Gargantua and Pantagruel
by Francis Rabelais
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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Your mousing, quoth Panurge, will not make me leave my musing why folks
should be so frumpishly disposed, seeing I am certainly persuaded that some
flout who merit to be flouted at; yet, as my vow imports, so will I do. It
is now a long time since, by Jupiter Philos (A mistake of the
translator's.--M.), we did swear faith and amity to one another. Give me
your advice, billy, and tell me your opinion freely, Should I marry or no?
Truly, quoth Epistemon, the case is hazardous, and the danger so eminently
apparent that I find myself too weak and insufficient to give you a
punctual and peremptory resolution therein; and if ever it was true that
judgment is difficult in matters of the medicinal art, what was said by
Hippocrates of Lango, it is certainly so in this case. True it is that in
my brain there are some rolling fancies, by means whereof somewhat may be
pitched upon of a seeming efficacy to the disentangling your mind of those
dubious apprehensions wherewith it is perplexed; but they do not thoroughly
satisfy me. Some of the Platonic sect affirm that whosoever is able to see
his proper genius may know his own destiny. I understand not their
doctrine, nor do I think that you adhere to them; there is a palpable
abuse. I have seen the experience of it in a very curious gentleman of the
country of Estangourre. This is one of the points. There is yet another
not much better. If there were any authority now in the oracles of Jupiter
Ammon; of Apollo in Lebadia, Delphos, Delos, Cyrra, Patara, Tegyres,
Preneste, Lycia, Colophon, or in the Castalian Fountain; near Antiochia in
Syria, between the Branchidians; of Bacchus in Dodona; of Mercury in
Phares, near Patras; of Apis in Egypt; of Serapis in Canope; of Faunus in
Menalia, and Albunea near Tivoli; of Tiresias in Orchomenus; of Mopsus in
Cilicia; of Orpheus in Lesbos, and of Trophonius in Leucadia; I would in
that case advise you, and possibly not, to go thither for their judgment
concerning the design and enterprise you have in hand. But you know that
they are all of them become as dumb as so many fishes since the advent of
that Saviour King whose coming to this world hath made all oracles and
prophecies to cease; as the approach of the sun's radiant beams expelleth
goblins, bugbears, hobthrushes, broams, screech-owl-mates, night-walking
spirits, and tenebrions. These now are gone; but although they were as yet
in continuance and in the same power, rule, and request that formerly they
were, yet would not I counsel you to be too credulous in putting any trust
in their responses. Too many folks have been deceived thereby. It stands
furthermore upon record how Agrippina did charge the fair Lollia with the
crime of having interrogated the oracle of Apollo Clarius, to understand if
she should be at any time married to the Emperor Claudius; for which cause
she was first banished, and thereafter put to a shameful and ignominious
death.

But, saith Panurge, let us do better. The Ogygian Islands are not far
distant from the haven of Sammalo. Let us, after that we shall have spoken
to our king, make a voyage thither. In one of these four isles, to wit,
that which hath its primest aspect towards the sun setting, it is reported,
and I have read in good antique and authentic authors, that there reside
many soothsayers, fortune-tellers, vaticinators, prophets, and diviners of
things to come; that Saturn inhabiteth that place, bound with fair chains
of gold and within the concavity of a golden rock, being nourished with
divine ambrosia and nectar, which are daily in great store and abundance
transmitted to him from the heavens, by I do not well know what kind of
fowls,--it may be that they are the same ravens which in the deserts are
said to have fed St. Paul, the first hermit,--he very clearly foretelleth
unto everyone who is desirous to be certified of the condition of his lot
what his destiny will be, and what future chance the Fates have ordained
for him; for the Parcae, or Weird Sisters, do not twist, spin, or draw out
a thread, nor yet doth Jupiter perpend, project, or deliberate anything
which the good old celestial father knoweth not to the full, even whilst he
is asleep. This will be a very summary abbreviation of our labour, if we
but hearken unto him a little upon the serious debate and canvassing of
this my perplexity. That is, answered Epistemon, a gullery too evident, a
plain abuse and fib too fabulous. I will not go, not I; I will not go.

Chapter 3.XXV.

How Panurge consulteth with Herr Trippa.

Nevertheless, quoth Epistemon, continuing his discourse, I will tell you
what you may do, if you believe me, before we return to our king. Hard by
here, in the Brown-wheat (Bouchart) Island, dwelleth Herr Trippa. You know
how by the arts of astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, metopomancy, and others
of a like stuff and nature, he foretelleth all things to come; let us talk
a little, and confer with him about your business. Of that, answered
Panurge, I know nothing; but of this much concerning him I am assured, that
one day, and that not long since, whilst he was prating to the great king
of celestial, sublime, and transcendent things, the lacqueys and footboys
of the court, upon the upper steps of stairs between two doors, jumbled,
one after another, as often as they listed, his wife, who is passable fair,
and a pretty snug hussy. Thus he who seemed very clearly to see all
heavenly and terrestrial things without spectacles, who discoursed boldly
of adventures past, with great confidence opened up present cases and
accidents, and stoutly professed the presaging of all future events and
contingencies, was not able, with all the skill and cunning that he had, to
perceive the bumbasting of his wife, whom he reputed to be very chaste, and
hath not till this hour got notice of anything to the contrary. Yet let us
go to him, seeing you will have it so; for surely we can never learn too
much. They on the very next ensuing day came to Herr Trippa's lodging.
Panurge, by way of donative, presented him with a long gown lined all
through with wolf-skins, with a short sword mounted with a gilded hilt and
covered with a velvet scabbard, and with fifty good single angels; then in
a familiar and friendly way did he ask of him his opinion touching the
affair. At the very first Herr Trippa, looking on him very wistly in the
face, said unto him: Thou hast the metoposcopy and physiognomy of a
cuckold,--I say, of a notorious and infamous cuckold. With this, casting
an eye upon Panurge's right hand in all the parts thereof, he said, This
rugged draught which I see here, just under the mount of Jove, was never
yet but in the hand of a cuckold. Afterwards, he with a white lead pen
swiftly and hastily drew a certain number of diverse kinds of points, which
by rules of geomancy he coupled and joined together; then said: Truth
itself is not truer than that it is certain thou wilt be a cuckold a little
after thy marriage. That being done, he asked of Panurge the horoscope of
his nativity, which was no sooner by Panurge tendered unto him, than that,
erecting a figure, he very promptly and speedily formed and fashioned a
complete fabric of the houses of heaven in all their parts, whereof when he
had considered the situation and the aspects in their triplicities, he
fetched a deep sigh, and said: I have clearly enough already discovered
unto you the fate of your cuckoldry, which is unavoidable, you cannot
escape it. And here have I got of new a further assurance thereof, so that
I may now hardily pronounce and affirm, without any scruple or hesitation
at all, that thou wilt be a cuckold; that furthermore, thou wilt be beaten
by thine own wife, and that she will purloin, filch and steal of thy goods
from thee; for I find the seventh house, in all its aspects, of a malignant
influence, and every one of the planets threatening thee with disgrace,
according as they stand seated towards one another, in relation to the
horned signs of Aries, Taurus, and Capricorn. In the fourth house I find
Jupiter in a decadence, as also in a tetragonal aspect to Saturn,
associated with Mercury. Thou wilt be soundly peppered, my good, honest
fellow, I warrant thee. I will be? answered Panurge. A plague rot thee,
thou old fool and doting sot, how graceless and unpleasant thou art! When
all cuckolds shall be at a general rendezvous, thou shouldst be their
standard-bearer. But whence comes this ciron-worm betwixt these two
fingers? This Panurge said, putting the forefinger of his left hand
betwixt the fore and mid finger of the right, which he thrust out towards
Herr Trippa, holding them open after the manner of two horns, and shutting
into his fist his thumb with the other fingers. Then, in turning to
Epistemon, he said: Lo here the true Olus of Martial, who addicted and
devoted himself wholly to the observing the miseries, crosses, and
calamities of others, whilst his own wife, in the interim, did keep an open
bawdy-house. This varlet is poorer than ever was Irus, and yet he is
proud, vaunting, arrogant, self-conceited, overweening, and more
insupportable than seventeen devils; in one word, (Greek), which term of
old was applied to the like beggarly strutting coxcombs. Come, let us
leave this madpash bedlam, this hairbrained fop, and give him leave to rave
and dose his bellyful with his private and intimately acquainted devils,
who, if they were not the very worst of all infernal fiends, would never
have deigned to serve such a knavish barking cur as this is. He hath not
learnt the first precept of philosophy, which is, Know thyself; for whilst
he braggeth and boasteth that he can discern the least mote in the eye of
another, he is not able to see the huge block that puts out the sight of
both his eyes. This is such another Polypragmon as is by Plutarch
described. He is of the nature of the Lamian witches, who in foreign
places, in the houses of strangers, in public, and amongst the common
people, had a sharper and more piercing inspection into their affairs than
any lynx, but at home in their own proper dwelling-mansions were blinder
than moldwarps, and saw nothing at all. For their custom was, at their
return from abroad, when they were by themselves in private, to take their
eyes out of their head, from whence they were as easily removable as a pair
of spectacles from their nose, and to lay them up into a wooden slipper
which for that purpose did hang behind the door of their lodging.

Panurge had no sooner done speaking, when Herr Trippa took into his hand a
tamarisk branch. In this, quoth Epistemon, he doth very well, right, and
like an artist, for Nicander calleth it the divinatory tree. Have you a
mind, quoth Herr Trippa, to have the truth of the matter yet more fully and
amply disclosed unto you by pyromancy, by aeromancy, whereof Aristophanes
in his Clouds maketh great estimation, by hydromancy, by lecanomancy, of
old in prime request amongst the Assyrians, and thoroughly tried by
Hermolaus Barbarus. Come hither, and I will show thee in this platterful
of fair fountain-water thy future wife lechering and sercroupierizing it
with two swaggering ruffians, one after another. Yea, but have a special
care, quoth Panurge, when thou comest to put thy nose within mine arse,
that thou forget not to pull off thy spectacles. Herr Trippa, going on in
his discourse, said, By catoptromancy, likewise held in such account by the
Emperor Didius Julianus, that by means thereof he ever and anon foresaw all
that which at any time did happen or befall unto him. Thou shalt not need
to put on thy spectacles, for in a mirror thou wilt see her as clearly and
manifestly nebrundiated and billibodring it, as if I should show it in the
fountain of the temple of Minerva near Patras. By coscinomancy, most
religiously observed of old amidst the ceremonies of the ancient Romans.
Let us have a sieve and shears, and thou shalt see devils. By
alphitomancy, cried up by Theocritus in his Pharmaceutria. By alentomancy,
mixing the flour of wheat with oatmeal. By astragalomancy, whereof I have
the plots and models all at hand ready for the purpose. By tyromancy,
whereof we make some proof in a great Brehemont cheese which I here keep by
me. By giromancy, if thou shouldst turn round circles, thou mightest
assure thyself from me that they would fall always on the wrong side. By
sternomancy, which maketh nothing for thy advantage, for thou hast an ill-
proportioned stomach. By libanomancy, for the which we shall need but a
little frankincense. By gastromancy, which kind of ventral fatiloquency
was for a long time together used in Ferrara by Lady Giacoma Rodogina, the
Engastrimythian prophetess. By cephalomancy, often practised amongst the
High Germans in their boiling of an ass's head upon burning coals. By
ceromancy, where, by the means of wax dissolved into water, thou shalt see
the figure, portrait, and lively representation of thy future wife, and of
her fredin fredaliatory belly-thumping blades. By capnomancy. O the
gallantest and most excellent of all secrets! By axionomancy; we want only
a hatchet and a jet-stone to be laid together upon a quick fire of hot
embers. O how bravely Homer was versed in the practice hereof towards
Penelope's suitors! By onymancy; for that we have oil and wax. By
tephromancy. Thou wilt see the ashes thus aloft dispersed exhibiting thy
wife in a fine posture. By botanomancy; for the nonce I have some few
leaves in reserve. By sicomancy; O divine art in fig-tree leaves! By
icthiomancy, in ancient times so celebrated, and put in use by Tiresias and
Polydamas, with the like certainty of event as was tried of old at the
Dina-ditch within that grove consecrated to Apollo which is in the
territory of the Lycians. By choiromancy; let us have a great many hogs,
and thou shalt have the bladder of one of them. By cheromancy, as the bean
is found in the cake at the Epiphany vigil. By anthropomancy, practised by
the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus. It is somewhat irksome, but thou wilt
endure it well enough, seeing thou art destinated to be a cuckold. By a
sibylline stichomancy. By onomatomancy. How do they call thee? Chaw-
turd, quoth Panurge. Or yet by alectryomancy. If I should here with a
compass draw a round, and in looking upon thee, and considering thy lot,
divide the circumference thereof into four-and-twenty equal parts, then
form a several letter of the alphabet upon every one of them; and, lastly,
posit a barleycorn or two upon each of these so disposed letters, I durst
promise upon my faith and honesty that, if a young virgin cock be permitted
to range alongst and athwart them, he should only eat the grains which are
set and placed upon these letters, A. C.U.C.K.O.L.D. T.H.O.U. S.H.A.L.T.
B.E. And that as fatidically as, under the Emperor Valens, most
perplexedly desirous to know the name of him who should be his successor to
the empire, the cock vacticinating and alectryomantic ate up the pickles
that were posited on the letters T.H.E.O.D. Or, for the more certainty,
will you have a trial of your fortune by the art of aruspiciny, by augury,
or by extispiciny? By turdispiciny, quoth Panurge. Or yet by the mystery
of necromancy? I will, if you please, suddenly set up again and revive
someone lately deceased, as Apollonius of Tyane did to Achilles, and the
Pythoness in the presence of Saul; which body, so raised up and
requickened, will tell us the sum of all you shall require of him: no more
nor less than, at the invocation of Erictho, a certain defunct person
foretold to Pompey the whole progress and issue of the fatal battle fought
in the Pharsalian fields. Or, if you be afraid of the dead, as commonly
all cuckolds are, I will make use of the faculty of sciomancy.

Go, get thee gone, quoth Panurge, thou frantic ass, to the devil, and be
buggered, filthy Bardachio that thou art, by some Albanian, for a steeple-
crowned hat. Why the devil didst not thou counsel me as well to hold an
emerald or the stone of a hyaena under my tongue, or to furnish and provide
myself with tongues of whoops, and hearts of green frogs, or to eat of the
liver and milt of some dragon, to the end that by those means I might, at
the chanting and chirping of swans and other fowls, understand the
substance of my future lot and destiny, as did of old the Arabians in the
country of Mesopotamia? Fifteen brace of devils seize upon the body and
soul of this horned renegado, miscreant cuckold, the enchanter, witch, and
sorcerer of Antichrist to all the devils of hell! Let us return towards
our king. I am sure he will not be well pleased with us if he once come to
get notice that we have been in the kennel of this muffled devil. I repent
my being come hither. I would willingly dispense with a hundred nobles and
fourteen yeomans, on condition that he who not long since did blow in the
bottom of my breeches should instantly with his squirting spittle
inluminate his moustaches. O Lord God now! how the villain hath besmoked
me with vexation and anger, with charms and witchcraft, and with a terrible
coil and stir of infernal and Tartarian devils! The devil take him! Say
Amen, and let us go drink. I shall not have any appetite for my victuals,
how good cheer soever I make, these two days to come,--hardly these four.

Chapter 3.XXVI.

How Panurge consulteth with Friar John of the Funnels.

Panurge was indeed very much troubled in mind and disquieted at the words
of Herr Trippa, and therefore, as he passed by the little village of
Huymes, after he had made his address to Friar John, in pecking at,
rubbing, and scratching his own left ear, he said unto him, Keep me a
little jovial and merry, my dear and sweet bully, for I find my brains
altogether metagrabolized and confounded, and my spirits in a most dunsical
puzzle at the bitter talk of this devilish, hellish, damned fool. Hearken,
my dainty cod.

