Then came a young maid of honour, fair, fresh, and pretty, but who lacked three teeth under her upper lip.
“Messire painter,” she said, “if you do not make me laugh and show thirty-two teeth, I shall have you cut to pieces by my lover, who is over there.”
And pointing out the captain of musketeers who had before been playing dice on the palace stairway, she passed on.
The procession continued; Ulenspiegel remained alone with the landgrave.
“If thou hast the ill-luck,” said the landgrave, “to err in one feature the pourtraying all these countenances, I shall have thy head cut off like a chicken’s.”
“Bereft of my head,” thought Ulenspiegel, “quartered, chopped in pieces, or hanged at least, it will be much more comfortable to pourtray nothing at all. I will bethink me for it.”
“Where,” he asked the landgrave, “is the hall that I am to decorate with all these paintings?”
“Follow me,” said the landgrave.
And showing him a great room with spacious walls all bare and empty:
“This,” he said, “is the hall.”