The smaller German Courts, says Dr. Doran,[131] followed the fashion set by the emperors, and Lips was so great a favourite that he actually sat in the council-chamber when the Margrave Philip was presiding. As may be gathered, however, from the following incident, the position of a fool was not always an enviable one. Thus when the Duke Ludwig of Bavaria was murdered on the bridge over the Danube at Kehlheim in 1231, the perpetrators of the crime laid it on the Duke’s fool, Stich, who was charged with having stabbed his patron with a bread-knife, because he had exasperated him by his bad jokes. “Ah,” said the unfortunate man, 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.” It would seem that as late as the sixteenth century the fool could be bought and sold, for when Louis II. of Hungary visited Erlau in 1520, he found that the governor possessed one of the best-trained hawks and one of the merriest fools that he had ever seen, both of which he obtained for between three and four thousand pounds. Another famous fool was Jenni von Stocken, who was attached to the household of Leopold the Pious. And of Killian, the fool of Albert of Austria, it is said that, when he was asked why, being so wise, he should play the fool, he replied, “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.” But, as it has been often remarked, although the fool was mostly in request for his tricks and his waggery, he was frequently employed as a political adviser; and when the Elector Frederick was threatened with invasion, he consulted his fool Klaus as to whether he should treat with the enemy, who said to him, “Give me your best mantle, and I will tell you.” Whereupon Klaus tore the mantle in two, and presented himself before his master with one half hanging from his shoulders. The Elector inquiring what he meant by so strange an act, Klaus replied, “If you treat with the foe, you will soon look as ridiculous with half your dominions as I do with half a cloak.” The unbridled language of the Court fool was oftentimes as amazing as it was insulting; for when one morning Philip, Landgrave of Baden, complained of a headache to his fool Peter after a drinking bout, and asked him his remedy, the latter replied, “Drink again to-day.” “Then I shall only suffer more to-morrow,” added the Prince. “Then,” rejoined Peter, “you must drink still more.” “But how would such a remedy end?” asked the Landgrave. “Why,” said Peter, “in your being a bigger fool than I am.”