Chapter XIV: Part 14

In the last character he was surpassed by a successor at the ducal court, Hans Miesko, A.D. 1600. Hans was imbecile, and it is surprising to find that, even in the age in which he lived, princes could derive pleasure from the mistakes and unclean acts of such persons, or could give them official standing in their household. Miesko died in extreme old-age, from reaching which his gluttony and excessive drinking had presented no obstruction; and he is perhaps the only fool who had the honour of a funeral sermon being preached over him. This was done by the command, and in the presence of, his master, Duke Francis, and the Reverend Philip Cradelius, who took his text from 1 Samuel xxi. 13–15: “And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard. Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man is mad: wherefore then have ye brought him to me? Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?” The preacher too much exalted the merits of Miesko, as Christian, servant, and fool; over-praised the condescension of princes towards such individuals, and founded on his text, scriptural warrant for the existence of such officials. But I think there is something satirical in the application of the text, which teaches us, says the preacher, that where great princes are, there too may you look to find great fools. The double meaning should have raised the Rector to a Deanery.--But perhaps Duke Francis did not relish the joke.

While Miesko was making Pomeranian princes glad by his imbecility and the fun drawn out of it, Frederick Taubman was keeping the Saxon court in merry humour by his conceits. But Taubman, though as lowly born as Miesko, was a scholar, and was not officially a fool. He was something of a poet, something of a philosopher, was well-read, was a collegiate professor; but therewith he was poor, yet was fond of luxurious living, and therefore he was glad to take his eccentricities to court, where their exhibition was paid for in ducats, rich viands, costly wines, and endless jollification. He was the court fool in all but being officially appointed; and, with better qualifications than many, used the license common to all. On one occasion, a courtier who was shaking hands with him, remarked, “Taubman, your coarse hands are only fit for digging.” Taubman squeezed the courtier’s fingers, and answered, “I am already handling a clod.” He once asked Cardinal Clesel, if he knew where God was _not_. “In hell,” answered the Cardinal readily.--“Nor in Rome,” rejoined the wit; “or wherefore is his Vicegerent there?”

Taubman died in 1613. The professional fools increased after his death. The Elector John George I. maintained, in the year 1639, no less than three at the same time. Two of them were named Michael, and one Caspar; and from a tailor’s bill quoted by Flögel, it is very clear that, gay as the official dress may have been, it was often patched and turned, before a new one was given in its place.

But, as in the case of Taubman, so in this later period were poor and witty scholars welcome at the German courts. Bolla was one of these; he was an Italian, who had his home in the palace at Heidelberg, where he proved himself to be, what was commonly said of him, _virum ad risum natum_, a man born for laughter. He excelled in macaronic poetry, and not only accepted the name of fool, but begged for fool’s largess in very indifferent Latin verse,--of which here is a sample:--

“Amate semper vestrum zanum,
Sed aperite, vestro more, manum.
Hoc precatur vester zanus,
Corpore, non crumena sanus.”

It was not only the poor scholar that now was even more welcome for his wit than the official jester. As in Saxony, so in Poland, the liveliest sayings were uttered by non-professional individuals. At the courts in both places just named, the acknowledged court wit, for a long period, was Frederick, Baron of Kyau, who excelled, we are told, both as a general and as a joker. In the same list must be enrolled the Baron von Gundling, who commenced his career of eccentricity at the court of Frederick William I. of Prussia, at the commencement of the last century.

Von Gundling was a scholar and of good family, and he was chosen by the King as a companion for his few leisure hours, which he desired to turn to instruction and amusement combined. But the Baron was a pedantic fool, inflated with the most absurd pride, and addicted to hard drinking and filthiness, like any Silenus. The King loaded him with ridiculous titles, and he walked about in a dress that must have made him look like our burlesque King Arthur, in ‘Tom Thumb,’ or Justice Midas, in O’Hara’s operetta. It must have been pitiable to see a man of learning submit to any indignity at the hands of King and nobles. He would embrace a dressed-up monkey presented by a prince, as his son; and he took as a mark of favour, his being sent-for to the palace in a sedan-chair, the bottom of which, as previously contrived, fell out by the way, and the bearers of which had orders to push on and keep their passenger walking. He was seldom absent from the private evening parties of the King, where six or eight persons only were present; where beer and pipes were the refreshments which stood before each guest,--no servant being admitted; and where sometimes very serious business was transacted. Gundling died in 1731; his body may be said to have been pelted by epigrammatic epitaphs, but as it was carried to the grave in a wine-cask, long before prepared for the occasion, the clergy refused to bury it with any but maimed rites.

