Sire de Joinville" this passage, which is,
perhaps, an interpolation from a contemporary document: "St. Louis drove
from his kingdom all tumblers and players of sleight of hand, through whom
many evil habits and tastes had become engendered in the people." A
troubadour's story of this period shows that the jugglers wandered about
the country with their trained animals nearly starved; they were half
naked, and were often without anything on their heads, without coats,
without shoes, and always without money. The lower orders welcomed them,
and continued to admire and idolize them for their clever tricks (Fig.
173), but the bourgeois class, following the example of the nobility,
turned their backs upon them. In 1345 Guillaume de Gourmont, Provost of
Paris, forbad their singing or relating obscene stories, under penalty of
fine and imprisonment.

[Illustration: Fig. 173.--Jugglers performing in public.--From a Miniature
of the Manuscript of "Guarin de Loherane" (Thirteenth Century).--Library
of the Arsenal, Paris.]

Having been associated together as a confraternity since 1331, they lived
huddled together in one street of Paris, which took the name of _Rue des
Jougleurs_. It was at this period that the Church and Hospital of St.
Julian were founded through the exertions of Jacques Goure, a native of
Pistoia, and of Huet le Lorrain, who were both jugglers. The newly formed
brotherhood at once undertook to subscribe to this good work, and each
member did so according to his means. Their aid to the cost of the two
buildings was sixty livres, and they were both erected in the Rue St.
Martin, and placed under the protection of St. Julian the Martyr. The
chapel was consecrated on the last Sunday in September, 1335, and on the
front of it there were three figures, one representing a troubadour, one a
minstrel, and one a juggler, each with his various instruments.

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 hist