It was
among the most highly-esteemed productions of this master, and not the
less remarkable for having been executed with the left hand, after a
paralytic stroke had deprived him of the use of the other.
Millin observes, with much justice, that one of the most remarkable of
the decrees that issued from this palace, was that which authorized the
meetings of the _Conards_, a name given to a confraternity of buffoons,
who, disguised in grotesque dresses, performed farces in the streets on
Shrove Tuesday and other holidays. Nor is it a little indicative of the
taste of the times, that men of rank, character, and respectability
entered into this society, the members of which, amounting to two
thousand five hundred, elected from among themselves a president, whom
they dressed as an abbot[106], with a crozier and mitre, and, placing
him on a car drawn by four horses, led him, thus attired, in great pomp
through the streets; the whole of the party being masked, and
personating not only the allegorical characters of avarice, lust, &c.
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