Volume I Part 10 (1/2)

That for His Hyperborean Highness she would much sooner cover herself with ten bearskins than with an ell of muslin.

Having put him in ill humour with this retort, she fled away rejoicing.

However, the fire of youth was lit up in the Infante's bosom, but it was not that hot burning flame that incites strong souls to high deeds, but a dark, sinister flame come out of h.e.l.l where Satan had without doubt kindled it. And it shone in his gray eyes like the wintry moon upon a charnel-house, and it burned him cruelly.

XXVI

The beautiful and sweet lady on a day left Valladolid to go to her Chateau of Dudzeele in Flanders.

Pa.s.sing through Damme attended by her fat seneschal, she saw sitting against the wall of a cottage a boy of fifteen blowing into a bagpipe. In front of him was a red dog that, not liking this music, howled in a melancholy fas.h.i.+on. The sun shone bright. Standing beside the lad there was a pretty girl laughing loudly at each fresh pitiful burst of howling from the dog.

The beautiful dame and the fat seneschal, as they pa.s.sed by the cottage, looked at Ulenspiegel blowing, Nele laughing, and t.i.tus Bibulus Schnouffius howling.

”Bad boy,” said the dame, addressing Ulenspiegel, ”could you not cease from making that poor red beast howl in that way?”

But Ulenspiegel, with his eyes on her, blew up his bagpipe more stoutly still. And Bibulus Schnouffius howled still more melancholily, and Nele laughed the more.

The seneschal, growing angry, said to the dame, pointing to Ulenspiegel:

”If I were to give this beggar's sp.a.w.n a dressing with my scabbard, he would stop making this impudent hubbub.”

Ulenspiegel looked at the seneschal, called him Jan Papzak, because of his belly, and continued to blow his bagpipe. The seneschal went up to him with a threatening fist, but Bibulus Schnouffius threw himself on the man and bit him in the leg, and the seneschal tumbled down in affright crying out:

”Help!”

The dame said to Ulenspiegel, smiling:

”Could you not tell me, bagpiper, if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not been changed?”

Ulenspiegel, without stopping his playing, nodded his head and looked still at the dame.

”Why do you look so steadily at me?” she asked.

But he, still playing, stretched his eyes wide as though rapt in an ecstasy of admiration.

She said to him:

”Are you not ashamed, young as you are, to stare at ladies so?”

Ulenspiegel reddened slightly, went on blowing, and stared harder.

”I asked you,” she went on, ”if the road that runs from Damme to Dudzeele has not altered?”

”It is not green now since you deprived it of the joy of carrying you,”

replied Ulenspiegel.

”Wilt thou guide me?” said the dame.