As pedantic and degraded a fool as Von Gundling, and at the same court, was a certain diminutive Doctor Bartholdi, whose buffoonery the King once rewarded by presenting him with a peruke which reached to his feet. But Bartholdi was for ever quarrelling with his patron or with the government, and he ended his days in prison. Nor were these the only persons who played the fool, without professing it, at the Prussian court. Among the latter, and they were all more or less scholars, was Kornemann, who had not wit enough to escape marrying a sham countess. A second was Von Hackmann, who was rogue as well as scholar and buffoon, and robbed the King who sheltered him at court. He fled to Vienna, changed and re-changed his religion, returned to Prussia, was whipped by the hangman, and died in misery. David Fassmann, a writer of considerable merit, was another of those buffoon-philosophers whom Frederick William distinguished as his “Learned Fools.” Fassmann held various offices at court, where his sufferings were as great as his absurd dignities, in both of which the monarch found opportunity for laughter. For losing a key entrusted to him by Frederick, Fassmann was condemned to carry a heavy wooden one, an ell long, round his neck for several days. On various occasions, these learned fools were excited against each other by noble persons, who found mirth in so doing. Then would they fly at each other; and Flögel describes one with a pair of tongs thrusting a burning coal in the face of his pedantic adversary, who, flying at his assailant, turns him on his face, strips down his dress, and beats him with the tongs, till he is tired, or, varying his attack, sets fire to the antagonistic pedant’s peruke by firing a pistol among the curls.

The Baron von Poelnitz, at the court of the last-named King and at that of Frederick II., fulfilled a similar office, without being expressly named to it. In the intercourse which subsisted between the King and the Baron, it is difficult to say which was the greater fool, and it is inconceivable that reasonable creatures should be guilty of the absurd follies attributed to them. The most of the jokes were childish enough, and King and Baron quarrelled and became reconciled like children. As a specimen of the familiarity which existed between them, here is one in connection with a royal commission to the Baron to procure a pair of turkeys. Poelnitz sent the birds with a very laconic letter: “Here are the turkeys, Sire.” Frederick, rather nettled at the style, ordered the leanest ox that could be found to be decked ridiculously with flowers, and the horns to be gilded. This done, the animal was taken and tied up in front of the Baron’s house, carrying this inscription on the forehead:--“Here is the ox, Poelnitz.”

The Baron’s readiness at repartee is exemplified by a remark he made to a Baron Schwertz, who was of Jewish descent. Poelnitz, one wintry day, standing with his back to one of the royal stoves, set his long-tailed coat on fire. “Ah,” said Schwertz,

“Ainsi brûla jadis et Sodome et Gomorre.”

To which Poelnitz readily replied,

“Quoi, du Vieux Testament tu te souviens encore!”

Solomon Morgenstern is the last of the learned fools whom I shall mention. He, too, submitted to every indignity, that he might keep in favour by exciting the good-humour of the King. His dress was more caricatured than that of any of his fellows; and instead of a sword, he wore a fox’s brush at his side, and in his cocked hat, hare’s feet for feathers. The wisest thing that Morgenstern did, was his lecture on ‘Reasonable thoughts on Folly and Fools,’ in which there was much sly satire, which was probably lost on the monarch, who presided over the assembly of listeners.

Finally, the last of the privileged fools existed within the lifetime of some aged persons still surviving. He was seen by Dr. Edward Moore, in 1774, at the Electoral court at Mannheim. He was a Tyrolese who spoke German with so droll an accent that universal laughter was excited by it. He appeared when the Elector and his guests sat down to dinner; and he went round the table directing his sallies of wit against every one present, not even sparing the princesses. This was the _ultimus ex officio stultorum_; but the time then was at hand that was to bring with it that revolution which came in contact with nothing in Europe that it did not destroy,--the French Revolution. It touched the German Empire; and down went Empire, Electors, and Fools. The three indeed have reappeared, but under different names and modified forms.

Before closing the roll of German fools, I will notice one who was in the service of Prince Maurice of Orange. He was with the Prince with his forces before Nimeguen. Maurice having some trouble to set his own troops in order, turned to his fool, who accompanied him on the expedition, and asked him whether it would not have been better that he, the jester, should command the army, and the prince turn fool. “Things would not be much improved by that,” said the Dutch motley; “for you are as little able to make a jest, as I am to command an army. If we change places, the States General will dismiss both of us.” Here, however, the fool did Maurice injustice, for the Prince could say some excellent things; and his description of the martial qualities of the chief military nations of the period, is exactly in the spirit of a professional wit, more true than refined: “The German,” said Maurice, “is, in war, just like a louse, which lets itself be killed without flinching. The Frenchman is like a flea, which skips here and there, and does not willingly allow himself to be taken. The Spaniard resembles the insect which can only with difficulty be dislodged from where it burrows itself; and as for the Italian, he is like the bug, which, being killed, leaves an ill smell behind him.”--And now for the official fools of Italy.

THE JESTERS OF ITALY.

There are very few of the writers who have devoted their attention to the subject treated in this imperfect volume, who have ever alluded to the fool who suddenly appeared at the court of Alboin, King of the Lombards, (A.D. 572,) and who created a large measure of astonishment there, by his rude exterior and his ready wit. All Verona was, in popular phrase, “full of him.” The chronicle of his “Astuzie” was long the delight of the whole of Italy.

His name was Bertoldo. He was hideously ugly, and not very clean in his person; dwarfed, and deformed. His eyebrows resembled pigs’ bristles; but his eyes beneath them, gleamed like two torches; his hair was as red as carrots, and if you can fancy humanity caricatured to the very utmost extent, you will not, even then, be able to see with your mind’s eye the never-matched hideousness of this rustic, who set all the court in a roar by entering the great hall where Alboin was presiding, and, without even uncovering, seating himself by the side of the grim husband of Rosamunda.

