Part 28

Finally, it may be said that the hand of Konrad was as heavy as his tongue was sharp. One scene in the life of this jester, exhibits him in a melodramatic light, that reminds one of the days, or nights, of “Raymond and Agnes, or the Bleeding Nun.” Konrad was once compelled to pass the night at a sorry inn, in a wood, through whose intricacies he had lost his way. It was kept by brigands; but the joyousness of Konrad won him the heart of the waiting-maid, who bade him beware of the male-servant who would come to take away his supper-tray, and who would extinguish the light, as if by accident, in order that the poor traveller might be murdered in the dark, by the landlord and his fellows. Konrad, by good luck, had with him a dark-lantern; this he lighted and concealed beneath his coat; and when the incident occurred for which the maid had told him to be prepared, the jester went to work in terrible earnest. As soon as the candle had been extinguished, he turned on his lantern, and saw himself in presence of three ruffians with very menacing looks and stilettoes. Kunz’s own poniard was quicker than theirs: having buried it in the bosom of the bandit nearest to him, he addressed himself to the landlord, of whose companions one lay dead at his feet, and the other had suddenly fled. The traveller did not kill his host, but bound him tightly, with the ready aid of the female servant, who was herself a sort of prisoner, and delivered him to that justice which begins with much needless form, but which has a rope and a noose at the end of it.

It was soon after this exploit that Konrad von den Rosen lost his Imperial master, Maximilian. The poor fool loved his patron; “I followed him near for a long while,” said he, “and I will follow him closely now.” And so it was! Konrad followed Maximilian, when Germany, too busy to think of him, was talking of Charles V., Luther, and the Diet of Worms.

The last-named Emperor, however, was himself no illiberal patron of official fools and dwarfs. Both figured, like living caricatures, amid the splendours of his Imperial court. One of the latter, who seems to have been both dwarf and buffoon, a Pole grandiosely named Corneille de Lithuanie, is spoken of as having figured with such distinction at a tournament held in Brussels on the first Sunday in February 1545, as to have carried off the second prize. The first was gained by the Count d’Egmont, for having broken the greatest number of lances; but on Corneille was conferred the second, for having been the next best in the ranks, and for general gallantry.

Charles had native fools in his other dominions. In Spain, we meet with that excellent jester, Don Francis; also with Pedro de San Erbas and Zapata. There was another in the service of Charles, named Pape Theun, who had originally exercised some office of trust. Of these, Francis was the wittiest; but it is said that the sharpness of his wit brought about his assassination. He was certainly mortally wounded by assassins, but his wit kept by him to the last. He was assailed at his own door, and his wife, hearing the consequent disturbance, cried out from within to know what was the matter. “Nothing at all, mistress,” exclaimed the fool, “they have merely killed your husband.” Another fool, Perico de Ayala, who was a retainer in the house of the Marquis de Vilena, attended on Don Francis while he was dying, and piously asked him to pray for poor Perico in the next world. “I will, I will,” said Francis; “but, Perico, suppose you tie a string round my little finger, lest I forget it.”

This specimen of wit does not say much for the official fool; and it is still worse in the case of Pedro de San Erbas, the only incident connected with whose office, with which I am acquainted, reveals rather the wit of his master than his own. Thus we are told, that after the abdication of Charles, he held a court at Valladolid, to receive the farewell compliments of the nobles and ladies of the vicinity. When the ceremony had concluded, Pedro approached to take leave of his old patron. At seeing him, Charles took off his hat, and Pedro thereupon asked if the act was one of courtesy, or simply to indicate that he was no longer Emperor. “Neither, Pedro,” answered the prince; “I do it to signify that all I can give you now is this simple token of civility.”

