[Illustration: Fig. 172.--Equestrian Performances.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in an
English Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century.]
From this remark we may understand their fall as well as the disrepute in
which they were held at that time, and we are not surprised to find in an
old edition of the "Memoires du 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.
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