Mellow C.           Varnished C.     Resolute C.
Lead-coloured C.    Renowned C.      Cabbage-like C.
Knurled C.          Matted C.        Courteous C.
Suborned C.         Genitive C.      Fertile C.
Desired C.          Gigantal C.      Whizzing C.
Stuffed C.          Oval C.          Neat C.
Speckled C.         Claustral C.     Common C.
Finely metalled C.  Virile C.        Brisk C.
Arabian-like C.     Stayed C.        Quick C.
Trussed-up Grey-     Massive C.       Bearlike C.
  hound-like C.     Manual C.        Partitional C.
Mounted C.          Absolute C.      Patronymic C.
Sleeked C.          Well-set C.      Cockney C.
Diapered C.         Gemel C.         Auromercuriated C.
Spotted C.          Turkish C.       Robust C.
Master C.           Burning C.       Appetizing C.
Seeded C.           Thwacking C.     Succourable C.
Lusty C.            Urgent C.        Redoubtable C.
Jupped C.           Handsome C.      Affable C.
Milked C.           Prompt C.        Memorable C.
Calfeted C.         Fortunate C.     Palpable C.
Raised C.           Boxwood C.       Barbable C.
Odd C.              Latten C.        Tragical C.
Steeled C.          Unbridled C.     Transpontine C.
Stale C.            Hooked C.        Digestive C.
Orange-tawny C.     Researched C.    Active C.
Embroidered C.      Encompassed C.   Vital C.
Glazed C.           Strouting out C. Magistral C.
Interlarded C.      Jolly C.         Monachal C.
Burgher-like C.     Lively C.        Subtle C.
Empowdered C.       Gerundive C.     Hammering C.
Ebonized C.         Franked C.       Clashing C.
Brasiliated C.      Polished C.      Tingling C.
Organized C.        Powdered Beef C. Usual C.
Passable C.         Positive C.      Exquisite C.
Trunkified C.       Spared C.        Trim C.
Furious C.          Bold C.          Succulent C.
Packed C.           Lascivious C.    Factious C.
Hooded C.           Gluttonous C.    Clammy C.
Fat C.              Boulting C.      New-vamped C.
High-prized C.      Snorting C.      Improved C.
Requisite C.        Pilfering C.     Malling C.
Laycod C.           Shaking C.       Sounding C.
Hand-filling C.     Bobbing C.       Battled C.
Insuperable C.      Chiveted C.      Burly C.
Agreeable C.        Fumbling C.      Seditious C.
Formidable C.       Topsyturvying C. Wardian C.
Profitable C.       Raging C.        Protective C.
Notable C.          Piled up C.      Twinkling C.
Musculous C.        Filled up C.     Able C.
Subsidiary C.       Manly C.         Algoristical C.
Satiric C.          Idle C.          Odoriferous C.
Repercussive C.     Membrous C.      Pranked C.
Convulsive C.       Strong C.        Jocund C.
Restorative C.      Twin C.          Routing C.
Masculinating C.    Belabouring C.   Purloining C.
Incarnative C.      Gentle C.        Frolic C.
Sigillative C.      Stirring C.      Wagging C.
Sallying C.         Confident C.     Ruffling C.
Plump C.            Nimble C.        Jumbling C.
Thundering C.       Roundheaded C.   Rumbling C.
Lechering C.        Figging C.       Thumping C.
Fulminating C.      Helpful C.       Bumping C.
Sparkling C.        Spruce C.        Cringeling C.
Ramming C.          Plucking C.      Berumpling C.
Lusty C.            Ramage C.        Jogging C.
Household C.        Fine C.          Nobbing C.
Pretty C.           Fierce C.        Touzing C.
Astrolabian C.      Brawny C.        Tumbling C.
Algebraical C.      Compt C.         Fambling C.
Venust C.           Repaired C.      Overturning C.
Aromatizing C.      Soft C.          Shooting C.
Tricksy C.          Wild C.          Culeting C.
Paillard C.         Renewed C.       Jagged C.
Gaillard C.         Quaint C.        Pinked C.
Broaching C.        Starting C.      Arsiversing C.
Addle C.            Fleshy C.        Polished C.
Syndicated C.       Auxiliary C.     Slashed C.
Hamed C.            Stuffed C.       Clashing C.
Leisurely C.        Well-fed C.      Wagging C.
Cut C.              Flourished C.    Scriplike C.
Smooth C.           Fallow C.        Encremastered C.
Depending C.        Sudden C.        Bouncing C.
Independent C.      Graspful C.      Levelling C.
Lingering C.        Swillpow C.      Fly-flap C.
Rapping C.          Crushing C.      Perinae-tegminal C.
Reverend C.         Creaking C.      Squat-couching C.
Nodding C.          Dilting C.       Short-hung C.
Disseminating C.    Ready C.         The hypogastrian C.
Affecting C.        Vigorous C.      Witness-bearing C.
Affected C.         Skulking C.      Testigerous C.
Grappled C.         Superlative C.   Instrumental C.

My harcabuzing cod and buttock-stirring ballock, Friar John, my friend, I
do carry a singular respect unto thee, and honour thee with all my heart.
Thy counsel I hold for a choice and delicate morsel; therefore have I
reserved it for the last bit. Give me thy advice freely, I beseech thee,
Should I marry or no? Friar John very merrily, and with a sprightly
cheerfulness, made this answer to him: Marry, in the devil's name. Why
not? What the devil else shouldst thou do but marry? Take thee a wife,
and furbish her harness to some tune. Swinge her skin-coat as if thou wert
beating on stock-fish; and let the repercussion of thy clapper from her
resounding metal make a noise as if a double peal of chiming-bells were
hung at the cremasters of thy ballocks. As I say marry, so do I understand
that thou shouldst fall to work as speedily as may be; yea, my meaning is
that thou oughtest to be so quick and forward therein, as on this same very
day, before sunset, to cause proclaim thy banns of matrimony, and make
provision of bedsteads. By the blood of a hog's-pudding, till when wouldst
thou delay the acting of a husband's part? Dost thou not know, and is it
not daily told unto thee, that the end of the world approacheth? We are
nearer it by three poles and half a fathom than we were two days ago. The
Antichrist is already born; at least it is so reported by many. The truth
is, that hitherto the effects of his wrath have not reached further than to
the scratching of his nurse and governesses. His nails are not sharp
enough as yet, nor have his claws attained to their full growth,--he is
little.

  Crescat; Nos qui vivimus, multiplicemur.

It is written so, and it is holy stuff, I warrant you; the truth whereof is
like to last as long as a sack of corn may be had for a penny, and a
puncheon of pure wine for threepence. Wouldst thou be content to be found
with thy genitories full in the day of judgment? Dum venerit judicari?
Thou hast, quoth Panurge, a right, clear, and neat spirit, Friar John, my
metropolitan cod; thou speakst in very deed pertinently and to purpose.
That belike was the reason which moved Leander of Abydos in Asia, whilst he
was swimming through the Hellespontic sea to make a visit to his sweetheart
Hero of Sestus in Europe, to pray unto Neptune and all the other marine
gods, thus:

  Now, whilst I go, have pity on me,
  And at my back returning drown me.

He was loth, it seems, to die with his cods overgorged. He was to be
commended; therefore do I promise, that from henceforth no malefactor shall
by justice be executed within my jurisdiction of Salmigondinois, who shall
not, for a day or two at least before, be permitted to culbut and
foraminate onocrotalwise, that there remain not in all his vessels to write
a Greek Y. Such a precious thing should not be foolishly cast away. He
will perhaps therewith beget a male, and so depart the more contentedly out
of this life, that he shall have left behind him one for one.

Chapter 3.XXVII.

How Friar John merrily and sportingly counselleth Panurge.

By Saint Rigomet, quoth Friar John, I do advise thee to nothing, my dear
friend Panurge, which I would not do myself were I in thy place. Only have
a special care, and take good heed thou solder well together the joints of
the double-backed and two-bellied beast, and fortify thy nerves so
strongly, that there be no discontinuance in the knocks of the venerean
thwacking, else thou art lost, poor soul. For if there pass long intervals
betwixt the priapizing feats, and that thou make an intermission of too
large a time, that will befall thee which betides the nurses if they desist
from giving suck to children--they lose their milk; and if continually thou
do not hold thy aspersory tool in exercise, and keep thy mentul going, thy
lacticinian nectar will be gone, and it will serve thee only as a pipe to
piss out at, and thy cods for a wallet of lesser value than a beggar's
scrip. This is a certain truth I tell thee, friend, and doubt not of it;
for myself have seen the sad experiment thereof in many, who cannot now do
what they would, because before they did not what they might have done: Ex
desuetudine amittuntur privilegia. Non-usage oftentimes destroys one's
right, say the learned doctors of the law; therefore, my billy, entertain
as well as possibly thou canst that hypogastrian lower sort of troglodytic
people, that their chief pleasure may be placed in the case of sempiternal
labouring. Give order that henceforth they live not, like idle gentlemen,
idly upon their rents and revenues, but that they may work for their
livelihood by breaking ground within the Paphian trenches. Nay truly,
answered Panurge, Friar John, my left ballock, I will believe thee, for
thou dealest plain with me, and fallest downright square upon the business,
without going about the bush with frivolous circumstances and unnecessary
reservations. Thou with the splendour of a piercing wit hast dissipated
all the lowering clouds of anxious apprehensions and suspicions which did
intimidate and terrify me; therefore the heavens be pleased to grant to
thee at all she-conflicts a stiff-standing fortune. Well then, as thou
hast said, so will I do; I will, in good faith, marry,--in that point there
shall be no failing, I promise thee,--and shall have always by me pretty
girls clothed with the name of my wife's waiting-maids, that, lying under
thy wings, thou mayest be night-protector of their sisterhood.

Let this serve for the first part of the sermon. Hearken, quoth Friar
John, to the oracle of the bells of Varenes. What say they? I hear and
understand them, quoth Panurge; their sound is, by my thirst, more
uprightly fatidical than that of Jove's great kettles in Dodona. Hearken!
Take thee a wife, take thee a wife, and marry, marry, marry; for if thou
marry, thou shalt find good therein, herein, here in a wife thou shalt find
good; so marry, marry. I will assure thee that I shall be married; all the
elements invite and prompt me to it. Let this word be to thee a brazen
wall, by diffidence not to be broken through. As for the second part of
this our doctrine,--thou seemest in some measure to mistrust the readiness
of my paternity in the practising of my placket-racket within the
Aphrodisian tennis-court at all times fitting, as if the stiff god of
gardens were not favourable to me. I pray thee, favour me so much as to
believe that I still have him at a beck, attending always my commandments,
docile, obedient, vigorous, and active in all things and everywhere, and
never stubborn or refractory to my will or pleasure. I need no more but to
let go the reins, and slacken the leash, which is the belly-point, and when
the game is shown unto him, say, Hey, Jack, to thy booty! he will not fail
even then to flesh himself upon his prey, and tuzzle it to some purpose.
Hereby you may perceive, although my future wife were as unsatiable and
gluttonous in her voluptuousness and the delights of venery as ever was the
Empress Messalina, or yet the Marchioness (of Oincester) in England, and I
desire thee to give credit to it, that I lack not for what is requisite to
overlay the stomach of her lust, but have wherewith aboundingly to please
her. I am not ignorant that Solomon said, who indeed of that matter
speaketh clerklike and learnedly,--as also how Aristotle after him declared
for a truth that, for the greater part, the lechery of a woman is ravenous
and unsatisfiable. Nevertheless, let such as are my friends who read those
passages receive from me for a most real verity, that I for such a Jill
have a fit Jack; and that, if women's things cannot be satiated, I have an
instrument indefatigable,--an implement as copious in the giving as can in
craving be their vade mecums. Do not here produce ancient examples of the
paragons of paillardice, and offer to match with my testiculatory ability
the Priapaean prowess of the fabulous fornicators, Hercules, Proculus
Caesar, and Mahomet, who in his Alkoran doth vaunt that in his cods he had
the vigour of three score bully ruffians; but let no zealous Christian
trust the rogue,--the filthy ribald rascal is a liar. Nor shalt thou need
to urge authorities, or bring forth the instance of the Indian prince of
whom Theophrastus, Plinius, and Athenaeus testify, that with the help of a
certain herb he was able, and had given frequent experiments thereof, to
toss his sinewy piece of generation in the act of carnal concupiscence
above three score and ten times in the space of four-and-twenty hours. Of
that I believe nothing, the number is supposititious, and too prodigally
foisted in. Give no faith unto it, I beseech thee, but prithee trust me in
this, and thy credulity therein shall not be wronged, for it is true, and
probatum est, that my pioneer of nature--the sacred ithyphallian champion--
is of all stiff-intruding blades the primest. Come hither, my ballocket,
and hearken. Didst thou ever see the monk of Castre's cowl? When in any
house it was laid down, whether openly in the view of all or covertly out
of the sight of any, such was the ineffable virtue thereof for excitating
and stirring up the people of both sexes unto lechery, that the whole
inhabitants and indwellers, not only of that, but likewise of all the
circumjacent places thereto, within three leagues around it, did suddenly
enter into rut, both beasts and folks, men and women, even to the dogs and
hogs, rats and cats.

I swear to thee that many times heretofore I have perceived and found in my
codpiece a certain kind of energy or efficacious virtue much more irregular
and of a greater anomaly than what I have related. I will not speak to
thee either of house or cottage, nor of church or market, but only tell
thee, that once at the representation of the Passion, which was acted at
Saint Maxents, I had no sooner entered within the pit of the theatre, but
that forthwith, by the virtue and occult property of it, on a sudden all
that were there, both players and spectators, did fall into such an
exorbitant temptation of lust, that there was not angel, man, devil, nor
deviless upon the place who would not then have bricollitched it with all
their heart and soul. The prompter forsook his copy, he who played
Michael's part came down to rights, the devils issued out of hell and
carried along with them most of the pretty little girls that were there;
yea, Lucifer got out of his fetters; in a word, seeing the huge disorder, I
disparked myself forth of that enclosed place, in imitation of Cato the
Censor, who perceiving, by reason of his presence, the Floralian festivals
out of order, withdrew himself.

Chapter 3.XXVIII.

How Friar John comforteth Panurge in the doubtful matter of cuckoldry.

I understand thee well enough, said Friar John; but time makes all things
plain. The most durable marble or porphyry is subject to old age and
decay. Though for the present thou possibly be not weary of the exercise,
yet is it like I will hear thee confess a few years hence that thy cods
hang dangling downwards for want of a better truss. I see thee waxing a
little hoar-headed already. Thy beard, by the distinction of grey, white,
tawny, and black, hath to my thinking the resemblance of a map of the
terrestrial globe or geographical chart. Look attentively upon and take
inspection of what I shall show unto thee. Behold there Asia. Here are
Tigris and Euphrates. Lo there Afric. Here is the mountain of the Moon,--
yonder thou mayst perceive the fenny march of Nilus. On this side lieth
Europe. Dost thou not see the Abbey of Theleme? This little tuft, which
is altogether white, is the Hyperborean Hills. By the thirst of my
thropple, friend, when snow is on the mountains, I say the head and the
chin, there is not then any considerable heat to be expected in the valleys
and low countries of the codpiece. By the kibes of thy heels, quoth
Panurge, thou dost not understand the topics. When snow is on the tops of
the hills, lightning, thunder, tempest, whirlwinds, storms, hurricanes, and
all the devils of hell rage in the valleys. Wouldst thou see the
experience thereof, go to the territory of the Switzers and earnestly
perpend with thyself there the situation of the lake of Wunderberlich,
about four leagues distant from Berne, on the Syon-side of the land. Thou
twittest me with my grey hairs, yet considerest not how I am of the nature
of leeks, which with a white head carry a green, fresh, straight, and
vigorous tail. The truth is, nevertheless (why should I deny it), that I
now and then discern in myself some indicative signs of old age. Tell
this, I prithee, to nobody, but let it be kept very close and secret
betwixt us two; for I find the wine much sweeter now, more savoury to my
taste, and unto my palate of a better relish than formerly I was wont to
do; and withal, besides mine accustomed manner, I have a more dreadful
apprehension than I ever heretofore have had of lighting on bad wine. Note
and observe that this doth argue and portend I know not what of the west
and occident of my time, and signifieth that the south and meridian of mine
age is past. But what then, my gentle companion? That doth but betoken
that I will hereafter drink so much the more. That is not, the devil hale
it, the thing that I fear; nor is it there where my shoe pinches. The
thing that I doubt most, and have greatest reason to dread and suspect is,
that through some long absence of our King Pantagruel (to whom I must needs
bear company should he go to all the devils of Barathrum), my future wife
shall make me a cuckold. This is, in truth, the long and short on't. For
I am by all those whom I have spoke to menaced and threatened with a horned
fortune, and all of them affirm it is the lot to which from heaven I am
predestinated. Everyone, answered Friar John, that would be a cuckold is
not one. If it be thy fate to be hereafter of the number of that horned
cattle, then may I conclude with an Ergo, thy wife will be beautiful, and
Ergo, thou wilt be kindly used by her. Likewise with this Ergo, thou shalt
be blessed with the fruition of many friends and well-willers. And finally
with this other Ergo, thou shalt be saved and have a place in Paradise.
These are monachal topics and maxims of the cloister. Thou mayst take more
liberty to sin. Thou shalt be more at ease than ever. There will be never
the less left for thee, nothing diminished, but thy goods shall increase
notably. And if so be it was preordinated for thee, wouldst thou be so
impious as not to acquiesce in thy destiny? Speak, thou jaded cod.

