there are very few of the writers who have devoted their attention to the subject treated in this imperfect volume, who have ever alluded to the fool who suddenly appeared at the court of alboin, king of the lombards, (a.d. 572,) and who created a large measure of astonishment there, by his rude exterior and his ready wit. all verona was, in popular phrase, “full of him.” the chronicle of his “astuzie” was long the delight of the whole of italy.
his name was bertoldo. he was hideously ugly, and not very clean in his person; dwarfed, and deformed. his eyebrows resembled pigs’ bristles; but his eyes beneath them, gleamed like two torches; his hair was as red as carrots, and if you can fancy humanity caricatured to the very utmost extent, you will not, even then, be able to see with your mind’s eye the never-matched hideousness of this rustic, who set all the court in a roar by entering the great hall where alboin was presiding, and, without even uncovering, seating himself by the side of the grim husband of rosamunda.
the lombard king smiled sourly at his impudence, and inquired what he was, when he was born, and in what country.
“i am a man,” said the monster; “was born the night my mother bore me; and” (this is something of ancient pistol’s phrase, which, indeed, often smacked of the fool’s humour or philosophy,) “the world is my native country.” king and court understood, now, with whom they had to do, and they tried his wit by plying him with questions,353 “what is the swiftest thing on earth?” asked one. “thought,” was the reply of bertoldo. to other questions he replied, that the best wine was the wine drunk in another man’s house; and that the worst fire at home was to be found in an angry wife and an impudent servant.
“bertoldo,” said the king, “could you contrive to bring me water in a sieve without spilling any?”
“certainly,” answered the fool; “in a hard frost, i could bring you any quantity.”
“tor so clever a rejoinder, you shall have from me any boon you desire.”
“la, you there!” cried bertoldo, “i shall have nothing of the sort. you cannot give me what you do not possess. i am in eager search of happiness, of which you have not a grain; and how could you give me any?”
alboin alluded to his kingly power and glory, which the fool mocked mightily. he pointed to the glittering crowds of nobles who stood around his throne. “oh yes,” was the comment of bertoldo, “they stand round your throne; so do hungry ants round a crab-apple, and with the same purpose,—to devour it.” and therewith he so satirized the condition of a king, that alboin threatened to have him whipped out of court. some rather sorry jests followed; but as they were rewarded with unaccountable peals of laughter, the lombard lords and ladies may be supposed to have been more merry, or much wiser, than we are. the riotous fun was checked for awhile, by the entrance of two women in search of the king and his royal justice. the subject in dispute was a crystal mirror, which was claimed by both, but which had been stolen by one from the other. alboin, being a most religious as well as gracious king, was, of course, reminded of the judgment of solomon, and thought he could not do better than imitate it. he first ordered the mirror to be broken into powder, and divided equally between the rival claimants; and then he commanded354 it to be delivered whole to the woman who had expressed regret that so splendid a mirror should be destroyed. the entire court was in ecstasy at this rather second-hand wisdom of the king, who, with more conceit than might have been expected in such a stern personage, looked at bertoldo and asked something tantamount to whether he was not a second daniel come to judgment?
“your excellent mightiness,” observed the fool, “can only be said to be an ass.” nevertheless, the king seems to have had the best of it, for bertoldo simply confined himself to abusing ladies generally, and the two who were lately plaintiff and defendant, in particular,—as impostors, whose wickedness was past imagining. thereupon the gallant monarch burst forth into a passionate panegyric on the entire female sex, dealing in warm terms and honeyed phrases, like those in a grand scena, by some enamoured tenore robusto, and which, set to music by a fashionable maestro, and trilled by the darling of the season, would make the fortune of mr. chappell, were he only lucky enough to secure the copyright.
“if i don’t make you change your tune before tomorrow night’s sleep,” said bertoldo, “gibbet me as high as haman.”
“be it so!” cried alboin; “by the bones of the wise kings, i will keep thee to thy bargain, sir wisdom. look to it.”
bertoldo flung himself on some straw in the royal stable: he was resolved not to go to sleep till he had provided for his triumph; and in five minutes a chuckle of satisfaction was suddenly succeeded by the loudest snore that had ever startled the affrighted ears of the steeds of alboin the king.
his plan was simple enough; he merely went, in the morning, to the lady who had been so self-denying in the affair of the mirror, and announced to her that the king had issued a decree by which every man was permitted to have seven wives. the announcement had the effect of infuriating355 the lady, and she lost no time in stirring up, not only the women of her own district, but half the city. these repaired, swift of foot and loud of tongue, to the palace, swept through its halls, and rushed into the sacred presence of alboin himself, who stood before his throne with his hand on his sword, as if in presence of an insurrection. bertoldo stood in one corner of the vast apartment, with a demure and satisfied look, feeling sure of the result.
if the words with which alboin was pelted by the ladies on this occasion be correctly given by the old chronicle, it is clear that freedom of speech was very fearlessly exercised by the remonstrants,—or rather, by the revilers. it was in vain that the king held his hand aloft, and essayed to speak. he was overwhelmed by a hurricane of screams, squalls, screeches, and reproaches, for issuing the decree in question. one loose-tongued termagant exclaimed above her sisters, that there would have been some sense in him, if he had conferred on every woman the right of taking seven husbands; but to allow every man to have seven wives!!—” and the very idea of such an outrage so worked upon the amiable furies, that they interrupted the loud speaker by a howl so shrill, so intense, so exasperating, that alboin, after stopping his ears with his gauntleted hands, gave a signal which his guards obeyed by charging the body of remonstrants, and driving them into the streets,—with much attendant ruffling of collars and disturbing of stomachers. when the hall was cleared, there remained bertoldo, looking still demurely at the king, and with an inquiring aspect about his expression. alboin seemed annoyed for a moment; but at length, smiling, he acknowledged that the fool was right, and that women were tigresses.
