“Monseigneur,” replied Ulenspiegel, “if they gave me the thirty florins first, I would endure the blows from the green wood with patience.”
“Aye, aye,” groaned Lamme Goedzak, “give him first of all the thirty florins; he will endure the rest with patience.”
“And then,” said Ulenspiegel, “having my soul free of guilt, I have no need to be washed with oak or rinsed with cornel.”
“Aye,” groaned Lamme Goedzak as before, “Ulenspiegel hath no need of washing or of rinsing. He hath a clean soul. Do not wash him, Messires, do not wash him.”
Ulenspiegel having received the thirty florins, the stock-meester was ordered by the provost to seize him.
“See, Messires,” said Lamme, “how piteous he looks. He hath no love for the wood, my friend Ulenspiegel.”
“I love,” replied Ulenspiegel, “to see a lovely ash all leafy, growing in the sunshine in all it’s native verdure; but I hate to the death those ugly sticks of wood still bleeding their sap, stripped of branches, without leaves or twigs, of fierce aspect and harsh of acquaintance.”
“Art thou ready?” asked the provost.
“Ready,” repeated Ulenspiegel, “ready for what? To be beaten. No, I am not, and have no desire to be, master stock-meester. Your beard is red and you have a formidable air; but I am fully persuaded that you have a kind heart and do not love to maltreat a poor fellow like me. I must tell it you, I love not to do it or see it; for a Christian man’s back is a sacred temple which, even as his breast, encloseth the lungs wherewith we breathe the air of the good God. With what poignant remorse would you be gnawed if a brutal stroke of the stick were to break me in pieces.”
“Make haste,” said the stock-meester.