Volume I Part 54 (1/2)
”Thou doubtest still, blind mole,” said Ulenspiegel.
”If it were not she?” said Lamme.
”Thou wouldst lose nothing by going; on the left there, towards the north, there is a kaberdoesje where thou wilt find good bruinbier. We shall go thither to join thee. And here is ham to salt thy natural thirst withal.”
Lamme, getting out of the cart, ran quickly towards the woman that was in the meadow.
Ulenspiegel said to Nele:
”Why do you not come beside me?”
Then, helping her to get up into the cart, he made her sit beside him, took the ap.r.o.n from about her head and the cloak from her shoulders: then giving her a hundred kisses, he said:
”Whither wert thou going, my beloved?”
She answered no word, but she seemed all entranced in ecstasy. And Ulenspiegel, transported even as she, said to her:
”So thou art here, indeed! The sweetbriar roses in the hedges have not the lovely redness of your fresh skin. You are no queen, but let me make you a crown of kisses. Darling arms, all soft, all rosy, that Love himself made all on purpose for kissing! Ah, beloved maid, will not my rugged man's hands wither that shoulder? The light b.u.t.terfly settles on the crimson carnation, but can I rest on your dazzling whiteness without withering it, clumsy lout that I am? G.o.d is in his heaven, the king upon his throne, and the sun is aloft, triumphing; but am I G.o.d, the king, or sunlight, to be so near you? Oh, hair softer than flossy silk! Nele, I strike, I rend, I tear to pieces! But do not be afraid, my love. Thy darling little foot! How comes it to be so white! Has it been bathed in milk?”
She would fain have risen.
”What fearest thou?” said Ulenspiegel. ”'Tis not the sun that s.h.i.+neth on us and paints thee all in gold. Lower not thine eyes. See in mine what a lovely fire he lighteth there. Listen, beloved; hear, my darling; it is the silent hour of noon; the peasant is in his home feeding on his soup, shall not we feed upon love? Why have not I a thousand years to pluck one by one on thy knees like a string of pearls from the Indies!”
”Golden tongue!” said she.
And Master Sun blazed through the white canvas of the cart, and a lark sang above the clover, and Nele drooped her head upon Ulenspiegel's shoulder.
III
Meanwhile Lamme came back sweating big drops of perspiration, and puffing and blowing like a dolphin.
”Alas!” he said, ”I was born under an ill star. After I had to run hard to come up with that woman, who was not my wife and who was old, I saw by her face that she was full forty-five years of age, and by her headdress that she had never been married. She asked me tartly what I was coming to do among the clover with my paunch.
”'I am looking for my wife, who has left me,' I replied with all gentleness, 'and taking you for her, I came hastening towards you.'
”At that word the old maid told me I had nothing to do but to go back whence I had come, and that if my wife had left me, she had done right, seeing that all men were scoundrels, heretics, disloyal, poisoners, deceiving poor maids despite even their ripe years, and that anyhow she would make her dog eat me if I did not make myself scarce as quickly as possible.
”I did so, though not without apprehension; for I could see a huge mastiff lying growling at her feet. When I had cleared the boundary of her field, I sat down and to restore myself I bit into your piece of ham you gave me. I was at that moment between two patches of clover; suddenly I heard a noise behind me, and turning round, I saw the old girl's big mastiff, not threatening now, but wagging his tail to and fro with amiability and appet.i.te. It was my ham he was sharp set against. So I gave him a few little pieces, when his mistress came up, and she cried out:
”'Seize the fellow! seize him, put your teeth in him, my son!'
”And I started to run, and the big mastiff at my stockings, and he took a piece of them and the flesh with it. But being angered with the pain of this, turning round on him I fetched him such a sour blow of my stick on his front paws that I broke at least one of them for him. He fell, crying out in his dog's speech 'mercy,'
which I accorded him. Meanwhile, his mistress was throwing clods of earth at me for want of stones. And I ran.
”Alas! is it not cruel and unjust that because a girl had not enough beauty to find a man to marry her, she should take revenge on poor innocent folk like myself?