Tradition, without bringing down to us any samples of the quality of Caillette, was long inconsistent with itself, by diversely representing this jester, now as a sorry, and at other times as a very brilliant, practitioner of his craft. There can be little doubt of the existence of a father and son of this name and office; and Paul Lacroix has followed out this idea in his work, noticed above.
According to this writer, who, it is necessary to remember, mingles a good deal of fiction with his antiquarian facts, the elder Caillette was a very inferior wit to Triboulet, and hung himself out of vexation at having been defeated by him at a match of cudgelling of brains. I do not know how much of reality or how much of merely fanciful is included in the following details; some portions may be less _vrai_ than _vraisemblable_, and with this warning, I place before my readers an outline of the younger Caillette, whose elaborate full-length has been superbly painted by a master in the romance of history.
While the father was exercising his vocation at the court of France, the son was sojourning in the château of the Count de St. Vallier, as a friend rather than a dependant. As a youth, he had attracted the attention of the famous Constable de Bourbon by his beauty and intellect. The Constable could not believe him to be of the low origin commonly assigned to him, and it was at Bourbon’s instigation that the Count de St. Vallier took the boy into his household, and educated him in company with the Count’s renowned daughter, Diane de Poictiers. In such society the younger Caillette remained, happy, loved, and light-hearted, till the period of the marriage of Diane with M. de Brézé, Grand Seneschal of Normandy. From this time, his character became changed. He lost his gaiety and his happy carelessness; studied more, in order to forget his sorrows, among which the circumstance of his father holding the office of fool to the King, was by no means the least.
Francis I. was at Moulins, where he had held the son of the Constable at the baptismal font, when he heard of the death of the elder Caillette. This high festival, celebrated at Moulins, had attracted a noble company, and among them was the Count de Saint-Vallier, with the younger Caillette, then about nineteen, in attendance on him. The death of the father, the fool, had more touched Francis than the demise of any of his ministers could have done; and when he heard and saw who was in attendance upon the Count de Saint-Vallier, he resolved to perpetuate the name of the deceased by appointing his son to the vacant office. The appointment was resisted by the noble patrons of the son, and by the latter himself with the energy of despair. But all in vain. The youth, who had looked forward to wield a sword, was compelled to carry the fool’s bauble. He would have committed suicide, but for the intervention of his confessor.