“Come and eat,” said Ulenspiegel.
And they went together to the Old Stairs, where they ate choesels and drank dobbel-cuyt as much as they could carry.
And Lamme wept no more.
And Ulenspiegel said:
“Blessed be the good beer that maketh thy soul all sunny! Laughest and shakest thy big paunch. How I love to see thee dance of the merry entrails.”
“My son,” said Lamme, “they would dance far more if I had the good luck to find my wife again.”
“Let us go and seek for her,” said Ulenspiegel.
They came thus to the quarter of the Lower Scheldt.
“Look,” said Ulenspiegel to Lamme, “see that little house all made of wood, with handsome windows, well opened and glazed with little square panes; consider these yellow curtains and that red lamp. There, my son, behind four casks of bruinbier, of uitzet, of dobbel-cuyt, and Amboise wine, sits a beauteous baesine of fifty years or upwards. Every year she lived gave her a fresh layer of bacon. Upon one of the casks shines a candle, and there is a lantern hung to the beams of the roof. It is bright and dark there, dark for love, bright for payment.”
“But,” said Lamme, “this is a convent of the devil’s nuns, and this baesine is its abbess.”