That neck itself was soon to suffer; and there seems like retribution in the fact. Borso lay ill, and his medical advisers pronounced his case hopeless, because they were too ignorant to cure him. His malady was a raging fever. Nature at first helped him a little, and the prince was enabled to repair to a country residence, where his fever settled into a fierce quartan; but he was not prevented from taking exercise. The whole ducal court was in sorrow because of the condition of their rough but not ungenerous master, and no one grieved more than Gonella. The latter heard that the doctors had asserted that nothing but a sudden fright would shake the malady out of the body of the prince. But then, who would dare to suddenly frighten such a terrible potentate as Borso of Ferrara? No one but the poor fool; and he did it effectually. While walking in the garden with his moody master, trying in vain to make him smile, the two came up to a deep lake, where the Duke usually took boat, and as he was about stepping in, Gonella, without a moment’s hesitation, pushed the Duke into the water. Borso roared aloud for succour, screamed in his agony, and cursed the fool, who ultimately, with aid he had prepared, drew him out. Borso was carried to bed, where he fell into such a perspiration from his fright and exertion, that he got rid of his fever, and rose free from any disagreeable symptom except his wrath against the jester. The latter was condemned to exile, with a sentence of death in case of his being found upon the soil of Ferrara. Gonella went into banishment, which he bore with so much impatience, that after a few months he resolved to return,--without incurring the threatened consequences. He thus contrived it: filling a cart with the earth of the Paduan district in which he had been sojourning, he rode boldly into Ferrara, where, upon being captured, he pertinaciously maintained, as he sat in the cart, that he was still upon the soil of Padua. Roquelaure, the French court wit, is, erroneously, said to have copied this trick, and with better result than was encountered by Gonella. The Duke ordered him to be seized and to be beheaded. “I will only pay fright with fright,” said Borso; “so, when his neck is on the block, let fall upon it, not the axe, but a drop of water; then bid my fool arise. I shall be glad to congratulate him on his and my recovery.” All was done as the Duke directed. Gonella, made sad for the first time in his life, was solemnly conveyed to the scaffold. All the usual ceremonies of the lugubrious drama were then enacted, and these over, the poor jester, with a shake and a sigh, laid down the old insignia of his office, and, blindfolded, placed his head upon the block. The executioner stepped up, and, from a phial, let fall a single drop of water on the fool’s neck. Then arose a burst of laughter and a clapping of hands, and shouts to Gonella to get up and thank the Duke for the life given him.