The Lombard King smiled sourly at his impudence, and inquired what he was, when he was born, and in what country.

“I am a man,” said the monster; “was born the night my mother bore me; and” (this is something of Ancient Pistol’s phrase, which, indeed, often smacked of the fool’s humour or philosophy,) “the world is my native country.” King and court understood, now, with whom they had to do, and they tried his wit by plying him with questions, “What is the swiftest thing on earth?” asked one. “Thought,” was the reply of Bertoldo. To other questions he replied, that the best wine was the wine drunk in another man’s house; and that the worst fire at home was to be found in an angry wife and an impudent servant.

“Bertoldo,” said the King, “could you contrive to bring me water in a sieve without spilling any?”

“Certainly,” answered the fool; “in a hard frost, I could bring you any quantity.”

“Tor so clever a rejoinder, you shall have from me any boon you desire.”

“La, you there!” cried Bertoldo, “I shall have nothing of the sort. You cannot give me what you do not possess. I am in eager search of happiness, of which you have not a grain; and how could you give me any?”

Alboin alluded to his kingly power and glory, which the fool mocked mightily. He pointed to the glittering crowds of nobles who stood around his throne. “Oh yes,” was the comment of Bertoldo, “they stand round your throne; so do hungry ants round a crab-apple, and with the same purpose,--to devour it.” And therewith he so satirized the condition of a King, that Alboin threatened to have him whipped out of court. Some rather sorry jests followed; but as they were rewarded with unaccountable peals of laughter, the Lombard lords and ladies may be supposed to have been more merry, or much wiser, than we are. The riotous fun was checked for awhile, by the entrance of two women in search of the King and his royal justice. The subject in dispute was a crystal mirror, which was claimed by both, but which had been stolen by one from the other. Alboin, being a most religious as well as gracious King, was, of course, reminded of the Judgment of Solomon, and thought he could not do better than imitate it. He first ordered the mirror to be broken into powder, and divided equally between the rival claimants; and then he commanded it to be delivered whole to the woman who had expressed regret that so splendid a mirror should be destroyed. The entire court was in ecstasy at this rather second-hand wisdom of the King, who, with more conceit than might have been expected in such a stern personage, looked at Bertoldo and asked something tantamount to whether he was not a second Daniel come to judgment?

“Your excellent mightiness,” observed the fool, “can only be said to be an ass.” Nevertheless, the King seems to have had the best of it, for Bertoldo simply confined himself to abusing ladies generally, and the two who were lately plaintiff and defendant, in particular,--as impostors, whose wickedness was past imagining. Thereupon the gallant monarch burst forth into a passionate panegyric on the entire female sex, dealing in warm terms and honeyed phrases, like those in a grand _scena_, by some enamoured _tenore robusto_, and which, set to music by a fashionable _maestro_, and trilled by the darling of the season, would make the fortune of Mr. Chappell, were he only lucky enough to secure the copyright.

“If I don’t make you change your tune before tomorrow night’s sleep,” said Bertoldo, “gibbet me as high as Haman.”

“Be it so!” cried Alboin; “by the bones of the Wise Kings, I will keep thee to thy bargain, Sir Wisdom. Look to it.”

Bertoldo flung himself on some straw in the royal stable: he was resolved not to go to sleep till he had provided for his triumph; and in five minutes a chuckle of satisfaction was suddenly succeeded by the loudest snore that had ever startled the affrighted ears of the steeds of Alboin the King.

His plan was simple enough; he merely went, in the morning, to the lady who had been so self-denying in the affair of the mirror, and announced to her that the King had issued a decree by which every man was permitted to have seven wives. The announcement had the effect of infuriating the lady, and she lost no time in stirring up, not only the women of her own district, but half the city. These repaired, swift of foot and loud of tongue, to the palace, swept through its halls, and rushed into the sacred presence of Alboin himself, who stood before his throne with his hand on his sword, as if in presence of an insurrection. Bertoldo stood in one corner of the vast apartment, with a demure and satisfied look, feeling sure of the result.

If the words with which Alboin was pelted by the ladies on this occasion be correctly given by the old chronicle, it is clear that freedom of speech was very fearlessly exercised by the remonstrants,--or rather, by the revilers. It was in vain that the King held his hand aloft, and essayed to speak. He was overwhelmed by a hurricane of screams, squalls, screeches, and reproaches, for issuing the decree in question. One loose-tongued termagant exclaimed above her sisters, that there would have been some sense in him, if he had conferred on every woman the right of taking seven husbands; but to allow every man to have seven wives!!--” and the very idea of such an outrage so worked upon the amiable furies, that they interrupted the loud speaker by a howl so shrill, so intense, so exasperating, that Alboin, after stopping his ears with his gauntleted hands, gave a signal which his guards obeyed by charging the body of remonstrants, and driving them into the streets,--with much attendant ruffling of collars and disturbing of stomachers. When the hall was cleared, there remained Bertoldo, looking still demurely at the King, and with an inquiring aspect about his expression. Alboin seemed annoyed for a moment; but at length, smiling, he acknowledged that the fool was right, and that women were tigresses.

