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!”