The great Condé furnishes us with another example of this class of fools. A village schoolmaster once came to him with an address. As the speaker bowed low, on commencing his speech, Condé, quick as thought, vaulted over his back. With equal rapidity, the orator turned and continued his speech, but Condé’s folly was uppermost, and laying a light hand upon the pedagogue’s shoulder, over he bounded again, lightly as an equestrian in a “daring act” of the harmless arena. The baffled speaker then gave up the attempt, and left the princely fool to the enjoyment of the recollection of his folly. The father of the last Duke of Mantua, Charles III., was another of those illustrious personages who preferred being his own fool, and after a singular fashion too. He loved to go abroad in the dirtiest of disguises, and accompanied by an escort of equally ill clad bullies for his defence. It was his sport to assail all he met in the coarsest terms, and when some persons thus assaulted, more impatient than others, fell upon him in return, with tongue or cudgel, he would laugh till he was sore, and then his escort came to the rescue. On other occasions, he would enter the shops of vendors of very breakable materials, and taking up mirrors or drinking glass, or any other fragile matter that came to hand, he would let it fall to the ground, and find double provocation to laughter in the ruin he had committed and in the expressions of unrestrained abuse which were showered on him in consequence. Something of madness must have lurked under this; but in the next buffoon we shall only see a development of natural disposition.