The rain had stopped and the last traces of the clouds had been completely scattered by the wind… His clothes wet and his hair disheveled he was wandering in the night, looking for shelter… Without being aware of it, he got to the old and worn out crypt of the monastery which he approached carefully and sniffed and licked some 56 times successively without getting any result. Greatly vexed he then drew his sword and dashed into the courtyard of the monastery… But he was soon appeased by the gentle look of a hen who came out to meet him and who invited him to wait a few moments in the office with a timid gesture that was, nevertheless, full of Christian charity… Gradually allayed and then moved to tears and seized by a thrilling feeling of remorse, he did renounce indeed and for good any plans of revenge and, after kissing the hen on the forehead he stored her in a safe place and then started to sweep all the monks' cells and rubbed the floor with debris. Then he counted his change and climbed a tree to wait for the arrival of morning. "What splendor! What greatness!" he exclaimed in ecstasy in front of the nature, coughing significantly a couple of times and jumping from one branch to another, while he furtively and regularly released some flies into the open air after having introduced under their tails long scraps of writing paper… But his happiness was short-lived… Three travelers who first pretended to be his friends and who finally justified their arrival there by the fact that they had been sent by the Inland Revenue, started to harass him in various ways, the first thing they did being to dispute him the very right to sit in that tree. As they wished, however, to show they were decent and well-bred people, they did not use all the means the law entitled them to and tried to force him through various indirect means to abandon the tree. They promised him to regularly purge his stomach and they ended by offering to rent him some sacks, aphorisms and sawdust. Cold and distant did he remain however to all these temptations as he contented himself to produce his certificate of pauperism, which he happened to have that day with him and which, besides other exemptions and advantages, offered him the right to squat over the branch of a tree entirely free of charge and as long as he wished… However, to show them that he had no grudge against them and, at the same time, to teach them a subtle lesson of urbanity and tactfulness he climbed down the tree, ungirded his sword and willingly got into the muddy and pestilential lake nearby where he swam rabbit-wise for about an hour; after which the fiscal committee suddenly ran away in disgrace and humiliation, spreading everywhere they went, in villages and towns, in mountainous or plain regions, a horrible fiscal stench. He was himself grieved and disappointed by all the adverse situations he had had to go through, so he counted his change and climbed into the tree again from where this time he left his droppings over the entire field smiling perversely… After which, sincerely regretting what he had done, but much advanced morally by the experience, he climbed down, he brushed his clothes with a measuring tape and humming the song of liberty he hid the hen under his coat and disappeared with it into the darkness… He is believed to have gone to his native town where, fed up with his bachelor's life, he decided to marry the hen and to become useful to his fellows, teaching them the art of midwifery.
by Urmuz (Dem. Dumitrescu-Buzău) (1883-1923)