Faded C.          Louting C.           Appellant C.
Mouldy C.         Discouraged C.       Swagging C.
Musty C.          Surfeited C.         Withered C.
Paltry C.         Peevish C.           Broken-reined C.
Senseless C.      Translated C.        Defective C.
Foundered C.      Forlorn C.           Crestfallen C.
Distempered C.    Unsavoury C.         Felled C.
Bewrayed C.       Worm-eaten C.        Fleeted C.
Inveigled C.      Overtoiled C.        Cloyed C.
Dangling C.       Miserable C.         Squeezed C.
Stupid C.         Steeped C.           Resty C.
Seedless C.       Kneaded-with-cold-    Pounded C.
Soaked C.           water C.           Loose C.
Coldish C.        Hacked C.            Fruitless C.
Pickled C.        Flaggy C.            Riven C.
Churned C.        Scrubby C.           Pursy C.
Filliped C.       Drained C.           Fusty C.
Singlefied C.     Haled C.             Jadish C.
Begrimed C.       Lolling C.           Fistulous C.
Wrinkled C.       Drenched C.          Languishing C.
Fainted C.        Burst C.             Maleficiated C.
Extenuated C.     Stirred up C.        Hectic C.
Grim C.           Mitred C.            Worn out C.
Wasted C.         Peddlingly furnished  Ill-favoured C.
Inflamed C.         C.                 Duncified C.
Unhinged C.       Rusty C.             Macerated C.
Scurfy C.         Exhausted C.         Paralytic C.
Straddling C.     Perplexed C.         Degraded C.
Putrefied C.      Unhelved C.          Benumbed C.
Maimed C.         Fizzled C.           Bat-like C.
Overlechered C.   Leprous C.           Fart-shotten C.
Druggely C.       Bruised C.           Sunburnt C.
Mitified C.       Spadonic C.          Pacified C.
Goat-ridden C.    Boughty C.           Blunted C.
Weakened C.       Mealy C.             Rankling tasted C.
Ass-ridden C.     Wrangling C.         Rooted out C.
Puff-pasted C.    Gangrened C.         Costive C.
St. Anthonified C. Crust-risen C.       Hailed on C.
Untriped C.       Ragged C.            Cuffed C.
Blasted C.        Quelled C.           Buffeted C.
Cut off C.        Braggadocio C.       Whirreted C.
Beveraged C.      Beggarly C.          Robbed C.
Scarified C.      Trepanned C.         Neglected C.
Dashed C.         Bedusked C.          Lame C.
Slashed C.        Emasculated C.       Confused C.
Enfeebled C.      Corked C.            Unsavoury C.
Whore-hunting C.  Transparent C.       Overthrown C.
Deteriorated C.   Vile C.              Boulted C.
Chill C.          Antedated C.         Trod under C.
Scrupulous C.     Chopped C.           Desolate C.
Crazed C.         Pinked C.            Declining C.
Tasteless C.      Cup-glassified C.    Stinking C.
Sorrowful C.      Harsh C.             Crooked C.
Murdered C.       Beaten C.            Brabbling C.
Matachin-like C.  Barred C.            Rotten C.
Besotted C.       Abandoned C.         Anxious C.
Customerless C.   Confounded C.        Clouted C.
Minced C.         Loutish C.           Tired C.
Exulcerated C.    Borne down C.        Proud C.
Patched C.        Sparred C.           Fractured C.
Stupified C.      Abashed C.           Melancholy C.
Annihilated C.    Unseasonable C.      Coxcombly C.
Spent C.          Oppressed C.         Base C.
Foiled C.         Grated C.            Bleaked C.
Anguished C.      Falling away C.      Detested C.
Disfigured C.     Smallcut C.          Diaphanous C.
Disabled C.       Disordered C.        Unworthy C.
Forceless C.      Latticed C.          Checked C.
Censured C.       Ruined C.            Mangled C.
Cut C.            Exasperated C.       Turned over C.
Rifled C.         Rejected C.          Harried C.
Undone C.         Belammed C.          Flawed C.
Corrected C.      Fabricitant C.       Froward C.
Slit C.           Perused C.           Ugly C.
Skittish C.       Emasculated C.       Drawn C.
Spongy C.         Roughly handled C.   Riven C.
Botched C.        Examined C.          Distasteful C.
Dejected C.       Cracked C.           Hanging C.
Jagged C.         Wayward C.           Broken C.
Pining C.         Haggled C.           Limber C.
Deformed C.       Gleaning C.          Effeminate C.
Mischieved C.     Ill-favoured C.      Kindled C.
Cobbled C.        Pulled C.            Evacuated C.
Embased C.        Drooping C.          Grieved C.
Ransacked C.      Faint C.             Carking C.
Despised C.       Parched C.           Disorderly C.
Mangy C.          Paltry C.            Empty C.
Abased C.         Cankered C.          Disquieted C.
Supine C.         Void C.              Besysted C.
Mended C.         Vexed C.             Confounded C.
Dismayed C.       Bestunk C.           Hooked C.
Divorous C.       Winnowed C.          Unlucky C.
Wearied C.        Decayed C.           Sterile C.
Sad C.            Disastrous C.        Beshitten C.
Cross C.          Unhandsome C.        Appeased C.
Vain-glorious C.  Stummed C.           Caitiff C.
Poor C.           Barren C.            Woeful C.
Brown C.          Wretched C.          Unseemly C.
Shrunken C.       Feeble C.            Heavy C.
Abhorred C.       Cast down C.         Weak C.
Troubled C.       Stopped C.           Prostrated C.
Scornful C.       Kept under C.        Uncomely C.
Dishonest C.      Stubborn C.          Naughty C.
Reproved C.       Ground C.            Laid flat C.
Cocketed C.       Retchless C.         Suffocated C.
Filthy C.         Weather-beaten C.    Held down C.
Shred C.          Flayed C.            Barked C.
Chawned C.        Bald C.              Hairless C.
Short-winded C.   Tossed C.            Flamping C.
Branchless C.     Flapping C.          Hooded C.
Chapped C.        Cleft C.             Wormy C.
Failing C.        Meagre C.            Besysted (In his anxiety to swell
his catalogue as much as possible, Sir Thomas Urquhart has set down this
word twice.) C.
Deficient C.      Dumpified C.         Faulty C.
Lean C.           Suppressed C.        Bemealed C.
Consumed C.       Hagged C.            Mortified C.
Used C.           Jawped C.            Scurvy C.
Puzzled C.        Havocked C.          Bescabbed C.
Allayed C.        Astonished C.        Torn C.
Spoiled C.        Dulled C.            Subdued C.
Clagged C.        Slow C.              Sneaking C.
Palsy-stricken C. Plucked up C.        Bare C.
Amazed C.         Constipated C.       Swart C.
Bedunsed C.       Blown C.             Smutched C.
Extirpated C.     Blockified C.        Raised up C.
Banged C.         Pommelled C.         Chopped C.
Stripped C.       All-to-bemauled C.   Flirted C.
Hoary C.          Fallen away C.       Blained C.
Blotted C.        Stale C.             Rensy C.
Sunk in C.        Corrupted C.         Frowning C.
Ghastly C.        Beflowered C.        Limping C.
Unpointed C.      Amated C.            Ravelled C.
Beblistered C.    Blackish C.          Rammish C.
Wizened C.        Underlaid C.         Gaunt C.
Beggar-plated C.  Loathing C.          Beskimmered C.
Douf C.           Ill-filled C.        Scraggy C.
Clarty C.         Bobbed C.            Lank C.
Lumpish C.        Mated C.             Swashering C.
Abject C.         Tawny C.             Moiling C.
Side C.           Whealed C.           Swinking C.
Choked up C.      Besmeared C.         Harried C.
Backward C.       Hollow C.            Tugged C.
Prolix C.         Pantless C.          Towed C.
Spotted C.        Guizened C.          Misused C.
Crumpled C.       Demiss C.            Adamitical C.
Frumpled C.       Refractory C.

Ballockatso to the devil, my dear friend Panurge, seeing it is so decreed
by the gods, wouldst thou invert the course of the planets, and make them
retrograde? Wouldst thou disorder all the celestial spheres, blame the
intelligences, blunt the spindles, joint the wherves, slander the spinning
quills, reproach the bobbins, revile the clew-bottoms, and finally ravel
and untwist all the threads of both the warp and the waft of the weird
Sister-Parcae? What a pox to thy bones dost thou mean, stony cod? Thou
wouldst if thou couldst, a great deal worse than the giants of old intended
to have done. Come hither, billicullion. Whether wouldst thou be jealous
without cause, or be a cuckold and know nothing of it? Neither the one nor
the other, quoth Panurge, would I choose to be. But if I get an inkling of
the matter, I will provide well enough, or there shall not be one stick of
wood within five hundred leagues about me whereof to make a cudgel. In
good faith, Friar John, I speak now seriously unto thee, I think it will be
my best not to marry. Hearken to what the bells do tell me, now that we
are nearer to them! Do not marry, marry not, not, not, not, not; marry,
marry not, not, not, not, not. If thou marry, thou wilt miscarry, carry,
carry; thou'lt repent it, resent it, sent it! If thou marry, thou a
cuckold, a cou-cou-cuckoo, cou-cou-cuckold thou shalt be. By the worthy
wrath of God, I begin to be angry. This campanilian oracle fretteth me to
the guts,--a March hare was never in such a chafe as I am. O how I am
vexed! You monks and friars of the cowl-pated and hood-polled fraternity,
have you no remedy nor salve against this malady of graffing horns in
heads? Hath nature so abandoned humankind, and of her help left us so
destitute, that married men cannot know how to sail through the seas of
this mortal life and be safe from the whirlpools, quicksands, rocks, and
banks that lie alongst the coast of Cornwall.

I will, said Friar John, show thee a way and teach thee an expedient by
means whereof thy wife shall never make thee a cuckold without thy
knowledge and thine own consent. Do me the favour, I pray thee, quoth
Panurge, my pretty, soft, downy cod; now tell it, billy, tell it, I beseech
thee. Take, quoth Friar John, Hans Carvel's ring upon thy finger, who was
the King of Melinda's chief jeweller. Besides that this Hans Carvel had
the reputation of being very skilful and expert in the lapidary's
profession, he was a studious, learned, and ingenious man, a scientific
person, full of knowledge, a great philosopher, of a sound judgment, of a
prime wit, good sense, clear spirited, an honest creature, courteous,
charitable, a giver of alms, and of a jovial humour, a boon companion, and
a merry blade, if ever there was any in the world. He was somewhat
gorbellied, had a little shake in his head, and was in effect unwieldy of
his body. In his old age he took to wife the Bailiff of Concordat's
daughter, young, fair, jolly, gallant, spruce, frisk, brisk, neat, feat,
smirk, smug, compt, quaint, gay, fine, tricksy, trim, decent, proper,
graceful, handsome, beautiful, comely, and kind--a little too much--to her
neighbours and acquaintance.

Hereupon it fell out, after the expiring of a scantling of weeks, that
Master Carvel became as jealous as a tiger, and entered into a very
profound suspicion that his new-married gixy did keep a-buttock-stirring
with others. To prevent which inconveniency he did tell her many tragical
stories of the total ruin of several kingdoms by adultery; did read unto
her the legend of chaste wives; then made some lectures to her in the
praise of the choice virtue of pudicity, and did present her with a book in
commendation of conjugal fidelity; wherein the wickedness of all licentious
women was odiously detested; and withal he gave her a chain enriched with
pure oriental sapphires. Notwithstanding all this, he found her always
more and more inclined to the reception of her neighbour copes-mates, that
day by day his jealousy increased. In sequel whereof, one night as he was
lying by her, whilst in his sleep the rambling fancies of the lecherous
deportments of his wife did take up the cellules of his brain, he dreamt
that he encountered with the devil, to whom he had discovered to the full
the buzzing of his head and suspicion that his wife did tread her shoe
awry. The devil, he thought, in this perplexity did for his comfort give
him a ring, and therewithal did kindly put it on his middle finger, saying,
Hans Carvel, I give thee this ring,--whilst thou carriest it upon that
finger, thy wife shall never carnally be known by any other than thyself
without thy special knowledge and consent. Gramercy, quoth Hans Carvel, my
lord devil, I renounce Mahomet if ever it shall come off my finger. The
devil vanished, as is his custom; and then Hans Carvel, full of joy
awaking, found that his middle finger was as far as it could reach within
the what-do-by-call-it of his wife. I did forget to tell thee how his
wife, as soon as she had felt the finger there, said, in recoiling her
buttocks, Off, yes, nay, tut, pish, tush, ay, lord, that is not the thing
which should be put up in that place. With this Hans Carvel thought that
some pilfering fellow was about to take the ring from him. Is not this an
infallible and sovereign antidote? Therefore, if thou wilt believe me, in
imitation of this example never fail to have continually the ring of thy
wife's commodity upon thy finger. When that was said, their discourse and
their way ended.

Chapter 3.XXIX.

How Pantagruel convocated together a theologian, physician, lawyer, and
philosopher, for extricating Panurge out of the perplexity wherein he was.

No sooner were they come into the royal palace, but they to the full made
report unto Pantagruel of the success of their expedition, and showed him
the response of Raminagrobis. When Pantagruel had read it over and over
again, the oftener he perused it being the better pleased therewith, he
said, in addressing his speech to Panurge, I have not as yet seen any
answer framed to your demand which affordeth me more contentment. For in
this his succinct copy of verses, he summarily and briefly, yet fully
enough expresseth how he would have us to understand that everyone in the
project and enterprise of marriage ought to be his own carver, sole
arbitrator of his proper thoughts, and from himself alone take counsel in
the main and peremptory closure of what his determination should be, in
either his assent to or dissent from it. Such always hath been my opinion
to you, and when at first you spoke thereof to me I truly told you this
same very thing; but tacitly you scorned my advice, and would not harbour
it within your mind. I know for certain, and therefore may I with the
greater confidence utter my conception of it, that philauty, or self-love,
is that which blinds your judgment and deceiveth you.

Let us do otherwise, and that is this: Whatever we are, or have,
consisteth in three things--the soul, the body, and the goods. Now, for
the preservation of these three, there are three sorts of learned men
ordained, each respectively to have care of that one which is recommended
to his charge. Theologues are appointed for the soul, physicians for the
welfare of the body, and lawyers for the safety of our goods. Hence it is
that it is my resolution to have on Sunday next with me at dinner a divine,
a physician, and a lawyer, that with those three assembled thus together we
may in every point and particle confer at large of your perplexity. By
Saint Picot, answered Panurge, we never shall do any good that way, I see
it already. And you see yourself how the world is vilely abused, as when
with a foxtail one claps another's breech to cajole him. We give our souls
to keep to the theologues, who for the greater part are heretics. Our
bodies we commit to the physicians, who never themselves take any physic.
And then we entrust our goods to the lawyers, who never go to law against
one another. You speak like a courtier, quoth Pantagruel. But the first
point of your assertion is to be denied; for we daily see how good
theologues make it their chief business, their whole and sole employment,
by their deeds, their words, and writings, to extirpate errors and heresies
out of the hearts of men, and in their stead profoundly plant the true and
lively faith. The second point you spoke of I commend; for, whereas the
professors of the art of medicine give so good order to the prophylactic,
or conservative part of their faculty, in what concerneth their proper
healths, that they stand in no need of making use of the other branch,
which is the curative or therapeutic, by medicaments. As for the third, I
grant it to be true, for learned advocates and counsellors at law are so
much taken up with the affairs of others in their consultations, pleadings,
and such-like patrocinations of those who are their clients, that they have
no leisure to attend any controversies of their own. Therefore, on the
next ensuing Sunday, let the divine be our godly Father Hippothadee, the
physician our honest Master Rondibilis, and our legist our friend
Bridlegoose. Nor will it be (to my thinking) amiss, that we enter into the
Pythagoric field, and choose for an assistant to the three afore-named
doctors our ancient faithful acquaintance, the philosopher Trouillogan;
especially seeing a perfect philosopher, such as is Trouillogan, is able
positively to resolve all whatsoever doubts you can propose. Carpalin,
have you a care to have them here all four on Sunday next at dinner,
without fail.

I believe, quoth Epistemon, that throughout the whole country, in all the
corners thereof, you could not have pitched upon such other four. Which I
speak not so much in regard of the most excellent qualifications and
accomplishments wherewith all of them are endowed for the respective
discharge and management of each his own vocation and calling (wherein
without all doubt or controversy they are the paragons of the land, and
surpass all others), as for that Rondibilis is married now, who before was
not,--Hippothadee was not before, nor is yet,--Bridlegoose was married
once, but is not now,--and Trouillogan is married now, who wedded was to
another wife before. Sir, if it may stand with your good liking, I will
ease Carpalin of some parcel of his labour, and invite Bridlegoose myself,
with whom I of a long time have had a very intimate familiarity, and unto
whom I am to speak on the behalf of a pretty hopeful youth who now studieth
at Toulouse, under the most learned virtuous doctor Boissonet. Do what you
deem most expedient, quoth Pantagruel, and tell me if my recommendation can
in anything be steadable for the promoval of the good of that youth, or
otherwise serve for bettering of the dignity and office of the worthy
Boissonet, whom I do so love and respect for one of the ablest and most
sufficient in his way that anywhere are extant. Sir, I will use therein my
best endeavours, and heartily bestir myself about it.

Chapter 3.XXX.

How the theologue, Hippothadee, giveth counsel to Panurge in the matter and
business of his nuptial enterprise.

The dinner on the subsequent Sunday was no sooner made ready than that the
afore-named invited guests gave thereto their appearance, all of them,
Bridlegoose only excepted, who was the deputy-governor of Fonsbeton. At
the ushering in of the second service Panurge, making a low reverence,
spake thus: Gentlemen, the question I am to propound unto you shall be
uttered in very few words--Should I marry or no? If my doubt herein be not
resolved by you, I shall hold it altogether insolvable, as are the
Insolubilia de Aliaco; for all of you are elected, chosen, and culled out
from amongst others, everyone in his own condition and quality, like so
many picked peas on a carpet.

The Father Hippothadee, in obedience to the bidding of Pantagruel, and with
much courtesy to the company, answered exceeding modestly after this
manner: My friend, you are pleased to ask counsel of us; but first you
must consult with yourself. Do you find any trouble or disquiet in your
body by the importunate stings and pricklings of the flesh? That I do,
quoth Panurge, in a hugely strong and almost irresistible measure. Be not
offended, I beseech you, good father, at the freedom of my expression. No
truly, friend, not I, quoth Hippothadee, there is no reason why I should be
displeased therewith. But in this carnal strife and debate of yours have
you obtained from God the gift and special grace of continency? In good
faith, not, quoth Panurge. My counsel to you in that case, my friend, is
that you marry, quoth Hippothadee; for you should rather choose to marry
once than to burn still in fires of concupiscence. Then Panurge, with a
jovial heart and a loud voice, cried out, That is spoke gallantly, without
circumbilivaginating about and about, and never hitting it in its centred
point. Gramercy, my good father! In truth I am resolved now to marry, and
without fail I shall do it quickly. I invite you to my wedding. By the
body of a hen, we shall make good cheer, and be as merry as crickets. You
shall wear the bridegroom's colours, and, if we eat a goose, my wife shall
not roast it for me. I will entreat you to lead up the first dance of the
bridesmaids, if it may please you to do me so much favour and honour.
There resteth yet a small difficulty, a little scruple, yea, even less than
nothing, whereof I humbly crave your resolution. Shall I be a cuckold,
father, yea or no? By no means, answered Hippothadee, will you be
cuckolded, if it please God. O the Lord help us now, quoth Panurge;
whither are we driven to, good folks? To the conditionals, which,
according to the rules and precepts of the dialectic faculty, admit of all
contradictions and impossibilities. If my Transalpine mule had wings, my
Transalpine mule would fly, if it please God, I shall not be a cuckold; but
I shall be a cuckold, if it please him. Good God, if this were a condition
which I knew how to prevent, my hopes should be as high as ever, nor would
I despair. But you here send me to God's privy council, to the closet of
his little pleasures. You, my French countrymen, which is the way you take
to go thither?