Of Zapata nothing is known save his remark when Charles, who owed his entire household a year’s salary, once observed to his courtiers, after teasing the fool for a long time, “He will soon pay me back again.” “Ah!” exclaimed Zapata, “what can I pay back, when not a soul under your roof has received a doit of their salary for a twelvemonth?” This remark showed the bold freedom rather than the wittiness of Zapata’s tongue. As for Pape Theun, he seems to have been rather a practical than a loquacious joker. He was insolent rather than witty of speech, and when this insolence brought him into disgrace, the jokes he played to recover the goodwill of his master were coarse jokes, acceptable to coarse people in coarse times, but the repeating of which would assuredly not be acceptable to my readers.

To return to the fools who exclusively belonged to the Imperial court of Germany, the next remarkable individual of the class is Nelle, attached to the household of Matthias II. Nelle not only attended the celebrated meeting of the States, assembled at Ratisbon in 1613, but he presented to the Emperor a volume, exquisitely bound, which contained, as he said, the record of all that had been accomplished by the statesmen. Matthias opened the book, and found it all blank paper, “Why, there is nothing written here,” said the monarch. “Exactly so,” answered the fool, “because there was nothing done _there_; and so my record is truthful.” I cannot say, however, that this was so witty as the reply of the Speaker of the Commons to Elizabeth, when the latter, at the end of a session, asked him what they had passed; “An it please your Majesty,” said Mr. Speaker, “we have passed two months and a half!”

Another story is told of Nelle. In his moody master’s reign Lutherans and Papists were at open strife; and a Bishop Clesel, in Vienna, was excessively indignant that the sheep of his own particular pasture flocked every Sunday out of the capital, to listen to a Lutheran monk in the neighbouring village of Hörnals. In great wrath, and open court, he besought the Emperor to prohibit the people from leaving Vienna on the Sabbath for the village in question. Matthias replied that he did not know how this was to be effected; and looking at the fool, he added, “Nelle, can your wit help us in this matter?” “It is the easiest thing in the world,” rejoined Nelle; “you have only to send the Bishop to Hörnals, and bring the Lutheran monk to preach in the capital, and you will not find a soul desirous of leaving Vienna on the Sunday.”

The Emperors certainly allowed a license to their jesters which no one else dared to take advantage of. Thus, at the court of Ferdinand II., we hear of a silly courtier who endeavoured to amuse the illustrious circle by his imbecilities. Jonas, Ferdinand’s favourite fool, began answering him according to his folly. But this so offended the noble simpleton of half a hundred quarters, that he exclaimed, “Fellow, be silent; I never stop to talk with a fool!” “Well, I do,” replied Jonas, bending over the courtier’s seat as he stood behind the pompous gentleman’s chair, “and therefore be good enough to listen to me in your turn.”

This courtier did not resemble Charles VI., at whose court the greatest favour was enjoyed, not indeed by a professional wearer of cap and bells, but by a saucy wit of the name of Steffens. The latter had been a clerk, and his readiness of repartee had so endeared him to the monarch, that he elevated him to the rank of Count, and so entirely surrendered himself to the jesting Count’s company, that none of the ministers, not even Prince Eugene himself, could obtain an audience, without being previously kept waiting an hour. I have read however more of Steffens’ reputation for wit than examples of the wit itself. Möser cites an instance which seems to me to have more impertinence in it than true humour. For example, in 1724, Count von Mikosch died of poison. “What is popularly said of Mikosch’s death?” asked Charles of Steffens. “Well,” answered the latter, “I will tell you, if you will make me a present.” The Emperor put some gold pieces in the hand of this mercenary fellow, who rejoined: “The people say that it was the devil who carried off Mikosch; and they add, that if he had lived longer, and you had continued to trust him and follow his counsel, the devil would speedily have come for your Majesty also.” It will be seen by this, that whatever humour there may have been under the ancient fool’s cap, there was not much of it to be found beneath the coronet of this lackered Count Steffens.

The smaller courts of Germany, as a matter of course, followed the fashion set by the Emperors. At Anspach the Margraves were ordinarily their own fools; but towards the end of the last century the little court found intense delight in the religious folly, if I may so speak, of a poor ex-artist named Bayer. He was reasonable and witty on every subject except prophecy and the Apocalypse; and it was precisely from his madness on these points that the Margrave and his courtiers drew most delight, till indeed they nearly drove the poor fellow mad on every other subject as well.

