“Slaet op den trommele van dirre dom deyne;
Slaet op den trommele van dirre dom dom:
Beat upon the war drum. Long live the Beggar!”
VI
Ulenspiegel, being at Ypres, was recruiting soldiers for the Prince: pursued by the Duke’s catchpolls, he offered himself as beadle to the provost of Saint Martin. There he had for his companion a bellringer called Pompilius Numan, a coward of the deepest dye, who at night took his own shadow for the devil and his shirt for a ghost.
The provost was fat and plump as a hen fattened just ripe for the spit. Ulenspiegel soon saw on what grass he grazed to make himself so much pork. According to what he heard from the bellringer and saw with his own eyes, the provost dined at nine and supped at four by the clock. He stayed in bed until half-past eight; then before dinner he went walking in his church to see if the poor-boxes were well filled. And the half he put into his own pouch. At nine o’clock he dined on a bowl of milk, half a leg of mutton, a little heron pie, and emptied five tankards of Brussels wine. At ten, sucking a few prunes and washing them down with Orleans wine, he prayed God never to bring him in the way of gluttony. At noon, he ate, to pass the time, a wing and rump of a chicken. At one o’clock, thinking of his supper, he drained a big draught of Spanish wine; then stretching himself out on his bed, refreshed himself with a little nap.
Awaking, he would eat a little salted salmon to whet his appetite, and drink a great tankard of dobbel-knol of Antwerp. Then he would go down into the kitchen, sit down before the chimney place and the noble wood fire that flamed in it. There he watched roasting and browning for the abbey monks a big piece of veal or a well-scalded little pigling, that he would have eaten more gladly than a piece of bread. But his appetite was a little wanting. And he would study the spit, which turned by itself like a miracle. It was the work of Peter van Steenkiste the smith, who lived in the castellany of Courtrai. The provost paid him fifteen Paris livres for one of these spits.
Then he would go up again to his bed, and dozing upon it through fatigue, he would wake up about three o’clock to gulp in a little pig jelly washed down with wine of Romagna at two hundred and forty florins the hogshead. At three he would eat a fledgling chick with Madeira sugar and empty two glasses of malvoisie at seventeen florins the keg. At half-past three, he took half a pot of preserves and washed it down with hydromel. Being now well awaked, he would take one foot in his hand and rest in meditation.
The moment of supper being come, the curé of Saint Jean would often arrive to visit him at this succulent hour. They sometimes disputed which could eat most fish, poultry, game, and meat. The one that was quickest filled must pay a dish of carbonadoes for the other, with three hot wines, four spices, and seven vegetables.