Without another word Ulenspiegel went and got a feed of oats, and returning, offered them to the donkey. But while he was eating of those viands Ulenspiegel jumped nimbly upon his back, and taking the reins, turned him first to the north, then to the east, and lastly to the west. Then, when he had gone from them a little way, he raised his hand as if in blessing on those aged dames. But they, almost fainting with fear, fell upon their knees before him. And that evening when they met together again, the tale was told of how an angel with a felt hat trimmed with a pheasant’s feather had come and blessed them, and had taken off the magician’s donkey by special favour of God.
And Ulenspiegel, astride of his ass, went his way through the green fields, where the horse pranced about at liberty, where the cows and heifers grazed at their ease or lay resting in the sunshine. And he called the ass Jef.
At last Jef came to a stop, and began, as happy as could be, to make his dinner off the thistles which grew in that place in great abundance. But anon he shivered all over, and flicked his sides with his tail in the hope of ridding himself of the greedy horse-flies who, like himself, were trying to get their dinner, not off the thistles, but off his own flesh.
Ulenspiegel, who himself began to feel the pangs of hunger, grew very melancholy.
“Happy indeed would you be, friend donkey, with your good dinner of fine thistles if there was no one to disturb you in your pleasures, and to remind you that you also are mortal, born, that is to say, to the endurance of all kinds of villainies.”
Thus did Ulenspiegel address his steed, and thus continued:
“For even as you have this gadfly of yours to worry you, so also hath His Holiness the Pope a gadfly of his own, even master Martin Luther; and His Sacred Majesty the Emperor, hath he not my Lord of France for his tormentor—Francis, first of that name, the King with the very long nose and a sword that is longer still? And forsooth, donkey mine, it is certainly permitted that I also, poor little man wandering all alone, may have my gadfly too.
“Alas! Woe is me! All my pockets have holes in them, and by the said apertures do all my fine ducats and florins and daelders ramble away, flying like a crowd of mice before the mouth of the cat that would devour them. I wonder why it is that money will have nothing to do with me—me that am so fond of money? Verily Fortune is no woman, whatever they may say, for she loves none but greedy misers that shut her up in their coffers, tie her up in sacks, close her down under twenty keys and never let her show herself at the window by so much as the little tip of her gilded nose! This, then, is the gadfly that preys upon me and makes me itch, and tickles me without ever so much as raising a laugh. But there, you are not listening to me at all, friend donkey! And you think of nothing but your food. You gobbling gobbler, your long ears are deaf to the cry of an empty stomach! But you shall listen to me. I insist!”
And he belaboured the ass as hard as he could, till the brute began to bray.
“Come, come, now that you have given us a song!” cried Ulenspiegel. But the donkey would not advance by more than a single step, and seemed determined to go on eating thistles until he had consumed all that grew by the roadside. And of these there was an abundance.