My honest father, I believe I will be your best not to come to my wedding.
The clutter and dingle-dangle noise of marriage guests will but disturb
you, and break the serious fancies of your brain. You love repose, with
solitude and silence; I really believe you will not come. And then you
dance but indifferently, and would be out of countenance at the first
entry. I will send you some good things to your chamber, together with the
bride's favour, and there you may drink our health, if it may stand with
your good liking. My friend, quoth Hippothadee, take my words in the sense
wherein I meant them, and do not misinterpret me. When I tell you,--If it
please God,--do I to you any wrong therein? Is it an ill expression? Is
it a blaspheming clause or reserve any way scandalous unto the world? Do
not we thereby honour the Lord God Almighty, Creator, Protector, and
Conserver of all things? Is not that a mean whereby we do acknowledge him
to be the sole giver of all whatsoever is good? Do not we in that manifest
our faith that we believe all things to depend upon his infinite and
incomprehensible bounty, and that without him nothing can be produced, nor
after its production be of any value, force, or power, without the
concurring aid and favour of his assisting grace? Is it not a canonical
and authentic exception, worthy to be premised to all our undertakings? Is
it not expedient that what we propose unto ourselves be still referred to
what shall be disposed of by the sacred will of God, unto which all things
must acquiesce in the heavens as well as on the earth? Is not that verily
a sanctifying of his holy name? My friend, you shall not be a cuckold, if
it please God, nor shall we need to despair of the knowledge of his good
will and pleasure herein, as if it were such an abstruse and mysteriously
hidden secret that for the clear understanding thereof it were necessary to
consult with those of his celestial privy council, or expressly make a
voyage unto the empyrean chamber where order is given for the effectuating
of his most holy pleasures. The great God hath done us this good, that he
hath declared and revealed them to us openly and plainly, and described
them in the Holy Bible. There will you find that you shall never be a
cuckold, that is to say, your wife shall never be a strumpet, if you make
choice of one of a commendable extraction, descended of honest parents, and
instructed in all piety and virtue--such a one as hath not at any time
haunted or frequented the company or conversation of those that are of
corrupt and depraved manners, one loving and fearing God, who taketh a
singular delight in drawing near to him by faith and the cordial observing
of his sacred commandments--and finally, one who, standing in awe of the
Divine Majesty of the Most High, will be loth to offend him and lose the
favourable kindness of his grace through any defect of faith or
transgression against the ordinances of his holy law, wherein adultery is
most rigorously forbidden and a close adherence to her husband alone most
strictly and severely enjoined; yea, in such sort that she is to cherish,
serve, and love him above anything, next to God, that meriteth to be
beloved. In the interim, for the better schooling of her in these
instructions, and that the wholesome doctrine of a matrimonial duty may
take the deeper root in her mind, you must needs carry yourself so on your
part, and your behaviour is to be such, that you are to go before her in a
good example, by entertaining her unfeignedly with a conjugal amity, by
continually approving yourself in all your words and actions a faithful and
discreet husband; and by living, not only at home and privately with your
own household and family, but in the face also of all men and open view of
the world, devoutly, virtuously, and chastely, as you would have her on her
side to deport and to demean herself towards you, as becomes a godly,
loyal, and respectful wife, who maketh conscience to keep inviolable the
tie of a matrimonial oath. For as that looking-glass is not the best which
is most decked with gold and precious stones, but that which representeth
to the eye the liveliest shapes of objects set before it, even so that wife
should not be most esteemed who richest is and of the noblest race, but she
who, fearing God, conforms herself nearest unto the humour of her husband.

Consider how the moon doth not borrow her light from Jupiter, Mars,
Mercury, or any other of the planets, nor yet from any of those splendid
stars which are set in the spangled firmament, but from her husband only,
the bright sun, which she receiveth from him more or less, according to the
manner of his aspect and variously bestowed eradiations. Just so should
you be a pattern to your wife in virtue, goodly zeal, and true devotion,
that by your radiance in darting on her the aspect of an exemplary
goodness, she, in your imitation, may outshine the luminaries of all other
women. To this effect you daily must implore God's grace to the protection
of you both. You would have me then, quoth Panurge, twisting the whiskers
of his beard on either side with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand,
to espouse and take to wife the prudent frugal woman described by Solomon.
Without all doubt she is dead, and truly to my best remembrance I never saw
her; the Lord forgive me! Nevertheless, I thank you, father. Eat this
slice of marchpane, it will help your digestion; then shall you be
presented with a cup of claret hippocras, which is right healthful and
stomachal. Let us proceed.

Chapter 3.XXXI.

How the physician Rondibilis counselleth Panurge.

Panurge, continuing his discourse, said, The first word which was spoken by
him who gelded the lubberly, quaffing monks of Saussiniac, after that he
had unstoned Friar Cauldaureil, was this, To the rest. In like manner, I
say, To the rest. Therefore I beseech you, my good Master Rondibilis,
should I marry or not? By the raking pace of my mule, quoth Rondibilis, I
know not what answer to make to this problem of yours.

You say that you feel in you the pricking stings of sensuality, by which
you are stirred up to venery. I find in our faculty of medicine, and we
have founded our opinion therein upon the deliberate resolution and final
decision of the ancient Platonics, that carnal concupiscence is cooled and
quelled five several ways.

First, By the means of wine. I shall easily believe that, quoth Friar
John, for when I am well whittled with the juice of the grape I care for
nothing else, so I may sleep. When I say, quoth Rondibilis, that wine
abateth lust, my meaning is, wine immoderately taken; for by intemperancy
proceeding from the excessive drinking of strong liquor there is brought
upon the body of such a swill-down boozer a chillness in the blood, a
slackening in the sinews, a dissipation of the generative seed, a numbness
and hebetation of the senses, with a perversive wryness and convulsion of
the muscles--all which are great lets and impediments to the act of
generation. Hence it is that Bacchus, the god of bibbers, tipplers, and
drunkards, is most commonly painted beardless and clad in a woman's habit,
as a person altogether effeminate, or like a libbed eunuch. Wine,
nevertheless, taken moderately, worketh quite contrary effects, as is
implied by the old proverb, which saith that Venus takes cold when not
accompanied with Ceres and Bacchus. This opinion is of great antiquity, as
appeareth by the testimony of Diodorus the Sicilian, and confirmed by
Pausanias, and universally held amongst the Lampsacians, that Don Priapus
was the son of Bacchus and Venus.

Secondly, The fervency of lust is abated by certain drugs, plants, herbs,
and roots, which make the taker cold, maleficiated, unfit for, and unable
to perform the act of generation; as hath been often experimented in the
water-lily, heraclea, agnus castus, willow-twigs, hemp-stalks, woodbine,
honeysuckle, tamarisk, chaste tree, mandrake, bennet, keckbugloss, the skin
of a hippopotam, and many other such, which, by convenient doses
proportioned to the peccant humour and constitution of the patient, being
duly and seasonably received within the body--what by their elementary
virtues on the one side and peculiar properties on the other--do either
benumb, mortify, and beclumpse with cold the prolific semence, or scatter
and disperse the spirits which ought to have gone along with and conducted
the sperm to the places destined and appointed for its reception, or
lastly, shut up, stop, and obstruct the ways, passages, and conduits
through which the seed should have been expelled, evacuated, and ejected.
We have nevertheless of those ingredients which, being of a contrary
operation, heat the blood, bend the nerves, unite the spirits, quicken the
senses, strengthen the muscles, and thereby rouse up, provoke, excite, and
enable a man to the vigorous accomplishment of the feat of amorous
dalliance. I have no need of those, quoth Panurge, God be thanked, and
you, my good master. Howsoever, I pray you, take no exception or offence
at these my words; for what I have said was not out of any illwill I did
bear to you, the Lord he knows.

Thirdly, The ardour of lechery is very much subdued and mated by frequent
labour and continual toiling. For by painful exercises and laborious
working so great a dissolution is brought upon the whole body, that the
blood, which runneth alongst the channels of the veins thereof for the
nourishment and alimentation of each of its members, hath neither time,
leisure, nor power to afford the seminal resudation, or superfluity of the
third concoction, which nature most carefully reserves for the conservation
of the individual, whose preservation she more heedfully regardeth than the
propagating of the species and the multiplication of humankind. Whence it
is that Diana is said to be chaste, because she is never idle, but always
busied about her hunting. For the same reason was a camp or leaguer of old
called castrum, as if they would have said castum; because the soldiers,
wrestlers, runners, throwers of the bar, and other such-like athletic
champions as are usually seen in a military circumvallation, do incessantly
travail and turmoil, and are in a perpetual stir and agitation. To this
purpose Hippocrates also writeth in his book, De Aere, Aqua et Locis, that
in his time there were people in Scythia as impotent as eunuchs in the
discharge of a venerean exploit, because that without any cessation, pause,
or respite they were never from off horseback, or otherwise assiduously
employed in some troublesome and molesting drudgery.

On the other part, in opposition and repugnancy hereto, the philosophers
say that idleness is the mother of luxury. When it was asked Ovid, Why
Aegisthus became an adulterer? he made no other answer but this, Because he
was idle. Who were able to rid the world of loitering and laziness might
easily frustrate and disappoint Cupid of all his designs, aims, engines,
and devices, and so disable and appal him that his bow, quiver, and darts
should from thenceforth be a mere needless load and burden to him, for that
it could not then lie in his power to strike or wound any of either sex
with all the arms he had. He is not, I believe, so expert an archer as
that he can hit the cranes flying in the air, or yet the young stags
skipping through the thickets, as the Parthians knew well how to do; that
is to say, people moiling, stirring and hurrying up and down, restless, and
without repose. He must have those hushed, still, quiet, lying at a stay,
lither, and full of ease, whom he is able, though his mother help him, to
touch, much less to pierce with all his arrows. In confirmation hereof,
Theophrastus, being asked on a time what kind of beast or thing he judged a
toyish, wanton love to be? he made answer, that it was a passion of idle
and sluggish spirits. From which pretty description of tickling love-
tricks that of Diogenes's hatching was not very discrepant, when he defined
lechery the occupation of folks destitute of all other occupation. For
this cause the Syconian engraver Canachus, being desirous to give us to
understand that sloth, drowsiness, negligence, and laziness were the prime
guardians and governesses of ribaldry, made the statue of Venus, not
standing, as other stone-cutters had used to do, but sitting.

Fourthly, The tickling pricks of incontinency are blunted by an eager
study; for from thence proceedeth an incredible resolution of the spirits,
that oftentimes there do not remain so many behind as may suffice to push
and thrust forwards the generative resudation to the places thereto
appropriated, and therewithal inflate the cavernous nerve whose office is
to ejaculate the moisture for the propagation of human progeny. Lest you
should think it is not so, be pleased but to contemplate a little the form,
fashion, and carriage of a man exceeding earnestly set upon some learned
meditation, and deeply plunged therein, and you shall see how all the
arteries of his brains are stretched forth and bent like the string of a
crossbow, the more promptly, dexterously, and copiously to suppeditate,
furnish, and supply him with store of spirits sufficient to replenish and
fill up the ventricles, seats, tunnels, mansions, receptacles, and cellules
of the common sense,--of the imagination, apprehension, and fancy,--of the
ratiocination, arguing, and resolution,--as likewise of the memory,
recordation, and remembrance; and with great alacrity, nimbleness, and
agility to run, pass, and course from the one to the other, through those
pipes, windings, and conduits which to skilful anatomists are perceivable
at the end of the wonderful net where all the arteries close in a
terminating point; which arteries, taking their rise and origin from the
left capsule of the heart, bring through several circuits, ambages, and
anfractuosities, the vital, to subtilize and refine them to the ethereal
purity of animal spirits. Nay, in such a studiously musing person you may
espy so extravagant raptures of one as it were out of himself, that all his
natural faculties for that time will seem to be suspended from each their
proper charge and office, and his exterior senses to be at a stand. In a
word, you cannot otherwise choose than think that he is by an extraordinary
ecstasy quite transported out of what he was, or should be; and that
Socrates did not speak improperly when he said that philosophy was nothing
else but a meditation upon death. This possibly is the reason why
Democritus deprived himself of the sense of seeing, prizing at a much lower
rate the loss of his sight than the diminution of his contemplations, which
he frequently had found disturbed by the vagrant, flying-out strayings of
his unsettled and roving eyes. Therefore is it that Pallas, the goddess of
wisdom, tutoress and guardianess of such as are diligently studious and
painfully industrious, is, and hath been still accounted a virgin. The
Muses upon the same consideration are esteemed perpetual maids; and the
Graces, for the like reason, have been held to continue in a sempiternal
pudicity.

I remember to have read that Cupid, on a time being asked of his mother
Venus why he did not assault and set upon the Muses, his answer was that he
found them so fair, so sweet, so fine, so neat, so wise, so learned, so
modest, so discreet, so courteous, so virtuous, and so continually busied
and employed,--one in the speculation of the stars,--another in the
supputation of numbers,--the third in the dimension of geometrical
quantities,--the fourth in the composition of heroic poems,--the fifth in
the jovial interludes of a comic strain,--the sixth in the stately gravity
of a tragic vein,--the seventh in the melodious disposition of musical
airs,--the eighth in the completest manner of writing histories and books
on all sorts of subjects,--and the ninth in the mysteries, secrets, and
curiosities of all sciences, faculties, disciplines, and arts whatsoever,
whether liberal or mechanic,--that approaching near unto them he unbended
his bow, shut his quiver, and extinguished his torch, through mere shame
and fear that by mischance he might do them some hurt or prejudice. Which
done, he thereafter put off the fillet wherewith his eyes were bound to
look them in the face, and to hear their melody and poetic odes. There
took he the greatest pleasure in the world, that many times he was
transported with their beauty and pretty behaviour, and charmed asleep by
the harmony; so far was he from assaulting them or interrupting their
studies. Under this article may be comprised what Hippocrates wrote in the
afore-cited treatise concerning the Scythians; as also that in a book of
his entitled Of Breeding and Production, where he hath affirmed all such
men to be unfit for generation as have their parotid arteries cut--whose
situation is beside the ears--for the reason given already when I was
speaking of the resolution of the spirits and of that spiritual blood
whereof the arteries are the sole and proper receptacles, and that likewise
he doth maintain a large portion of the parastatic liquor to issue and
descend from the brains and backbone.

Fifthly, By the too frequent reiteration of the act of venery. There did I
wait for you, quoth Panurge, and shall willingly apply it to myself, whilst
anyone that pleaseth may, for me, make use of any of the four preceding.
That is the very same thing, quoth Friar John, which Father Scyllino, Prior
of Saint Victor at Marseilles, calleth by the name of maceration and taming
of the flesh. I am of the same opinion,--and so was the hermit of Saint
Radegonde, a little above Chinon; for, quoth he, the hermits of Thebaide
can no more aptly or expediently macerate and bring down the pride of their
bodies, daunt and mortify their lecherous sensuality, or depress and
overcome the stubbornness and rebellion of the flesh, than by duffling and
fanfreluching it five-and-twenty or thirty times a day. I see Panurge,
quoth Rondibilis, neatly featured and proportioned in all the members of
his body, of a good temperament in his humours, well-complexioned in his
spirits, of a competent age, in an opportune time, and of a reasonably
forward mind to be married. Truly, if he encounter with a wife of the like
nature, temperament, and constitution, he may beget upon her children
worthy of some transpontine monarchy; and the sooner he marry it will be
the better for him, and the more conducible for his profit if he would see
and have his children in his own time well provided for. Sir, my worthy
master, quoth Panurge, I will do it, do not you doubt thereof, and that
quickly enough, I warrant you. Nevertheless, whilst you were busied in the
uttering of your learned discourse, this flea which I have in mine ear hath
tickled me more than ever. I retain you in the number of my festival
guests, and promise you that we shall not want for mirth and good cheer
enough, yea, over and above the ordinary rate. And, if it may please you,
desire your wife to come along with you, together with her she-friends and
neighbours--that is to be understood--and there shall be fair play.

Chapter 3.XXXII.

How Rondibilis declareth cuckoldry to be naturally one of the appendances
of marriage.

There remaineth as yet, quoth Panurge, going on in his discourse, one small
scruple to be cleared. You have seen heretofore, I doubt not, in the Roman
standards, S.P.Q.R., Si, Peu, Que, Rien. Shall not I be a cuckold? By the
haven of safety, cried out Rondibilis, what is this you ask of me? If you
shall be a cuckold? My noble friend, I am married, and you are like to be
so very speedily; therefore be pleased, from my experiment in the matter,
to write in your brain with a steel pen this subsequent ditton, There is no
married man who doth not run the hazard of being made a cuckold. Cuckoldry
naturally attendeth marriage. The shadow doth not more naturally follow
the body, than cuckoldry ensueth after marriage to place fair horns upon
the husbands' heads.

And when you shall happen to hear any man pronounce these three words, He
is married; if you then say he is, hath been, shall be, or may be a
cuckold, you will not be accounted an unskilful artist in framing of true
consequences. Tripes and bowels of all the devils, cries Panurge, what do
you tell me? My dear friend, answered Rondibilis, as Hippocrates on a time
was in the very nick of setting forwards from Lango to Polystilo to visit
the philosopher Democritus, he wrote a familiar letter to his friend
Dionysius, wherein he desired him that he would, during the interval of his
absence, carry his wife to the house of her father and mother, who were an
honourable couple and of good repute; because I would not have her at my
home, said he, to make abode in solitude. Yet, notwithstanding this her
residence beside her parents, do not fail, quoth he, with a most heedful
care and circumspection to pry into her ways, and to espy what places she
shall go to with her mother, and who those be that shall repair unto her.
Not, quoth he, that I do mistrust her virtue, or that I seem to have any
diffidence of her pudicity and chaste behaviour,--for of that I have
frequently had good and real proofs,--but I must freely tell you, She is a
woman. There lies the suspicion.

