Ulenspiegel bent up his back, and scratching at it, whined:
“Glorious saint, take pity. It is chastisement. I feel between my shoulder bones a bitter agony. Alas! O! O! Pardon, Master Saint Remacle. Go, pilgrim, go, leave me here alone, like a parricide, to weep and to repent.”
But the pilgrim had fled away as far as the Great Square of Bouillon, where all the hunchbacks were gathered.
There, shivering with fear, he told them, speaking brokenly:
“Met a pilgrim as straight as a poplar ... a blaspheming pilgrim ... hump on his back ... a burning hump!”
The pilgrims, hearing this, they gave vent to a thousand joyful outcries, saying:
“Master Saint Remacle, if you give humps, you can take them away. Take away our humps, Master Saint Remacle!”
Meanwhile, Ulenspiegel left his tree. Passing through the empty suburb, he saw, at the low door of a tavern, two bladders swinging from a stick, pigs’ bladders, hung up in this fashion as a sign of a fair of black puddings, panch kermis as they say in the country of Brabant.
Ulenspiegel took one of the two bladders, picked up from the ground the backbone of a schol, which the French call dried plaice, drew blood from himself, made some blood run into the bladder, blew it up, sealed it, put it on his back, and on it placed the backbone of the schol. Thus equipped, with his back arched, his head wagging, and his legs tottering like an old humpback, he came out on the square.
The pilgrim that had witnessed his fall saw him and cried out: