ory
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).]

One of the most extraordinary examples of the daring of these tumblers is
to be found in the records of the entry of Queen Isabel of Bavaria into
Paris, in 1385 (see chapter on Ceremonials); and, indeed, all the
chronicles of the fifteenth century are full of anecdotes of their doings.
Mathieu de Coucy, who wrote a history of the time of Charles VII., relates
some very curious details respectin