The monks found the Marshal lying on his bed reading. To his stare of surprise they meekly replied by inquiring how he found himself in soul and body. “So well, both in strength and spirit,” said Strozzi, “that if you do not immediately decamp, I will fling the couple of you out of window.” They concluded that he was very powerfully “possessed” indeed; and straightway with loud prayer, and some inharmonious singing, they proceeded to sprinkle him from headto foot with holy water. He really hissed with rage, as if he had been red-hot. Then, leaping from his bed, he grasped at his dagger, and flew at the monks. A fearful struggle ensued, and howling, and stamping, and showers of oaths on one side, and holy water on the other. When the uproar brought the servants of the Marshal to his assistance, they found him speechless with rage, and in the sudden temporary lull, Brusquet beckoned them from the room, and locked the door upon Strozzi and his attendants. He then paid and dismissed the Franciscans, and, fresh from this new exploit, he ran to the palace, and kept the whole royal and august personages there assembled, in a roar of laughter at the highly seasoned details which he exultingly recounted,—from the Marshal’s ride into Paris, to the final exorcism made to relieve him from Satanic possession.
The joke was so exceedingly to the taste of his Majesty, that he despatched messengers to Strozzi to inquire after his ghostly and bodily health, and especially if the Franciscans had succeeded or failed in making a true believer of the most unbelieving man in France.
Strozzi never forgave this trick, which had rendered him ridiculous in the eyes of his own servants. He exacted a double vengeance, which fell heavily on the fool. The Cardinal of Lorraine had established an inquisitorial tribunal in France, and before this body, Brusquet was charged with heresy, and with open mockery of the religion of the State. The tribunal found it an easy matter to fling the alleged offender into confinement, with menace of loss of life. He was a well-plumed pigeon, whom of course, they did not intend to kill, but only to greatly terrify and thoroughly pluck. Brusquet was a coward and avaricious, but he bled freely in pistoles in order to save his life and purchase freedom.—Strozzi having injured him in purse, proceeded to assail him in his honour.
The year was 1555. The Cardinal de Lorraine had goneon a mission to Rome, and in his suite was his favourite Brusquet, who had the royal sanction to follow his Eminence. The Legation had not been long within the walls of Rome, when intelligence of the death of the King’s “plaisant” reached Paris, by especial courier. The latter carried with him a duly attested document, the jester’s last will. It was the most singular of deeds, for therein the testator willed or prayed that the King should permit the wife of Brusquet to retain the office held previously by her husband,—that of Superintendent-General of Posting,—on one condition, namely, that she espoused his friend the courier, who was the bearer of the news and the testamentary paper. It was thought that nothing could possibly be more appropriate than this dying act of a court fool. The thing was resolved upon, and the wife of Brusquet, who had no children, except a married daughter, was forced, persuaded, or cajoled, till she consented to marry the courier,—in order that she might preserve a lucrative office.
The wedded pair had already kept house for a month when Brusquet (who was daily electrifying the Papal Court by his mirthfulness or impudence) suddenly learned the news of his death, and of the indecently hasty marriage of his not altogether disconsolate widow. He was in exceeding wrath, hurried back to Paris, turned the second husband into the street, chastised his wife, and then publicly remarried her! Court, camp, and city considered this last act as one more in the official character of the fool than any he had hitherto accomplished, and the hilarity was general and unbounded. Brusquet, however, only showed that his wit had departed, for he attempted to avenge himself by conveying false information to the Court of Rome as to alleged traitorous intentions of Strozzi against the states and property of the Church. He represented the Marshal as having fallen into disgrace, and, after flying from France, having joined an Algerine force destined to operate successivelyagainst Ostia, Civita Vecchia, and Ancona, and ultimately to plunder the wealthy shrine of Loretto. The Roman Government was only needlessly alarmed, and Brusquet only suffered for his accusation of another.
There can be little doubt that his old personal enemy brought down upon him the calamity by which he was visited in 1562. In the very midst of much worldly prosperity, he found himself accused of a very serious crime, that of being a Huguenot, and, still worse, that of suppressing or delaying despatches which contained news unfavourable to the Huguenot cause. The accusation would seem to have been better founded as regards Brusquet’s son-in-law. The storm, however, fell most heavily upon the former. He was obliged to fly, and the orthodox populace plundered the house which the heretical court fool had abandoned with so much precipitation.
The fugitive jester found a home, first at Nogent, with Madame de Bouillon, a great friend of the Huguenots, and, subsequently, with Madame de Valentinois. But to be a concealed, fugitive dependant was little to the humour of a man who had made three kings laugh, and whose jokes had for so long a period been accepted as apologies or excuses for much rascality. He stooped to beseech his adversary, Strozzi, in a letter shown by the latter to Brantôme, who describes it as very well expressed, to use his influence with the authorities, to enable him, an odd man, to end his days in Paris, in peace and quietness. The petition was unheeded; at all events, the petitioner drew no benefit from it. He lost all heart, patience, and health, sank into moody despair, and died at the château of Anet, the guest of Madame de Valentinois, in the year 1563.
