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.