Poictiers, Triboulet the fool insults the outraged parent; and the old noble, robbed of his daughter, curses Triboulet the man. On this curse the whole piece turns, and from the time it is fulminated, there is little that ensues which is illustrative of the office and pleasantry of the buffoon, though all is highly dramatic, and Nemesis rules without restraint. The curse of the old Count smites Triboulet through his child, whom the King carries off, and whom the father slays by mistake for the royal seducer. The moral of the piece is defective, seeing that the buffoon, for a thoughtless trick of his office, is the only person most terribly punished. The King, who is the gay stage villain of the piece, escapes scot-free. It is like sending Leporello _ad inferos_, instead of Don Giovanni. If the Triboulet of Victor Hugo be full of brilliant inconsistencies and glittering contradictions, he is in many things what tradition represents him to have been. He flings smart sayings at marriage, laughs at the King’s pretensions to write verses, pushes or draws him into vice, and shoots a fool’s bolt at woman, by styling her, “a highly perfected devil.” His malice is illustrated by his delight at the opportunity offered him to cruelly rally the husbands whom his highly perfected devils outrage and betray. His humour is to comment and criticize, while others, and especially the King, enjoy life after their fashion. Between his own condition and that of the master whom he serves, he draws a distinction of which he might reasonably have been the author, saying to Francis “Vous êtes Heureux comme un roi, et moi comme un bossu.” That Victor Hugo was careful of representing Triboulet in his vocation of buffoon, according to the way in which the contemporaries of the “fou” had spoken of him, may be seen in the speech of M. de Pienne to Marot, who is, and was, fool in all things but the title, with enough of that wit which our own national poet alluded to as requisite for a man who aspired to play the character becomingly. De Pienne says to Marot:-- “J’ai lu dans votre écrit du siége de Peschière, Ces vers sur Triboulet, Fou de tête écornée, Aussi sage à trente ans que le jour qu’ il est né.” It is probable, therefore, that we find other reflections of the buffoon’s actual character and his bearing towards Francis, in the best passages connected with him and his vocation. Triboulet certainly exhibits a turn of his profession when, after drinking with the monarch, he boasts of possessing two advantages over him, that of not being drunk, and that of not being King. The well-known freedom which he invariably took with Francis, is not less pleasantly illustrated by his satire against scholars, when the King’s sister Margaret counselled him to surround himself with wise men, since he lacked the love of ladies. “C’est bien mal,” says the buffoon,--