Again, if we look to the fools of Cardinals in England, we shall not find them particularly distinguished for happiness of wit. The best thing uttered by Cardinal Wolsey’s jester, Saxton, was his wish that Wolsey might become Pope. “For you see,” said he, “Peter’s father being a fisherman, he ordered all men to eat fish in Lent, for the sake of his father’s trade; now, your Eminence’s father having been a butcher, we should hope, for a similar reason, to be ordered to eat meat all the year round.” This is at least as good as anything that is told of foreign fools in the palaces of Cardinals; and I may add, that Wolsey’s fool was prophet also, if we may credit the story in which we are told, that, once, as the Cardinal was contemplating the design for a tomb intended for himself, the fool remarked, “The tomb is well enough, but your Eminence’s bones will never lie in it,” which proved to be true. Cardinal Richelieu possessed a better taste in jesters than Wolsey. His buffoons were men of wit and learning, and the latter were admirably combined in the Abbé de Boisrobert, who brought to the Cardinal his daily dish of city scandal, amused him by his imitations of the peculiarities of Richelieu’s friends, wrote half his tragedies for him, knew more of the drama than of divinity, was so constantly present at the theatre that it came to be called the “Cathedral of Boisrobert,” and finally, who founded the French Academy. The Abbé was no ordinary fool, but an incomparable wit; and when he was out of favour with Richelieu, and the latter was ill, his physician wrote the simple but indispensable prescription, “Recipe Boisrobert!” If Cardinals had their jesters, we must not be surprised to find them in episcopal houses. In Germany, in the 16th and 17th centuries, some of them exhibited the usual bent of the class for practical joking; some were famous for their feats of strength; others for their blasphemy; one or two were remarkable for their simplicity; but none of them can be said to have been distinguished for wit. I have already mentioned Klaus Narr in a ducal household; he was subsequently jester to Ernst, Archbishop of Magdeburg. In this service, if he did nothing else, he at least gave rise to a proverbial saying. He had covered the floor of the Archbishop’s room with feathers from a bed which he had ripped open. The prelate, on entering the apartment, angrily inquired who had done this; and as, at the moment, the Archbishop’s dog Lepsch, which had been in the chamber the whole time of Klaus Narr’s freak, rose from his couchant position, and opened his mouth, Klaus called to him angrily, “Lepsch, boy, don’t let out the secret!” The prelate laughed; and the expression became a proverb, to be applied in cases where silence was recommended.