The fashion of keeping Court and household fools, writes Voltaire in his Age de Louis XIV., was for a time the grande mode of all the Courts of Europe. Some sovereigns, however, discarded the practice, and when Charles Louis, Electoral Prince of the Rhine, was asked why he did not keep a Court fool, he replied: “Well, it is easily accounted for. When I am inclined to laugh, I send for a couple of professors from college, set them an argument, and laugh at their folly.”
The Emperor Henry III., surnamed the Black, despised the Court fool—“a licensed scoundrel,” he said, “who obtained for his nonsense rewards that had never properly been showered on the benefactors of mankind.” And Christian I. of Denmark once remarked, that if he were in want of Court fools he had only to give license to his courtiers, who were capable of exhibiting themselves as the greatest fools in Europe. Frederick Barbarossa hated Court fools; and in France, Philip Augustus and Charles VII. had no sympathy for mirth-makers of this description.
On the other hand, few sovereigns extended greater favour to their fools than Maximilian I.; and yet, as it has been remarked, “he found as much peril as profit in his intercourse with them.” On one occasion, when he was loading a fowling-piece, his house fool coming into his presence with a lighted candle was about to place it on an open cask of powder; and at another time his Majesty was playing at snowballs with his fool, when the latter threw one so violently at his right eye, that the imperial sight was damaged for a month. His principal fool or jester was Konrad, popularly styled “The Soldier and Wit of Maximilian,” for, on more than one occasion, he proved himself wiser in his generation than some of the political advisers who counselled their imperial master. Sometimes, however, Konrad’s jokes were of so astounding a nature that he would scarcely have dared to make them on his own responsibility. Such an instance occurred at a banquet given in honour of the Venetian ambassadors, and their Government, who had presented to the Emperor a costly goblet of the purest crystal; when Konrad, in the midst of the revelry and mirth, contrived to hook his spur in the tablecloth, and dancing off to pull with him everything on the table, the crystal goblet lying in fragments on the ground.
The ambassadors demanded the immediate punishment of Konrad, but Maximilian refused to gratify them, for he remarked, “the thing was only of glass, and that glass is very fragile. Had it been of gold, it would not have broken; and, even if it had, its fragments at least would have been valuable.” A somewhat similar story is told of the French wit Brusquet, at a banquet given in the house of the Duke of Alva, when the Cardinal of Lorraine had negotiated the peace of Cateau-Cambresis with Philip II. of Spain. Brusquet at the close of the dessert jumped on the table, and, laying himself flat, rolled himself up in the cloth with plates, spoons, &c., and fell off at the other end of the table. Philip II. took the matter in good part, and laughed immoderately, ordering that Brusquet should be allowed to leave the room with what he had carried off under the cloth. Although oftentimes Konrad was open to reproach for his extraordinary conduct, there can be no doubt he loved his imperial master, and in emergency Maximilian had no truer friend.
One of the many fools of his successor, Charles V., was a Pole, Corneille de Lithuanie, who distinguished himself at a tournament held in Brussels in 1545, by carrying off the second prize for general gallantry. Another of his Court fools was Pedro de San Erbas; and it is related that, after Charles had abdicated, he held a Court at Valladolid to receive the farewell compliments of the nobles and ladies of the vicinity. At the conclusion of the ceremony, Pedro drew near to take leave of his old patron, whereupon Charles raised his hat, at which Pedro asked if the act was one of courtesy, or as an indication that he was no longer Emperor.
“Neither, Pedro,” answered Charles; “I do it to signify that all I can give you now is this simple token of civility.”
An amusing story is told of Nelle, the fool attached to the Court of Matthias, who not only attended the celebrated meeting of the States, held at Ratisbon, but he had the effrontery to present to the Emperor an exquisitely bound volume, containing, as he said, a record of all that had been accomplished by the statesmen. On opening the book Matthias found it all blank paper, and exclaimed, “Why, there is nothing hidden here.”
“Exactly,” replied Nelle, “because there was nothing done there, and so my record is truthful.”
Another humorous anecdote relates how one day, at the Court of Ferdinand II., a silly courtier fancied he could amuse those present by his frivolities, which prompted Jonas, Ferdinand’s favourite fool, to answer him according to his folly. But this so enraged the courtier that he shouted, “Fellow, be silent; I never stoop to talk with a fool.”
“Well, I do,” retorted Jonas, “and therefore be good enough to listen to me in your turn.”