If there be any of Brusquet’s descendants living, they belong to their illustrious ancestor through his daughter. It is popularly said, that when Thoni (one of the fools of Henry II.) died, the principal poets of the day applied forthe vacant post. This shows, as I have before remarked, that the suggestion of Ménage, that the court poet and court fool often consisted of one and the same person, is not to be summarily rejected. The poets probably were not such fools as to neglect the present opportunity, which offered them the chance of a lucrative social appointment, with that of the less richly paid office ofplaisantto the King.
I have in a previous page noticed the sharp wit of some of the ladies at the court of Catherine de Medicis. I may here add, that such wit was sometimes very sharply reprehended. Mr. Bayle St. John, in his biography of Montaigne, affords me an illustration of this fact, by there recording the circumstance of one of the maids-of-honour, Mademoiselle de Limeuil, who wrote a laughable satire on the Queen Catherine; by whom it was accounted but a sorry court jest, and the sprightly young authoress was well whipped, like any coarse male fool, for her pains. Mr. St. John records also a fact which proves that the jest of the “fou” was not always the most acceptable sauce at a royal banquet. The fact alluded to refers to Duchatel, who was originally in a printer’s office, was ultimately Grand Almoner of France, and who, as Mr. St. John tells us, was paid by the King to talk to him during meals.
It is a singular fact, that while Francis I., who had a great affection for jesters, was mentioned in the funeral oration pronounced over his remains, as a grave, learned, and philosophic prince, Charles IX., who cared nothing for those old, joyous appendages to court, and whose name is associated with everything gloomy and terrible, was celebrated in the sermon preached athisinterment by Father Sorbin, as a prince at once tender-hearted and gracious, the bulwark of the faith, and the lover of men of wit: “piteux et débonnaire, propugnateur de la foy, et amateur des bons esprits.” Charles may be said to have been, in some measure,his own fool, for we hear of him figuring at a tournament, with a party of joyous followers, all of whom, King and courtiers, fought in the lists attired as women. Another of his court jests consisted in his hiring ten young thieves, whom he brought to the Louvre, where he set them to rob the guests of their swords, jewellery, and splendid cloaks, laughing heartily the while, as he witnessed their success, or saw the unconsciousness of the victims, or beheld their surprise and indignation, after they had been despoiled. These young thieves, who were amply rewarded for the exercise of their ability, rank among the most singular of hirelings paid to excite laughter in a gloomy king.
Henri III. was an especial patron of the “fou,” and some of the best specimens of the latter class figured at his court. The most renowned of these were Sibilot and John (or Sebastian) Chicot. The name of the former became, for a time, the generic name for a witty fool, and to be a “Sibilot” was to be a jester of the highest quality. It was even said of the aspiring and conspiring Duke de Mayenne, that he wanted only troops and a Sibilot to be as great a man as the King.
It was an act of this turbulent Duke of the house of Lorraine which first brought Chicot into notice. Cardinal Perron, in his ‘Perroniana,’ published at Cologne, 1694, speaks in high praise of this Gascon gentleman; for the latter wasDeChicot, and proud of the prefix, before he descended to plain Chicot, and became “fou du Roi.”
Like most Gascons, Chicot was poor; but he seems to have first repaired to court not so much with the intention of pushing his fortune as seeking protection against the manners and rough usages of the Duke de Mayenne, who looked with favour on a lady who was the object also of the homage of the tall and humorous Gascon. The mirth inspired by the sallies of Chicot soon attracted the notice of the King, and the quaint fellow speedily discovered that he might turnhis wit to more profitable use at the Louvre and at Fontainebleau than he could his industry devoted to any professional pursuit in Paris. The last biographer of Chicot, in the ‘Nouvelle Dictionnaire Biographique,’ refers to the portrait of the celebrated buffoon drawn by Dumas, in his ‘Dame de Monsoreau,’ as preserving the traditionary features of Chicot’s manners, aspect, and character. In the work just named, the author adopts the tradition of the love-affair, in which the Lorrainer and the Gascon were rivals; and M. Dumas further intimates that when Chicot became official jester he found solace for his disappointment, in mimicking the manners of his master. To the buffoon who would stand with his cheeks puffed out, and his hand on his side, the nobles would pay court as to the true King, while Chicot feigned to treat the latter as his jester. If the nobles winced under the sarcastic speeches of the “fou,” and threatened vengeance, Henri would protect him, in his character alike of fool and gentleman; and in return, Chicot took an infinite delight in countermanding orders issued by Henri; and, standing at the King’s toilette, thought nothing of dipping his fingers into the monarch’s perfumed cream, and tearing the royal combs through his rough beard. It was only when Henri was religiously scourging himself, and when Chicot was consequently most inclined to jest, that the sovereign would tolerate no ribaldry. At those times, the buffoon might, if he liked, go and fight duels, whips being the weapons, with gentlemen who had too much leisure and too little pastime. Or he would resort to some tavern outside the barrier, swallow delicious teal with crab-sauce, address himself to joyous drinking, and return to court when it suited his caprice; for Chicot seems to have been exempt from the rule by which the French official fool was bound to remain within the precincts of the palace.
