under the lash. But he never laughed.
Another day he would select some other corridor in which to lay a similar trap, and once again he would sit himself down with his legs stretched out in front of him. Then one of the Ladies of the Court, mayhap, or one of the Lords or pages, would stumble across him; and if they fell down and hurt themselves, he took delight in their discomfiture. But he never laughed. And if by chance any one knocked against him but did not fall down, he would cry out as if he had been struck. He liked to see the other’s fright. But he never laughed.