Ulenspiegel was living at Koolkerke, in the intimate favour of a farmer's widow, a sweet and gentle person who refused him nothing of what was hers to give. He was very happy there, petted and made much of, until one day a treacherous rival, an alderman of the village, lay in wait for him early in the morning when he was coming out of the tavern, and would have beaten him with a wooden club. But Ulenspiegel, thinking to cool his rival's anger, threw him into a duck-pond that was full of water, and the alderman scrambled out as best he could, green as a toad and dripping like a sponge. -from Chapter XXXVII Based upon scatterings of European folktales and mythologies, this is a romantic drama of human vice and virtue spun around the wanderings of Tyl Ulenspiegel, artist, prankster, and fool.
Charles-Théodore-Henri de Coster was a Belgian author; though the son of a Flemish father and Walloon mother, he wrote in French. He died on May 7, 1879 (aged 51) in Brussels, Belgium.