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And after all this misery they have given you a necklace of honour, as they hang a girdle of bells round the breast of an ass to deafen it on its journey, and prevent it from feeling fatigue. A man like you, braver than Pyrrhus! If only you had wished it! Ah! how happy will you be in large cool halls, with the sound of lyres, lying on flowers, with women and buffoons!
But to tell the King that he was at once a sluggard and a debauchee; that he had lost the respect, and would probably soon forfeit the obedience of his subjects; and to scold his jocular raillery by painting him as courting the society and imitating the manners of buffoons, was scarcely a tactful way of insinuating a lesson of caution and establishing the confidence which makes a servant congenial to his master.
Or that during this period also he was drunk and abusive and in the assemblies would frequently vomit the remains of yesterday's debauch on the rostra itself, in the midst of his harangues? Or that he went about Italy at the head of pimps and prostitutes and buffoons, women as well as men, in company with the lictors bearing festoons of laurel?
Many a morning have I waited hours in the cold parlours of men of quality; where, after seeing the lowest rascals in lace and embroidery, the pimps and buffoons in fashion, admitted, I have been sometimes told, on sending in my name, that my lord could not possibly see me this morning; a sufficient assurance that I should never more get entrance into that house.
And beside all these are the blind fiddlers, scraping out old-fashioned tunes that were popular thirty years ago; the guitarists, singing the flamenco songs which have been sung in Spain ever since the Moorish days; the buffoons, who extract tunes from a broomstick; the owners of performing dogs. They are a picturesque lot, neither vicious nor ill-humoured.
IX. He is protecting the interests of his buffoons and gamesters and pimps. He is protecting Capho's and Sasu's interests too, pugnacious and muscular centurions, whom he placed among his troops of male and female buffoons. Besides all this, he demands "that the decrees of himself and his colleague concerning Caesar's writings and memoranda are to stand."
And could you not perceive something of the infernal cold in the lovingness of the spendthrift, and in your own civility to your customers, whilst any thing remained with them in the drollery of the buffoons, in the praise of the envious and the backbiter, in the promises of the wanton, or in the shanks of the good companions freezing beneath your tables?
Nor were these impious spectacles concealed from the eyes of the city. On the day of a solemn festival, the emperor, with his bishops or buffoons, rode on asses through the streets, encountered the true patriarch at the head of his clergy; and by their licentious shouts and obscene gestures, disordered the gravity of the Christian procession.
Do not suppose I am going, sicut est mos, to indulge in moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking. Nay, Prime Ministers rehearse their jokes; Opposition leaders prepare and polish them; Tabernacle preachers must arrange them in their minds before they utter them.
If you find good occasion for a joke, be careful not to bite, still less to tear, like a dog. Witticisms and repartee should be to the point, and should have elegance and appropriateness without exciting the indignation of any. Do not let your pleasantries degenerate into those of buffoons, who raise laughter by extravagant representations and indecent action.
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