LVII
Towards the end of her third year of banishment Katheline came back to her own house at Damme. And she never ceased to say in witless fashion: “Fire on my head, the soul is knocking, make a hole, it would fain come out.” And she still fled away at the sight of oxen and of sheep. And she sat on the bench under the lime trees, behind her cottage, wagging her head and looking, without knowing them, at the folk of Damme, who said as they passed by in front of her, “There is the madwife.”
At this time, strolling by highways and byways, Ulenspiegel saw on the high road an ass harnessed with leather studded with copper nails, and its head adorned with tufts and tassels of red wool.
Certain old women stood about the ass all talking at the same time and saying: “No one can take possession of it, it is the horrible mount of the great wizard the Baron de Raix, who was burned alive for having sacrificed eight children to the devil——” “Gossips, he ran away so quickly that they could not catch him. Satan is in him to protect him——” “For while being weary, he stayed on his way, the sergeants of the commune came to take him bodily, but he reared and brayed so terribly that they dared not come near him——” “And it was not the braying of an ass but the roaring voice of a demon——” “So they left him to browse on thistles without putting him on his trial or burning him alive as a wizard——” “These folk have no kind of courage——”
In spite of all this fine talk, as soon as the donkey pricked up his ears or lashed his ribs with his tail, the women fled shrieking, to come in again chattering and jabbering, and to do the same thing again at the least movement of the donkey.
But Ulenspiegel, contemplating them and laughing:
“Ah,” said he, “endless curiosity and everlasting babble flow like a river from the mouths of gossips and especially the old ones, for in the young, the flood is less common because of their amorous employments.”
Considering next the ass:
“This wizard beast,” said he, “is nimble and without doubt no sloucher; I can either ride or sell him.”
He went off without a word, to fetch a peck of oats, made the ass eat them, leaped lightly on his back, and tightening up the rein, turned to the north, the east, and the west, and from afar blessed the old women. These, swooning for terror, knelt down, and that day at the evening hour in the village it was told how an angel with a pheasant plumed hat on his head had come, had blessed them all and taken away the wizard’s ass, by special favour of God.