The Angry Fool

At the command of the angel Raphael, the younger Tobias catches a fish in the river Tigris and takes out of it the heart, the liver, and the gall, all of them good for medicine; and soon afterwards he anointed the eyes of his blind father with the gall, and so his father recovered the sight he had longed for.¹ That fish’s gall was good and useful. But a man’s gall is harmful beyond all measure, for it does not bring light, as it did for Tobias; it takes away the light of the understanding and makes a man an utter fool.² As the wise Seneca testifies: “Where there is much anger, there is much madness.”³

The angry man and every fool
Ride in one cart, as a rule.⁴

The prophet Jonas, when he had escaped from his swimming lodging-house, hurried off to Nineveh and there proclaimed and preached the overthrow of the whole city. After that he left the city and withdrew to a spot over against it, and there a gourd at once sprang up, whose broad leaves gave him a very pleasant shade, and he was not a little glad of it. Not long after, the gourd was bitten by a little worm and so withered; and this put Jonas into such a choler and rage that he wished himself dead on account of it. That was a great piece of folly in its day, to wish for death over a gourd, as though a gourd mattered more than life. And so God rebuked him and said: “Dost thou think thou hast reason to be angry, for the ivy?”⁵

Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia, flew into such a rage with his cook for not roasting him a capon properly that he had the man stuck alive on the spit, turned, and basted with his own blood.⁶

Otto Antonius, Count of Montferrat, when his page woke him at the wrong hour, had the boy sewn up alive in a cloth daubed with pitch and soaked in sulphur and set alight, so that he burned like a torch.⁷

Bajazet, the Turkish Emperor, had in his garden a favourite little tree on which hung three apples. One of three pages of his picked them, and at this he flew into such a rage that he ordered all three to be cut open and the stolen fruit searched for; and so it would have been done, had they not found the apples in the stomach of the first.⁸

But it is a greater piece of folly still to fly into a rage over a thing that has no life, let alone any reason. Cyrus, King of Persia, was so enraged with the famous river Gyndes, because his beloved white horse had drowned in it, that he had it divided into three hundred and eighty channels.⁹ King Xerxes conceived such anger against the narrow strait of the Aegean Sea that he had it given three hundred lashes, and even had fetters thrown into it.¹⁰ Caligula, because of dismal weather, flew into a rage with his supposed god Jupiter, challenged him outright, and shouted at him, aut tolle me, aut ego te: either you break my neck, or I break yours!¹¹ O fool above all fools!

In a city in Germany, much renowned for its trade, there was a barber, otherwise a man of honest life and well skilled in his craft; only he had an impediment in his speech and stammered with his tongue. One day there came to him a man who likewise stumbled with his tongue, and who did not know that the barber had the same natural failing. So he said: “Bon, bon, bona dies! I’d l-l-like a t-t-trim.”¹²

The barber looked at him and was too angry to answer. At last he said: “You m-m-mock me!”

“I d-d-don’t m-m-mock you,” said the other. “I, I’d l-l-like a t-t-trim.”

This went on for a good while, until at last the barber was up in arms and in such a fury that he threw his barber’s basin at the man’s head, and then thrashed him with a thick chair-leg so soundly that, if people had not stepped in, he would have beaten him to death. But the barber’s anger did the barber himself so much harm that he had to keep to his bed for several weeks, and barely escaped with his life. Hence Job says: “Anger indeed killeth the foolish.”¹³