Читать книгу The Legend of Ulenspiegel - Charles de Coster - Страница 19

Table of Contents

When he came home, riding upon his donkey, and provided with a bag full of patards his brother Josse had given him and a goodly tankard of pewter, there were in the cottage Sunday good cheer and daily feasts, for every day they had meat and beans to eat.

Claes filled often the great pewter tankard with dobbel-cuyt and emptied it as often.

Ulenspiegel ate for three and paddled in the dishes like a sparrow in a heap of corn.

“Look,” said Claes, “he’s eating the saltcellar, too!”

Ulenspiegel answered:

“When the saltcellar, as in our house, is made of a hollow piece of bread, it must be eaten now and then, lest the worms might come in it as it gets old.”

“Why,” said Soetkin, “do you wipe your greasy hands on your breeches?”

“So that I may never have my thighs wet,” replied Ulenspiegel.

At this moment Claes drank a deep draught from his tankard. Ulenspiegel said to him:

“Why have you so big a cup, I have only a poor little mug?”

Claes answered:

“Because I am your father and the baes of this house.”

Ulenspiegel retorted:

“You have been drinking for forty years, I for nine only; your time to drink is passed, mine is come; it is therefore for me to have the tankard and for you to take the mug.”

“Son,” said Claes, “he that would pour a hogshead into a keg would throw his beer into the gutter.”

“You will then be wise to pour your keg into my hogshead, for I am bigger than your tankard,” replied Ulenspiegel.

And Claes, delighted, gave him his tankard to drain. In this wise Ulenspiegel learned how to talk for his drink.