My worthy friend, the nature of women is set forth before our eyes and
represented to us by the moon, in divers other things as well as in this,
that they squat, skulk, constrain their own inclinations, and, with all the
cunning they can, dissemble and play the hypocrite in the sight and
presence of their husbands; who come no sooner to be out of the way, but
that forthwith they take their advantage, pass the time merrily, desist
from all labour, frolic it, gad abroad, lay aside their counterfeit garb,
and openly declare and manifest the interior of their dispositions, even as
the moon, when she is in conjunction with the sun, is neither seen in the
heavens nor on the earth, but in her opposition, when remotest from him,
shineth in her greatest fulness, and wholly appeareth in her brightest
splendour whilst it is night. Thus women are but women.

When I say womankind, I speak of a sex so frail, so variable, so
changeable, so fickle, inconstant, and imperfect, that in my opinion
Nature, under favour, nevertheless, of the prime honour and reverence which
is due unto her, did in a manner mistake the road which she had traced
formerly, and stray exceedingly from that excellence of providential
judgment by the which she had created and formed all other things, when she
built, framed, and made up the woman. And having thought upon it a hundred
and five times, I know not what else to determine therein, save only that
in the devising, hammering, forging, and composing of the woman she hath
had a much tenderer regard, and by a great deal more respectful heed to the
delightful consortship and sociable delectation of the man, than to the
perfection and accomplishment of the individual womanishness or muliebrity.
The divine philosopher Plato was doubtful in what rank of living creatures
to place and collocate them, whether amongst the rational animals, by
elevating them to an upper seat in the specifical classis of humanity, or
with the irrational, by degrading them to a lower bench on the opposite
side, of a brutal kind, and mere bestiality. For nature hath posited in a
privy, secret, and intestine place of their bodies, a sort of member, by
some not impertinently termed an animal, which is not to be found in men.
Therein sometimes are engendered certain humours so saltish, brackish,
clammy, sharp, nipping, tearing, prickling, and most eagerly tickling, that
by their stinging acrimony, rending nitrosity, figging itch, wriggling
mordicancy, and smarting salsitude (for the said member is altogether
sinewy and of a most quick and lively feeling), their whole body is shaken
and ebrangled, their senses totally ravished and transported, the
operations of their judgment and understanding utterly confounded, and all
disordinate passions and perturbations of the mind thoroughly and
absolutely allowed, admitted, and approved of; yea, in such sort that if
nature had not been so favourable unto them as to have sprinkled their
forehead with a little tincture of bashfulness and modesty, you should see
them in a so frantic mood run mad after lechery, and hie apace up and down
with haste and lust, in quest of and to fix some chamber-standard in their
Paphian ground, that never did the Proetides, Mimallonides, nor Lyaean
Thyades deport themselves in the time of their bacchanalian festivals more
shamelessly, or with a so affronted and brazen-faced impudency; because
this terrible animal is knit unto, and hath an union with all the chief and
most principal parts of the body, as to anatomists is evident. Let it not
here be thought strange that I should call it an animal, seeing therein I
do no otherwise than follow and adhere to the doctrine of the academic and
peripatetic philosophers. For if a proper motion be a certain mark and
infallible token of the life and animation of the mover, as Aristotle
writeth, and that any such thing as moveth of itself ought to be held
animated and of a living nature, then assuredly Plato with very good reason
did give it the denomination of an animal, for that he perceived and
observed in it the proper and self-stirring motions of suffocation,
precipitation, corrugation, and of indignation so extremely violent, that
oftentimes by them is taken and removed from the woman all other sense and
moving whatsoever, as if she were in a swounding lipothymy, benumbing
syncope, epileptic, apoplectic palsy, and true resemblance of a pale-faced
death.

Furthermore, in the said member there is a manifest discerning faculty of
scents and odours very perceptible to women, who feel it fly from what is
rank and unsavoury, and follow fragrant and aromatic smells. It is not
unknown to me how Cl. Galen striveth with might and main to prove that
these are not proper and particular notions proceeding intrinsically from
the thing itself, but accidentally and by chance. Nor hath it escaped my
notice how others of that sect have laboured hardly, yea, to the utmost of
their abilities, to demonstrate that it is not a sensitive discerning or
perception in it of the difference of wafts and smells, but merely a
various manner of virtue and efficacy passing forth and flowing from the
diversity of odoriferous substances applied near unto it. Nevertheless, if
you will studiously examine and seriously ponder and weigh in Critolaus's
balance the strength of their reasons and arguments, you shall find that
they, not only in this, but in several other matters also of the like
nature, have spoken at random, and rather out of an ambitious envy to check
and reprehend their betters than for any design to make inquiry into the
solid truth.

I will not launch my little skiff any further into the wide ocean of this
dispute, only will I tell you that the praise and commendation is not mean
and slender which is due to those honest and good women who, living
chastely and without blame, have had the power and virtue to curb, range,
and subdue that unbridled, heady, and wild animal to an obedient,
submissive, and obsequious yielding unto reason. Therefore here will I
make an end of my discourse thereon, when I shall have told you that the
said animal being once satiated--if it be possible that it can be contented
or satisfied--by that aliment which nature hath provided for it out of the
epididymal storehouse of man, all its former and irregular and disordered
motions are at an end, laid, and assuaged, all its vehement and unruly
longings lulled, pacified, and quieted, and all the furious and raging
lusts, appetites, and desires thereof appeased, calmed, and extinguished.
For this cause let it seem nothing strange unto you if we be in a perpetual
danger of being cuckolds, that is to say, such of us as have not
wherewithal fully to satisfy the appetite and expectation of that voracious
animal. Odds fish! quoth Panurge, have you no preventive cure in all your
medicinal art for hindering one's head to be horny-graffed at home whilst
his feet are plodding abroad? Yes, that I have, my gallant friend,
answered Rondibilis, and that which is a sovereign remedy, whereof I
frequently make use myself; and, that you may the better relish, it is set
down and written in the book of a most famous author, whose renown is of a
standing of two thousand years. Hearken and take good heed. You are,
quoth Panurge, by cockshobby, a right honest man, and I love you with all
my heart. Eat a little of this quince-pie; it is very proper and
convenient for the shutting up of the orifice of the ventricle of the
stomach, because of a kind of astringent stypticity which is in that sort
of fruit, and is helpful to the first concoction. But what? I think I
speak Latin before clerks. Stay till I give you somewhat to drink out of
this Nestorian goblet. Will you have another draught of white hippocras?
Be not afraid of the squinzy, no. There is neither squinant, ginger, nor
grains in it; only a little choice cinnamon, and some of the best refined
sugar, with the delicious white wine of the growth of that vine which was
set in the slips of the great sorbapple above the walnut-tree.

Chapter 3.XXXIII.

Rondibilis the physician's cure of cuckoldry.

At that time, quoth Rondibilis, when Jupiter took a view of the state of
his Olympic house and family, and that he had made the calendar of all the
gods and goddesses, appointing unto the festival of every one of them its
proper day and season, establishing certain fixed places and stations for
the pronouncing of oracles and relief of travelling pilgrims, and ordaining
victims, immolations, and sacrifices suitable and correspondent to the
dignity and nature of the worshipped and adored deity--Did not he do, asked
Panurge, therein as Tintouille, the Bishop of Auxerre, is said once to have
done? This noble prelate loved entirely the pure liquor of the grape, as
every honest and judicious man doth; therefore was it that he had an
especial care and regard to the bud of the vine-tree as to the great-
grandfather of Bacchus. But so it is, that for sundry years together he
saw a most pitiful havoc, desolation, and destruction made amongst the
sprouts, shootings, buds, blossoms, and scions of the vines by hoary frost,
dank fogs, hot mists, unseasonable colds, chill blasts, thick hail, and
other calamitous chances of foul weather, happening, as he thought, by the
dismal inauspiciousness of the holy days of St. George, St. Mary, St. Paul,
St. Eutrope, Holy Rood, the Ascension, and other festivals, in that time
when the sun passeth under the sign of Taurus; and thereupon harboured in
his mind this opinion, that the afore-named saints were Saint Hail-
flingers, Saint Frost-senders, Saint Fog-mongers, and Saint Spoilers of the
Vine-buds. For which cause he went about to have transmitted their feasts
from the spring to the winter, to be celebrated between Christmas and
Epiphany, so the mother of the three kings called it, allowing them with
all honour and reverence the liberty then to freeze, hail, and rain as much
as they would; for that he knew that at such a time frost was rather
profitable than hurtful to the vine-buds, and in their steads to have
placed the festivals of St. Christopher, St. John the Baptist, St.
Magdalene, St. Anne, St. Domingo, and St. Lawrence; yea, and to have gone
so far as to collocate and transpose the middle of August in and to the
beginning of May, because during the whole space of their solemnity there
was so little danger of hoary frosts and cold mists, that no artificers are
then held in greater request than the afforders of refrigerating
inventions, makers of junkets, fit disposers of cooling shades, composers
of green arbours, and refreshers of wine.

Jupiter, said Rondibilis, forgot the poor devil Cuckoldry, who was then in
the court at Paris very eagerly soliciting a peddling suit at law for one
of his vassals and tenants. Within some few days thereafter, I have forgot
how many, when he got full notice of the trick which in his absence was
done unto him, he instantly desisted from prosecuting legal processes in
the behalf of others, full of solicitude to pursue after his own business,
lest he should be foreclosed, and thereupon he appeared personally at the
tribunal of the great Jupiter, displayed before him the importance of his
preceding merits, together with the acceptable services which in obedience
to his commandments he had formerly performed; and therefore in all
humility begged of him that he would be pleased not to leave him alone
amongst all the sacred potentates, destitute and void of honour, reverence,
sacrifices, and festival ceremonies. To this petition Jupiter's answer was
excusatory, that all the places and offices of his house were bestowed.
Nevertheless, so importuned was he by the continual supplications of
Monsieur Cuckoldry, that he, in fine, placed him in the rank, list, roll,
rubric, and catalogue, and appointed honours, sacrifices, and festival
rites to be observed on earth in great devotion, and tendered to him with
solemnity. The feast, because there was no void, empty, nor vacant place
in all the calendar, was to be celebrated jointly with, and on the same day
that had been consecrated to the goddess Jealousy. His power and dominion
should be over married folks, especially such as had handsome wives. His
sacrifices were to be suspicion, diffidence, mistrust, a lowering pouting
sullenness, watchings, wardings, researchings, plyings, explorations,
together with the waylayings, ambushes, narrow observations, and malicious
doggings of the husband's scouts and espials of the most privy actions of
their wives. Herewithal every married man was expressly and rigorously
commanded to reverence, honour, and worship him, to celebrate and solemnize
his festival with twice more respect than that of any other saint or deity,
and to immolate unto him with all sincerity and alacrity of heart the
above-mentioned sacrifices and oblations, under pain of severe censures,
threatenings, and comminations of these subsequent fines, mulcts,
amerciaments, penalties, and punishments to be inflicted on the
delinquents: that Monsieur Cuckoldry should never be favourable nor
propitious to them; that he should never help, aid, supply, succour, nor
grant them any subventitious furtherance, auxiliary suffrage, or
adminiculary assistance; that he should never hold them in any reckoning,
account, or estimation; that he should never deign to enter within their
houses, neither at the doors, windows, nor any other place thereof; that he
should never haunt nor frequent their companies or conversations, how
frequently soever they should invocate him and call upon his name; and that
not only he should leave and abandon them to rot alone with their wives in
a sempiternal solitariness, without the benefit of the diversion of any
copes-mate or corrival at all, but should withal shun and eschew them, fly
from them, and eternally forsake and reject them as impious heretics and
sacrilegious persons, according to the accustomed manner of other gods
towards such as are too slack in offering up the duties and reverences
which ought to be performed respectively to their divinities--as is
evidently apparent in Bacchus towards negligent vine-dressers; in Ceres,
against idle ploughmen and tillers of the ground; in Pomona, to unworthy
fruiterers and costard-mongers; in Neptune, towards dissolute mariners and
seafaring men, in Vulcan, towards loitering smiths and forgemen; and so
throughout the rest. Now, on the contrary, this infallible promise was
added, that unto all those who should make a holy day of the above-recited
festival, and cease from all manner of worldly work and negotiation, lay
aside all their own most important occasions, and to be so retchless,
heedless, and careless of what might concern the management of their proper
affairs as to mind nothing else but a suspicious espying and prying into
the secret deportments of their wives, and how to coop, shut up, hold at
under, and deal cruelly and austerely with them by all the harshness and
hardships that an implacable and every way inexorable jealousy can devise
and suggest, conform to the sacred ordinances of the afore-mentioned
sacrifices and oblations, he should be continually favourable to them,
should love them, sociably converse with them, should be day and night in
their houses, and never leave them destitute of his presence. Now I have
said, and you have heard my cure.

Ha, ha, ha! quoth Carpalin, laughing; this is a remedy yet more apt and
proper than Hans Carvel's ring. The devil take me if I do not believe it!
The humour, inclination, and nature of women is like the thunder, whose
force in its bolt or otherwise burneth, bruiseth, and breaketh only hard,
massive, and resisting objects, without staying or stopping at soft, empty,
and yielding matters. For it pasheth into pieces the steel sword without
doing any hurt to the velvet scabbard which ensheatheth it. It chrusheth
also and consumeth the bones without wounding or endamaging the flesh
wherewith they are veiled and covered. Just so it is that women for the
greater part never bend the contention, subtlety, and contradictory
disposition of their spirits unless it be to do what is prohibited and
forbidden.

Verily, quoth Hippothadee, some of our doctors aver for a truth that the
first woman of the world, whom the Hebrews call Eve, had hardly been
induced or allured into the temptation of eating of the fruit of the Tree
of Life if it had not been forbidden her so to do. And that you may give
the more credit to the validity of this opinion, consider how the cautelous
and wily tempter did commemorate unto her, for an antecedent to his
enthymeme, the prohibition which was made to taste it, as being desirous to
infer from thence, It is forbidden thee; therefore thou shouldst eat of it,
else thou canst not be a woman.

Chapter 3.XXXIV.

How women ordinarily have the greatest longing after things prohibited.

When I was, quoth Carpalin, a whoremaster at Orleans, the whole art of
rhetoric, in all its tropes and figures, was not able to afford unto me a
colour or flourish of greater force and value, nor could I by any other
form or manner of elocution pitch upon a more persuasive argument for
bringing young beautiful married ladies into the snares of adultery,
through alluring and enticing them to taste with me of amorous delights,
than with a lively sprightfulness to tell them in downright terms, and to
remonstrate to them with a great show of detestation of a crime so horrid,
how their husbands were jealous. This was none of my invention. It is
written, and we have laws, examples, reasons, and daily experiences
confirmative of the same. If this belief once enter into their noddles,
their husbands will infallibly be cuckolds; yea, by God, will they, without
swearing, although they should do like Semiramis, Pasiphae, Egesta, the
women of the Isle Mandez in Egypt, and other such-like queanish flirting
harlots mentioned in the writings of Herodotus, Strabo, and such-like
puppies.

Truly, quoth Ponocrates, I have heard it related, and it hath been told me
for a verity, that Pope John XXII., passing on a day through the Abbey of
Toucherome, was in all humility required and besought by the abbess and
other discreet mothers of the said convent to grant them an indulgence by
means whereof they might confess themselves to one another, alleging that
religious women were subject to some petty secret slips and imperfections
which would be a foul and burning shame for them to discover and to reveal
to men, how sacerdotal soever their functions were; but that they would
freelier, more familiarly, and with greater cheerfulness, open to each
other their offences, faults, and escapes under the seal of confession.
There is not anything, answered the pope, fitting for you to impetrate of
me which I would not most willingly condescend unto; but I find one
inconvenience. You know confession should be kept secret, and women are
not able to do so. Exceeding well, quoth they, most holy father, and much
more closely than the best of men.

The said pope on the very same day gave them in keeping a pretty box,
wherein he purposely caused a little linnet to be put, willing them very
gently and courteously to lock it up in some sure and hidden place, and
promising them, by the faith of a pope, that he should yield to their
request if they would keep secret what was enclosed within that deposited
box, enjoining them withal not to presume one way nor other, directly or
indirectly, to go about the opening thereof, under pain of the highest
ecclesiastical censure, eternal excommunication. The prohibition was no
sooner made but that they did all of them boil with a most ardent desire to
know and see what kind of thing it was that was within it. They thought
long already that the pope was not gone, to the end they might jointly,
with the more leisure and ease, apply themselves to the box-opening
curiosity.

The holy father, after he had given them his benediction, retired and
withdrew himself to the pontifical lodgings of his own palace. But he was
hardly gone three steps from without the gates of their cloister when the
good ladies throngingly, and as in a huddled crowd, pressing hard on the
backs of one another, ran thrusting and shoving who should be first at the
setting open of the forbidden box and descrying of the quod latitat within.

On the very next day thereafter the pope made them another visit, of a full
design, purpose, and intention, as they imagined, to despatch the grant of
their sought and wished-for indulgence. But before he would enter into any
chat or communing with them, he commanded the casket to be brought unto
him. It was done so accordingly; but, by your leave, the bird was no more
there. Then was it that the pope did represent to their maternities how
hard a matter and difficult it was for them to keep secrets revealed to
them in confession unmanifested to the ears of others, seeing for the space
of four-and-twenty hours they were not able to lay up in secret a box which
he had highly recommended to their discretion, charge, and custody.

Welcome, in good faith, my dear master, welcome! It did me good to hear
you talk, the Lord be praised for all! I do not remember to have seen you
before now, since the last time that you acted at Montpellier with our
ancient friends, Anthony Saporra, Guy Bourguyer, Balthasar Noyer, Tolet,
John Quentin, Francis Robinet, John Perdrier, and Francis Rabelais, the
moral comedy of him who had espoused and married a dumb wife. I was there,
quoth Epistemon. The good honest man her husband was very earnestly urgent
to have the fillet of her tongue untied, and would needs have her speak by
any means. At his desire some pains were taken on her, and partly by the
industry of the physician, other part by the expertness of the surgeon, the
encyliglotte which she had under her tongue being cut, she spoke and spoke
again; yea, within a few hours she spoke so loud, so much, so fiercely, and
so long, that her poor husband returned to the same physician for a recipe
to make her hold her peace. There are, quoth the physician, many proper
remedies in our art to make dumb women speak, but there are none that ever
I could learn therein to make them silent. The only cure which I have
found out is their husband's deafness. The wretch became within few weeks
thereafter, by virtue of some drugs, charms, or enchantments which the
physician had prescribed unto him, so deaf that he could not have heard the
thundering of nineteen hundred cannons at a salvo. His wife perceiving
that indeed he was as deaf as a door-nail, and that her scolding was but in
vain, sith that he heard her not, she grew stark mad.

