“Cooking,” said Lamme: “thou art good to eat of it, to smell it, to sniff it up, but to perform it, no: poor friend and chief-captain, saving your respect, I could make thee eat leather wallets cut up into ribbons, and thou wouldst take it for toughish tripe: leave me, my son, to be still the master cook of here, else I shall dry up, like a lathstick.”
“Remain master cook then,” said Ulenspiegel; “if thou dost not heal, I will shut up the galley and we shall eat naught save biscuits.”
“Ah! my son,” said Lamme, weeping for joy, “thou art good and kind as Notre Dame herself.”
IV
And in any case he appeared to be healing.
Every Saturday the Beggars saw him measuring the monk’s waist girth with a long leather thong.
The first Saturday he said:
“Four feet.”
And measuring himself, he said: