November was come, the month of hail-storms, when sufferers from cold
in the head abandon themselves freely to their concerts of coughing
and spitting. This also is the month when the turnip-fields are
filled with gangs of youths that there disport themselves and steal
whatever they can, to the mighty wrath of the peasants, who try in
vain to catch them, chasing after them with sticks and pitchforks.
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.