The revolt of the women, and the share that Bertoldo had had therein, coming to the knowledge of Alboin’s not very gentle Queen, she sent for the jester, who, throughout the interview, kept up with her Majesty, as was indeed his custom in most of the conversations in which he took part, a constant fire of proverbs. As he contrived to surpass the royal lady in this species of “capping,” she rather unfairly ordered him, under escort, to carry a letter to certain officials, which letter enjoined them to whip the bearer. At Bertoldo’s urgent request, the Queen condescended to add a postscript, whereby the scourgers were directed to spare the head, but by no means to be merciful in an opposite direction. When prisoner and escort reached the gaol, Bertoldo stepped forward, letter in hand, announced himself as head of the company, and bade the hangman’s lackeys to lay lustily on his tail, or followers. The poor wretches were lashed till they were raw; and at this practical joke the court laughed, and all that was asked of Bertoldo was, that he should maintain a tournament of words with Alboin’s own official court fool.

This fool’s name, or nickname, was Fagotto. He was short, fat, and bald; and he was the challenger of Bertoldo. When the King acceded to his request, and ordered the duel of the two fools to take place, he remarked to Fagotto, “Now, proceed; but take heed not to resemble Benevento, who went out to shear, and came home shorn.”

Fagotto replied with a pompous boast, and then turning on his rival, assailed him with a species of amenities like those that used to pass between carnival fools on the Paris Boulevards, and before which every decent person fled. From this contest Bertoldo issued triumphant; but the King again taxed his wit by ordering him to demonstrate in what way, as he had asserted, the daylight was whiter than milk, and stimulated him to success by promising him the bastinado if he failed.

Bertoldo is said to have proved his assertion by a simple process. Having access everywhere, he entered the King’s bedchamber at night, and closing all the blinds, placed a pail of milk in the middle of the room. Alboin rising in the dark, overthrew the pail, and then calling lustily for daylight, Bertoldo let the same in upon him, with the remark, that if the milk had been clearer than daylight, he would have seen the former without the aid of the latter. Whereupon Alboin rubbed his shins, shook his head, and supposed his philosophy was wrong.

Bertoldo subsequently had to prove that the royal political system was quite as rickety as the royal philosophy. It seems that the ladies of the capital had united in demanding “their rights.” They insisted on the equality of women and men; and demanded therefore that in all matters of government they should be employed in the same way as their lords had hitherto been, exclusively. Alboin had a soft heart, and was inclined to yield to the request; but Bertoldo offered to show the incapacity of the petitioners to fill the offices to which they aspired, by a trick of his own devising, and according to his own office. He enclosed a bird in a casket, and delivering the same to a deputation of ladies, in the name of the Queen, he informed them that their petition was granted, and that the first official duty confided to them was the guardianship of this casket. The ladies carried it off, full of delight and promises of fidelity. But they had no sooner reached the house of one of them, than, after a very little hesitation, in a fit of intense curiosity, they lifted the lid of the casket, and away flew the treasure.

Their remorse was great--not that they had betrayed their trust, but that not one had observed what sort of bird it was; and that consequently their fault was irreparable. In a body, and with the Queen at their head, they presented themselves before the King, imploring pardon. As before stated, Alboin had a gentle heart where ladies were in the case; and he granted an unreserved pardon,--much to the disgust of the ungallant Bertoldo, who declared that such a King was not worth rendering homage to, and that, for his part, he would never bow to him again. Alboin, remembering the threat, assembled his court early on the following morning, and ordering the upper part of the open doorway to be covered with boards, so that any one entering must necessarily bow to the King, seated opposite, sent for Bertoldo. When the fool arrived, he saw how it was intended to press a stooping homage out of him; but his ready wit amply served him, and swinging suddenly round, he entered the royal presence by “one turn astern!”

The other stories related of Bertoldo, almost do outrage to Romance, as they assuredly do to Reason. Of the more credible, and yet sufficiently silly, jokes, there is not one that is not told of other jesters, and much of both belongs probably to the History of Fiction.

Next to Bertoldo, and far better known to light historians generally, stands joyous and unlucky Gonella, the favourite yet ill-treated jester of Borso, Duke of Ferrara, to whose service he was transferred from that of Nicholas, Count of Este, the father of Borso, who died in 1441.

Borso was a coarse fellow, who savoured coarse jokes; and Gonella, despite his own more refined taste, was obliged to supply his patron with that he best liked. Hence the proverb, addressed to one who is too roughly playing the fool, “We are not now in the days of Duke Borso.”

Generally speaking, the Italian fools were more practical in their jokes than witty of speech; yet it is not thus we should expect to find them; but it pleased the patrons of fools as well as if it had been divinest wit, admirably spoken. For instance, Borso the Duke had a sick Duchess, and he ordered the then newly-married Gonella to send his wife, that she might amuse the illustrious lady. “She’s as deaf as a stone,” said Gonella,--which was a jester’s lie, told for a purpose,--“and you must roar like a tempest, to make her hear.” The Duke would have her nevertheless, and Gonella, hastening to obey, said to his wife, on despatching her to the palace, “Now, wench, there will be ducats for us if you mind my bidding. The Duke is as deaf as a lump of clay. If you would have him hear, you must shout with a voice that would arouse the Seven Sleepers. Away with you, and do not be afraid to pitch it high.” The consequences may be imagined. When the jester’s wife met the Duke at the bed-side of the sick Duchess, there ensued a dialogue that might have been heard by the guard at the outer gate. Each shouted till the head of the invalid throbbed again; and she begged her husband to speak lower. “It’s of no use,” said Borso, “the woman’s as deaf as a post.” “Not at all,” answered the wife of Gonella, “it is you who are deaf, if my husband has spoken truth.” Whereupon it was discovered that Gonella had played a trick of his profession; and as no better could be had for the moment, the jest was declared to be excellent. So easily pleased were the illustrious nobles of that day, who depended for a laugh upon practical jokes like the above--if, indeed, the joke be Gonella’s; for a similar story is told of other jesters and their patrons. Perhaps the same may be said of the following, which has certainly been appropriated by various authors.

