Читать книгу The Legend of the Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegel in the land of Flanders and elsewhere - Charles de Coster - Страница 13

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Once in the open country, Ulenspiegel shook himself like a dog, or like a bird that has regained its liberty, and his heart was cheered by the trees and fields and the bright sunshine.

When he had walked on thus for three days he came to the outskirts of Brussels, and to the wealthy township of Uccle. And there, passing in front of the inn with the sign of the Trumpet, his attention was drawn to a most heavenly odour of fricassee. A little urchin who stood by was also sniffing the delightful perfume of the sauce, and Ulenspiegel asked him in whose honour it was that there rose to heaven such odour of festal incense. The boy made answer that the Guild of the Jolly Face was to meet at the inn that evening after vespers, to celebrate the deliverance of the town by the women and girls of olden time.

Now in the distance Ulenspiegel saw a high pole with a popinjay on the top of it, and the pole was set in the ground, and round it were a company of women armed with bows and arrows. He asked the boy if women were become archers nowadays?

The boy, still sniffing greedily the savour of the sauces, replied that in the days of the Good Duke the very bows that were now being used by those women had been the means of killing over a hundred brigands.

Ulenspiegel desired to know further concerning this matter, but the boy said that he could tell no more, so hungry was he, unless forsooth Ulenspiegel would give him a patard with which he might buy food and drink. This Ulenspiegel did, for he felt sorry for him.

No sooner had the boy received the patard than he rushed into the tavern like a fox to the hen-house, and presently reappeared in triumph with half a sausage and a large loaf of bread.

And now Ulenspiegel was suddenly aware of a sweet sound of viols and tabors, and soon he saw a number of women dancing together, and among them a woman of great beauty with a chain of gold hanging round her neck.

The boy, who had by this time assuaged his hunger and was grinning with delight, informed Ulenspiegel that the beautiful woman was the Queen of Archery, that her name was Mietje, and that she was wife to Messire Renonckel, alderman of the parish. Then he asked Ulenspiegel to give him six liards for a drink. Ulenspiegel gave him the money, and when he had thus eaten and drunk his fill the urchin sat himself down in the sun and fell to picking his teeth with his nails.

When the women archers noticed Ulenspiegel standing there in his pilgrim’s habit, they came and began to dance round him in a ring, crying:

“Hail pilgrim, hail! Do you come from far away, you handsome pilgrim boy?”

Ulenspiegel, thinking sadly of Nele, thus made answer:

“I come from Flanders, a lovely land and filled with lovesome girls.”

“What crime have you committed?” asked the women, stopping in their dance.

“I dare not confess it, so great it was,” said he.

They asked him the reason why it was needful for him to journey thus with a pilgrim’s staff and wallet, and those scalloped oysters that are the sign of the pilgrim.

“The reason is,” he replied, not quite truthfully, “that I said that Masses for the dead are advantageous to the priests.”

“True, they bring many a sounding denier to the priests,” they answered; “but are they not also of advantage to the souls in purgatory!”

“I have never been there,” answered Ulenspiegel.

“Will you come dine with us?” said the prettiest of the archers.

“Willingly would I dine with you,” said he, “and dine off you into the bargain! You and all your companions in turn, for you are morsels fit for a king, more delicate to swallow than any ortolan or thrush or snipe!”

“Nay,” they answered, “but we are not for sale.”

“Then perhaps you will give?” he asked them.

“Yea, verily,” they laughed, “a good box on the ear to such as are too bold. And if needs were we would beat you now like a bundle of corn!”

“Thank you,” he said, “I will go without the beating.”

“Well then,” they said, “come in to dinner.”

So he followed them into the inn yard, glad for their fresh young faces. And thereafter he saw the Brethren of the Jolly Face themselves, who were now entering the yard with great ceremony, and by their own jolly appearance living up most conspicuously to the name of their Guild.

They scrutinized Ulenspiegel with some curiosity, till one of the women informed them who he was—a pilgrim they had picked up on the road, and whom, being a good red-face like unto their husbands and their sweethearts, they had invited to share in the entertainment. The men were agreeable to this proposal, and one of them addressed himself to Ulenspiegel:

“Pilgrim on pilgrimage, what say you now to continuing your pilgrimage across some sauce and fricassee?”

