The Legend of Ulenspiegel, Volume 1 (of 2) / And Lamme Goedzak, and their Adventures Heroical, Joyous and Glorious in the Land of Flanders and Elsewhere

by Charles de Coster

“Show me, at any rate,” said the man, “a road that goes to Heyst.”

“In Flanders, it is the travellers that go and not the roads,” said Ulenspiegel.

XVII

One day Soetkin said to Claes:

“Husband, my heart is sad: it is now three days since Thyl left the house; dost thou not know where he is?”

Claes replied ruefully:

“He is where homeless dogs are, on some highway with a crew of other vagabonds of his own kidney. God was cruel to give us such a son. When he was born, I beheld in him the joy of our age, a tool more in the house; I looked to make a craftsman of him, and wicked fate makes him a thief and a drone.”

“Be not so hard, husband,” said Soetkin, “our son being but nine years old is in the heyday of childish thoughtlessness and folly. Is it not so that like the trees, he must shed the young buds before the coming of the full leaves, which for the human tree are honour and virtue? He is full of tricks, I am not blind to them, but they will turn later to his advantage, if instead of employing them to ill ends, he applies them to some useful trade. He is prone to flout his neighbours; but later this will help him to hold his own in merry company. He laughs ever and always; but faces sour before they are ripe are an ill omen for the countenance to come. If he runs, ’tis that he must grow; if he does not work, it is for that he is not yet of an age to feel that work is duty, and if now and then he spends day and night away from home for half a week together, ’tis that he knows nothing of what grief he gives us, for he has a good heart, and he loves us.”

Claes wagged his head and made no answer, and while he slept, Soetkin wept alone. And in the morning, thinking that her son was sick in a corner of some highway, she went out on the doorstep to see if he was not coming back; but she saw nothing, and she sate near the window, looking thence into the street. And many a time her heart danced in her bosom at the sound of the light foot of some lad; but when he passed, she saw it was not Ulenspiegel, and then she wept, poor dolorous mother.