Everything was good in their eyes: hens, chickens, ducks, pigeons, calves, and pigs. One day, as they were coming back laden with plunder, Kornjuin and his lieutenants saw at the foot of a tree Ulenspiegel lying asleep and dreaming of fricassees.
“What do you do for a living?” asked Kornjuin.
“I’m dying of hunger,” replied Ulenspiegel.
“What is your trade?”
“To go on pilgrimage for my sins, look on at others toiling, dance on the rope, paint pretty faces, carve knife handles, play the rommel-pot, and blow the trumpet.”
Now if Ulenspiegel spoke so bold of trumpets, it was because he had learned that the post of watchman to the Castle of Audenaerde was vacant after the death of an old man who had held it.
Kornjuin said to him:
“You shall be trumpeter to the town.”
Ulenspiegel went with him and was posted on the tallest tower on the ramparts, in a little box of a cell well ventilated by the four winds, all except the south wind that fanned it only with one wing.
He was enjoined to sound the trumpet as soon as he might see an enemy coming and, to that end, to keep his head clear and his eyes keen; and so they did not give him overmuch either to eat or to drink.