“I shall have need of my seven-league boots,” answered Ulenspiegel.

Now as he was following them into the festal hall, he noticed twelve blind men coming along the Paris road. And as they passed they were lamenting most piteously their hunger and thirst. But Ulenspiegel said to himself that they should dine that night like kings, and all at the expense of the Dean of Uccle himself, and in memory of the Masses for the dead.

He accosted them, saying:

“Here are nine florins for you. Come in to dinner. Do you not smell the good smell of fricassee?”

“Ah!” they cried, “for the last half-league, and without hope!”

“Now you can eat your fill,” said Ulenspiegel, “for you have nine florins.”

But he had not really given them anything.

“The Lord bless you,” they said. For being blind, each man believed his neighbour had been given the money. And shown the way by Ulenspiegel, they all sat down at a small table while the Brethren of the Jolly Face took their seats at a long one, together with their wives and their daughters.

Then, with the complete assurance that comes from the possession of nine florins:

“Mine host,” cried the blind men insolently, “give us now to eat and to drink of your best.”

The landlord, who had heard tell of the nine florins and thought that they were safe in the blind men’s purse, asked them what they would like for their dinner.

Then they all began to talk at once at the top of their voices:

“Bacon and peas, hotchpotch of beef and veal, chicken and lamb! And where are the sausages—were they made for the dogs, pray? And who is he that has smelt out the black and white puddings in the passage without collaring them for us? I used to be able to see them, alas, in the days when my poor eyes were bright as candles! And where is the buttered koekebakken of Anderlecht? Sizzling in the frying-pan, juicy and crackling, enough to make a fish thirsty for drink! Ho there! But who will bring me eggs and ham, or ham and eggs, twin friends of my palate? And where are you, you choesels, that float in a heavenly mess of meats and kidneys, coxcombs, sweetbreads, ox-tails, lamb’s feet, with many onions, pepper, cloves, nutmegs, all in a stew, and three pints at least of best white wine for sauce? And who will bring you to me divine, chitterlings, you that are so good that one does not utter a word while you are being swallowed! And they come straight from Luyleckerland, a land bursting with fatness and filled with happy lazy folk, whose passion for good things to eat is never assuaged! And where are you, dried leaves of autumns past? Now quick there! Bring me a leg of mutton with broad beans. And for me, some pig’s ears grilled with bread-crumbs. And for me, a chaplet of ortolans. Verily the snipe shall figure the Paters, and a fat capon the Credo.”

Mine host answered quietly:

“I will bring you an omelette made with sixty eggs. And as sign-posts to guide your spoons, I will plant fifty black puddings in the midst, all smoking on a veritable mountain of good cheer; and from the top of all some dobbel peterman shall flow down like a river on every side.”

At this the mouths of the poor blind men began to water indeed, and they said:

“Then serve us, pray, and that right quickly with the mountain, the sign-posts, and the river!”

And the Brethren of the Jolly Face, who were now all seated at table with their wives, remarked to Ulenspiegel that this should be called the Day of the Invisible Feast; for that the blind men could not see what they were eating, and thus, poor things, were deprived of half their pleasure.

At last it came—the omelette all garnished with cress and parsley, carried by mine host himself and four of his cooks—and the blind men desired to fall to incontinently, and at once began to set their paws upon it. But mine host was determined to serve each of them fairly, and, however difficult it might be, to make sure that each trencher had its just portion.

The women archers were filled with pity to see the blind men gobbling and sighing with joy at what was set before them. For in truth they were half starved, and they swallowed down the puddings as though they had been oysters. And the dobbel peterman flowed into their stomachs as if it had been a cataract falling down from some lofty mountain.

When at length they had cleared their trenchers, they demanded yet further supplies of koekebakken, ortolans, and fricassees. Mine host, however, only provided a great platter of beef and veal and mutton bones, all swimming in a most goodly sauce. But he did not divide it properly. So that when they had well dipped their bread in the sauce, and eke their hands right up to the elbows, yet drew not out anything but bones of cutlet of veal or mutton, each man fell straightway to imagining that his neighbour had got hold of all the meat, and they began to fight among themselves, hitting out most furiously one against another with the bones.

