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.