The painters wanted somehow to celebrate the one-year anniversary of their association, from which so much good had come in such a short time, and each of them secretly decided, as a way of doing this, to paint pictures of the houses of the other two. On the appointed day, the three met, each bringing his paintings with him. It so happened that they talked about their respective houses—their locations, their practical aspects, and so on. They became quite involved in this, with the result that during the discussion, each of them forgot the oil sketches he had brought along and late that night came home with the unopened package. How that could have happened is hard to understand. But in addition, during the period that followed they also did not show each other the paintings. And when one of them visited one of the others (which happened ever more rarely because of a great deal of work), he found on his friend’s easel sketches from that first period when they were all living together at the same farm. But one time the one on the right (who now also lived on the right, so we can continue to call him that) discovered at the house of the one I have been calling the youngest, one of those never-shown anniversary pictures. He looked it over reflectively for a while and then said with a laugh:

“Look at that, I wasn’t at all aware of that. That’s not at all bad the way you’ve captured my house. A really brilliant caricature. You’ve really got something there, the way you’ve exaggerated the color and form and the audacious way you’ve caught my gable, which really does stand out in that way.”

The expression that came over the face of the youngest one was not one of his more becoming looks—on the contrary. He was upset and took himself off to the house of the middle artist, the most measured of the three, hoping he would soothe him. For the youngest one was quick to be intimidated by incidents of this sort and tended to doubt his talent. He did not find the middle one at home, so he rummaged around his studio a bit and soon ran across a picture that he found curiously repellent. It was a house, but one that a real fool must live in. That facade! That could only have been built by someone who had no sense of architecture at all and was applying his miserable painter’s ideas to a building. All at once the youngest one pushed away the painting as though it had just burned his fingers. On the left edge of the picture he had read the date of that first anniversary and next to it: “The House of Our Youngest.” Naturally he did not wait for the inhabitant of the house to return but returned home in a somewhat bad mood.