Some time after the doctor asked for his fee of the husband, who answered
that truly he was deaf, and so was not able to understand what the tenour
of his demand might be. Whereupon the leech bedusted him with a little, I
know not what, sort of powder, which rendered him a fool immediately, so
great was the stultificating virtue of that strange kind of pulverized
dose. Then did this fool of a husband and his mad wife join together, and,
falling on the doctor and the surgeon, did so scratch, bethwack, and bang
them that they were left half dead upon the place, so furious were the
blows which they received. I never in my lifetime laughed so much as at
the acting of that buffoonery.

Let us come to where we left off, quoth Panurge. Your words, being
translated from the clapper-dudgeons to plain English, do signify that it
is not very inexpedient that I marry, and that I should not care for being
a cuckold. You have there hit the nail on the head. I believe, master
doctor, that on the day of my marriage you will be so much taken up with
your patients, or otherwise so seriously employed, that we shall not enjoy
your company. Sir, I will heartily excuse your absence.

  Stercus et urina medici sunt prandia prima.
  Ex aliis paleas, ex istis collige grana.

You are mistaken, quoth Rondibilis, in the second verse of our distich, for
it ought to run thus--

  Nobis sunt signa, vobis sunt prandia digna.

If my wife at any time prove to be unwell and ill at ease, I will look upon
the water which she shall have made in an urinal glass, quoth Rondibilis,
grope her pulse, and see the disposition of her hypogaster, together with
her umbilicary parts--according to the prescript rule of Hippocrates, 2.
Aph. 35--before I proceed any further in the cure of her distemper. No,
no, quoth Panurge, that will be but to little purpose. Such a feat is for
the practice of us that are lawyers, who have the rubric, De ventre
inspiciendo. Do not therefore trouble yourself about it, master doctor; I
will provide for her a plaster of warm guts. Do not neglect your more
urgent occasions otherwhere for coming to my wedding. I will send you some
supply of victuals to your own house, without putting you to the trouble of
coming abroad, and you shall always be my special friend. With this,
approaching somewhat nearer to him, he clapped into his hand, without the
speaking of so much as one word, four rose nobles. Rondibilis did shut his
fist upon them right kindly; yet, as if it had displeased him to make
acceptance of such golden presents, he in a start, as if he had been wroth,
said, He he, he, he, he! there was no need of anything; I thank you
nevertheless. From wicked folks I never get enough, and I from honest
people refuse nothing. I shall be always, sir, at your command. Provided
that I pay you well, quoth Panurge. That, quoth Rondibilis, is understood.

Chapter 3.XXXV.

How the philosopher Trouillogan handleth the difficulty of marriage.

As this discourse was ended, Pantagruel said to the philosopher
Trouillogan, Our loyal, honest, true, and trusty friend, the lamp from hand
to hand is come to you. It falleth to your turn to give an answer: Should
Panurge, pray you, marry, yea or no? He should do both, quoth Trouillogan.
What say you? asked Panurge. That which you have heard, answered
Trouillogan. What have I heard? replied Panurge. That which I have said,
replied Trouillogan. Ha, ha, ha! are we come to that pass? quoth Panurge.
Let it go nevertheless, I do not value it at a rush, seeing we can make no
better of the game. But howsoever tell me, Should I marry or no? Neither
the one nor the other, answered Trouillogan. The devil take me, quoth
Panurge, if these odd answers do not make me dote, and may he snatch me
presently away if I do understand you. Stay awhile until I fasten these
spectacles of mine on this left ear, that I may hear you better. With this
Pantagruel perceived at the door of the great hall, which was that day
their dining-room, Gargantua's little dog, whose name was Kyne; for so was
Toby's dog called, as is recorded. Then did he say to these who were there
present, Our king is not far off,--let us all rise.

That word was scarcely sooner uttered, than that Gargantua with his royal
presence graced that banqueting and stately hall. Each of the guests arose
to do their king that reverence and duty which became them. After that
Gargantua had most affably saluted all the gentlemen there present, he
said, Good friends, I beg this favour of you, and therein you will very
much oblige me, that you leave not the places where you sate nor quit the
discourse you were upon. Let a chair be brought hither unto this end of
the table, and reach me a cupful of the strongest and best wine you have,
that I may drink to all the company. You are, in faith, all welcome,
gentlemen. Now let me know what talk you were about. To this Pantagruel
answered that at the beginning of the second service Panurge had proposed a
problematic theme, to wit, whether he should marry, or not marry? that
Father Hippothadee and Doctor Rondibilis had already despatched their
resolutions thereupon; and that, just as his majesty was coming in, the
faithful Trouillogan in the delivery of his opinion hath thus far
proceeded, that when Panurge asked whether he ought to marry, yea or no? at
first he made this answer, Both together. When this same question was
again propounded, his second answer was, Neither the one nor the other.
Panurge exclaimeth that those answers are full of repugnancies and
contradictions, protesting that he understands them not, nor what it is
that can be meant by them. If I be not mistaken, quoth Gargantua, I
understand it very well. The answer is not unlike to that which was once
made by a philosopher in ancient times, who being interrogated if he had a
woman whom they named him to his wife? I have her, quoth he, but she hath
not me,--possessing her, by her I am not possessed. Such another answer,
quoth Pantagruel, was once made by a certain bouncing wench of Sparta, who
being asked if at any time she had had to do with a man? No, quoth she, but
sometimes men have had to do with me. Well then, quoth Rondibilis, let it
be a neuter in physic, as when we say a body is neuter, when it is neither
sick nor healthful, and a mean in philosophy; that, by an abnegation of
both extremes, and this by the participation of the one and of the other.
Even as when lukewarm water is said to be both hot and cold; or rather, as
when time makes the partition, and equally divides betwixt the two, a while
in the one, another while as long in the other opposite extremity. The
holy Apostle, quoth Hippothadee, seemeth, as I conceive, to have more
clearly explained this point when he said, Those that are married, let them
be as if they were not married; and those that have wives, let them be as
if they had no wives at all. I thus interpret, quoth Pantagruel, the
having and not having of a wife. To have a wife is to have the use of her
in such a way as nature hath ordained, which is for the aid, society, and
solace of man, and propagating of his race. To have no wife is not to be
uxorious, play the coward, and be lazy about her, and not for her sake to
distain the lustre of that affection which man owes to God, or yet for her
to leave those offices and duties which he owes unto his country, unto his
friends and kindred, or for her to abandon and forsake his precious
studies, and other businesses of account, to wait still on her will, her
beck, and her buttocks. If we be pleased in this sense to take having and
not having of a wife, we shall indeed find no repugnancy nor contradiction
in the terms at all.

Chapter 3.XXXVI.

A continuation of the answer of the Ephectic and Pyrrhonian philosopher
Trouillogan.

You speak wisely, quoth Panurge, if the moon were green cheese. Such a
tale once pissed my goose. I do not think but that I am let down into that
dark pit in the lowermost bottom whereof the truth was hid, according to
the saying of Heraclitus. I see no whit at all, I hear nothing, understand
as little, my senses are altogether dulled and blunted; truly I do very
shrewdly suspect that I am enchanted. I will now alter the former style of
my discourse, and talk to him in another strain. Our trusty friend, stir
not, nor imburse any; but let us vary the chance, and speak without
disjunctives. I see already that these loose and ill-joined members of an
enunciation do vex, trouble, and perplex you.

  Now go on, in the name of God! Should I marry?

  Trouillogan. There is some likelihood therein.

  Panurge. But if I do not marry?

  Trouil. I see in that no inconvenience.

  Pan. You do not?

  Trouil. None, truly, if my eyes deceive me not.

  Pan. Yea, but I find more than five hundred.

  Trouil. Reckon them.

  Pan. This is an impropriety of speech, I confess; for I do no more
thereby but take a certain for an uncertain number, and posit the
determinate term for what is indeterminate. When I say, therefore, five
hundred, my meaning is many.

  Trouil. I hear you.

Pan. Is it possible for me to live without a wife, in the name of all the
subterranean devils?

  Trouil. Away with these filthy beasts.

  Pan. Let it be, then, in the name of God; for my Salmigondinish people
use to say, To lie alone, without a wife, is certainly a brutish life. And
such a life also was it assevered to be by Dido in her lamentations.

  Trouil. At your command.

  Pan. By the pody cody, I have fished fair; where are we now? But will
you tell me? Shall I marry?

  Trouil. Perhaps.

  Pan. Shall I thrive or speed well withal?

  Trouil. According to the encounter.

  Pan. But if in my adventure I encounter aright, as I hope I will, shall
I be fortunate?

  Trouil. Enough.

  Pan. Let us turn the clean contrary way, and brush our former words
against the wool: what if I encounter ill?

  Trouil. Then blame not me.

  Pan. But, of courtesy, be pleased to give me some advice. I heartily
beseech you, what must I do?

  Trouil. Even what thou wilt.

  Pan. Wishy, washy; trolly, trolly.

  Trouil. Do not invocate the name of anything, I pray you.

  Pan. In the name of God, let it be so! My actions shall be regulated by
the rule and square of your counsel. What is it that you advise and
counsel me to do?

  Trouil. Nothing.

  Pan. Shall I marry?

  Trouil. I have no hand in it.

  Pan. Then shall I not marry?

  Trouil. I cannot help it.

  Pan. If I never marry, I shall never be a cuckold.

  Trouil. I thought so.

  Pan. But put the case that I be married.

  Trouil. Where shall we put it?

  Pan. Admit it be so, then, and take my meaning in that sense.

  Trouil. I am otherwise employed.

  Pan. By the death of a hog, and mother of a toad, O Lord! if I durst
hazard upon a little fling at the swearing game, though privily and under
thumb, it would lighten the burden of my heart and ease my lights and reins
exceedingly. A little patience nevertheless is requisite. Well then, if I
marry, I shall be a cuckold.

  Trouil. One would say so.

  Pan. Yet if my wife prove a virtuous, wise, discreet, and chaste woman,
I shall never be cuckolded.

  Trouil. I think you speak congruously.

  Pan. Hearken.

  Trouil. As much as you will.

  Pan. Will she be discreet and chaste? This is the only point I would be
resolved in.

  Trouil. I question it.

  Pan. You never saw her?

  Trouil. Not that I know of.

  Pan. Why do you then doubt of that which you know not?

  Trouil. For a cause.

  Pan. And if you should know her.

  Trouil. Yet more.

  Pan. Page, my pretty little darling, take here my cap,--I give it thee.
Have a care you do not break the spectacles that are in it. Go down to the
lower court. Swear there half an hour for me, and I shall in compensation
of that favour swear hereafter for thee as much as thou wilt. But who
shall cuckold me?

  Trouil. Somebody.

  Pan. By the belly of the wooden horse at Troy, Master Somebody, I shall
bang, belam thee, and claw thee well for thy labour.

  Trouil. You say so.

  Pan. Nay, nay, that Nick in the dark cellar, who hath no white in his
eye, carry me quite away with him if, in that case, whensoever I go abroad
from the palace of my domestic residence, I do not, with as much
circumspection as they use to ring mares in our country to keep them from
being sallied by stoned horses, clap a Bergamasco lock upon my wife.

  Trouil. Talk better.

  Pan. It is bien chien, chie chante, well cacked and cackled, shitten,
and sung in matter of talk. Let us resolve on somewhat.

  Trouil. I do not gainsay it.

  Pan. Have a little patience. Seeing I cannot on this side draw any
blood of you, I will try if with the lancet of my judgment I be able to
bleed you in another vein. Are you married, or are you not?

  Trouil. Neither the one nor the other, and both together.

  Pan. O the good God help us! By the death of a buffle-ox, I sweat with
the toil and travail that I am put to, and find my digestion broke off,
disturbed, and interrupted, for all my phrenes, metaphrenes, and
diaphragms, back, belly, midriff, muscles, veins, and sinews are held in a
suspense and for a while discharged from their proper offices to stretch
forth their several powers and abilities for incornifistibulating and
laying up into the hamper of my understanding your various sayings and
answers.

  Trouil. I shall be no hinderer thereof.

  Pan. Tush, for shame! Our faithful friend, speak; are you married?

  Trouil. I think so.

  Pan. You were also married before you had this wife?

  Trouil. It is possible.

  Pan. Had you good luck in your first marriage?

  Trouil. It is not impossible.

  Pan. How thrive you with this second wife of yours?

  Trouil. Even as it pleaseth my fatal destiny.

  Pan. But what, in good earnest? Tell me--do you prosper well with her?

  Trouil. It is likely.

  Pan. Come on, in the name of God. I vow, by the burden of Saint
Christopher, that I had rather undertake the fetching of a fart forth of
the belly of a dead ass than to draw out of you a positive and determinate
resolution. Yet shall I be sure at this time to have a snatch at you, and
get my claws over you. Our trusty friend, let us shame the devil of hell,
and confess the verity. Were you ever a cuckold? I say, you who are here,
and not that other you who playeth below in the tennis-court?

  Trouil. No, if it was not predestinated.

  Pan. By the flesh, blood, and body, I swear, reswear, forswear, abjure,
and renounce, he evades and avoids, shifts, and escapes me, and quite slips
and winds himself out of my grips and clutches.

At these words Gargantua arose and said, Praised be the good God in all
things, but especially for bringing the world into that height of
refinedness beyond what it was when I first came to be acquainted
therewith, that now the learnedst and most prudent philosophers are not
ashamed to be seen entering in at the porches and frontispieces of the
schools of the Pyrrhonian, Aporrhetic, Sceptic, and Ephectic sects.
Blessed be the holy name of God! Veritably, it is like henceforth to be
found an enterprise of much more easy undertaking to catch lions by the
neck, horses by the main, oxen by the horns, bulls by the muzzle, wolves by
the tail, goats by the beard, and flying birds by the feet, than to entrap
such philosophers in their words. Farewell, my worthy, dear, and honest
friends.

When he had done thus speaking, he withdrew himself from the company.
Pantagruel and others with him would have followed and accompanied him, but
he would not permit them so to do. No sooner was Gargantua departed out of
the banqueting-hall than that Pantagruel said to the invited guests:
Plato's Timaeus, at the beginning always of a solemn festival convention,
was wont to count those that were called thereto. We, on the contrary,
shall at the closure and end of this treatment reckon up our number. One,
two, three; where is the fourth? I miss my friend Bridlegoose. Was not he
sent for? Epistemon answered that he had been at his house to bid and
invite him, but could not meet with him; for that a messenger from the
parliament of Mirlingois, in Mirlingues, was come to him with a writ of
summons to cite and warn him personally to appear before the reverend
senators of the high court there, to vindicate and justify himself at the
bar of the crime of prevarication laid to his charge, and to be
peremptorily instanced against him in a certain decree, judgment, or
sentence lately awarded, given, and pronounced by him; and that, therefore,
he had taken horse and departed in great haste from his own house, to the
end that without peril or danger of falling into a default or contumacy he
might be the better able to keep the prefixed and appointed time.

I will, quoth Pantagruel, understand how that matter goeth. It is now
above forty years that he hath been constantly the judge of Fonsbeton,
during which space of time he hath given four thousand definitive
sentences, of two thousand three hundred and nine whereof, although appeal
was made by the parties whom he had judicially condemned from his inferior
judicatory to the supreme court of the parliament of Mirlingois, in
Mirlingues, they were all of them nevertheless confirmed, ratified, and
approved of by an order, decree, and final sentence of the said sovereign
court, to the casting of the appellants, and utter overthrow of the suits
wherein they had been foiled at law, for ever and a day. That now in his
old age he should be personally summoned, who in all the foregoing time of
his life hath demeaned himself so unblamably in the discharge of the office
and vocation he had been called unto, it cannot assuredly be that such a
change hath happened without some notorious misfortune and disaster. I am
resolved to help and assist him in equity and justice to the uttermost
extent of my power and ability. I know the malice, despite, and wickedness
of the world to be so much more nowadays exasperated, increased, and
aggravated by what it was not long since, that the best cause that is, how
just and equitable soever it be, standeth in great need to be succoured,
aided, and supported. Therefore presently, from this very instant forth,
do I purpose, till I see the event and closure thereof, most heedfully to
attend and wait upon it, for fear of some underhand tricky surprisal,
cavilling pettifoggery, or fallacious quirks in law, to his detriment,
hurt, or disadvantage.

Then dinner being done, and the tables drawn and removed, when Pantagruel
had very cordially and affectionately thanked his invited guests for the
favour which he had enjoyed of their company, he presented them with
several rich and costly gifts, such as jewels, rings set with precious
stones, gold and silver vessels, with a great deal of other sort of plate
besides, and lastly, taking of them all his leave, retired himself into an
inner chamber.

Chapter 3.XXXVII.

How Pantagruel persuaded Panurge to take counsel of a fool.

When Pantagruel had withdrawn himself, he, by a little sloping window in
one of the galleries, perceived Panurge in a lobby not far from thence,
walking alone, with the gesture, carriage, and garb of a fond dotard,
raving, wagging, and shaking his hands, dandling, lolling, and nodding with
his head, like a cow bellowing for her calf; and, having then called him
nearer, spoke unto him thus: You are at this present, as I think, not
unlike to a mouse entangled in a snare, who the more that she goeth about
to rid and unwind herself out of the gin wherein she is caught, by
endeavouring to clear and deliver her feet from the pitch whereto they
stick, the foulier she is bewrayed with it, and the more strongly pestered
therein. Even so is it with you. For the more that you labour, strive,
and enforce yourself to disencumber and extricate your thoughts out of the
implicating involutions and fetterings of the grievous and lamentable gins
and springs of anguish and perplexity, the greater difficulty there is in
the relieving of you, and you remain faster bound than ever. Nor do I know
for the removal of this inconveniency any remedy but one.