“For the love of the saints, give a poor blind man alms!”

“Pray pity the poor blind; and Heaven preserve your precious eyesight!”

“Born blind, gracious signor; bestow your charity on one who never saw light!”

Thus prayed three blind beggars, as Gonella passed by them to Mass. “Poor fellows!” said the jester, “there is a florin, divide it amongst you.” He gave nothing at all; and as those who stood near smiled, he put his finger on his lips, to enjoin silence.

“May Heaven reward you in Paradise!” said the blind men, in chorus;--and a moment after, “Let us share the signor’s charity.” But as neither had any florin, and as no one believed that he was not being robbed by his fellows, they fell to savage words, and from savage words to blows, fiercely striking at each other with their crutches till heads were broken and bleeding; and Gonella passed in to prayers, with the complacent comment, “Blessed are the peace-makers!”

Whether it was some such comment or some still worse joke that once angered the Duchess, I cannot say, but he had so offended her that she sent for him to her chamber, where she had stationed half-a-dozen of her maids, armed with sticks, and with orders to lay on the fool without mercy, as soon as he should appear. Gonella however saw, as soon as the door was opened, what was intended, and he cried out, “Ladies, my back is quite at your service; all the favour I ask is, that the one I kissed last will strike first, and that the most impudent hussey among you will lay on the heaviest.” Taken by surprise, each hesitated to strike; and Gonella tripped away to the echo of the Duchess’s laughter.

That he well deserved the bastinado, is certain, if all be true that is told of his tricks to swindle honest shopkeepers out of goods and money. They were such tricks as no common shop-lifter would now stoop to, nor tradesmen be deceived by; but they earned the unprincipled fool many a scourging, and they seem to have been held derogatory to his profession, for there is record of a Florentine jester, named Mocceca, remonstrating with Gonella on the disgrace brought upon their common vocation by his flagrant want of honesty. “If honesty be the most profitable policy,” said Gonella, “by all means let us adopt it.”

That his place was profitable, is pretty clear, from the fact of his betting a hundred crowns with his master, the Duke, that there were more doctors in Ferrara than there were members of any other profession. “Fool,” said Borso, “there are not half-a-dozen to be found in the city Directory.” “I will bring you a more correct list in three or four days,” said Gonella; and then the jester went, with his jaws bound up, and sat at the church door, and as every one asked him what he ailed, he answered, “The tooth-ache;” whereupon each questioner prescribed an infallible remedy, and passed on, Gonella writing down his name and address, instead of the prescription. At length he appeared, still with his jaws bound up, at the table of his master, who, hearing from what he suffered, declared that there was no remedy but extraction. Immediately, the fool put the Duke’s illustrious name on the list of Ferrara doctors, and reckoning them up, counted just three hundred. The great man laughed aloud, and told down his forfeited crowns with as much glee as if the joke had been worth paying for. It was at all events a more harmless jest than that which Gonella subsequently played, in return for a practical joke at the hands of the Duke. The latter, finding Gonella’s pony in the ducal stable, cut off its tail, and, as a comical revenge, the jester took the Duke’s mule, and cut off its upper lip. The princely owner was moved to anger, it is said; but when the two animals were paraded before him, their mutilated condition so touched the humane prince, that he took Gonella round the neck, and laughed till he was breathless.

