(Till Eulenspiegel again forms a class by himself, as the personified
quiz, mostly pointless enough, of particular classes and professions.)
The court-fool of the Este retaliated more than once by his keen satire
and refined modes of vengeance.
The type of the 'uomo piacevole' and the 'buffone' long survived the
freedom of Florence. Under Duke Cosimo flourished Barlacchia, and at
the beginning of the seventeenth century Francesco Ruspoli and Curzio
Marignolli. In Pope Leo X, the genuine Florentine love of jesters
showed itself strikingly. This prince, whose taste for the most refined
intellectual pleasures was insatiable, endured and desired at his table
a number of witty buffoons and jack-puddings, among them two monks and
a cripple; at public feasts he treated them with deliberate scorn as
parasites, setting before them monkeys and crows in the place of savory
meats. Leo, indeed, showed a peculiar fondness for the 'burla'; it
belonged to his nature sometimes to treat his own favorite pursuits- -
music and poetry--ironically, parodying them with his factotum,
Cardinal Bibbiena. Neither of them found it beneath him to fool an
honest old secretary till he thought himself a master of the art of
music. The Improvisatore, Baraballo of Gaeta, was brought so far by
Leo's flattery that he applied in all seriousness for the poet's
coronation on the Capitol.
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