XX
They went on their way each well astride his ass.
Lamme, chewing the cud of his last meat, sniffed up the cool air rejoicing. Suddenly Ulenspiegel fetched him a great stinging slash of his whip on his behind, which was like a cushion in the saddle.
“What are you doing?” cried Lamme, piteously.
“What!” answered Ulenspiegel.
“This lash with the whip?” said Lamme.
“What lash with the whip?”
“The one I got from you,” returned Lamme.
“On the left?” asked Ulenspiegel.
“Aye, on the left and on my behind. Why did you do that, scandalous vagabond?”
“In ignorance,” replied Ulenspiegel. “I know well enough what a whip is, and very well, too, what a behind of small compass is upon a saddle. But seeing this one wide, swollen, tight, and overflowing the saddle, I said to myself: ‘Since it could never be pinched with a finger, a stroke of the whip could not sting it either with the lash.’ I was wrong.”
Lamme smiling at this speech, Ulenspiegel went on in these terms:
“But I am not the only one in this world to sin through ignorance, and there is more than one past-master idiot displaying his fat on a donkey saddle who could give me points. If my whip sinned on your behind, you sinned much more weightily on my legs in preventing them from running after the girl who was coquetting in her garden.”
“Crow’s meat!” said Lamme, “so it was revenge then?”
“Just a little one,” replied Ulenspiegel.