At times, the King would appeal to Chicot, not as his jester, but as a man of sense, and his friend. Chicot, on theother hand, would make suggestions worth adopting, and quote from books in support of his advice or opinions. The familiarity of the two was so great, that they often slept in the same room; and by day travelled in the same litter, drawn by half-a-dozen mules, or where the roads were difficult, by as many oxen. The state in which King and fool journeyed is thus admirably sketched by Dumas, in the work mentioned above. “The litter contained Henri, his physician, his chaplain, the jester, four of the King’s ‘minions,’ a couple of huge hounds, and a basketful of puppies, which rested on the King’s knees, but which was upheld from his neck by a gold chain. From the roof hung a gilded cage, in which were white turtle-doves, the plumage of their necks marked by a sable circlet of feathers. Occasionally, two or three apes were to be seen in this ‘Noah’s Ark,’ as it was called,” some of the inmates of which used to amuse themselves by plaiting ribbons, while Chicot made anagrams on the names of the courtiers.
Able as Chicot was in this respect, and expert in quoting Marco Polo, Galen, and sentences from the Breviary, it may, of course, be questioned whether he was so skilful in his dramatic plottings and counter-plottings against the traitorous Guises as M. Dumas has represented him to be. He probably did not meddle in such serious affairs; and I think the ability of the jester is set too high when he is exhibited in positions that would puzzle a Machiavelli, in disguises that have a very melodramatic tone and aspect, and in situations of peril from which he releases himself as dexterously as the virtuous hero of a transpontine semi-tragedy. Chicot, indeed, was well qualified to effect his release from any peril where odds were not very strongly against him, for the jester was in the habit of daily fencing with the King, and bore the reputation of being one of the best swordsmen in the kingdom. He could apply his cunning of fence to excellent purpose; andif, half in sport, he would engage with noble courtiers in a fight with whips, there was no man, at once insulted, vindictive, and self-possessed, who could more politely and fatally pass his sword through the body of the individual from whom he had suffered wrong. The tongue of Chicot could be as sharp as his sword, and it inflicted, perhaps, more exquisite torture on the nobles whom he hated or the courtiers whom he despised, than if he had passed his blade between the ribs, which he would “poke” with as much audacity as he used when, seating himself on the same royal chair with the King, he would call himHenriquet, and greedily devour the dainties presented to his master. At the council-board too Chicot was often present, where his wit worked as profitably as that of any grave-looking member present; albeit, while he enunciated his profound political maxims, he was perhaps engaged in making paper boats, and arranging them into a fleet. On the most serious occasions, a sally from Chicot at the head of the table, would cause the King to laugh. Solemn statesmen would then look grave, and while the royal laughter was yet pealing, Chicot would utter a stentorian “Silence there!” which would cause the King to suddenly close his mouth, and the councillors to open theirs, moved, in spite of themselves, to lively hilarity.
By way of sample of what was then probably considered a rather neat joke, and showing how Henri profited by being constantly in company with Chicot, I may cite the traditionary incident of the monk preaching from the back of an ass. “Which is the preacher?” said the King, “for they both speak at the same time.” “The one beneath is the most eloquent,” replied Chicot, “but the uppermost one speaks the best French.” The power wielded by this influential buffoon is also indicated by M. Dumas, in the observation made by the former when he learns a most important State secret which he resolves to keep to himself.“Why should I communicate it to any one else?” said he, “Is it not I who am King of France?” He had mimicked his master so often, that he almost thought himself king;—like Elliston when, in tipsy majesty, he represented George IV. at the Drury Lane coronation, and hiccupped benedictions on the heads of his laughing subjects in the pit. With Chicot, however, the case was less imaginary; for when Henri was about to take a fatal step, a sign from the jester would set him right, and the gentleman buffoon might then have been justified in exclaiming, “Did I not say rightly, thatIwas the real King in France?” We may fancy him, on his long legs, saying this, and by raising himself, looking longer than ever.