That neck itself was soon to suffer; and there seems like retribution in the fact. Borso lay ill, and his medical advisers pronounced his case hopeless, because they were too ignorant to cure him. His malady was a raging fever. Nature at first helped him a little, and the prince was enabled to repair to a country residence, where his fever settled into a fierce quartan; but he was not prevented from taking exercise. The whole ducal court was in sorrow because of the condition of their rough but not ungenerous master, and no one grieved more than Gonella. The latter heard that the doctors had asserted that nothing but a sudden fright would shake the malady out of the body of the prince. But then, who would dare to suddenly frighten such a terrible potentate as Borso of Ferrara? No one but the poor fool; and he did it effectually. While walking in the garden with his moody master, trying in vain to make him smile, the two came up to a deep lake, where the Duke usually took boat, and as he was about stepping in, Gonella, without a moment’s hesitation, pushed the Duke into the water. Borso roared aloud for succour, screamed in his agony, and cursed the fool, who ultimately, with aid he had prepared, drew him out. Borso was carried to bed, where he fell into such a perspiration from his fright and exertion, that he got rid of his fever, and rose free from any disagreeable symptom except his wrath against the jester. The latter was condemned to exile, with a sentence of death in case of his being found upon the soil of Ferrara. Gonella went into banishment, which he bore with so much impatience, that after a few months he resolved to return,--without incurring the threatened consequences. He thus contrived it: filling a cart with the earth of the Paduan district in which he had been sojourning, he rode boldly into Ferrara, where, upon being captured, he pertinaciously maintained, as he sat in the cart, that he was still upon the soil of Padua. Roquelaure, the French court wit, is, erroneously, said to have copied this trick, and with better result than was encountered by Gonella. The Duke ordered him to be seized and to be beheaded. “I will only pay fright with fright,” said Borso; “so, when his neck is on the block, let fall upon it, not the axe, but a drop of water; then bid my fool arise. I shall be glad to congratulate him on his and my recovery.” All was done as the Duke directed. Gonella, made sad for the first time in his life, was solemnly conveyed to the scaffold. All the usual ceremonies of the lugubrious drama were then enacted, and these over, the poor jester, with a shake and a sigh, laid down the old insignia of his office, and, blindfolded, placed his head upon the block. The executioner stepped up, and, from a phial, let fall a single drop of water on the fool’s neck. Then arose a burst of laughter and a clapping of hands, and shouts to Gonella to get up and thank the Duke for the life given him. The fool did not move, and all around laughed the more at the jest which they thought he was perpetuating. Still he remained motionless; at last the headsman went up to him, and raising Gonella from the ground, discovered that he was dead. The drop of water had had all the effect of the sharpest axe; and the spectators went home repeating to one another, “A shocking bad joke, indeed!”

Such was the end of Gonella, a man proud of his family name. It is a name not unknown to our own times, and it is borne by an individual of higher dignity than the Florentine fool. Monseigneur de Gonella is the Papal Nuncio at Brussels, and there is now wisdom in the family, as well as wit.

Again, a practical joke had once wellnigh killed Menicucci, the jester to the Grand Duke Ferdinand I., in Florence. Ferdinand loved to surround himself with men who could in any way administer to his enjoyment, and Menicucci, who dubbed himself Count, took up the office of parasite and fool, that he might be in continual intercourse with the aristocracy. One of his follies was in the conviction he entertained, that there was not a corner of the globe in which his name and fame were not known; and that Kings and Emperors were dying of envy to make his acquaintance. In the Grand Duke’s household he never permitted any official to take precedence of him; and, as indicative of his superiority, he once mounted to the top of a high closet in the great stone hall of the palace, where he insisted that the pages should serve him at dinner. They humoured him for awhile; but while the mock Count was finishing his repast, they carried off the ladder by which he had mounted, filled the hall with damp straw, to which they set fire, and would have left the screaming fool to be suffocated, but for the Archduke, who, hearing his cries, went to his assistance, and after enjoying the joke for awhile, ordered the choking “Count” to be released.

Ferdinand had a fool of quite another quality in the person of Ciajesius, who was a melancholy and serious fool, addicted to gloomy prophesying and solemn admonishings, rather than to quips and jests, like his fellow-professors. As he was well acquainted with Latin, the Grand Duke appointed him to the office of tutor to his young sons, that they might learn the language from him colloquially. When he laid down his more respectable vocation, he asked permission to proceed to Padua, to take the degree of Doctor of Laws. Ferdinand refused, on the ground that the dignity would be lowered by its being conferred, by favour or otherwise, on a court fool. But Ciajesius contrived to escape to “learned Padua,” where he submitted to examination, and returned to Florence triumphantly with his diploma. Ferdinand roughly reproached the authorities of the University, for making a doctor of his fool, and thereby a fool of the Grand Duke. They replied that the profession of the candidate was entirely unknown to them; and that they did not remember any one having passed more creditably through his examination.

Ferdinand would have preferred a fool to a philosopher, like Gian Andrea Doria of Genoa, who once being ill, and condemned to take some very disagreeable remedies, and to adopt a very unpalatable diet, summoned his jester Feo to his room, and ordered him to take the same remedies and follow the same course of diet as his ducal master. “Why, master,” said Feo, “you are like the condemned in the infernal regions, who want everybody to suffer just what they do themselves. I beg to be excused.” “No, no, merry friend,” said the Doge, “you ate and drank of the best with me when I was well, and you shall even share the same fare that I have, being ill.” And accordingly Feo was obliged to swallow many a detestable potion; and the mighty but nervous Doge could find delight in the torture and embarrassments to which he exposed his fool.

There is more matter for astonishment in the subject in which great men could find amusement. Vincentius, Duke of Mantua, when he received Frederick, Duke of Wirtemberg, at his castle, in the year 1600, could think of nothing better wherewith to amuse his princely guest, after a day’s hard hunting, than to make sport with his jester. On the latter, armed with sword and stick, and placed within improvised lists, was let loose a young wild boar, deprived of his tusks and upper teeth, but still a dangerous adversary to encounter. The illustrious spectators roared with delight at seeing first the fool, then the boar, down. Now the jester was uppermost, now his savage enemy was on the top of him; anon they were rolling over and over; and it was impossible to say which had the best of it. The boar, all deprived as he was of his chief weapons, would probably have overcome the fool; but the latter was carried off with bloody cockscomb, for which sorry plaister was provided in the laughter, applause, and pistoles awarded him by his refined patrons.

