“Noble men alone see aught, alone they see aught there, the noble ladies, so shall men say ere long: ‘blind in painting as a base fellow, clear seeing as a noble gentleman’!”
All opened their eyes to the widest, pretending to see, mutually pointing themselves out to one another, showing and recognizing each other, but seeing nothing in reality but the white wall, which made them grieved.
All at once the fool who was there bounded three feet into the air and shaking his bells:
“Let me be looked on as base,” said he, “a base fellow full of basest baseness, but I will say and cry and proclaim with trumpets and flourish of trumpets that I see there a bare wall, a blank wall, a naked wall. So help me God and all His saints!”
Ulenspiegel replied:
“When fools begin to talk it is time for wise men to be off.”
He was making to leave the palace when the landgrave staying him:
“Fool full of folly,” said he, “that goest about the world praising things fine and good and mocking at things stupid with wide mouth, thou that hast dared before so many noble dames and most high and mighty lords to make a vulgar mock of pride of blasonry and lordship, thou wilt be hanged one day for thy over-free speech.”
“If the rope be a golden rope,” replied Ulenspiegel, “it will break with terror to see me coming.”
“There,” said the landgrave, giving him fifteen florins, “there is the first piece of it.”