If we may believe the Bibliophile, who is, indeed, as frequently a romancer as an antiquary, it was as some compensation for this outrage, that Francis of Angoulême created Triboulet his fool by patent. The same writer adds, that the pages found the jester’s tongue even longer than his ears; and, “remarkable fact, from this period, Triboulet, who was then about four-and-twenty years of age, suddenly ceased to be idiotic and imbecile, and became a witty, diverting, and crafty buffoon, and, above all, a perfect courtier.”
In person, Triboulet was small and crooked; his head and ears were enormously large; his mouth proportionately wide; his nose must have been three times the size of that of Francis, who had otherwise the largest nose of any man in France: Rudolph of Hapsburg had not a larger. The fool’s eyes were protruding; his forehead was low and narrow. “His flat and hollow chest,” says Jacob, “his bowed back, his short and twisted legs, his long and hanging arms, amused the ladies, who contemplated him as if he had been a monkey or a paroquet.”
We find one of the uses to which these official fools were put at this court, in a remark touching the costume of Triboulet. “His dress was not less eccentric than his person. In accordance with his secret occupation of purveyor of pleasures to the King, he adopted the colours of the reigning mistress, and dressed in something of the fashion of his master. His justaucorps was of striped blue and white silk, fitting so tightly as to render his bodily deformity more conspicuous, and to excite more readily the laughter of all who looked upon him for the first time. On his back, thighs, and cap, were emblazoned the royal arms, and from his girdle of gilt leather hung the symbols of his office,—a club, a wooden sword, and a bagpipe. Another distinguishing mark of his office might be seen and heard in the little silver bells attached to his conical cap, his wand with a fool’s head at the end of it, and his long-toed red morocco slippers. He could not advance a step, nor turn his body ever so slightly, without setting these bells in motion, and thereby making a noise louder than that of ten mules in full trot. Triboulet was proud of functions which placed him near the King, and which he would not have exchanged for a ducal coronet or an episcopal mitre. He used to say of himself, that he was ‘the most noble in France, commencing from the lowest rank.... Keep duchies, countships, baronies, and marquisates to yourselves, Triboulet is sovereign lord of all at whom he mocks.’”
The Triboulet of Paul Lacroix is probably more like the original Triboulet than the half sentimental half savage hero of Victor Hugo’s play, ‘Le Roi s’amuse.’ In this piece, the “fou” is rendered malicious by a three-piled misery,—he is infirm, deformed, and an official court fool. He hates all his superiors because they are his superiors, and detests those beneath him,—detests men generally, in fact, because they are not hunchbacked, like himself. He excites rank against rank, and all against the King, and the King against all. He is the bad genius of Francis, whom he corrupts, and the scourge of the nobility, the dishonour of whose families he works through the King. He is Mephistophiles without superhuman power, for the lack of which he makes up by the intensity of his devilishness. Victor Hugo himself compares the buffoon and the King to a man holding a plaything and mortally wounding those among whom he capers with his toy. The buffoon is altogether without heart; yet not quite altogether, for there is one point on which he is as tender-hearted, as ever father could be who had an only daughter dearer to him far than his own life. Yet he has no heart for other sires whose love for their daughters is ardent, but who would rather see them coffined at their feet than crowned and dishonoured. So, when the Count de Saint-Vallier denounces Francis, in open court, for having brought disgrace upon his child, Diane de Poictiers, Triboulet the fool insults the outraged parent; and the old noble, robbed of his daughter, curses Triboulet the man. On this curse the whole piece turns, and from the time it is fulminated, there is little that ensues which is illustrative of the office and pleasantry of the buffoon, though all is highly dramatic, and Nemesis rules without restraint. The curse of the old Count smites Triboulet through his child, whom the King carries off, and whom the father slays by mistake for the royal seducer. The moral of the piece is defective, seeing that the buffoon, for a thoughtless trick of his office, is the only person most terribly punished. The King, who is the gay stage villain of the piece, escapes scot-free. It is like sending Leporello ad inferos, instead of Don Giovanni. If the Triboulet of Victor Hugo be full of brilliant inconsistencies and glittering contradictions, he is in many things what tradition represents him to have been. He flings smart sayings at marriage, laughs at the King’s pretensions to write verses, pushes or draws him into vice, and shoots a fool’s bolt at woman, by styling her, “a highly perfected devil.” His malice is illustrated by his delight at the opportunity offered him to cruelly rally the husbands whom his highly perfected devils outrage and betray. His humour is to comment and criticize, while others, and especially the King, enjoy life after their fashion. Between his own condition and that of the master whom he serves, he draws a distinction of which he might reasonably have been the author, saying to Francis
“Vous êtes
Heureux comme un roi, et moi comme un bossu.”
That Victor Hugo was careful of representing Triboulet in his vocation of buffoon, according to the way in which the contemporaries of the “fou” had spoken of him, may be seen in the speech of M. de Pienne to Marot, who is, and was, fool in all things but the title, with enough of that wit which our own national poet alluded to as requisite for a man who aspired to play the character becomingly. De Pienne says to Marot:—
“J’ai lu dans votre écrit du siége de Peschière,
Ces vers sur Triboulet, Fou de tête écornée,
Aussi sage à trente ans que le jour qu’ il est né.”
It is probable, therefore, that we find other reflections of the buffoon’s actual character and his bearing towards Francis, in the best passages connected with him and his vocation. Triboulet certainly exhibits a turn of his profession when, after drinking with the monarch, he boasts of possessing two advantages over him, that of not being drunk, and that of not being King. The well-known freedom which he invariably took with Francis, is not less pleasantly illustrated by his satire against scholars, when the King’s sister Margaret counselled him to surround himself with wise men, since he lacked the love of ladies.
“C’est bien mal,” says the buffoon,—
“C’est bien mal
De la part d’une sœur. Il n’est pas d’animal,
Pas de corbeau goulu, pas de loup, pas de chouette,
Pas d’oison, pas de bœuf, pas même de poët e,
Pas de Mahométan, pas de théologien,
Pas d’échevin flamand, pas d’ours et pas de chien,
Plus laid, plus chevelu, plus repoussant des formes,
Plus caparaçonné d’absurdités énormes,
Plus hérissé, plus sale et plus gonflé de vent,
Que cet âne bâté qu’on appelle un savant.
.... Médecine inouïe!
Conseiller les savants à quelqu’un qui s’ennuie!”