Here is not quite an imaginary picture of the wisdom of the “fou,” as he looks over a chess-board at which he is sitting alone, meditating the while on the dangers threatening Henri III. To one who questions him, he replies, “I am disquieted about the King. At chess, you see, the King is but an insignificant personage. He has no will of his own; can only move one step forward or back; one step to the right or to the left, while he is surrounded by foes on the alert; by knights who jump three squares at a time; by a mob of pawns, who close round him; and if he be only ill-advised, he is a lost and ruined king in no time.”
It is the great merit of Chicot, if Dumas has painted him faithfully, that he was not merely the “plaisant” of the King, but his protector. He could be, and ordinarily was, indifferent and sarcastic in look, speech, and general demeanour; but this gentleman-jester, with a sword on his thigh, and a duty to perform to Henri, could also be as eloquent, and put on an air as noble as any great man with countless quarterings on his shield. We may conclude, from the limning of the traditionary portrait in the ‘Dame de Monsoreau,’ that if Chicot loved his jest well, he loved his king (worthless as he was) even better.
Again, if we turn to ‘Les Quarante-Cinq,’ in search of further information touching the qualities of this famousplaisant, we find him brave and careless, and yet fully appreciating life generally, which came to him in a very enjoyable form. In this latter work, we find him loving wine, and eccentric in act and speech. He was not close cropped, or shaven, like the earlier jesters. His hair was black and curled, but his brow was bald long before the period of middle age. He brought to perfection, says the author of ‘Les Quarante-Cinq,’ “that art dear to the ancient mimes, which consists in changing, by scientific contractions, the natural play of the muscles, and the habitual play of the physiognomy.”
Chicot cannot be said to have been a graceful fellow. His arms and legs were immoderately long. He was all nerves, muscle, and bone; active, addicted to raillery, ingenious in contrivances, and he laughed silently like an Indian. After having been prodigal, he became parsimonious, and saved a little fortune. He ordinarily spoke with a Gascon accent, but he could change that at will, and it was as easy for him to assume any other as it was for him to assume any rank. He maintained a superiority over his royal master through the fears of the latter, and the author of ‘Les Quarante-Cinq’ represents Henri as having a superstitious dread of his jester, who was occasionally a sort of phantom-buffoon, suddenly appearing and disappearing in a way which perplexed Henri, but which admitted of very natural explanations. We see him in the last-mentioned work, as a scholar and a man of taste, a purist in classical knowledge, able to construe Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and reading, and sometimes sleeping over, the Essays of Montaigne.
Had this jester not been a man of singular ability, the King would not have employed him on diplomatic missions of some delicacy and difficulty. He went on such missions to Henri of Navarre; and Dumas represents him to us assaving the life of the Béarnais, in his first fight at Cahors, where Henri’s bold soul carried his then cowardly body into the very thickest of themêlée. It is said to have been on this occasion that the King of Navarre induced Chicot to promise to enter his service whenever his old master, Henri III., should die. Flögel, Cardinal Perron, and Sully, only mention Chicot as the court jester of Henri IV.; he was however in the service of both Kings. He was as familiar with his new master as with the old one, and the Bourbon King was as indulgent to him as the old Valois monarch had been. His boldness was especially exhibited in satirical allusions to the King of Navarre being of the reformed religion, and to suggestions touching political matters generally. In the ‘Mémoires pour l’Histoire de France’ (vol. ii. 72), it is stated that when the Duke of Parma came to France, Chicot said to the King, before all the courtiers, “My friend, I see very well that all you do will signify nothing, unless you either turn Catholic, or pretend you are one.” Another time, Chicot said to him, “I am convinced that to be peaceably King of France, you would give both Papists and Huguenots to Lucifer’s clerk.” “I am not surprised,” said he another time to his Majesty, “that so many persons desire to be Kings. It is a good trade, and by working at it only an hour in a day, one may make sufficient provision for the rest of the week, without being obliged to one’s neighbours. But, for Heaven’s sake! my friend, take care, and keep out of the hands of the Leaguers, for if you should fall into them, they would hang you up like a hog’s pudding, and write upon your gibbet—‘Good lodgings to let, at the Crown of France and Navarre.’”
Of such quality was the bold humour of Chicot. Of his bravery, we have an instance in his conduct at the siege of Rouen, where he behaved so gallantly that he made Henri of Lorraine, Count of Chaligny, prisoner with his own hand.He led his captive to the King, saying to the latter, “Here, I make you a present of the Count; keep what I took, and now give you.” The Count was so enraged at being captured by a court fool, that he smote poor Chicot on the head, so violently, with the hilt of his sword, that the jester died of the cruel blow, after lingering for a fortnight. During this latter period, a dying Huguenot soldier shared his room. A priest visited the Huguenot, but, at the moment of his dying, refused to administer consolation, on the ground of his being a heretic. The orthodox Chicot could not witness this with patience. Weak as he was, he arose to chastise the priest for his lack of charity; but he was too feeble for the achievement, and he returned to bed, only to die. The honest Gascon thus ended his life, and his last act exhibits, as much as anything, the daring and impatience of his character.