The Wirtembergian Duke had a fool of his own, named Jeronimo, a Spaniard, who was not so careful of his pistoles as Feo. He was an inveterate gambler, and at one sitting lost 4000 crowns, a sufficient proof that his profession was not always an unprofitable one. The rage for play was so strong upon him, that he once agreed, in case of his being a loser, that his adversary should take aim at him with a crossbow, and discharge a certain number of little pointed darts at his head. He came off a little injured, but he was used to rough treatment, and when the weather was too inclement for hunting, his master would turn him into his court-yard, and there he formed an object of chase and assault for august princes and lofty nobles, who pelted him with unsavoury eggs and fruit, while the jester, in a paper helmet, and with a wooden sword, excited general shouts of laughter by his vapouring, screaming, and mock airs of defiance.

After all these practical jokes, we are glad to come upon that rare thing in an Italian jester, namely, wit. The sample of it which I have now to furnish is well known, indeed, but it is said to have originally belonged to a Pavian jester, who, when the surgeons and the doctors of law were at loggerheads on a question of precedents, suggested to the Duke of Milan, who asked his counsel, that the matter was easy enough of settlement. “When a murderer,” said he, “goes to execution, he always walks before the hangman; so here, the surgeons ought to precede the doctors of law.”

The slyest hint made against the want of wit in an Italian jester, was that of Cardinal Perron to the Duke of Mantua. “Your Highness’s fool,” said he, “has the most stupendous wit I ever heard of; for he gains a livelihood by a profession he does not understand.”

Patrons and jesters were, indeed, often worthy of each other. When Dante was a fugitive, and was received at the court of Cane della Scala, he found there a host of jugglers, singers, and jesters, the latter of whom, especially, did not spare the almost friendless poet. “How comes it?” asked one of him, at his lord’s table, “that you, who are accounted such a wise and learned man, are such a poor devil, while I, who am but a fool, am rich, and well cared for?” “There is nothing wonderful therein,” answered Dante, calmly; “when I find a patron whose sentiments are in accordance with mine, as you have found one who very much resembles _you_, then, like you, my merry friend, I shall be rich and well cared for too.”

Dante was not wrong in comparing Cane della Scala with the fool, for that great personage often played fool’s tricks on the poet himself. On one occasion, at a banquet, Cane ordered the bones left from the feast to be quietly deposited beneath the seat of Dante. When the company arose, there was a universal shout of laughter at the strange heap then visible to all. Dante was not disconcerted. “Truly,” said he, “it is nothing wonderful that the dog (Canis) hath gnawed his bones; but I am no dog, and have nothing to do with these.” And therewith he walked proudly away.

Milan, like Verona, had its jesters at court, but the only incident therewith worth repeating is, that at the court of Duke Francis Sforza, the fool Marchesina bore so striking a resemblance to the Duke’s son-in-law, Malatesta, that it was thought necessary always to send Marchesina out of Milan whenever Malatesta repaired thither on a visit.

From the Italian jesters we will, if my readers please, pass finally to those of households where we might least expect to find them, unless Scripture could give warrant for their employment,--namely, priestly households where fools found homes.

JESTERS IN PRIESTS’ HOUSES.

The court fool, like the tailor, is one whose avocation is passed by without notice in Scripture. From no passage in Holy Writ could the old church dignitaries who maintained fools in their households, find warrant for their practice; they simply found a worldly fashion, and adopted it. Like princes, they were not always free from “vapours;” and as princes sought to cure their melancholy by the agency of hired mirth-makers, these reverend gentlemen followed the example.

With respect to the profession of fools, in its connection with the Clergy, there are two circumstances which present themselves to our attention, and excite our surprise. In old pictures and woodcuts representing inner clerical life, the presence of the jester proves that he was an actual member of the godly and merry household. This is further certain by several edicts, which forbid, not only various church dignitaries therein named from maintaining fools, but also forbidding abbesses from making dull days in convents tolerable by employing jesters to help them through such heavy seasons. But if it be matter of some surprise, to find grave religious dignitaries and solemn lady abbesses taking pleasure in such jokes as the professional mirth-maker could manufacture for them, a still greater measure of surprise is excited by the fact, that these holy personages occasionally acted the fool themselves, at the tables of patrons whose particular favour they most earnestly desired. That this irregular practice must have prevailed to a very wide extent, is ascertained by a passage in a decree of the Council of Cahors, to this effect: “It is also our command, that the clergy shall not practise as jesters, fools, or buffoons (_Joculatores, Goliardi, seu Bufones_), declaring that if they exercise such disgraceful profession for one year, they are thereby deprived of every ecclesiastical privilege; and further ordering, that if they do not desist, after being duly admonished, they shall be subjected, in addition, to secular punishment.” I am afraid that the Council of Cahors would not even have granted exemption to Sydney Smith.

Among the punishments alluded to, was whipping--after degradation. The last alone was no joke to a clerical jester. He was condemned to serve his brethren, and to go to communion as a simple laic. If such an offender travelled without testimonials, he was further subject to great annoyance and suspicion, as (to take an early example) when Chrysostom, at Constantinople, hospitably entertained some agreeable Egyptian monks, he was delighted with his visitors, but he would not admit them to the Eucharist. The joyous strangers might, for aught he knew, be under censure, and he treated them accordingly.