Baden, too, had its fools of various degrees; and indeed the Margrave Philip kept two, Lips and Hänsel von Gingen. The wit or fun of the latter seems to have consisted in his pride, which would never permit him to sit at meat with other jesters who accompanied their lords to the court at Baden. Lips was so great a favourite that he sat in the council-chamber when Philip was presiding. Lips was once asked his opinion on a vexed question which the counsellors could not solve--the admission of the Jews into Baden. “Oh, let them in, let them in,” said Lips, “and then we shall have all religions among us, even a little Christianity!”

The jester had occasionally to endure a very superabundant measure of hardship, as for example, when policy or revenge brought about the murder of Duke Ludwig of Bavaria, on the bridge over the Danube at Kehlheim, in 1231. The great but hidden perpetrators of the deed thought it convenient to lay the crime upon the Duke’s fool, Stich. He was told that his ducal master having exasperated him by sundry bad jokes, Stich had suddenly stabbed the Duke with his bread-knife. “Ah!” said the poor fellow, as he stood at the gallows, “that some one ought to be hanged for murdering the Duke, I can very well comprehend; but that that some one should be _me_, I do not comprehend at all.”

To another of Louis of Bavaria’s fools, the King of Bohemia once gave a goblet of such strong wine that the tipsy jester declared he could be content to be a fool through eternity, if he might only always be permitted to drink such wine. But this is far inferior to the quiet observation of the Connaught man, after a long pull at a whisky flask; that, had his mother first brought him up on such beverage, he would never have been weaned. And the Bavarian is not less inferior in his wit to another Hibernian, who, on hearing a senseless drunken man pronounced dead, coolly remarked, “Dead is he? I wish I had half his disease.”

It must be confessed, however, that it is difficult to place fairly the German fools or joy-makers before a foreign public. Many of their brightest sayings turn on the point of some sparkling pun which, when rendered into English, is, as the Germans themselves would say, for a translation, completely “overset.” On the other hand, the feats of some of these joy-makers are incredible, although related in solemn Latin by grave bishops, like Dubravius, the diocesan of Olmütz. This prelate speaks at great length, in his ‘History of Bohemia,’ of a certain Zytho, who was brought to the Bohemian court by the Emperor Wenceslaus, in 1389. In that century, and in that which preceded as well as that which followed it, the court at Prague took most delight, not in witty jesters, but in astounding conjurors, jugglers, magicians, and sorcerers. Individuals of this quality were retained in the sovereign’s household, and their achievements were of a nature to do credit to the professions which they exercised. It was when a body of these were exhibiting in presence of Wenceslaus, then on a visit at Prague, that the Emperor produced his own wonderful man, Zytho, ordering him to excel, if he could, those rivals in his vocation. Zytho (so we are seriously told by the episcopal historian) went quietly up to the most accomplished of the wonder-workers, and--swallowed him! The Duke of Bavaria was angry at thus being deprived of his principal performer; and Zytho, at the command of Wenceslaus, reproduced him after a fashion that stirred to thundering laughter that unrefined assembly. The Bishop further tells us that Zytho could change his shape at will; produce any animal required, out of any material, and, in short, work marvels in which the prelate believes, and I do not. On one occasion, at a court banquet, he changed the hands of various of the guests into hoofs, in order to prevent their taking up the costly viands provided; and on another occasion, seeing a courtier put his head out of window, Zytho made spring from his forehead such a gigantic pair of antlers that the poor gentleman could not draw his head in again, whereby, says the right reverend historian, he produced such laughter as was _never heard_ in Bohemia,--the which I can very well believe. I will repeat one other tale recounted of him, as it gave rise to a proverb which I have myself heard applied in Bohemia. Zytho, procuring some wisps of straw, transformed them into swine, which he sold at a good price to a baker named Michael. Zytho simply recommended the purchaser not to take the swine down to the water, which of course Michael did on the first opportunity, out of curiosity, to see the consequence. And he saw it: the swine no sooner touched the water than they were all again transformed into wisps of straw, and went floating away down the stream. Away too went Michael in search of Zytho, whom he found fast asleep on a bench, but at whose leg he pulled so lustily, in order to arouse him, that the leg, thigh and all, came away, and the enraged Zytho summoned him before a magistrate, who awarded him very competent damages. Hence the proverb, applied by a Bohemian to any one who has played him false or put a trick upon him, “You’ll get as much profit from that, as Michael did from the swine.”