Contemporary with the Gascon Chicot, was the Norman Maître Guillaume Le Marchand, a dreaming half-witted fellow, who passed from the household of the Cardinal of Bourbon to be “fou” in that of Henry IV. Master Guillaume was accustomed to say that God created angels, but the devil made pages. These last never lost an opportunity of tormenting the “natural,” who was quite as active in taking advantage of every occasion to revenge himself. He would then take out his “little bird,” as he called his cudgel, pretty well break the bones of the offending page, and would roar all the time, as if he himself were being beaten. Guillaume was a Roman Catholic, like Chicot, but he was less tolerant. He so hated the reformed religion, and the Reformation itself, that he always used the words “ruined religion,” or the “Ruin,” to show a fool’s contempt for what he could not understand.
The King certainly did not value him as he valued Chicot. When any one uttered an opinion in his hearing, unsupported by reason, Henry was accustomed to bid them go and keep company with Master Guillaume. The Parisgaminswere in the habit of hooting him in the streets, and noble counts made little of employing him to scare away a whole saloon-full of ladies by the performance of some beastly trick. Even Cardinals would condescend to argue with this Norman fool, and boast of victories in disputes where there was small common sense and less wit on either side, and little honour to be gained by triumphing over a “natural.”
As a companion to Guillaume, the name of Pierre du Four l’Evêque is met with; but he was a street fool, and not a “fou à titre d’office.” Under their names, and that of Chicot, some of the best political satires of this period were published. The author could not safely print his own name; and he found not only safety but profit in publishing his book under the name of some more popular fool.
Some authors rank Joubert, surnamed Angoulevent, with the court fools of Henri IV. The surname was common to some of the clubs or memberships which met under the inspiration of Folly. Joubert was president of some such society. He called himself “noble” and “gentleman of the King’s chamber;” but this was in joke, for Joubert seems to have been connected with the theatre at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. His title of “Prince of Fools” procured for him some privileges granted by the Parliament, and some protection at the tribunals of law and justice. This is explained at great length by Du Tillot, and also by Dr. Rigollet, in their respective works on this subject. Joubert was probably a well-esteemedfarceur, but I only find him once in connection with Henri IV., namely, when a woman committed suicide by hanging herself, and the King gave her property, forfeited to the crown by the felonious act, to Joubert, “surnamed Angoulement, Prince of Fools.”
Chicot, with his Gascon accent, was accustomed to excite the laughter of the courts of Henri III. and Henri IV. Maret, the servant andplaisantof Louis XIII. tried toeffect the same object by imitating the Gascon twang of Gascon nobles. Even Richelieu once imitated this bad example, bidding the Duke d’Espernon to get rid of his provincial accent, and at the same time speaking with that accent himself. The Cardinal ended by hoping that the Duke would not be offended. “Why should I take offence at it?” said the Duke; “it is only what the King’s fool does in my hearing every day.”
Maret showed more jealousy than wit, when the King’s page Bravadas was suddenly preferred to be the friend and playfellow of Louis. At dinner, on the day when this sudden growth of favour was first made manifest, the fool, pointing to some mushrooms, bade the lacquey bring him “a spoonful ofBravadas.” On many of the royal customs this jester was trenchant enough, particularly on the custom observed by the King, of eating alone; while other customs were observed by him only when surrounded by a circle of courtiers. “Voilà deux choses de votre métier,” said Maret, “dont je ne pourrois jamais m’accommoder.”
At the same court with Maret, and accounted as a fool, but not decorated with, or stigmatized by, the official title, we find, attached to the King’s brother, Gaston of Orléans, Louis de Neufgermain, a man whose silliness and vanity made him the sport of the court, and whose affected skill in poetry acquired for him the appellation, which he seriously accepted and proudly displayed, of “Poëte Hétéroclite to his royal highness the Duke of Orleans.” This very select poet penned rhymes which would not be acknowledged in the bon-bon Parnassus of the Rue des Lombards. They were execrable and pointless. For the most part they consisted of lines which he supplied to words given to him, for which he was to find rhymes. It was the sport of the court to puzzle him by intractable words, such as in English would beorangeandmonth; and to extricate himself from the difficulty, he wrote the wildest nonsense,and the wilder this was, the more the audience laughed at the fool.
With Louis XIV. we approach the last of the French “plaisants.” As Margaret of Navarre had Guerin to make lively her leisure hours, so the consort of Louis XIV. maintained Tricomini, who was hardly amusing. He was remarkable more for rough, unpalatable, but irrefutable truths than for wit; and we pass him by, to notice L’Angeli, whose greatest honour it is that he is named by Boileau, in a way too which shows how fortunate a fool was the last of the official jesters of France.
