Well, on an evening when Ulenspiegel was returning home from one of
these raids, he heard close by, in a corner of the hedgerow, a sound
as of groaning. He leant down, and beheld a dog lying stretched out
on the stones.
"Hallo!" he cried. "Poor little beast! What are you doing out here
so late at night?"
He patted the dog, and found that its back was all wet, as though some
one had been trying to drown it. He took it in his arms to warm it,
and when he had reached home he said:
"I have brought back a wounded animal. What shall we do with it?"
"Dress its wounds," said Claes.
Ulenspiegel laid the dog on the table; whereupon he and Claes and
Soetkin saw that it was a little red-haired Luxemburg terrier, and that
it was wounded in the back. Soetkin sponged the wounds, and anointed
them with ointment, and bound them up with linen bandages. Then
Ulenspiegel took the dog and put it in his bed; but Soetkin desired
to have it in her own, saying she was afraid that Ulenspiegel would
hurt the little red-haired thing. For in those days Ulenspiegel was
wont to toss about in his sleep all night like a young devil in a
stoup of holy water. Ulenspiegel, however, had his way, and he took
such care of the dog that in the space of six days it was walking
about like any other dog, and giving itself great airs.
And the village schoolmaster christened him Titus Bibulus Schnouffius:
Titus after a certain good Emperor of the Romans who was fond of
befriending lost dogs; Bibulus because the dog loved beer with all
the passion of a confirmed drunkard; and Schnouffius because he would
always run about sniffing and putting his nose into every rat-hole
and mole-hole he could find.
XVI
The young prince of Spain was now fifteen years old, and his custom was
to wander about the rooms and passages and stairways of the castle. But
chiefly was he to be found prowling around the women's quarters,
trying to pick a quarrel with one of the pages, who themselves were
wont to lurk on the look out, like cats, in the corridors; while
others, again, out in the courtyard, would stand singing some tender
ballad, nose in air. When the young prince heard one singing thus,
he would show himself at one of the windows, and the heart of that
poor page would be stricken with fear as he saw that white face there,
instead of the gentle eyes of his beloved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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