The Emperor Henry III., surnamed the Black, despised the Court fool--“a licensed scoundrel,” he said, “who obtained for his nonsense rewards that had never properly been showered on the benefactors of mankind.” And Christian I. of Denmark once remarked, that if he were in want of Court fools he had only to give license to his courtiers, who were capable of exhibiting themselves as the greatest fools in Europe. Frederick Barbarossa hated Court fools; and in France, Philip Augustus and Charles VII. had no sympathy for mirth-makers of this description. On the other hand, few sovereigns extended greater favour to their fools than Maximilian I.; and yet, as it has been remarked, “he found as much peril as profit in his intercourse with them.” On one occasion, when he was loading a fowling-piece, his house fool coming into his presence with a lighted candle was about to place it on an open cask of powder; and at another time his Majesty was playing at snowballs with his fool, when the latter threw one so violently at his right eye, that the imperial sight was damaged for a month. His principal fool or jester was Konrad, popularly styled “The Soldier and Wit of Maximilian,” for, on more than one occasion, he proved himself wiser in his generation than some of the political advisers who counselled their imperial master. Sometimes, however, Konrad’s jokes were of so astounding a nature that he would scarcely have dared to make them on his own responsibility. Such an instance occurred at a banquet given in honour of the Venetian ambassadors, and their Government, who had presented to the Emperor a costly goblet of the purest crystal; when Konrad, in the midst of the revelry and mirth, contrived to hook his spur in the tablecloth, and dancing off to pull with him everything on the table, the crystal goblet lying in fragments on the ground. The ambassadors demanded the immediate punishment of Konrad, but Maximilian refused to gratify them, for he remarked, “the thing was only of glass, and that glass is very fragile. Had it been of gold, it would not have broken; and, even if it had, its fragments at least would have been valuable.” A somewhat similar story is told of the French wit Brusquet, at a banquet given in the house of the Duke of Alva, when the Cardinal of Lorraine had negotiated the peace of Cateau-Cambresis with Philip II. of Spain. Brusquet at the close of the dessert jumped on the table, and, laying himself flat, rolled himself up in the cloth with plates, spoons, &c., and fell off at the other end of the table. Philip II. took the matter in good part, and laughed immoderately, ordering that Brusquet should be allowed to leave the room with what he had carried off under the cloth. Although oftentimes Konrad was open to reproach for his extraordinary conduct, there can be no doubt he loved his imperial master, and in emergency Maximilian had no truer friend.