“That would be too big a meal for a lean little man like you. Will not some other kind of meat do for you?”
When Ulenspiegel made no answer:
“What have you done,” she said, “with that handsome, well-set-up, but rather corpulent gentleman I have so often seen in your company?”
“Do you mean Lamme?” queried Ulenspiegel.
“Yes. What have you done with him?” she repeated.
“He is busy eating,” answered Ulenspiegel, “eating anything he can set his teeth upon—hard-boiled eggs from the street stalls, smoked eels and salted fish: and all this, forsooth, to help him find his wife. But why are you not she, my sweet? Would you like fifty florins? Would you like a collar of gold?”
But she crossed herself, saying:
“I am not to be bought, nor yet taken.”
“Do you love no one?” said Ulenspiegel.
“I love you as my neighbour; but above all I love Our Lord and Our Lady, they that command me to live an honest life. Hard indeed and oftentimes burdensome are the duties that are laid on us poor women. Nevertheless God gives us his aid. Yet some there are who succumb to temptation. But this fat friend of yours, come, tell me, is he well and happy?”