at which he appeared dressed in cloth of gold studded all over with pearls and precious stones.  Under the third dynasty King Robert celebrated court days with the same magnificence, and the people were admitted to the palace during the royal banquet to witness the King sitting amongst his great officers of state.  The Cours Plenieres, which were always held at Christmas, Twelfth-day, Easter, and on the day of Pentecost, were not less brilliant during the reigns of Robert’s successors.  Louis IX. himself, notwithstanding his natural shyness and his taste for simplicity, was noted for the display he made on state occasions.  In 1350, Philippe de Valois wore his crown at the Cours Plenieres, and from that time they were called Cours Couronnees.  The kings of jugglers were the privileged performers, and their feats and the other amusements, which continued on each occasion for several days, were provided for at the sovereign’s sole expense.

[Illustration:  Fig. 169.—­Feats in Balancing.—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Thirteenth Century).]

These kings of jugglers exercised a supreme authority over the art of jugglery and over all the members of this jovial fraternity.  It must not be imagined that these jugglers merely recited snatches from tales and fables in rhyme; this was the least of their talents.  The cleverest of them played all sorts of musical instruments, sung songs, and repeated by heart a multitude of stories, after the example of their reputed forefather, King Borgabed, or Bedabie, who, according to these troubadours, was King of Great Britain at the time that Alexander the Great was King of Macedonia.  The jugglers of a lower order especially excelled in tumbling and in tricks of legerdemain (Figs. 169 and 170).  They threw wonderful somersaults, they leaped through hoops placed at certain distances from one another, they played with knives, slings, baskets, brass balls, and earthenware plates, and they walked on their hands with their feet in the air or with their heads turned downwards so as to look through their legs backwards.  These acrobatic feats were even practised by women.  According to a legend, the daughter of Herodias was a renowned acrobat, and on a bas-relief in the Cathedral of Rouen we find this Jewish dancer turning somersaults before Herod, so as to fascinate him, and thus obtain the decapitation of John the Baptist.

[Illustration:  Fig. 170.—­Sword-dance to the sound of the Bagpipe.—­Fac-simile of a Manuscript in the British Museum (Fourteenth Century).]

“The jugglers,” adds M. de Labedolliere, in his clever work on “The Private Life of the French,” “often led about bears, monkeys, and other animals, which they taught to dance or to fight (Figs. 171 and 172).  A manuscript in the National Library represents a banquet, and around the table, so as to amuse the guests, performances of animals are going on, such as monkeys riding on horseback,