“Un poëte à la cour fut jadis à la mode,Mais des Fous aujourd’hui c’est le plus incommode,Et l’esprit le plus beau, l’auteur le plus poli,Ne parviendra jamais au sort de l’Angeli.”
“Un poëte à la cour fut jadis à la mode,Mais des Fous aujourd’hui c’est le plus incommode,Et l’esprit le plus beau, l’auteur le plus poli,Ne parviendra jamais au sort de l’Angeli.”
“Un poëte à la cour fut jadis à la mode,Mais des Fous aujourd’hui c’est le plus incommode,Et l’esprit le plus beau, l’auteur le plus poli,Ne parviendra jamais au sort de l’Angeli.”
L’Angeli was of a good family, but the branch of it to which he belonged was so decayed, that the bearer of the name was glad to follow the Prince of Condé to Flanders in the humble capacity of a stable-boy. The lad excited notice by his satire and wit, and Condé, on his return from Flanders, could think of no more acceptable gift to present to the King, Louis XIII., than his vivacious stable-boy. The latter rose to fortune, especially in the succeeding reign, when he became the salaried and official jester, and amassed a fortune. If the courtiers wanted a joke from him, he first made them pay for it. If they wanted to escape his sarcasm, Angeli would not pronounce them exempt, without a fee. What he thus pocketed he carefully put by. Altogether, he was a well-regulated fellow, save in the matter of attendance at church; for absenting himself from which, he assigned two fool’s reasons, namely, that he could not endure brawling, and did not understand argument. When he had acquired some five-and-twenty thousand crowns by the exercise of his office at court, his proud relatives began to acknowledge their long-neglected kinsman: Angeli onlylaughed, and went on increasing his fortune. “Of all us fools,” once exclaimed Marigny, as he saw Louis XIV. laughing at the jester’s light words,—“of all us fools who were attached to the Prince of Condé, Angeli is the only one who has made his fortune.”
This “fou” had a quiet as well as a lively wit. On one occasion, finding himself standing by the side of a nobleman, one of whose ancestors was supposed to have been a buffoon: “Cousin,” said Angeli, “let us both sit down, nobody will pay any particular attention tous; and you and I are not likely to take offence from each other.” L’Angeli died in 1640, just three years after Archie Armstrong had been ejected from the English court.
With L’Angeli ordinarily closes the list of officially titled fools in France; but I learn from the learned author of the work on the medals and tokens of societies connected with fools and follies, that the Count of Toulouse, the illegitimate son of Louis, had a fool officially appointed to exercise his calling in the Count’s household. The author in question most provokingly adds, that “there was one anecdote he could tell of this fool, which would suffice to avenge the whole class of fools of the contempt with which we cover them. The history is unpublished and piquant, but,” again adds this writer, “it does not belong to me; and that is all I can say about it,for the moment;”—and he never alludes to it again throughout his book!
Although Louis XIV. appointed no successor to L’Angeli, it is clear that he continued to be pleased with tricks after the court jester’s fashion. We have this exemplified in the case of that elegant but inconstant lover, Vardis, who, after throwing the whole court and household of the King into confusion by his audacious gallantries, was exiled to Provence, where, for nearly thirty years, he continued to be the delight of the women and the detestation of the men, who envied and could not rival him.
At the end of the time above mentioned, the Count, then almost a sexagenarian, received permission from the Government, to return to Paris. Vardis was still uncertain how he might be received by the King, and his very happiness depended on the nature of such reception. He went boldly down to Versailles, and on entering the presence, he had the gratification of seeing King and courtiers burst into uncontrollable peals of laughter. He had prepared himself to produce so desired a result, by appearing at court in a dress which was the very height of the fashion when he began his exile, but which looked so ridiculous now, that I do not know how I can better illustrate it than by asking any matron who has preserved her bridal bonnet and dress of thirty years ago, what she thinks she would look like, if she were to wear the same at her youngest daughter’s wedding-breakfast. Let any gentleman open a book of fashions of 1828, and say if he would be daring enough to enter Hyde Park in such a costume. The appearance of Vardis was still more ridiculous. He had been to his contemporaries what D’Orsay was within our own remembrance; and he returned to court, the King of Fashion, but a King who had been touched by a fairy’s wand, and had been lain asleep as soundly and as long as Rip van Winkle. His head was a perfect caricature, and he wore one of those blue coats, or tunics, embroidered with gold and silver lace, which had the name of a “justaucorps à brevet,” because no person could wear this article of dress, which the King himself wore, without his Majesty’sbrevet, or warrant. Louis rolled in ecstasy at the sight of the old portrait; and the happy Vardis exclaimed, “Ah, Sire, absent from your Majesty, one becomes not only unhappy, but ridiculous.” The King, still laughing, presented him to the Dauphin, to whom Vardis offered the homage of a low bow. Louis laughed again, remarking, “Vardis, you have done the act of a fool; you know that no person can salute another in my presence.”“Oh!” cried Vardis, with an air that would have done credit to the official fool, “I know nothing at all. I have forgotten everything.Oneact of folly? your Majesty must pardon thirty.” “Be it so,” answered the King; “but stop at nine-and-twenty.” And with thiscoup de foudid Vardis leap into a little brief favour.
