We find one of the uses to which these official fools were put at this court, in a remark touching the costume of Triboulet. “His dress was not less eccentric than his person. In accordance with his secret occupation of purveyor of pleasures to the King, he adopted the colours of the reigning mistress, and dressed in something of the fashion of his master. His _justaucorps_ was of striped blue and white silk, fitting so tightly as to render his bodily deformity more conspicuous, and to excite more readily the laughter of all who looked upon him for the first time. On his back, thighs, and cap, were emblazoned the royal arms, and from his girdle of gilt leather hung the symbols of his office,--a club, a wooden sword, and a bagpipe. Another distinguishing mark of his office might be seen and heard in the little silver bells attached to his conical cap, his wand with a fool’s head at the end of it, and his long-toed red morocco slippers. He could not advance a step, nor turn his body ever so slightly, without setting these bells in motion, and thereby making a noise louder than that of ten mules in full trot. Triboulet was proud of functions which placed him near the King, and which he would not have exchanged for a ducal coronet or an episcopal mitre. He used to say of himself, that he was ‘the most noble in France, commencing from the lowest rank.... Keep duchies, countships, baronies, and marquisates to yourselves, Triboulet is sovereign lord of all at whom he mocks.’” The Triboulet of Paul Lacroix is probably more like the original Triboulet than the half sentimental half savage hero of Victor Hugo’s play, ‘Le Roi s’amuse.’ In this piece, the “fou” is rendered malicious by a three-piled misery,--he is infirm, deformed, and an official court fool. He hates all his superiors because they _are_ his superiors, and detests those beneath him,--detests men generally, in fact, because they are not hunchbacked, like himself. He excites rank against rank, and all against the King, and the King against all. He is the bad genius of Francis, whom he corrupts, and the scourge of the nobility, the dishonour of whose families he works through the King. He is Mephistophiles without superhuman power, for the lack of which he makes up by the intensity of his devilishness. Victor Hugo himself compares the buffoon and the King to a man holding a plaything and mortally wounding those among whom he capers with his toy. The buffoon is altogether without heart; yet not quite altogether, for there is one point on which he is as tender-hearted, as ever father could be who had an only daughter dearer to him far than his own life. Yet he has no heart for other sires whose love for their daughters is ardent, but who would rather see them coffined at their feet than crowned and dishonoured. So, when the Count de Saint-Vallier denounces Francis, in open court, for having brought disgrace upon his child, Diane de