When they arrived at the city Ulenspiegel got down from the wagon, and straightway noticed a charming-looking woman standing at the door of an inn. She smiled when she saw him looking at her.
Taking this kindly humour of hers for a good omen:
“Hostess,” says he, “will you give asile, pray, to a poor pilgrim on pilgrimage who has carried his full time and is about to be delivered of his sins?”
“We give asile to all such as pay us for it,” said the woman.
I have a hundred ducats in my purse,” said Ulenspiegel (who, in fact, had no more than one), “and I would dearly like to spend the first of them in your pleasant company and over a bottle of old Roman wine.”
“Wine is not dear in these holy parts,” she answered. “Come in and drink your fill. It will only cost you a soldo.”
And they twain drank together for so long, and emptied so many bottles of wine and all to the tune of such pleasant conversation, that the hostess was constrained to order her servant to serve the customers in her place, while she and Ulenspiegel retired into a room at the back of the inn, a marble chamber, cool as a winter’s day, where, leaning her head on her new friend’s shoulder, she demanded of him who he might be.
And Ulenspiegel answered her:
“I am Lord of Geeland, Count of Gavergeëten, Baron of Tuchtendeel. I was born at Damme, in Flanders, and I hold there for my estate five and twenty acres of moonlight.”
“What land is that whence you come?” the hostess asked him, drinking from Ulenspiegel’s tankard.