Take heed, I have often heard it said in a vulgar proverb, The wise may be
instructed by a fool. Seeing the answers and responses of sage and
judicious men have in no manner of way satisfied you, take advice of some
fool, and possibly by so doing you may come to get that counsel which will
be agreeable to your own heart's desire and contentment. You know how by
the advice and counsel and prediction of fools, many kings, princes,
states, and commonwealths have been preserved, several battles gained, and
divers doubts of a most perplexed intricacy resolved. I am not so
diffident of your memory as to hold it needful to refresh it with a
quotation of examples, nor do I so far undervalue your judgment but that I
think it will acquiesce in the reason of this my subsequent discourse. As
he who narrowly takes heed to what concerns the dexterous management of his
private affairs, domestic businesses, and those adoes which are confined
within the strait-laced compass of one family, who is attentive, vigilant,
and active in the economic rule of his own house, whose frugal spirit never
strays from home, who loseth no occasion whereby he may purchase to himself
more riches, and build up new heaps of treasure on his former wealth, and
who knows warily how to prevent the inconveniences of poverty, is called a
worldly wise man, though perhaps in the second judgment of the
intelligences which are above he be esteemed a fool,--so, on the contrary,
is he most like, even in the thoughts of all celestial spirits, to be not
only sage, but to presage events to come by divine inspiration, who laying
quite aside those cares which are conducible to his body or his fortunes,
and, as it were, departing from himself, rids all his senses of terrene
affections, and clears his fancies of those plodding studies which harbour
in the minds of thriving men. All which neglects of sublunary things are
vulgarily imputed folly. After this manner, the son of Picus, King of the
Latins, the great soothsayer Faunus, was called Fatuus by the witless
rabble of the common people. The like we daily see practised amongst the
comic players, whose dramatic roles, in distribution of the personages,
appoint the acting of the fool to him who is the wisest of the troop. In
approbation also of this fashion the mathematicians allow the very same
horoscope to princes and to sots. Whereof a right pregnant instance by
them is given in the nativities of Aeneas and Choroebus; the latter of
which two is by Euphorion said to have been a fool, and yet had with the
former the same aspects and heavenly genethliac influences.

I shall not, I suppose, swerve much from the purpose in hand, if I relate
unto you what John Andrew said upon the return of a papal writ, which was
directed to the mayor and burgesses of Rochelle, and after him by Panorme,
upon the same pontifical canon; Barbatias on the Pandects, and recently by
Jason in his Councils, concerning Seyny John, the noted fool of Paris, and
Caillet's fore great-grandfather. The case is this.

At Paris, in the roastmeat cookery of the Petit Chastelet, before the
cookshop of one of the roastmeat sellers of that lane, a certain hungry
porter was eating his bread, after he had by parcels kept it a while above
the reek and steam of a fat goose on the spit, turning at a great fire, and
found it, so besmoked with the vapour, to be savoury; which the cook
observing, took no notice, till after having ravined his penny loaf,
whereof no morsel had been unsmokified, he was about decamping and going
away. But, by your leave, as the fellow thought to have departed thence
shot-free, the master-cook laid hold upon him by the gorget, and demanded
payment for the smoke of his roast meat. The porter answered, that he had
sustained no loss at all; that by what he had done there was no diminution
made of the flesh; that he had taken nothing of his, and that therefore he
was not indebted to him in anything. As for the smoke in question, that,
although he had not been there, it would howsoever have been evaporated;
besides, that before that time it had never been seen nor heard that
roastmeat smoke was sold upon the streets of Paris. The cook hereto
replied, that he was not obliged nor any way bound to feed and nourish for
nought a porter whom he had never seen before with the smoke of his roast
meat, and thereupon swore that if he would not forthwith content and
satisfy him with present payment for the repast which he had thereby got,
that he would take his crooked staves from off his back; which, instead of
having loads thereafter laid upon them, should serve for fuel to his
kitchen fires. Whilst he was going about so to do, and to have pulled them
to him by one of the bottom rungs which he had caught in his hand, the
sturdy porter got out of his grip, drew forth the knotty cudgel, and stood
to his own defence. The altercation waxed hot in words, which moved the
gaping hoidens of the sottish Parisians to run from all parts thereabouts,
to see what the issue would be of that babbling strife and contention. In
the interim of this dispute, to very good purpose Seyny John, the fool and
citizen of Paris, happened to be there, whom the cook perceiving, said to
the porter, Wilt thou refer and submit unto the noble Seyny John the
decision of the difference and controversy which is betwixt us? Yes, by
the blood of a goose, answered the porter, I am content. Seyny John the
fool, finding that the cook and porter had compromised the determination of
their variance and debate to the discretion of his award and arbitrament,
after that the reasons on either side whereupon was grounded the mutual
fierceness of their brawling jar had been to the full displayed and laid
open before him, commanded the porter to draw out of the fob of his belt a
piece or money, if he had it. Whereupon the porter immediately without
delay, in reverence to the authority of such a judicious umpire, put the
tenth part of a silver Philip into his hand. This little Philip Seyny John
took; then set it on his left shoulder, to try by feeling if it was of a
sufficient weight. After that, laying it on the palm of his hand, he made
it ring and tingle, to understand by the ear if it was of a good alloy in
the metal whereof it was composed. Thereafter he put it to the ball or
apple of his left eye, to explore by the sight if it was well stamped and
marked; all which being done, in a profound silence of the whole doltish
people who were there spectators of this pageantry, to the great hope of
the cook's and despair of the porter's prevalency in the suit that was in
agitation, he finally caused the porter to make it sound several times upon
the stall of the cook's shop. Then with a presidential majesty holding his
bauble sceptre-like in his hand, muffling his head with a hood of marten
skins, each side whereof had the resemblance of an ape's face sprucified up
with ears of pasted paper, and having about his neck a bucked ruff, raised,
furrowed, and ridged with pointing sticks of the shape and fashion of small
organ pipes, he first with all the force of his lungs coughed two or three
times, and then with an audible voice pronounced this following sentence:
The court declareth that the porter who ate his bread at the smoke of the
roast, hath civilly paid the cook with the sound of his money. And the
said court ordaineth that everyone return to his own home, and attend his
proper business, without cost and charges, and for a cause. This verdict,
award, and arbitrament of the Parisian fool did appear so equitable, yea,
so admirable to the aforesaid doctors, that they very much doubted if the
matter had been brought before the sessions for justice of the said place,
or that the judges of the Rota at Rome had been umpires therein, or yet
that the Areopagites themselves had been the deciders thereof, if by any
one part, or all of them together, it had been so judicially sententiated
and awarded. Therefore advise, if you will be counselled by a fool.

Chapter 3.XXXVIII.

How Triboulet is set forth and blazed by Pantagruel and Panurge.

By my soul, quoth Panurge, that overture pleaseth me exceedingly well. I
will therefore lay hold thereon, and embrace it. At the very motioning
thereof my very right entrail seemeth to be widened and enlarged, which was
but just now hard-bound, contracted, and costive. But as we have hitherto
made choice of the purest and most refined cream of wisdom and sapience for
our counsel, so would I now have to preside and bear the prime sway in our
consultation as very a fool in the supreme degree. Triboulet, quoth
Pantagruel, is completely foolish, as I conceive. Yes, truly, answered
Panurge, he is properly and totally a fool, a

    Pantagruel.                       Panurge.
Fatal f.                          Jovial f.
Natural f.                        Mercurial f.
Celestial f.                      Lunatic f.
Erratic f.                        Ducal f.
Eccentric f.                      Common f.
Aethereal and Junonian f.         Lordly f.
Arctic f.                         Palatine f.
Heroic f.                         Principal f.
Genial f.                         Pretorian f.
Inconstant f.                     Elected f.
Earthly f.                        Courtly f.
Salacious and sporting f.         Primipilary f.
Jocund and wanton f.              Triumphant f.
Pimpled f.                        Vulgar f.
Freckled f.                       Domestic f.
Bell-tinging f.                   Exemplary f.
Laughing and lecherous f.         Rare outlandish f.
Nimming and filching f.           Satrapal f.
Unpressed f.                      Civil f.
First broached f.                 Popular f.
Augustal f.                       Familiar f.
Caesarine f.                      Notable f.
Imperial f.                       Favourized f.
Royal f.                          Latinized f.
Patriarchal f.                    Ordinary f.
Original f.                       Transcendent f.
Loyal f.                          Rising f.
Episcopal f.                      Papal f.
Doctoral f.                       Consistorian f.
Monachal f.                       Conclavist f.
Fiscal f.                         Bullist f.
Extravagant f.                    Synodal f.
Writhed f.                        Doting and raving f.
Canonical f.                      Singular and surpassing f.
Such another f.                   Special and excelling f.
Graduated f.                      Metaphysical f.
Commensal f.                      Scatical f.
Primolicentiated f.               Predicamental and categoric f.
Train-bearing f.                  Predicable and enunciatory f.
Supererogating f.                 Decumane and superlative f.
Collateral f.                     Dutiful and officious f.
Haunch and side f.                Optical and perspective f.
Nestling, ninny, and youngling f. Algoristic f.
Flitting, giddy, and unsteady f.  Algebraical f.
Brancher, novice, and cockney f.  Cabalistical and Massoretical f.
Haggard, cross, and froward f.    Talmudical f.
Gentle, mild, and tractable f.    Algamalized f.
Mail-coated f.                    Compendious f.
Pilfering and purloining f.       Abbreviated f.
Tail-grown f.                     Hyperbolical f.
Grey peckled f.                   Anatomastical f.
Pleonasmical f.                   Allegorical f.
Capital f.                        Tropological f.
Hair-brained f.                   Micher pincrust f.
Cordial f.                        Heteroclit f.
Intimate f.                       Summist f.
Hepatic f.                        Abridging f.
Cupshotten and swilling f.        Morrish f.
Splenetic f.                      Leaden-sealed f.
Windy f.                          Mandatory f.
Legitimate f.                     Compassionate f.
Azymathal f.                      Titulary f.
Almicantarized f.                 Crouching, showking, ducking f.
Proportioned f.                   Grim, stern, harsh, and wayward f.
Chinnified f.                     Well-hung and timbered f.
Swollen and puffed up f.          Ill-clawed, pounced, and pawed f.
Overcockrifedlid and lified f.    Well-stoned f.
Corallory f.                      Crabbed and unpleasing f.
Eastern f.                        Winded and untainted f.
Sublime f.                        Kitchen haunting f.
Crimson f.                        Lofty and stately f.
Ingrained f.                      Spitrack f.
City f.                           Architrave f.
Basely accoutred f.               Pedestal f.
Mast-headed f.                    Tetragonal f.
Modal f.                          Renowned f.
Second notial f.                  Rheumatic f.
Cheerful and buxom f.             Flaunting and braggadocio f.
Solemn f.                         Egregious f.
Annual f.                         Humourous and capricious f.
Festival f.                       Rude, gross, and absurd f.
Recreative f.                     Large-measured f.
Boorish and counterfeit f.        Babble f.
Pleasant f.                       Down-right f.
Privileged f.                     Broad-listed f.
Rustical f.                       Duncical-bearing f.
Proper and peculiar f.            Stale and over-worn f.
Ever ready f.                     Saucy and swaggering f.
Diapasonal f.                     Full-bulked f.
Resolute f.                       Gallant and vainglorious f.
Hieroglyphical f.                 Gorgeous and gaudy f.
Authentic f.                      Continual and intermitting f.
Worthy f.                         Rebasing and roundling f.
Precious f.                       Prototypal and precedenting f.
Fanatic f.                        Prating f.
Fantastical f.                    Catechetic f.
Symphatic f.                      Cacodoxical f.
Panic f.                          Meridional f.
Limbecked and distilled f.        Nocturnal f.
Comportable f.                    Occidental f.
Wretched and heartless f.         Trifling f.
Fooded f.                         Astrological and figure-flinging f.
Thick and threefold f.            Genethliac and horoscopal f.
Damasked f.                       Knavish f.
Fearney f.                        Idiot f.
Unleavened f.                     Blockish f.
Baritonant f.                     Beetle-headed f.
Pink and spot-powdered f.         Grotesque f.
Musket-proof f.                   Impertinent f.
Pedantic f.                       Quarrelsome f.
Strouting f.                      Unmannerly f.
Wood f.                           Captious and sophistical f.
Greedy f.                         Soritic f.
Senseless f.                      Catholoproton f.
Godderlich f.                     Hoti and Dioti f.
Obstinate f.                      Alphos and Catati f.
Contradictory f.
Pedagogical f.
Daft f.
Drunken f.
Peevish f.
Prodigal f.
Rash f.
Plodding f.

  Pantagruel. If there was any reason why at Rome the Quirinal holiday of
old was called the Feast of Fools, I know not why we may not for the like
cause institute in France the Tribouletic Festivals, to be celebrated and
solemnized over all the land.

  Pantagruel. If all fools carried cruppers.

  Pantagruel. If he were the god Fatuus of whom we have already made
mention, the husband of the goddess Fatua, his father would be Good Day,
and his grandmother Good Even.

  Panurge. If all fools paced, albeit he be somewhat wry-legged, he would
overlay at least a fathom at every rake. Let us go toward him without any
further lingering or delay; we shall have, no doubt, some fine resolution
of him. I am ready to go, and long for the issue of our progress
impatiently. I must needs, quoth Pantagruel, according to my former
resolution therein, be present at Bridlegoose's trial. Nevertheless,
whilst I shall be upon my journey towards Mirelingues, which is on the
other side of the river of Loire, I will despatch Carpalin to bring along
with him from Blois the fool Triboulet. Then was Carpalin instantly sent
away, and Pantagruel, at the same time attended by his domestics, Panurge,
Epistemon, Ponocrates, Friar John, Gymnast, Ryzotomus, and others, marched
forward on the high road to Mirelingues.

Chapter 3.XXXIX.

How Pantagruel was present at the trial of Judge Bridlegoose, who decided
causes and controversies in law by the chance and fortune of the dice.

On the day following, precisely at the hour appointed, Pantagruel came to
Mirelingues. At his arrival the presidents, senators, and counsellors
prayed him to do them the honour to enter in with them, to hear the
decision of all the causes, arguments, and reasons which Bridlegoose in his
own defence would produce, why he had pronounced a certain sentence against
the subsidy-assessor, Toucheronde, which did not seem very equitable to
that centumviral court. Pantagruel very willingly condescended to their
desire, and accordingly entering in, found Bridlegoose sitting within the
middle of the enclosure of the said court of justice; who immediately upon
the coming of Pantagruel, accompanied with the senatorian members of that
worshipful judicatory, arose, went to the bar, had his indictment read, and
for all his reasons, defences, and excuses, answered nothing else but that
he was become old, and that his sight of late was very much failed, and
become dimmer than it was wont to be; instancing therewithal many miseries
and calamities which old age bringeth along with it, and are concomitant to
wrinkled elders; which not. per Archid. d. lxxxvi. c. tanta. By reason of
which infirmity he was not able so distinctly and clearly to discern the
points and blots of the dice as formerly he had been accustomed to do;
whence it might very well have happened, said he, as old dim-sighted Isaac
took Jacob for Esau, that I after the same manner, at the decision of
causes and controversies in law, should have been mistaken in taking a
quatre for a cinque, or a trey for a deuce. This I beseech your worships,
quoth he, to take into your serious consideration, and to have the more
favourable opinion of my uprightness, notwithstanding the prevarication
whereof I am accused in the matter of Toucheronde's sentence, that at the
time of that decree's pronouncing I only had made use of my small dice; and
your worships, said he, know very well how by the most authentic rules of
the law it is provided that the imperfections of nature should never be
imputed unto any for crimes and transgressions; as appeareth, ff. de re
milit. l. qui cum uno. ff. de reg. Jur. l. fere. ff. de aedil. edict. per
totum. ff. de term. mod. l. Divus Adrianus, resolved by Lud. Rom. in l. si
vero. ff. Sol. Matr. And who would offer to do otherwise, should not
thereby accuse the man, but nature, and the all-seeing providence of God,
as is evident in l. Maximum Vitium, c. de lib. praeter.

