Volume I Part 35 (1/2)
Then men said to him:
”Baes, why do you wake us up in the middle of the night?”
”'Tis a custom of mine,” replied the baes, ”not to allow my workmen to stay more than half the night in a bed for the first seven days.”
The following night he awaked his men at midnight again. Ulenspiegel, who slept in the garret, took his bed on his back and thus laden came down into the forge.
The baes said to him:
”Are you mad? Why do you not leave your bed in its place?”
”'Tis a custom I have,” answered Ulenspiegel, ”to spend for the first seven days half the night on top of my bed and the other half under it.”
”Well, for me, it is a second custom I have to throw into the street my impudent workmen with leave to pa.s.s the first week above the pavement and the second below it.”
”In your cellar, baes, if you please, beside the casks of bruinbier,”
replied Ulenspiegel.
LXIV
Having left the wheelwright and gone back to Flanders, he must hire himself as apprentice to a shoemaker who liked better to stay in the streets than to wield the awl in his workshop. Ulenspiegel, seeing him for the hundredth time ready to go abroad, asked him how he must cut the leather for vamps.
”Cut it,” replied the baes, ”for big feet and average feet, so that all that lead big cattle and little cattle may get into them handily.”
”So shall it be, baes,” answered Ulenspiegel.
When the shoemaker had gone out, Ulenspiegel cut out vamps only good to make shoes for fillies, a.s.ses, heifers, sows, and ewes.
Coming back to his workshop, the baes, seeing his leather in pieces:
”What have you done there, good-for-nothing botcher?” said he.
”What you bade me,” Ulenspiegel made answer.
”I bade you,” replied the baes, ”cut me shoes in which might be put handily everything that leads oxen, swine, and sheep, and you make me shoes for the feet of the beasts.”
Ulenspiegel replied:
”Baes, what leads the boar but the sow, the donkey but the a.s.s, the bull but the heifer, the ram but the ewe, in the season when all the beasts are in love?”
Then he went away, and must needs remain outside.
LXV