It is all up with Vidra; Vidra is dying.

If only it had been a wolf that had killed poor Vidra; but a mouse--oh, oh!" "Don't be a fool, man! You'll take no harm from it.

Look! here's another hundred.

Don't take on so; it has quite gone now! Hit him on the back, some one, can't you?
Bring the venison on now, and make him swallow some of it!" The jester thanked them for the thump on the back, and when they set the venison before him, he regarded it with the doubtful, ambiguous expression of a spoiled child, who does not know whether to laugh or to cry.

First he laughed, and then he grumbled again, but finally he sat him down before the savoury cold meat, which had been basted with the finest lard and flavoured with good cream-like wine sauce, and began to cram himself full with morsel after morsel so huge that there was surely never a mouse in the wide world half so big.