"A little of all, a little of all, cousin," answered the jester. "It's a Saturday's stew, containing fragments of all things rich and rare, with a sauce of mine own composing. Now listen and you shall hear. Once upon a time there was a prince--we'll call him prince for want of a better name; without offence too, for a prince may be a gentleman sometimes--well, this prince lived at ease in his own land--for you see he had neither wife nor child to vex him--and a very merry prince he was. Well might he be so, too, for everybody did just what he liked, and he drank the best wine and ate the best meat, and slept upon good goose-feathers which he had not the trouble of plucking; and then, moreover, he had a jester who was fit to make any heart gay. Besides this jester, he had a brother, a wise man and a thoughtful, full of all sorts of learning; for they wished to make a bishop of him, but he loved the sword better than the coif, and all he learned in the convent was Latin and Greek, and reading and writing, and Aristotle, and Duns Scotus, and to love nobody better than himself." "Ha!" exclaimed Ferdinand, beginning to think that he perceived some drift in the man's tale, but he made no observation, and the jester continued. "Well, the prince loved his brother very much, and they lived together in the same castle, and passed their time pleasantly; they hunted together, and they made a little war, and then they made a little peace; and while the men at arms played at mutton-bones in the court-yard, the two lords played at chess in the hall--and I can tell you, that though the brother, won the first game, the prince won the second, and the jester stood by and laughed. Merrily passed, the time, and if men would but be contented in this world, life would be like a summer day, but the brother was always urging the prince to this war or that, for the glory of their house, as he called it; and sometimes he went himself, and sometimes he stayed at home to take care of the castle, while the prince followed his advice; and then the brother one day thought it would be a good thing for the prince to go and visit Jerusalem, and that it would be honourable, as he knew something of hard blows and of leading armies, to help the knights hospitallers and other sagacious men who were fighting for the pure pleasure of the thing, to get lands which they could not keep when they had got them. And the prince thought it a very good plan; and as he had got a great number of chests full of money, he went away to sow it in the fields of Syria, and to see if it would grow there. As he had a multitude of stout young men, too, who always required bleeding in the summer time, he took them with him, but as his brother was of a cold constitution, he left him at home to keep house. Now the prince having neither wife nor child, his dear brother was his heir." "I see," said Ferdinand. "Go on, Herr!"