But, although Scripture does not mention, and the Councils of the Church do not sanction, “fools,” the latter particularly when they are members also of the clerical profession; yet the jester does not lack a protector among the Saints. The Church, indeed, has been, if one may say so without being impertinent, a little inconsistent towards the professional merrymen, when it is recollected, that in the roll of Saints there are two who especially favour fools. One is St. Mathurin, who was always invoked by them in sickness. He was a very good man, who lived at Montargis, in the fourth century, and who condescended to be the physician of all professional jesters, till the vocation became extinct. The other, and more especially patron-saint, was St. Julian; but which of the half-dozen of solemn and shadowy men who bear that name on the calendar, I am unable to say. Probably it was the Julian who, in the seventh century, was Archbishop of Toledo. This prelate not only lived at the court of King Wemba, but he talked him into abdicating the crown, and assuming the cowl. There was no other but a fool who could have had such liberty of speech, or was likely to have used it so effectually,--and from this circumstance is, perhaps, derived the alleged fact of St. Julian’s patronage of the professors of folly.

Whatever the Saint may have thought of the community, it is very clear that the Church did not regard its members with so much complacency as certain individual priests, who loved to have a “fun-maker” in their household. I suppose the liking and the practices to which it led were abused, or solemn councils would hardly have issued stern prohibitions, by which prelates were forbidden to retain the professional fool. The prohibition was referred to during many centuries, and we are told that Antony Sanderus, as late as 1624, reproached the clergy of his time with their love for buffoons, and for young ladies whose wit might be heavier, but whose principles were lighter than any ever professed beneath the party-coloured gabardine.

There was a time when _some_ church corporations peculiarly honoured the votary of St. Julian. At Tournay, for instance, at the annual procession of the Holy Sacrament, the pompous line of march was opened by the official _fou de la ville_, who was paid by the municipality. When we read that his dress, acts, and words were all of the most extravagant description, we are surprised to learn that the office was sometimes filled by a wealthy banker of the city. At _that_ time perhaps bankers were more fools than knaves.

A reminiscence of this custom was exhibited in Belgium as late as 1834, at the musical contest in Brussels, when several troops of musicians from various provinces entered the city, with their especial “fou” at the head of every company.

Among the Popes, there was none who so liberally patronized jesters as Leo X. It has been said of this prelate that a witty fool had always a much better chance of obtaining an audience of him than a grave philosopher. Jovius and Guicciardini agree in the fact of the papal predilection for fellows who could afford him mirth, not merely by their light learning, but by their gross and heavy appetites. The same writers especially allude to the favour which Leo extended to buffoons, and to those so-called arch-poets who played the fool and miserably degraded themselves for the sake of a half-gnawed bone and a handful of ducats. The most famous, yet not the grossest of these mirthmakers, was Querno, a Neapolitan by birth, with a diminutive figure, a huge appetite, and an unquenchable thirst. The mock ovation of this arch-poet, his march to the Capitol, crowned with a wreath of vine, carrot, and cabbage-leaves, and mounted on an elephant, is a well-known incident, as is also his bandying of indifferent Latin verses, improvised for the nonce, with Leo himself. This buffoon, although by no means devoid of mental endowments, was content to stand by at papal banquets, and amuse the godly company by the greedy avidity with which he swallowed the fragments and half-consumed dishes despatched to him from the pontiff’s table. If Querno was a buffoon, he was at least that sort of fool to perform whose part efficiently requires a certain sort of wit. But Leo had other jesters who had no merit but the sorry one of being disagreeable fools. Of these we may judge by what is said of two of them, a greedy, insatiable fellow named Martinus, and a mendicant brother called Marianus. They certainly were wonderful buffoons in their way, for one could take a pigeon, roasted or stewed, compress it into a species of gigantic bolus, and swallow it whole, at one gulp. The other made no difficulty of devouring forty eggs at a meal, and indeed on high festive days, wondering and applauding guests saw him deliberately devour a score of capons!

Of the extravagance of Leo’s table, his successor, Adrian VI., was heartily ashamed, having a sort of disgust for a pontiff who, in the company of buffoons like Querno, Gazoldo, Britonio, and Baraballo, could eat himself into an indigestion, or see others do so, on costly dishes of peacock-sausages. But in this case we have an instance of that easy compounding for one’s own sins by denouncing those of our neighbours. Adrian did not care for costly dishes or jesters; but his appetite was under less control than that of Leo, if it be true, as Jovius says of him, that the Flemish pontiff drank himself into chronic disease on strong beer. “Contrahisse morbum assiduum cerevisiæ potu.”

According to some writers, it was the fool Baraballo, and not Querno, who was processionally conducted in mock pomp through the streets of Rome, to be crowned in the Capitol. The absurd verses of this jester procured for him this doubtful honour; but when he uttered dull jokes in bad measure, Leo would order him to be bastinadoed,--and to such depth could one of the most intellectual of pontiffs stoop to find relaxation from heavy duties and oblivion of as heavy responsibilities. But he might cite as example and excuse the Pontiff Paul II., who from 1458 to 1464 found exquisite delight in the poor jests of his official fools. But Paul was at least more orthodox than Leo, and in that distinction there is a world of difference.