Volume Ii Part 7 (1/2)
”See, Messires,” said Lamme, ”how piteous he looks. He hath no love for the wood, my friend Ulenspiegel.”
”I love,” replied Ulenspiegel, ”to see a lovely ash all leafy, growing in the suns.h.i.+ne in all it's native verdure; but I hate to the death those ugly sticks of wood still bleeding their sap, stripped of branches, without leaves or twigs, of fierce aspect and harsh of acquaintance.”
”Art thou ready?” asked the provost.
”Ready,” repeated Ulenspiegel, ”ready for what? To be beaten. No, I am not, and have no desire to be, master stock-meester. Your beard is red and you have a formidable air; but I am fully persuaded that you have a kind heart and do not love to maltreat a poor fellow like me. I must tell it you, I love not to do it or see it; for a Christian man's back is a sacred temple which, even as his breast, encloseth the lungs wherewith we breathe the air of the good G.o.d. With what poignant remorse would you be gnawed if a brutal stroke of the stick were to break me in pieces.”
”Make haste,” said the stock-meester.
”Monseigneur,” said Ulenspiegel, speaking to the Prince, ”nothing presses, believe me; first should this stick be dried and seasoned, for they say that green wood entering living flesh imparts to it a deadly venom. Would Your Highness wish to see me die of this foul death? Monseigneur, I hold my faithful back at Your Highness' service; have it beaten with rods, lashed with the whip; but, if you would not see me dead, spare me, if it please you, the green wood.”
”Prince, give him grace,” said Messire de Hoogstraeten and Dieterich de Schooenbergh. The others smiled pityingly.
Lamme also said:
”Monseigneur, Monseigneur, show grace; green wood it is pure poison.”
The Prince then said: ”I pardon him.”
Ulenspiegel, leaping several times high in air, struck on Lamme's belly and forced him to dance, saying:
”Praise Monseigneur with me, who saved me from the green wood.”
And Lamme tried to dance, but could not, because of his belly.
And Ulenspiegel treated him to both eating and drinking.
XII
Not wis.h.i.+ng to give battle, the duke without truce or respite harried the Silent as he wandered about the flat land between Juliers and the Meuse, everywhere sounding the river at Hondt, Mechelen, Elsen, Meersen, and everywhere finding it filled with traps and caltrops to wound men and horses that sought to pa.s.s over by fording.
At Stockem, the sounders found none of these engines. The prince gave orders for crossing. The reiters went over the Meuse and held themselves in battle order on the other bank, so as to protect the crossing on the side of the bishopric of Liege; then there formed up in line from one bank to the other, in this way breaking the current of the river, ten ranks of archers and musketeers, among whom was Ulenspiegel.
He had water up to his thighs, and often some treacherous wave would lift him up, himself and his horse.
He saw the foot soldiers cross, carrying a powder bag upon their headgear and holding their muskets high in air: then came the wagons, the hackbuts, linstocks, culverins, double culverins, falcons, falconets, serpentines, demi-serpentines, double serpentines, mortars, double mortars, cannon, demi-cannon, double cannon, sacres, little field pieces mounted on carriages drawn by two horses, able to manoeuvre at the gallop and in every way like those that were nicknamed the Emperor's Pistols; behind them, protecting the rear, landsknechts and reiters from Flanders.
Ulenspiegel looked about to find some warming drink. The archer Riesencraft, a High German, a lean, cruel, gigantic fellow, was snoring on his charger beside him, and as he breathed he spread abroad the perfume of brandy. Ulenspiegel, spying for a flask on his horse's crupper, found it hung behind on a cord like a baldric, which he cut, and he took the flask, and drank rejoicing. The archer companions said to him:
”Give us some.”
He did so. The brandy being drunk, he knotted the cord that held the flask, and would have put it back about the soldier's breast. As he lifted his arm to pa.s.s it round, Riesencraft awoke. Taking the flask, he would have milked his cow as usual. Finding that it gave no more milk, he fell into mighty anger.
”Robber,” said he, ”what have you done with my brandy?”
Ulenspiegel replied: