Thus the doctor himself absolutely starved during the sumptuous banquet, for not a single dish was ever brought back to him, the remains being sent into a side room, where, at a table without a table-cloth, sat the lower order of guests, such as the begging friars, the clerks who acted as secretaries, and the court poets. The latter usually went by the name of "court fools" when they had more than common genius, but not every poet merited this higher title, for there were bores among them too, and these remained poets, and nothing but poets.
The favourite amongst them all was the house-fool, Lupko, who had also been invited into the gentlemen's dining-hall, and was there practising every sort of tomfoolery, letting off literary squibs, imitating feline and canine concerts, and the squeaking of stuck pigs, turning his hat into twenty different shapes, tootling in a bottle, and drumming in the hollow of his hand, and drinking glasses of wine at the same time that he was imitating the scream of a peacock.
Naturally, in these things Heinrich could by no means compete with him.
All the guests treated Lupko with wine; but none of them said to the doctor, "What will you drink? Fetch wine for the doctor."
Casimir also joked familiarly with the jester—nay, he almost openly urged him to go along and try conclusions with the doctor.
Students love to heckle each other, especially if one of them has had a full skin at table.
So the fool skipped away to the doctor.
"Servus humillimus collega! For colleagues we really are. Yes, doctores ambo! The only difference is that on your head is a college cap, and on mine a cap with pointed hare's-ears. Evoe Bacche!"
And with that he clapped Heinrich on the shoulder.
At this Heinrich was very angry, but still angrier was the mastiff to see his master hit on the shoulder by a hunch-backed rascal, so he rushed at him incontinently, placed his paws on his neck, and snatched from his head the fur cap adorned with the two projecting hare's-ears.