This the Brethren of the Jolly Face at once offered to do, but Ulenspiegel refused them.
“No,” he said, “the Dean of Uccle shall be my surety. I will go and find him.”
To be sure it was those Masses for the dead that he was thinking of. And when he had found the Dean he told him a story of how the innkeeper of the Trumpet Inn was possessed by the Devil, and how he could talk of nothing but “pigs” and “blind men”—something or other about pigs eating the blind, and the blind eating the pigs under various infamous forms of roast meats and fricassees. While these attacks were on, the innkeeper, so Ulenspiegel affirmed, would break up all the furniture in the inn; and he begged the Dean to come and deliver the poor man from the wicked devil that possessed him.
The Dean promised to do so, but he said he could not come at the moment (for he was busy with the accounts of the Chapter, trying to make something out of them for himself). Seeing that the Dean was growing impatient, Ulenspiegel said that he would return and bring with him the innkeeper’s wife in order that the Dean might speak to her himself.
“Very well,” said the Dean.
So Ulenspiegel came again to the innkeeper and said to him:
“I have just seen the Dean, and he is willing to go surety for the blind men. Do you keep watch over them, and let your wife come with me, and the Dean will repeat to her what I have just told you.”
“Go, wife,” said the innkeeper.
So the innkeeper’s wife went with Ulenspiegel to the Dean, who was still at his accounts and busy with the same problem. When, therefore, he saw Ulenspiegel and the woman, he made an impatient gesture that they should withdraw, saying at the same time:
“It is all right. I will come to the help of your husband in a day or two.”