The Legend of Ulenspiegel. Volume 1 of 2

Whilst the vagabond son of the coalman was growing up gay and frolicsome, in lean melancholy vegetated the dolorous scion of the sublime Emperor. Lords and ladies saw the pitiful little weakling dragging through the rooms and corridors of Valladolid his frail body and his tottering limbs that could scarce sustain the weight of his big head, covered with fair stiff hair.

Ever seeking out the darkest corridors, there he would sit for hours thrusting out his legs in front of him. If a servant trod on him by accident, he had the man flogged, and took pleasure in hearing him cry out under the lashes, but he never laughed.

The next day, going elsewhere to set the same trap, he would sit again in some corridor with his legs thrust out. The ladies, lords, and pages who might pass there going fast or slow would trip over him, fall down and hurt themselves. He took pleasure in this, also, but he never laughed.

When one of them, having run into him, failed to fall, he would cry out as if he had been struck, and he was delighted to see their fear, but he never laughed.

His Sacred Majesty was informed of his behaviour and gave orders to take no notice of the boy, saying that if he did not wish to have his legs trodden on, he ought not to put them in the way of people’s feet.

This angered Philip, but he said nothing, and no one saw him after, except when on bright summer days he went to warm his shivering body in the sunshine in the courtyard.

One day, coming back from the wars, Charles saw him steeped in melancholy in this fashion.

“Son,” said he, “how different art thou from me! At thy age, I loved to climb among trees to hunt the squirrels; I had myself lowered by a rope down some steep cliff to take eaglets from the nest. At this play I might have left my bones behind me; they but became the harder for it. In the chase the wild things fled to their dens when they saw me coming with my good arquebus.”

“Ah,” sighed the boy, “I have a pain in the belly, monseigneur my father.”

“The wine of Paxaretos,” said Charles, “is a sovereign cure.”

“I do not like wine; my head aches, monseigneur my father.”

“Son,” said Charles, “thou must run and leap and romp as do other boys of thine own years.”

“My legs are stiff, monseigneur my father.”

“How,” said Charles, “how can they be otherwise if thou usest them no more than if they were legs of wood? I will have thee fastened on some nimble steed.”

The boy wept.

“Do not so,” said he, “I have a pain in my loins, monseigneur my father.”

“But,” said Charles, “you have a pain everywhere then?”

“I would not be ill at all if I were left in peace,” replied the child.

“Dost thou think,” rejoined the Emperor, impatiently, “to pass thy royal life in brooding as do clerks? For them, if it must be, in order that they may soil their parchments with ink, from the silence, solitude, and retirement; for thee, son of the sword, there needs hot blood, the eye of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the strength of Hercules. Why dost thou make the holy sign? God’s blood! ’tis not for the lion’s cub to ape paternoster-mongering females.”

“Hark, the Angelus, monseigneur my father,” replied the child.

XIX

This year May and June were verily the months of flowers. Never did any see in Flanders hawthorn so fragrant, never in the gardens so many roses, such heaps of jasmine and honeysuckle. When the wind that blew up out of England drove the incense of this flowery land towards the east, every man, and specially in Antwerp, nose in air with delight, would say:

“Do you smell the sweet wind that comes from Flanders?”

In like wise the busy bees sucked the flowers’ honey, made wax, laid their eggs in hives too small to harbour their swarms. What music of labour under the blue sky that covered the rich earth with its dazzling tent!

Men made hives out of rushes, of straw, of osiers, of plaited hay. Basketmakers, tubmakers, coopers were wearing out their tools over the work. As for the wood carvers, for a long time they had been unequal to the task.

The swarms were of full thirty thousand bees and two thousand seven hundred drones. The honeycombs were so delicious that because of their rare quality, the dean of Damme sent eleven to the Emperor Charles, by way of thanks for having through his edicts restored the Holy Inquisition to all its full vigour. It was Philip that ate them, but they did him no good.

Tramps, beggars, vagabonds, and all that ragtag and bobtail of idle rogues that parade their laziness about the roads, preferring to be hanged rather than to work, enticed by the taste of the honey, came to get their share of it. And they prowled about by night, in crowds.

Claes had made hives to attract the swarming bees to them; some were full and others empty, awaiting the bees. Claes used to watch all night to guard this sugared wealth. When he was tired, he used to bid Ulenspiegel take his place. And the boy did so with a good will.

Now one night Ulenspiegel, to avoid the cold air, had taken shelter in a hive, and, all huddled up, was looking through the openings, of which there were two, in the top of the hive.

As he was on the point of falling asleep, he heard the little trees and bushes of the hedge crackling and heard the voices of two men whom he took to be robbers. He looked out through one of the openings in the hive, and saw that they both had long hair and a long beard, though the beard was the mark and sign of noble rank.

They went from hive to hive, and came to his own, and picking it up, they said:

“Let us take this one: it is the heaviest.”

Then they carried it off, using their sticks to do it. Ulenspiegel took no pleasure in being thus carted in a hive. The night was clear and bright, and the thieves walked along without uttering a word. Every fifty paces they stopped, clean out of breath, to go on their way again presently. The one in front grumbled furiously at having so heavy a weight to bear, and the one behind whimpered melancholy-wise. For in this world there are two kinds of idle cowards, those who grow angry with work, and those that whine when there is work to be done.

Ulenspiegel, having nothing else to do, pulled the hair of the robber who went in front, and the beard of the one behind, so that growing tired of this game, the angry one said to the snivelling one:

“Stop pulling my hair, or I will give you such a wallop on the head with my fist that it will sink down into your chest and you will look through your ribs like a thief through the bars of his prison.”

“I wouldn’t dare, my friend,” said the sniveller, “but it is you that are pulling me by the beard.”

The angry one answered:

“I don’t go hunting vermin in beggar fellows’ fur.”

“Sir,” replied the sniveller, “do not make the hive jump about so much; my poor arms are nearly breaking in two.”

“I’ll have them off altogether,” answered the angry fellow.

Then, putting off his leathern gear he set the hive down on the ground, and leaped upon his comrade. And they fought with each other, the one cursing and swearing, the other crying for mercy.

Ulenspiegel, hearing the blows pattering down, came out of the hive, dragged it with him as far as the nearest wood so as to find it there again, and went back to Claes’s house.

And thus it is that in quarrellings sly folk find their advantage.

XX

When he was fifteen, Ulenspiegel erected a little tent at Damme upon four stakes, and he cried out that everyone might see within, represented in a handsome frame of hay, his present and future self.

When there came a man of law, haughty and puffed up with his own importance, Ulenspiegel would thrust his head out of the frame, and mimicking the face of an old ape, he would say:

“An old mug may decay, but never flourish; am I not your very mirror, good sir of the doctoral phiz?”

If he had a stout soldier for client, Ulenspiegel would hide and show in the middle of the frame, instead of his face, a dishful of meat and bread, and say:

“Battle will make hash of you; what will you give me for my prophecy, O soldier beloved of the big-mouthed sakers?”

When an old man, wearing ingloriously his hoary head, would bring Ulenspiegel his wife, a young woman, the boy, hiding himself as he had done for the soldier, and showing in the frame a little tree, on whose branches were hung knife handles, caskets, combs, inkhorns, all made of horn, would call out: