The freedom with which the fool treated his great patron is seen in the incident at the card-table, at which Kunz was playing, the monarch standing by him the while. The game, at which much money was staked, was won by _him_, who under certain circumstances held, and could play, four kings. Kunz had only three, but after playing his third, he suddenly seized upon Maximilian, and crying, “Here is my fourth and winning king,” swept the whole of the stakes into the pockets of his white trunk-hose, slashed with scarlet. Then throwing his light-blue cap upon his head, and buckling to his girdle the sword, outside whose sheath he carried knife and fork, and pulling together his blue and yellow vest, and fingering complacently his ample and well-curled beard, he walked off laughingly, every tiny bell in his bonnet ringing merrily to his laughter, as he passed along. If all Konrad’s jokes had been as harmless, albeit as bold as this, there would have been little wherewith to reproach him. But some of his jests will not bear repeating, and others are only remarkable for their silliness. Some were quiet and telling; as when a too grossly flattering genealogist curried favour with the Emperor, by showing him a pedigree which traced his descent from Noah.--“Bravo!” exclaimed Von den Rosen, who was present, “then the Kaiser and I are cousins, through the patriarch. I did not know I was of half such good blood!” Maximilian smiled approvingly on the fool, and then contemptuously on Master Johann Stabius, poet and genealogist, who had thought to get crowns from a King, and only obtained sly reproaches from a fool.