"You are a bold man," said his companion, "to give me such an answer."
"How so?" demanded Ferdinand, "I must surely know who I am myself."
"If you know yourself, you are the first man that ever did," replied the jester. "Your father was a proper man."
"Indeed! did you know him?" exclaimed Ferdinand.
"Oh, dear no, not at all," said the Herr von Narren, "but my uncle Frederick told us so at supper. I knew your grand-father and your great-grandfather, and I was distantly related to his great-grandfather; for as Adam was the first of my ancestors, and all his race sprang from Eve, there was some connection between us, either by blood or matrimony--Do you remember your father?"
"No," answered Ferdinand, "I was but a mere boy when he died."
"Ay, then you were not long acquainted," said the jester. "I remember mine quite well, and how he used to tickle me with his beard--that's longer ago than you recollect, or than you could if you would, for to ask you for a long memory in your short life, would be like putting a gallon of wine into a pint stoup--But I'll tell you a story, cousin."
"What is it about?" asked Ferdinand, drinking some of the wine out of the cup he held in his hand. "Is it a story of fate, or about the Saracens, or of knightly deeds here in our own land?"
"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.