At these words the eyes of the robber sparkled.
"That woman is my sweetheart! Did you see her husband?"
"Yes, and a very polite old man he is."
"Well, if you know them, go back to them once more. I'll pay your traveling expenses"—here he proudly jingled the ducats in his girdle. "Tell them that they are both on my bad books; the woman because she a little time ago drank mead and danced till morning with the headman of Leta at the church consecration there; the man because he lately guided the son of the vihodar of Zeb and his wife over the mountains, and thus helped them to escape us. Tell them that I mean to pay them a visit shortly. The woman must then put on her best humor, and the man must not show his face at all. For if I once kiss the woman's lips and bite the man's cheek, the pair of them will have had enough of me for some time to come." At these words the robber spat out the hellebore, and Simplex perceived that his mouth and teeth were perfectly yellow. "That is the message you must deliver to them, trumpeter. For the present, however, you will remain with us; eat and drink as much as your stomach can hold, and then show us what you can do with the trumpet. We'll pay for it, of course."
Poor Simplex rejoiced exceedingly at escaping so well, and having the prospect of turning an honest penny besides, he loudly and solemnly protested that he would faithfully deliver the robber's message.
Meanwhile the sheep's flesh in the great caldron was quite done, and the robbers sat down to eat. The caldron was lowered on to the outspread skins, which served as tablecloth and napkin, and the robbers carved for themselves with their huge clasp-knives. But if their meat was coarse and their table rude, their drinking vessels were magnificent. They consisted of gold and silver chalices and pocals, the spoil of many a church and castle, and as often as a robber took a draught he drank to the memory of some comrade or other who had ended a glorious career on the wheel, gallows, or stake, winding up with a full recital of the deceased's exploits—e. g., how many men he had killed, how many robberies he had achieved, what lady of quality had been his doxy, and how at the last he had manfully endured all manner of torments rather than betray his comrades.
And after each toast Simplex had to blow a long flourish.
And as the feast proceeded, the robbers became more and more communicative. They began to boast loudly of their own heroic deeds; how, for instance, they had plundered great caravans, attacked noblemen's castles, and extirpated everyone therein in a different sort of way; how they had filled a Jew's mouth with molten lead, and nearly died with laughter at the queer faces he pulled; how they had forced a rich miser by torture to discover his hidden treasure; how they had tied the captured militiamen to the branches of trees and then torn them limb from limb; and how they had set fire to a church in which a lot of peasants had taken refuge and burnt them all alive. Everyone vied with his neighbor in boasting, and tried to make himself out more ferocious than the rest. And Simplex blew incessantly with his trumpet, so as to hear as little as possible of their ghastly stories.
The robbers forced him also to eat and drink with them, and well for him it was that he had learnt in his student days to hold a full skin. For he was well aware that so long as he could keep on trumpeting he was safe. It fared with him as with the piper in the story, who piped to the wolf to save himself from being eaten up.
Meanwhile night had set in; the rocky chamber was lit only by the heaps of smoldering logs; the robbers began to dance a wild dance, and Simplex was forced to mount upon a barrel and play for them with all his might. They stamped with their feet, roared, howled, fired off their guns, and so deftly hurled their axes at the barrel on which Simplex was standing that they all stuck fast in it without hurting a hair of his head.