But Ulenspiegel and Nele loved each other, and their love was true.
It was now the end of April. All the trees were in bloom, and every
plant was swollen with sap, for May was near, the month of the peacock,
flowered like a bouquet, the month that sends the nightingales singing
aloud in the trees of all the earth.
Oftentimes would Nele and Ulenspiegel wander together along the
roads. Nele would lean on the arm of Ulenspiegel, and hang round him
with her two hands. Ulenspiegel loved this little game, and often
did he pass his arm about Nele's waist, to hold her the better,
as he said. And she was happy, but spake not a word.
Softly along the roads blew the wind, wafting the scent from the
fields; the sea boomed in the distance, rocking lazily in the sun;
Ulenspiegel seemed like some youthful devil, all pride; and Nele like
a little saint from Paradise, half shy of her happiness.
She leant her head against Ulenspiegel's shoulder, and her hand was in
his, and as they passed along he kissed her forehead, and her cheek,
and her sweet lips. But still she spake no word.
After some hours they grew hot and thirsty, and they drank milk at
the house of a peasant; and yet they were not refreshed. Then they
sat them down on the grass by the side of the ditch, and Nele seemed
pale and pensive, and Ulenspiegel looked at her, afraid that something
was amiss.
"You are unhappy?" said she.
"Yes," he admitted.
"But why?" she asked him.
"I know not," said he. "But these apple-trees and cherry-trees
all in flower, this air so warm that one would say it was charged
with lightning, these daisies that open their blushing petals to
the fields, and oh, the hawthorn, there, close by us in the hedge,
all white.... Will no one tell me why it is that I feel troubled,
and always ready to die or to go to sleep? And my heart beats so
strangely when I hear the birds awaken in the trees, and when I see
the swallows coming home! Then I am fain to go away beyond the sun and
beyond the moon. And sometimes I am cold, and then again I am hot. Ah,
Nele! would that I were no longer a creature of this low world! Verily
I would give my life a thousand times to her that would love me!"
Yet Nele spake not at all, but smiling at her ease sat looking at
Ulenspiegel.