When Cortez first visited the court of Montezuma, he found there various instances of high civilization:--among others, light ladies, strong drinks, court fools, and a spirit of infidelity against the established church, inspired by an influence called the “Rational Owl.” The Aztec monarch resembled Heliogabalus in one respect;--“he had a museum,” says Brantz Mayer, in his excellent work, ‘Mexico, Aztec, Spanish, and Republican,’ “in which, with an oddity of taste unparalleled in history, there had been collected a vast number of human monsters, cripples, dwarfs, albinos, and other freaks and caprices of nature.” Bernal Diaz saw the monarch at dinner, and among the incidents recorded by the old Spaniard, is, that, “at different intervals during the time of dinner, there entered certain Indians, hump-backed, very deformed and ugly, who played tricks of buffoonery; and others, who they said were jesters.” The fashion of maintaining the latter was followed by the nobles. “The principal men,” says Acoste, quoted by Prescott, “had also buffoons and jugglers in their service, who amused them, and astonished the Spaniards by their feats of dexterity and strength.” Montezuma patronized rather the witty buffoons than the skilful jugglers. “Indeed, he used to say, that more instruction was to be gathered from them than from wiser men, for they dared to tell the truth.” Prescott adds in a note, founded on Clavigero, that “the Aztec mountebanks had such repute, that Cortez sent two of them to Rome, to amuse his Holiness, Clement VII.” This was only an exchange of personages of similar profession, for the European official house fool had already been imported into America. In 1519, at St. Jago, when Velasquez the governor was beginning to be suspicious of the designs of Cortez to supplant him, the two great men were walking together towards the port. As they passed on, the fool of the former called aloud, “Have a care, Master Velasquez, or we shall have to go a-hunting, some day or other, after this same captain of ours.” “Do you hear what the rogue says?” exclaimed the Governor to his companion. “Do not heed him,” said Cortez, “he is a saucy knave, and deserves a good whipping.” The hint of the fool, however, heightened the suspicions of his master; but how the latter was too slow of wit and action to profit thereby, is known to all who have read the graphic pages which tell of the conquest of Mexico. But neither Aztec nor Spanish monarch rivalled their less civilized brother of Monomotapa in this peculiar department of his household. Gallienus alone deserves to be mentioned, in this respect, with the African potentate, who never stirred abroad with less than five hundred official fools in his vast and noisy retinue!