“Have you finished him off?” he asked.
“Yes, my son,” replied Ulenspiegel, “but come....”
Lamme, then, coming out of his hiding-place, saw Ulenspiegel all covered with blood. He ran like a stag, in spite of his fat belly, and came to Ulenspiegel where he sat by the three dead men.
“He is wounded!” Lamme cried. “My gentle friend is wounded by the rascally murderer.” And then, with a vicious kick at the jaw of the evangelist who lay nearest to him: “You cannot answer me, Ulenspiegel? Are you going to die, my son? Where is the ointment! Ha! I remember now. It is at the bottom of his satchel under the sausages. Can’t you hear me speak, Ulenspiegel? Alas! there is no warm water here to wash your wound, and no way of getting any. The water of the Sambre will have to do instead. But speak to me, my friend. You are not so badly hurt after all, surely. A little water—there, it’s cold, isn’t it? But he is waking up. It’s I, your friend; and your enemies are all dead! Oh, where is some linen? Some linen to bind up his wounds. There isn’t any. What am I to do? Ah! my shirt, that must serve.”
Presently Ulenspiegel opened his eyes and raised himself from the ground with his teeth all chattering because of the cold.
“And here you are standing up already!” Lamme exclaimed.
“It is a balm of much virtue,” said Ulenspiegel.
“Balm of valiance,” answered Lamme.
And then, taking the bodies of the evangelists one by one, he cast them into a hole in the rocks, leaving their weapons and their clothes upon them. But he took their cloaks.
And all around in the sky the crows were beginning to caw to each other, in anticipation of the feast. And the Sambre flowed by like a river of steel under the grey sky.