Note 54 — PART I.

It has been asserted that the Champagne, and notably the town of Troyes, enjoyed the dubious honour of furnishing fools to the court of France. There is certainly a letter of Charles V. to the notables of Troyes, asking them, ‘according to custom,’ for a fool to replace one named Grand Jehan de Troyes, whom he had had buried in the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and who has been immortalised by Rabelais. But Brusquet was a Provençal; Triboulet, his predecessor, immortalised by Victor Hugo in the ‘Roi s’amuse,’ a native of Blois; Chicot the Jester, the fool of Henry III., and the favourite hero of Dumas, a Gascon; and Guillaume, his successor, a Norman.