A noted fool of Henri III. was Chicot, who, indeed, was not only his jester but his friend, and, according to Dumas, his protector. In the same capacity he entered the service of Henri IV.; and it was his bravery at the siege of Rouen that cost him his life. It appears that he made Henri of Lorraine, Count of Chaligny, prisoner, and leading him to the King, said, “Here I make you a present of the Count, keep what I took and now give you!” So enraged was the Count at being captured by a Court fool that he gave Chicot a violent blow on the head with the hilt of his sword, from the effects of which he died. Jeanne, Queen of Charles I. of France, maintained a female fool named Artaude du Puy. At the Court of Henri IV. there was a Mathurine who held the office of female fool for the amusement of the Court, and who is said to have employed her wit in laughing people out of the Huguenot faith into Roman Catholicism. But this sort of foolery almost cost her her life. It seems she was present in 1594 when Jean Chastel wounded the King, and almost shared the fate of the would-be assassin. Henri, well aware of her zeal for the Roman Catholic Church, and that she only regarded him as half a Romanist, ordered her arrest as an accomplice, but she proved her innocence, and was set free. Much merriment was caused at the Court of Louis XIII. by Maret, who imitated the Gascon twang of Gascon nobles; and with Louis XIV. we come to the last of the official jesters, L’Angeli, originally a stable-boy, and whose memory has been thus immortalised by Boileau:-- “Un poête 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.” Although on the death of L’Angeli in 1640 Louis XIV. appointed no successor, we occasionally meet with amateur fools who kept the Court amused. Thus Vardis, “after throwing the whole Court and household of the King into confusion by his audacious gallantries, was exiled to Provence for nearly thirty years,” and the Duke de Roquelaure figures in many jest-books as a buffoon at the Court of Louis XIV. When Don John of Austria accompanied Pimentel to Paris to negotiate the marriage of Maria Theresa of Spain with the young Louis XIV., he introduced at Court Capiton, a Spanish _folle_, whose wit and jokes were much appreciated. Louis enjoyed her fun and merriment, and she was so popular that no party was thought complete without her.