“Is it thou, good fellow, that the scourge of Saint Remacle has smitten?”
“Yea, Messire Dean,” replied Ulenspiegel, “it is indeed I his humble worshipper who would fain be cured of his new hump, if it please him.”
The dean, smelling some trick under this speech:
“Let me,” said he, “feel this hump.”
“Feel it, Messire,” answered Ulenspiegel.
And having done so, the dean:
“It is,” said he, “of recent date and wet. I hope, however, that Master Saint Remacle will be pleased to act pitifully. Follow me.”
Ulenspiegel followed the dean and went into the church. The humpbacks, walking behind him, cried out: “Behold the accursed! Behold the blasphemer! What doth it weigh, thy fresh hump? Wilt thou make a bag of it to put thy patacoons in? Thou didst mock at us all thy life because thou wast straight: now it is our turn. Glory be to Master Saint Remacle!”
Ulenspiegel, without uttering a word, bending his head, still following the dean, went into a little chapel where there was a tomb all marble covered with a great flat slab also of marble. Between the tomb and the chapel wall there was not the space of the span of a large hand. A crowd of humpbacked pilgrims, following one another in single file, passed between the wall and the slab of the tomb, on which they rubbed their humps in silence. And thus they hoped to be delivered. And those that were rubbing their humps were loath to give place to those that had not yet rubbed theirs, and they fought together, but without any noise, only daring to strike sly blows, humpbacks’ blows, because of the holiness of the place.
The dean bade Ulenspiegel get up on the flat top of the tomb, that all the pilgrims might see him plainly. Ulenspiegel replied: “I cannot get up by myself.”