The Brethren of the Jolly Face laughed heartily at this, but being charitably disposed, each put a portion of his own dinner into the blind men’s platter. So now if one of the blind went searching for a new bone with which to carry on the fight, he would put his hand belike upon a thrush or chicken or a lark or two; and all the time the women, holding their heads well backwards, kept pouring into the mouths of the blind long draughts of Brussels wine, and when they reached out with their hands to feel, as blind men will, whence came these rivulets of ambrosia, they would catch oftentimes at a woman’s skirt, and try to hold it fast. But quickly the skirt would make its escape.

Thus they laughed and drank, ate and sang, enjoying themselves hugely. Some of them, when they found that women were present, ran through the hall all maddened with amorous desire. But the malicious girls kept out of their way, hiding behind the Brethren of the Jolly Face. And one of them would say: “Come, kiss me!” And when the blind victim tried to do so he would find himself kissing not a girl at all but the bearded face of a man, who would reward him with a cuff on the cheek as like as not.

And the Brethren of the Jolly Face began to sing, and the blind men sang also, and the merry women smiled with fond delight to see their pleasure. But when the juicy hours were past, it was the turn of the innkeeper, who came forward, saying:

“Now you have eaten your fill, my friends, and drunk your fill. You owe me seven florins.”

The Feast of the Blind Men

But each of the blind men swore that he had no purse, and asserted that it was one of the others who carried it. Thereat arose a further dispute, and they began to hit out at one another with feet and hands and heads; but they mostly missed their mark, striking out at random, while the Brethren of the Jolly Face, entering into the fun, took care to keep them apart, so that their blows rained down upon the empty air—all save one, which happened unfortunately to strike the face of the innkeeper, who straightway fell into a rage and ransacked all their pockets. But he found there nothing but an old scapular, seven liards, three breeches-buttons, and a few rosaries.

At last he threatened to throw the whole lot of them into the pig-trough, and leave them there with nothing but bread and water to eat till they paid what they owed.

“Let me go surety for them,” said Ulenspiegel.

“Certainly,” answered the innkeeper, “if some one will also go surety for you.”

This the Brethren of the Jolly Face at once offered to do, but Ulenspiegel refused them.

“No,” he said, “the Dean of Uccle shall be my surety. I will go and find him.”

To be sure it was those Masses for the dead that he was thinking of. And when he had found the Dean he told him a story of how the innkeeper of the Trumpet Inn was possessed by the Devil, and how he could talk of nothing but “pigs” and “blind men”—something or other about pigs eating the blind, and the blind eating the pigs under various infamous forms of roast meats and fricassees. While these attacks were on, the innkeeper, so Ulenspiegel affirmed, would break up all the furniture in the inn; and he begged the Dean to come and deliver the poor man from the wicked devil that possessed him.

The Dean promised to do so, but he said he could not come at the moment (for he was busy with the accounts of the Chapter, trying to make something out of them for himself). Seeing that the Dean was growing impatient, Ulenspiegel said that he would return and bring with him the innkeeper’s wife in order that the Dean might speak to her himself.

“Very well,” said the Dean.

So Ulenspiegel came again to the innkeeper and said to him:

“I have just seen the Dean, and he is willing to go surety for the blind men. Do you keep watch over them, and let your wife come with me, and the Dean will repeat to her what I have just told you.”

“Go, wife,” said the innkeeper.

So the innkeeper’s wife went with Ulenspiegel to the Dean, who was still at his accounts and busy with the same problem. When, therefore, he saw Ulenspiegel and the woman, he made an impatient gesture that they should withdraw, saying at the same time:

“It is all right. I will come to the help of your husband in a day or two.”

And Ulenspiegel went back to the inn and said to himself:

“Seven florins shall he pay; seven florins. And that shall be the first of my Masses for the dead!”

And Ulenspiegel departed from that place, and the blind men likewise.