Volume Ii Part 23 (1/2)
Ulenspiegel made answer:
”The fat hare wants me to renounce good wine, cervoise ale, and the fresh skin of women.”
The girl looked at him with an ugly eye.
”Your breath is short; you must rest,” said she.
”Rest myself? I see no shelter,” replied Ulenspiegel.
”Your virtue,” said the girl, ”will serve for a quilt.”
”I like your petticoat better,” said he.
”My petticoat,” said the girl, ”would not be worthy to cover a saint such as you would fain be. Take yourself off that I may run alone.”
”Do you not know,” replied Ulenspiegel, ”that a dog goes swifter with four feet than a man with two? And so, having four feet, we shall run better.”
”You have a lively tongue for a virtuous man.”
”Aye,” said he.
”But,” said she, ”I have always observed that virtue is a quiet, sleepy, thick, and chilly quality. It is a mask to hide grumbling faces, a velvet cloak on a man of stone. I like men that have in their breast a stove well lighted with the fire of virility, which exciteth to valiant and gay enterprises.”
”It was ever thus,” replied Ulenspiegel, ”that the lovely she-devil spake to the glorious Saint Anthony.”
There was an inn a score of paces from the road.
”You have spoken well,” said Ulenspiegel, ”now you must drink well.”
”My tongue is still cool and fresh,” said the girl.
They went in. On a chest there slumbered a big jug nicknamed ”belly,”
because of its wide paunch.
Ulenspiegel said to the baes:
”Dost thou see this florin?”
”I see it,” said the baes.
”How many patards would thou extract from it to fill up that belly there with dobbel-clauwert?”
The baes said to him:
”With negen mannekens (nine little men), you will be clear.”