The bad repute into which jugglers had fallen did not prevent the kings of France from attaching buffoons, or fools, as they were generally called, to their households, who were often more or less deformed dwarfs, and who, to all intents and purposes, were jugglers.  They were allowed to indulge in every sort of impertinence and waggery in order to excite the risibility of their masters (Figs. 174 and 175).  These buffoons or fools were an institution at court until the time of Louis XIV., and several, such as Caillette, Triboulet, and Brusquet, are better known in history than many of the statesmen and soldiers who were their contemporaries.

[Illustration:  Fig. 174.—­Dance of Fools.—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century in the Bodleian Library of Oxford.]

At the end of the fourteenth century the brotherhood of jugglers divided itself into two distinct classes, the jugglers proper and the tumblers.  The former continued to recite serious or amusing poetry, to sing love-songs, to play comic interludes, either singly or in concert, in the streets or in the houses, accompanying themselves or being accompanied by all sorts of musical instruments.  The tumblers, on the other hand, devoted themselves exclusively to feats of agility or of skill, the exhibition of trained animals, the making of comic grimaces, and tight-rope dancing.

[Illustration:  A Court-Fool, of the 15th Century.

Fac-simile of a miniature from a ms. in the Bibl. de l’Arsenal, Th. lat., no 125.]

The art of rope dancing is very ancient; it was patronised by the Franks, who looked upon it as a marvellous effort of human genius.  The most remarkable rope-dancers of that time were of Indian origin.  All performers in this art came originally from the East, although they afterwards trained pupils in the countries through which they passed, recruiting themselves chiefly from the mixed tribe of jugglers.  According to a document quoted by the learned Foncemagne, rope-dancers appeared as early as 1327 at the entertainments given at state banquets by the kings of France.  But long before that time they are mentioned in the poems of troubadours as the necessary auxiliaries of any feast given by the nobility, or even by the monasteries.  From the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century they were never absent from any public ceremonial, and it was at the state entries of kings and queens, princes and princesses, that they were especially called upon to display their talents.

[Illustration:  Fig. 175.—­Court Fool.—­Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Cosmographie Universelle” of Munster:  folio (Basle, 1552).]