"After some years of delay, William appears to have become desperate, and, if we may trust to the evidence of the 'Chronicle of Ingerbe,' he waylaid Matilda in the streets of Bruges as she was returning from mass, seized her, rolled her in the dirt, spoiled her rich array; and, not content with these outrages, struck her repeatedly, then rode off at full speed. This Teutonic method of courtship, according to our author, brought the affair to a crisis: for Matilda, either convinced of the strength of William's passion by the violence of his behaviour, or afraid of encountering a second beating, consented to become his wife. How he ever presumed to enter her presence again after such enormities the chronicler sayeth not, and we are at a loss to imagine." _Court Fools._ From very ancient times there existed a class of persons whose business it was to amuse the rich and noble, particularly at table, by jests and witty sayings. It was, however, during the Middle Ages that this singular vocation became fully developed. The symbols of the court fool were: the shaven crown, the fool's cap of gay colors with asses' ears and cock's comb and bells, the fool's sceptre, and a wide collar. Some of these professional fools obtained an historical reputation, as Triboulet, jester to Francis I. of France; Klaus Narr, at the Court of the Elector Frederic, the Wise of Prussia, and Scogan, court fool to Edward IV. of England. Besides the regular fools, dressed and recognized as such, there was a higher class called merry counsellors, generally men of talent, who availed themselves of the privilege of free speech to ridicule in the most merciless manner the follies and vices of their contemporaries. At a later period, imbecile or weak-minded persons were kept for the entertainment of company. Even ordinary noblemen considered such an attendant indispensable, and thus the system reached its last stage, and toward the end of the seventeenth century it was abolished. It survived longest in Russia, where Peter the Great had so many fools that he divided them into distinct classes. _A Cunning Astrologer._