the revolt of the women, and the share that bertoldo had had therein, coming to the knowledge of alboin’s not very gentle queen, she sent for the jester, who, throughout the interview, kept up with her majesty, as was indeed his356 custom in most of the conversations in which he took part, a constant fire of proverbs. as he contrived to surpass the royal lady in this species of “capping,” she rather unfairly ordered him, under escort, to carry a letter to certain officials, which letter enjoined them to whip the bearer. at bertoldo’s urgent request, the queen condescended to add a postscript, whereby the scourgers were directed to spare the head, but by no means to be merciful in an opposite direction. when prisoner and escort reached the gaol, bertoldo stepped forward, letter in hand, announced himself as head of the company, and bade the hangman’s lackeys to lay lustily on his tail, or followers. the poor wretches were lashed till they were raw; and at this practical joke the court laughed, and all that was asked of bertoldo was, that he should maintain a tournament of words with alboin’s own official court fool.
this fool’s name, or nickname, was fagotto. he was short, fat, and bald; and he was the challenger of bertoldo. when the king acceded to his request, and ordered the duel of the two fools to take place, he remarked to fagotto, “now, proceed; but take heed not to resemble benevento, who went out to shear, and came home shorn.”
fagotto replied with a pompous boast, and then turning on his rival, assailed him with a species of amenities like those that used to pass between carnival fools on the paris boulevards, and before which every decent person fled. from this contest bertoldo issued triumphant; but the king again taxed his wit by ordering him to demonstrate in what way, as he had asserted, the daylight was whiter than milk, and stimulated him to success by promising him the bastinado if he failed.
bertoldo is said to have proved his assertion by a simple process. having access everywhere, he entered the king’s bedchamber at night, and closing all the blinds, placed a pail of milk in the middle of the room. alboin rising in the357 dark, overthrew the pail, and then calling lustily for daylight, bertoldo let the same in upon him, with the remark, that if the milk had been clearer than daylight, he would have seen the former without the aid of the latter. whereupon alboin rubbed his shins, shook his head, and supposed his philosophy was wrong.
bertoldo subsequently had to prove that the royal political system was quite as rickety as the royal philosophy. it seems that the ladies of the capital had united in demanding “their rights.” they insisted on the equality of women and men; and demanded therefore that in all matters of government they should be employed in the same way as their lords had hitherto been, exclusively. alboin had a soft heart, and was inclined to yield to the request; but bertoldo offered to show the incapacity of the petitioners to fill the offices to which they aspired, by a trick of his own devising, and according to his own office. he enclosed a bird in a casket, and delivering the same to a deputation of ladies, in the name of the queen, he informed them that their petition was granted, and that the first official duty confided to them was the guardianship of this casket. the ladies carried it off, full of delight and promises of fidelity. but they had no sooner reached the house of one of them, than, after a very little hesitation, in a fit of intense curiosity, they lifted the lid of the casket, and away flew the treasure.
their remorse was great—not that they had betrayed their trust, but that not one had observed what sort of bird it was; and that consequently their fault was irreparable. in a body, and with the queen at their head, they presented themselves before the king, imploring pardon. as before stated, alboin had a gentle heart where ladies were in the case; and he granted an unreserved pardon,—much to the disgust of the ungallant bertoldo, who declared that such a king was not worth rendering homage to, and that, for his part, he would never bow to him again. alboin, remembering the threat,358 assembled his court early on the following morning, and ordering the upper part of the open doorway to be covered with boards, so that any one entering must necessarily bow to the king, seated opposite, sent for bertoldo. when the fool arrived, he saw how it was intended to press a stooping homage out of him; but his ready wit amply served him, and swinging suddenly round, he entered the royal presence by “one turn astern!”
the other stories related of bertoldo, almost do outrage to romance, as they assuredly do to reason. of the more credible, and yet sufficiently silly, jokes, there is not one that is not told of other jesters, and much of both belongs probably to the history of fiction.
next to bertoldo, and far better known to light historians generally, stands joyous and unlucky gonella, the favourite yet ill-treated jester of borso, duke of ferrara, to whose service he was transferred from that of nicholas, count of este, the father of borso, who died in 1441.
borso was a coarse fellow, who savoured coarse jokes; and gonella, despite his own more refined taste, was obliged to supply his patron with that he best liked. hence the proverb, addressed to one who is too roughly playing the fool, “we are not now in the days of duke borso.”
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 if359 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 no360 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.”361 “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 the362 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 executioner363 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!”
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 would364 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 fare365 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 and366 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 scala367 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.
milan, like verona, had its jesters at court, but the only incident therewith worth repeating is, that at the court of duke francis sforza, the fool marchesina bore so striking a resemblance to the duke’s son-in-law, malatesta, that it was thought necessary always to send marchesina out of milan whenever malatesta repaired thither on a visit.
from the italian jesters we will, if my readers please, pass finally to those of households where we might least expect to find them, unless scripture could give warrant for their employment,—namely, priestly households where fools found homes.