Such were the stories rather than the deeds which gave delight to the Ducal court of Bohemia a few centuries ago. According to tradition, Zytho was ultimately carried off by his arch-patron, the devil; not however so much because of his sorcery and satanic deeds, as because he fell into the heresy of John Huss, who, according to the Roman Catholics of that day, and the _Univers_ of this, was himself an agent of Lucifer.

My readers may remember that a pagan Roman Emperor left to a decision of the Senate the question whether Christianity should or should not be tolerated in the Roman dominions. In Iceland, too, the same question was submitted to a similar process, and in both cases it was carried in the affirmative, by narrow majorities. In Bohemia, one similar, but less important in degree, was left to be decided by the issue of a contest between two court fools. In 1461, the Hungarian King, Mathias Corvinus, and the Bohemian King, George Podiebrad, met in conference at Prague. The latter, a Reformer, was the father-in-law of Corvinus, a Roman Catholic, and each had a capacious hut erected, in which, by turns, the august parties, illustriously attended, carried on a course of debates, disputes, hard words, and jollification. From the Pope’s Nuncio down to the two court fools of their majesties, all took active part in every circumstance of the conference. One of the knotty points under discussion was that of religion,--the Reformed or the Roman Catholic.

“Let the two fools fight, and decide it by single combat,” said the Bohemian counsellor, Isdengo, who was secretly in the pay of Corvinus. “Let the two fools settle it!” cried the counsellor. The Papal Nuncio had the decency to protest against the proposition. But the two sovereigns, lacking excitement, and weary with last night’s banquet, thought the idea excellent. The fools were accordingly commanded to fall-to and do their best in behalf of their respective forms of faith. After exasperating each other by sallies of irritating wit, they grappled and commenced wrestling. The spectators stood anxiously looking on while, by such singular argument, the question of the Sacrament in one or both kinds was being discussed. The Bohemian Utraquists were in high spirits, for their champion was a gigantic fellow, while his opponent, the little Hungarian, was not stouter built than ordinary strong men. He maintained the contest, however, manfully, and when the course of combat passed from wrestling to hard blows, he dealt one so well placed, that it would have upset the Utraquist champion, had he not been promptly upheld by a Bohemian in the rear.

Thereupon the whole Hungarian faction roared out, “Shame! Unfair!” etc. The Bohemians shouted loudly in an opposite sense. From exclamations, both parties fell to their swords, and the whole company were speedily hacking at each other, while the fools sat down and laughed at both sides. Their respective royal masters had great difficulty in appeasing the tumult and postponing the debate. Meanwhile, many a good fellow had got a hole in his side or his throat, from which his life-blood went trickling; and, finally, Isdengo was banished for making the proposition, by which he had left a Sacramental question to the arbitrement of a couple of jesters.

The fool still meddled with religious matters, and Killian, the jester of King Ladislaus of Hungary, once lectured the Bohemian sovereign George von Podiebrad, as the Hussite monarch stood by the side of the Roman Catholic Ladislaus, at a mass in the cathedral at Breslau. “I see,” whispered Killian to George, “with what sort of a face you look at our service; but I cannot see your heart. So tell me, do you not think our religion better than your own? See the nobles, princes, kings, who follow it. Had you not better join with them than with your Bohemian Reformers? Can a few men like these be of more sound understanding than the whole Christian Church? Let noble knight as you are join with noble knight, and not with the dirty mob of Reformers.”