I must not dismiss the reign of Louis XIV. without a word in reference to the Duke de Roquelaure, who figures in so many jest-books as a buffoon at the court of Louis XIV. The Duke is indebted for much of his reputation, as to this matter, to Saint-Simon, who hated him heartily, and misrepresented him accordingly. Roquelaure was a plain, brave, facetious man; but the jokes attributed to him in the ‘Momus Français’ are entirely apocryphal. These represent him as disgustingly insulting to ladies, audacious to the highest clergy, regardless of his own honour or of that of his wife, and so forgetful of reverence due to holy places, as, on one occasion, to have jumped out of bed, run into a church, and there beat the Spanish Ambassador about the head with his slippers. According to the ‘Momus,’ no courtier escaped the rough licking of his tongue; though the Duke, who had little or no nose, sometimes had to undergo more painful allusions than he himself made, from courtiers or prelates whose huge noses were points on which he is said to have sharpened his wit. The last court-foolery told of him is, of his having asserted that he would not only kick a certain courtier, Bechamel, but that the latter would thank him for it. He committed the assault, saluting the victim at the same time, as if he had been the handsome De Grammont. Bechamel was so delighted at being mistaken, as he thought, for so brilliant a cavalier, that he turned round with radiant smiles, and thanked Roquelaure for the error into which he had fallen.
As I have said, I could not entirely pass over Roquelaure; and it is on the authority of his biographer in the‘Biographie Universelle,’ I have stated that his court jests are apocryphal. Worse jokes, however, than these were perpetrated at the court of Louis XIV.; witness that occasion when the French court was at Fère, very dull, and sadly in want of sport. Cardinal Mazarin then undertook to play the fool for it; and he did so after a fashion that was highly enjoyed by the “people of quality.” There was then residing with the Cardinal the youngest of his nieces, a little girl seven or eight years of age, Marianne Mancini, afterwards Duchess de Bouillon. As an illustration of court-foolery, the incident requires to be told, and I prefer giving the opening portion of it in the words of M. Amédée Renée, from whose book on ‘Les Nièces de Mazarin,’ I make theextract:—
“Le Cardinal, une après-dînée, se mit à plaisanter la nièce sur ses galants. Il alla jusqu’à lui dire qu’elle etoit grosse. Marianne se fâcha tout rouge, et l’oncle de s’en amuser si bien qu’il continua la plaisanterie. On retrécit les robes de l’enfant, pour lui faire croire que sa taille s’arrondissait. Ses colères divertissaient toute la cour. Il n’était question que de son prochain accouchement, et Marianne, un beau matin, trouva dans ses draps un enfant qui venait de naître. Il fallut bien convenir alors de sa maternité. Elle jeta des cris de désespoir, et fit chorus longtemps avec son nouveau-né; elle assurait fort qu’elle ne s’était aperçu de rien.” To the child thus fooled, the Queen-mother, Anne of Austria, paid a visit of ceremony, and begged to be allowed to be godmother to the baby! The entire court turned fools on this occasion, waited on the imaginary mother in great pomp, and passed in ceremonious rotation before the bed, according to prescribed etiquette; and these fine people were in ecstasies! The elder sister of Marianne, Hortense, Duchess of Mazarin, says in her autobiography, of which not she, but St. Réal, was the author, “Ce fut un divertissement public. On pressa Marianne de déclarer le père del’enfant, et elle répondit que ce ne pouvait être que le Roi ou le Comte de Guiche, car elle ne voyoit que ces deux hommes-là qui l’eussent embrassé.” Hortense, who was, as M. Renée remarks, “au courant de la chose,” testified her enjoyment of the joke by loud bursts of laughter. The court thought there had never been so choice a jester as the Cardinal; for of such complexion were the jokes of that time, and in this manner did fools of quality prepare the minds of little girls for this world and the next.
