Whether it was some such comment or some still worse joke that once angered the Duchess, I cannot say, but he had so offended her that she sent for him to her chamber, where she had stationed half-a-dozen of her maids, armed with sticks, and with orders to lay on the fool without mercy, as soon as he should appear. Gonella however saw, as soon as the door was opened, what was intended, and he cried out, “Ladies, my back is quite at your service; all the favour I ask is, that the one I kissed last will strike first, and that the most impudent hussey among you will lay on the heaviest.” Taken by surprise, each hesitated to strike; and Gonella tripped away to the echo of the Duchess’s laughter. That he well deserved the bastinado, is certain, if all be true that is told of his tricks to swindle honest shopkeepers out of goods and money. They were such tricks as no common shop-lifter would now stoop to, nor tradesmen be deceived by; but they earned the unprincipled fool many a scourging, and they seem to have been held derogatory to his profession, for there is record of a Florentine jester, named Mocceca, remonstrating with Gonella on the disgrace brought upon their common vocation by his flagrant want of honesty. “If honesty be the most profitable policy,” said Gonella, “by all means let us adopt it.” That his place was profitable, is pretty clear, from the fact of his betting a hundred crowns with his master, the Duke, that there were more doctors in Ferrara than there were members of any other profession. “Fool,” said Borso, “there are not half-a-dozen to be found in the city Directory.” “I will bring you a more correct list in three or four days,” said Gonella; and then the jester went, with his jaws bound up, and sat at the church door, and as every one asked him what he ailed, he answered, “The tooth-ache;” whereupon each questioner prescribed an infallible remedy, and passed on, Gonella writing down his name and address, instead of the prescription. At length he appeared, still with his jaws bound up, at the table of his master, who, hearing from what he suffered, declared that there was no remedy but extraction. Immediately, the fool put the Duke’s illustrious name on the list of Ferrara doctors, and reckoning them up, counted just three hundred. The great man laughed aloud, and told down his forfeited crowns with as much glee as if the joke had been worth paying for. It was at all events a more harmless jest than that which Gonella subsequently played, in return for a practical joke at the hands of the Duke. The latter, finding Gonella’s pony in the ducal stable, cut off its tail, and, as a comical revenge, the jester took the Duke’s mule, and cut off its upper lip. The princely owner was moved to anger, it is said; but when the two animals were paraded before him, their mutilated condition so touched the humane prince, that he took Gonella round the neck, and laughed till he was breathless.