“Friend Killian,” said George, “if you say this unprompted by others, you are not such a fool as you pretend to be; but if you have been moved to it by others, tell them from me, that I act according to my conscience, am responsible to God only for my belief, and that my trust is in Him alone. What I profess, I firmly believe; and were I to change, I should be not only fool, but knave; and I see no cause, cousin Killian, why I should either make myself like unto you or unto those who moved you to this bold step of yours. Keep to your folly, Fool, and I will keep to my belief.”

It is certain that, as late as the sixteenth century, the court or house fool was still a serf or thrall, and could be bought and sold. We have a well-known instance of this, which may be mentioned here. When Louis II. of Hungary (Louis I. of Bohemia) visited Erlau, in 1520, he found that the governor there possessed one of the best trained hawks and one of the merriest fools that Louis had ever seen; and so well pleased was he with them, that he offered to purchase both. We can only approximately judge of the value of the fool, as the price given for him and the bird is set down in the sum total. There was a good deal of haggling, but the money paid down by the King was 40,000 gulden--between three and four thousand pounds.

Looking in at another minor court, we discover that “Frederick with the bitten cheek,” a Thuringian prince, was partly indebted to a court fool for the scar from which he got his name. It happened that his father, Albert, Landgrave of Thuringia, loved a lady, Cunegunda, better than he did his wife, Margaret, daughter of the Emperor Frederick II. The court fool seems to have been a menial, since I find him described as a carrier of wood and water to the Wartburg, where Margaret resided. Cunegunda so wrought upon the fool by terror, that he consented to murder the Landgrave’s wife; but he only entered her room to reveal to her the conspiracy, and to ask forgiveness. Poor Margaret, aware that her life was not safe, since her rival, Cunegunda von Eisenberg, had resolved to take it, resolved on immediate flight; and it was in her eagerly kissing her little son Frederick before she escaped, that she bit his cheek, and left for ever thereon the testimony of her terror and affection.

“She, wanting wit, and frantic with affright, Would fain have kiss’d, but, mad with grief, did bite.”

The name of the faithful fool is not given; but he is said to have lived in her service, during the few months she survived, at Frankfort-on-the-Maine.

The most renowned fool of the following century was Jenni von Stocken, who was attached to the household of Leopold the Pious. He was greatly esteemed by his master, and often gave him counsel which would have profited him had he been more ready to follow it. Jenni strongly advised Leopold against entering the Swiss defiles before securing his return therefrom, in case of accident. The issue of the battle of Sempach, A.D. 1386, showed that a fool’s advice would have been worth taking.

Nearly all von Stocken’s sayings and doings are attributed to various jesters of succeeding centuries. This, too, was the case with Killian, the fool of Albert of Austria. But there is one saying which is undoubtedly Killian’s own. He was a strangely eccentric fellow, and some one asked him why, being so profoundly wise a personage, he should play the fool. “Ah! there it is,” said Killian; “The more thoroughly I play the fool, the wiser do men account me; and there is my son, who thinks himself wise, and whom everybody knows to be a fool.”

It may perhaps be safely asserted, that of all the court jesters at the lesser courts of Germany, Klaus von Ranstadt, or Klaus _Narr_, “the fool,” was the most famous. He flourished at the electoral court of Saxony at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. He served as fool to four successive Electors. The first of these, the Elector Ernest, met with Klaus when he was keeping geese. The Prince was passing through Ranstadt with a great number of horses, men, and waggons, when Klaus, wishing to see the sight, and unwilling to leave his geese, tied all the young ones by the neck to his girdle, and with two old geese under his arms, he stood to view the procession. The Prince laughed, questioned the goosekeeper, who had strangled his young charge, and was so delighted at the sharp replies he received, that he engaged him at once as his fool, to the great delight of the grave elders of the place, who declared that Klaus kept the whole district in a continual uproar of idle laughter by his tricks and waggery.

His tricks and his waggery, however, have frequently a coarse and sometimes an unintelligible character. They have been published at various times, and one sample will serve to show how Klaus performed his office.