As true wit however was found among the nobles and gentlemen at the court of the Grand Monarque as ever had been uttered by the liveliest of professional jesters. Sydney Smith, in his Lectures on Moral Philosophy, cites a sample which is of such excellence as to have received his high approbation. “Louis XIV.,” he says, “was exceedingly molested by the solicitations of a general officer at the levée, and cried out, loud enough to be heard, ‘That gentleman is the most troublesome officer in the whole army.’ ‘Your Majesty’s enemies have said the same thing more than once,’ was the answer; the wit of which,” adds the narrator, “consists in the sudden relation discovered in the officer’s assent to the King’s invective, and his own defence. By admitting the King’s observation, he seems, at first sight, to be subscribing to the King’s imputation against him; whereas, in reality, he effaces it by this very means.”
Louis XIV. was yet in his youth when Mazarin introduced a new source whence idle, wealthy people might derive amusement. The Cardinal filledhispalace with monkeys, that is, there was scarcely a room which had not in it one of these tricksy animals, to afford laughter to the occupant or visitor. They were carefully tended and highly scented by the nieces of Mazarin, those celebrated ladies whom satirists distinguished by the name of Mazarinettes. They are thus alluded to in ‘Le Passeport et l’Adieu de Mazarin.’
“Ainsi donc par vos limonades,Par vos excellentes pommades,Par la bonne odeur de vos gants,* * * * *Par les singes que tant aimez,Qui, comme vous, sont parfumésPar les belles Mazarinettes,” etc.
“Ainsi donc par vos limonades,Par vos excellentes pommades,Par la bonne odeur de vos gants,* * * * *Par les singes que tant aimez,Qui, comme vous, sont parfumésPar les belles Mazarinettes,” etc.
“Ainsi donc par vos limonades,Par vos excellentes pommades,Par la bonne odeur de vos gants,
* * * * *
Par les singes que tant aimez,Qui, comme vous, sont parfumésPar les belles Mazarinettes,” etc.
The fashion of finding amusement in keeping monkeys was, however, of very old date. Plutarch tells us, that when Cæsar happened once to see some strangers at Rome carrying young dogs and monkeys in their arms, caressing them, he asked, ‘Whether the women in their country never bore any children?’ thus reproving those who lavish on brutes the natural tenderness which is due to mankind. The only case in which I can remember that monkeys were made useful, is that of the Abbé Galiani, whose monkey used to unseal all his letters for him. Galiani used to call him “a member of the diplomatic body.”
Although the jester by right of office, had disappeared from the French court, we occasionally meet with amateur fools who presumed to hint censure at the monarch, but who found the King with more censorious wit than themselves. This was the case when Latour was taking the portrait of Louis XV. It was just after a national calamity. Latour, with the impudent familiarity of Triboulet, exclaimed, “Well, Sire, so we have no longer any navy!” “And Vernet?” coldly replied the King,—alluding to the marine painter whom he patronized, and who could furnish him any amount of fleets on and under canvas.
If Louis XV. had not altogether the ever-ready wit necessary to a jester, he possessed all the imperturbability of the fool. An instance presents itself in the little court incident, when M. de Chauvelin was seized at the royal card-table with the fit of apoplexy of which he died. On seeing him fall, some one exclaimed, “M. de Chauvelin is ill!” “Ill?” said the King, coldly turning round andlooking at him; “he is dead. Take him away; spades are trumps, gentlemen!”
Neither did this sovereign maintain an official jester; as before intimated, the vocation of the fool had ceased, but the favour and freedom he had enjoyed were acquired by men who, as Chesterfield remarks of the Marshal Duke of Richelieu, raised themselves above their betters, without knowledge, talent, or merit. The Duke, however, whom Louis XV. used to call his “amiable Good-for-nothing,” had certainly some claim to be ranked as a court wit. He proved as much when Louis, on one occasion, remarked that there was not such another “good-for-nothing” in all France. “Ah, Sire,” said the Duke with a tone of kindly reproach, “Your Majesty forgets yourself!” Triboulet never said anything half so good.
Here I will close the record of Frenchplaisants. The “plaisantes” of Louis XV. have no claim to admission upon my list; and at the court of his successors, the time had come when princes had begun to be their own fools. The Republic lowered “Liberty” to the level of fool, and the people paid dearly for theirmarotte. With the Empire, the nation had again its fool, under the name of “Glory;” a costly toy which brought a splendid misery. How Louis Philippe could be his own jester, I shall have to show in a subsequent page. At the present Imperial Court, there is no official fool; but some persons may perhaps discover the Emperor’s “joculator” in that wonderful man, the Count de Morny, whose last joke consisted in his telling the Imperial Legislature that the utmost purity of election had brought them there, and that the utmost freedom of speech was their undoubted privilege. That the Count could say as much to the Members without, as the French say, “laughing at their noses,” demonstrates how admirably he is qualified to be “joculator” to the Empire at large.
The Count’s name, too, is so associated with that of Russia, that,aproposto court fools, I will now ask my readers to turn with me towards Muscovy, and see how fools have flourished at the court of the Czars, and, indeed, in the Northern courts of Europe generally.