What kind of dice, quoth Trinquamelle, grand-president of the said court,
do you mean, my friend Bridlegoose? The dice, quoth Bridlegoose, of
sentences at law, decrees, and peremptory judgments, Alea Judiciorum,
whereof is written, Per Doct. 26. qu. 2. cap. sort. l. nec emptio ff. de
contrahend. empt. l. quod debetur. ff. de pecul. et ibi Bartol., and which
your worships do, as well as I, use, in this glorious sovereign court of
yours. So do all other righteous judges in their decision of processes and
final determination of legal differences, observing that which hath been
said thereof by D. Henri. Ferrandat, et not. gl. in c. fin. de sortil. et
l. sed cum ambo. ff. de jud. Ubi Docto. Mark, that chance and fortune are
good, honest, profitable, and necessary for ending of and putting a final
closure to dissensions and debates in suits at law. The same hath more
clearly been declared by Bald. Bartol. et Alex. c. communia de leg. l. Si
duo. But how is it that you do these things? asked Trinquamelle. I very
briefly, quoth Bridlegoose, shall answer you, according to the doctrine and
instructions of Leg. ampliorem para. in refutatoriis. c. de appel.; which
is conform to what is said in Gloss l. I. ff. quod met. causa. Gaudent
brevitate moderni. My practice is therein the same with that of your other
worships, and as the custom of the judicatory requires, unto which our law
commandeth us to have regard, and by the rule thereof still to direct and
regulate our actions and procedures; ut not. extra. de consuet. in c. ex
literis et ibi innoc. For having well and exactly seen, surveyed,
overlooked, reviewed, recognized, read, and read over again, turned and
tossed over, seriously perused and examined the bills of complaint,
accusations, impeachments, indictments, warnings, citations, summonings,
comparitions, appearances, mandates, commissions, delegations,
instructions, informations, inquests, preparatories, productions,
evidences, proofs, allegations, depositions, cross speeches,
contradictions, supplications, requests, petitions, inquiries, instruments
of the deposition of witnesses, rejoinders, replies, confirmations of
former assertions, duplies, triplies, answers to rejoinders, writings,
deeds, reproaches, disabling of exceptions taken, grievances, salvation
bills, re-examination of witnesses, confronting of them together,
declarations, denunciations, libels, certificates, royal missives, letters
of appeal, letters of attorney, instruments of compulsion, delineatories,
anticipatories, evocations, messages, dimissions, issues, exceptions,
dilatory pleas, demurs, compositions, injunctions, reliefs, reports,
returns, confessions, acknowledgments, exploits, executions, and other
such-like confects and spiceries, both at the one and the other side, as a
good judge ought to do, conform to what hath been noted thereupon. Spec.
de ordination. Paragr. 3. et Tit. de Offi. omn. jud. paragr. fin. et de
rescriptis praesentat. parag. I.--I posit on the end of a table in my
closet all the pokes and bags of the defendant, and then allow unto him the
first hazard of the dice, according to the usual manner of your other
worships. And it is mentioned, l. favorabiliores. ff. de reg. jur. et in
cap. cum sunt eod. tit. lib. 6, which saith, Quum sunt partium jura
obscura, reo potius favendum est quam actori. That being done, I
thereafter lay down upon the other end of the same table the bags and
satchels of the plaintiff, as your other worships are accustomed to do,
visum visu, just over against one another; for Opposita juxta se posita
clarius elucescunt: ut not. in lib. I. parag. Videamus. ff. de his qui
sunt sui vel alieni juris, et in l. munerum. para. mixta ff. de mun. et
hon. Then do I likewise and semblably throw the dice for him, and
forthwith livre him his chance. But, quoth Trinquamelle, my friend, how
come you to know, understand, and resolve the obscurity of these various
and seeming contrary passages in law, which are laid claim to by the
suitors and pleading parties? Even just, quoth Bridlegoose, after the
fashion of your other worships; to wit, when there are many bags on the one
side and on the other, I then use my little small dice, after the customary
manner of your other worships, in obedience to the law, Semper in
stipulationibus ff. de reg. jur. And the law ver(s)ified versifieth that,
Eod. tit. Semper in obscuris quod minimum est sequimur; canonized in c. in
obscuris. eod. tit. lib. 6. I have other large great dice, fair and goodly
ones, which I employ in the fashion that your other worships use to do,
when the matter is more plain, clear, and liquid, that is to say, when
there are fewer bags. But when you have done all these fine things, quoth
Trinquamelle, how do you, my friend, award your decrees, and pronounce
judgment? Even as your other worships, answered Bridlegoose; for I give
out sentence in his favour unto whom hath befallen the best chance by dice,
judiciary, tribunian, pretorial, what comes first. So our laws command,
ff. qui pot. in pign. l. creditor, c. de consul. I. Et de regul. jur. in
6. Qui prior est tempore potior est jure.

Chapter 3.XL.

How Bridlegoose giveth reasons why he looked upon those law-actions which
he decided by the chance of the dice.

Yea but, quoth Trinquamelle, my friend, seeing it is by the lot, chance,
and throw of the dice that you award your judgments and sentences, why do
not you livre up these fair throws and chances the very same day and hour,
without any further procrastination or delay, that the controverting party-
pleaders appear before you? To what use can those writings serve you,
those papers and other procedures contained in the bags and pokes of the
law-suitors? To the very same use, quoth Bridlegoose, that they serve your
other worships. They are behooveful unto me, and serve my turn in three
things very exquisite, requisite, and authentical. First, for formality
sake, the omission whereof, that it maketh all, whatever is done, to be of
no force nor value, is excellently well proved, by Spec. I. tit. de instr.
edit. et tit. de rescript. praesent. Besides that, it is not unknown to
you, who have had many more experiments thereof than I, how oftentimes, in
judicial proceedings, the formalities utterly destroy the materialities and
substances of the causes and matters agitated; for Forma mutata, mutatur
substantia. ff. ad exhib. l. Julianus. ff. ad leg. Fal. l. si is qui
quadraginta. Et extra de decim. c. ad audientiam, et de celebrat. miss. c.
in quadam.

Secondly, they are useful and steadable to me, even as unto your other
worships, in lieu of some other honest and healthful exercise. The late
Master Othoman Vadet (Vadere), a prime physician, as you would say, Cod. de
Comit. et Archi. lib. 12, hath frequently told me that the lack and default
of bodily exercise is the chief, if not the sole and only cause of the
little health and short lives of all officers of justice, such as your
worships and I am. Which observation was singularly well before him noted
and remarked by Bartholus in lib. I. c. de sent. quae pro eo quod.
Therefore it is that the practice of such-like exercitations is appointed
to be laid hold on by your other worships, and consequently not to be
denied unto me, who am of the same profession; Quia accessorium naturam
sequitur principalis. de reg. jur. l. 6. et l. cum principalis. et l. nihil
dolo. ff. eod. tit. ff. de fide-juss. l. fide-juss. et extra de officio
deleg. cap. I. Let certain honest and recreative sports and plays of
corporeal exercises be allowed and approved of; and so far, (ff. de allus.
et aleat. l. solent. et authent.) ut omnes obed. in princ. coll. 7. et ff.
de praescript. verb. l. si gratuitam et l. I. cod. de spect. l. II. Such
also is the opinion of D. Thom, in secunda, secundae Q. I. 168. Quoted in
very good purpose by D. Albert de Rosa, who fuit magnus practicus, and a
solemn doctor, as Barbatias attesteth in principiis consil. Wherefore the
reason is evidently and clearly deduced and set down before us in gloss. in
prooemio. ff. par. ne autem tertii.

  Interpone tuis interdum gaudia curis.

In very deed, once, in the year a thousand four hundred fourscore and
ninth, having a business concerning the portion and inheritance of a
younger brother depending in the court and chamber of the four high
treasurers of France, whereinto as soon as ever I got leave to enter by a
pecuniary permission of the usher thereof,--as your other worships know
very well, that Pecuniae obediunt omnia, and there says Baldus, in l.
singularia. ff. si cert. pet. et Salic. in l. receptitia. Cod. de constit.
pecuni. et Card. in Clem. I. de baptism.--I found them all recreating and
diverting themselves at the play called muss, either before or after
dinner; to me, truly, it is a thing altogether indifferent whether of the
two it was, provided that hic not., that the game of the muss is honest,
healthful, ancient, and lawful, a Muscho inventore, de quo cod. de petit.
haered. l. si post mortem. et Muscarii. Such as play and sport it at the
muss are excusable in and by law, lib. I. c. de excus. artific. lib. 10.
And at the very same time was Master Tielman Picquet one of the players of
that game of muss. There is nothing that I do better remember, for he
laughed heartily when his fellow-members of the aforesaid judicial chamber
spoiled their caps in swingeing of his shoulders. He, nevertheless, did
even then say unto them, that the banging and flapping of him, to the waste
and havoc of their caps, should not, at their return from the palace to
their own houses, excuse them from their wives, Per. c. extra. de
praesumpt. et ibi gloss. Now, resolutorie loquendo, I should say,
according to the style and phrase of your other worships, that there is no
exercise, sport, game, play, nor recreation in all this palatine, palatial,
or parliamentary world, more aromatizing and fragrant than to empty and
void bags and purses, turn over papers and writings, quote margins and
backs of scrolls and rolls, fill panniers, and take inspection of causes,
Ex. Bart. et Joan. de Pra. in l. falsa. de condit. et demonst. ff.

Thirdly, I consider, as your own worships use to do, that time ripeneth and
bringeth all things to maturity, that by time everything cometh to be made
manifest and patent, and that time is the father of truth and virtue.
Gloss. in l. I. cod. de servit. authent. de restit. et ea quae pa. et spec.
tit. de requisit. cons. Therefore is it that, after the manner and fashion
of your other worships, I defer, protract, delay, prolong, intermit,
surcease, pause, linger, suspend, prorogate, drive out, wire-draw, and
shift off the time of giving a definitive sentence, to the end that the
suit or process, being well fanned and winnowed, tossed and canvassed to
and fro, narrowly, precisely, and nearly garbled, sifted, searched, and
examined, and on all hands exactly argued, disputed, and debated, may, by
succession of time, come at last to its full ripeness and maturity. By
means whereof, when the fatal hazard of the dice ensueth thereupon, the
parties cast or condemned by the said aleatory chance will with much
greater patience, and more mildly and gently, endure and bear up the
disastrous load of their misfortune, than if they had been sentenced at
their first arrival unto the court, as not. gl. ff. de excus. tut. l. tria.
onera.

  Portatur leviter quod portat quisque libenter.

On the other part, to pass a decree or sentence when the action is raw,
crude, green, unripe, unprepared, as at the beginning, a danger would ensue
of a no less inconveniency than that which the physicians have been wont to
say befalleth to him in whom an imposthume is pierced before it be ripe, or
unto any other whose body is purged of a strong predominating humour before
its digestion. For as it is written, in authent. haec constit. in Innoc.
de constit. princip., so is the same repeated in gloss. in c. caeterum.
extra. de juram. calumn. Quod medicamenta morbis exhibent, hoc jura
negotiis. Nature furthermore admonisheth and teacheth us to gather and
reap, eat and feed on fruits when they are ripe, and not before. Instit.
de rer. div. paragr. is ad quem et ff. de action. empt. l. Julianus. To
marry likewise our daughters when they are ripe, and no sooner, ff. de
donation. inter vir. et uxor. l. cum hic status. paragr. si quis sponsam.
et 27 qu. I. c. sicut dicit. gl.

  Jam matura thoro plenis adoleverat annis
  Virginitas.

And, in a word, she instructeth us to do nothing of any considerable
importance, but in a full maturity and ripeness, 23. q. para ult. et 23. de
c. ultimo.

Chapter 3.XLI.

How Bridlegoose relateth the history of the reconcilers of parties at
variance in matters of law.

I remember to the same purpose, quoth Bridlegoose, in continuing his
discourse, that in the time when at Poictiers I was a student of law under
Brocadium Juris, there was at Semerve one Peter Dandin, a very honest man,
careful labourer of the ground, fine singer in a church-desk, of good
repute and credit, and older than the most aged of all your worships; who
was wont to say that he had seen the great and goodly good man, the Council
of Lateran, with his wide and broad-brimmed red hat. As also, that he had
beheld and looked upon the fair and beautiful Pragmatical Sanction his
wife, with her huge rosary or patenotrian chaplet of jet-beads hanging at a
large sky-coloured ribbon. This honest man compounded, atoned, and agreed
more differences, controversies, and variances at law than had been
determined, voided, and finished during his time in the whole palace of
Poictiers, in the auditory of Montmorillon, and in the town-house of the
old Partenay. This amicable disposition of his rendered him venerable and
of great estimation, sway, power, and authority throughout all the
neighbouring places of Chauvigny, Nouaille, Leguge, Vivonne, Mezeaux,
Estables, and other bordering and circumjacent towns, villages, and
hamlets. All their debates were pacified by him; he put an end to their
brabbling suits at law and wrangling differences. By his advice and
counsels were accords and reconcilements no less firmly made than if the
verdict of a sovereign judge had been interposed therein, although, in very
deed, he was no judge at all, but a right honest man, as you may well
conceive,--arg. in l. sed si unius. ff. de jure-jur. et de verbis
obligatoriis l.continuus. There was not a hog killed within three parishes
of him whereof he had not some part of the haslet and puddings. He was
almost every day invited either to a marriage banquet, christening feast,
an uprising or women-churching treatment, a birthday's anniversary
solemnity, a merry frolic gossiping, or otherwise to some delicious
entertainment in a tavern, to make some accord and agreement between
persons at odds and in debate with one another. Remark what I say; for he
never yet settled and compounded a difference betwixt any two at variance,
but he straight made the parties agreed and pacified to drink together as a
sure and infallible token and symbol of a perfect and completely well-
cemented reconciliation, sign of a sound and sincere amity and proper mark
of a new joy and gladness to follow thereupon,--Ut not. per (Doct.) ff. de
peric. et com. rei vend. l. I. He had a son, whose name was Tenot Dandin,
a lusty, young, sturdy, frisking roister, so help me God! who likewise, in
imitation of his peace-making father, would have undertaken and meddled
with the making up of variances and deciding of controversies betwixt
disagreeing and contentious party-pleaders; as you know,

  Saepe solet similis esse patri.
  Et sequitur leviter filia matris iter.

Ut ait gloss. 6, quaest. I. c. Si quis. gloss. de cons. dist. 5. c. 2. fin.
et est. not. per Doct. cod. de impub. et aliis substit. l. ult. et l.
legitime. ff. de stat. hom. gloss. in l. quod si nolit. ff. de aedil.
edict. l. quisquis c. ad leg. Jul. Majest. Excipio filios a Moniali
susceptos ex Monacho. per glos. in c. impudicas. 27. quaestione. I. And
such was his confidence to have no worse success than his father, he
assumed unto himself the title of Law-strife-settler. He was likewise in
these pacificatory negotiations so active and vigilant--for, Vigilantibus
jura subveniunt. ex l. pupillus. ff. quae in fraud. cred. et ibid. l. non
enim. et instit. in prooem.--that when he had smelt, heard, and fully
understood--ut ff.si quando paup. fec. l. Agaso. gloss. in verb. olfecit,
id est, nasum ad culum posuit--and found that there was anywhere in the
country a debatable matter at law, he would incontinently thrust in his
advice, and so forwardly intrude his opinion in the business, that he made
no bones of making offer, and taking upon him to decide it, how difficult
soever it might happen to be, to the full contentment and satisfaction of
both parties. It is written, Qui non laborat non manducat; and the said
gl. ff. de damn. infect. l. quamvis, and Currere plus que le pas vetulam
compellit egestas. gloss. ff. de lib. agnosc. l. si quis. pro qua facit. l.
si plures. c. de cond. incert. But so hugely great was his misfortune in
this his undertaking, that he never composed any difference, how little
soever you may imagine it might have been, but that, instead of reconciling
the parties at odds, he did incense, irritate, and exasperate them to a
higher point of dissension and enmity than ever they were at before. Your
worships know, I doubt not, that,

  Sermo datur cunctis, animi sapientia paucis.

Gl. ff. de alien. jud. mut. caus. fa. lib.2. This administered unto the
tavern-keepers, wine-drawers, and vintners of Semerve an occasion to say,
that under him they had not in the space of a whole year so much
reconciliation-wine, for so were they pleased to call the good wine of
Leguge, as under his father they had done in one half-hour's time. It
happened a little while thereafter that he made a most heavy regret thereof
to his father, attributing the causes of his bad success in pacificatory
enterprises to the perversity, stubbornness, froward, cross, and backward
inclinations of the people of his time; roundly, boldly, and irreverently
upbraiding, that if but a score of years before the world had been so
wayward, obstinate, pervicacious, implacable, and out of all square, frame,
and order as it was then, his father had never attained to and acquired the
honour and title of Strife-appeaser so irrefragably, inviolably, and
irrevocably as he had done. In doing whereof Tenot did heinously
transgress against the law which prohibiteth children to reproach the
actions of their parents; per gl. et Bart. l. 3. paragr. si quis. ff. de
cond. ob caus. et authent. de nupt. par. sed quod sancitum. col. 4. To
this the honest old father answered thus: My son Dandin, when Don Oportet
taketh place, this is the course which we must trace, gl. c. de appell. l.
eos etiam. For the road that you went upon was not the way to the fuller's
mill, nor in any part thereof was the form to be found wherein the hare did
sit. Thou hast not the skill and dexterity of settling and composing
differences. Why? Because thou takest them at the beginning, in the very
infancy and bud as it were, when they are green, raw, and indigestible.
Yet I know handsomely and featly how to compose and settle them all. Why?
Because I take them at their decadence, in their weaning, and when they are
pretty well digested. So saith Gloss:

  Dulcior est fructus post multa pericula ductus.

L. non moriturus. c. de contrahend. et committ. stip. Didst thou ever hear
the vulgar proverb, Happy is the physician whose coming is desired at the
declension of a disease? For the sickness being come to a crisis is then
upon the decreasing hand, and drawing towards an end, although the
physician should not repair thither for the cure thereof; whereby, though
nature wholly do the work, he bears away the palm and praise thereof. My
pleaders, after the same manner, before I did interpose my judgment in the
reconciling of them, were waxing faint in their contestations. Their
altercation heat was much abated, and, in declining from their former
strife, they of themselves inclined to a firm accommodation of their
differences; because there wanted fuel to that fire of burning rancour and
despiteful wrangling whereof the lower sort of lawyers were the kindlers.
That is to say, their purses were emptied of coin, they had not a win in
their fob, nor penny in their bag, wherewith to solicit and present their
actions.

  Deficiente pecu, deficit omne, nia.

There wanted then nothing but some brother to supply the place of a
paranymph, brawl-broker, proxenete, or mediator, who, acting his part
dexterously, should be the first broacher of the motion of an agreement,
for saving both the one and the other party from that hurtful and
pernicious shame whereof he could not have avoided the imputation when it
should have been said that he was the first who yielded and spoke of a
reconcilement, and that therefore, his cause not being good, and being
sensible where his shoe did pinch him, he was willing to break the ice, and
make the greater haste to prepare the way for a condescendment to an
amicable and friendly treaty. Then was it that I came in pudding time,
Dandin, my son, nor is the fat of bacon more relishing to boiled peas than
was my verdict then agreeable to them. This was my luck, my profit, and
good fortune. I tell thee, my jolly son Dandin, that by this rule and
method I could settle a firm peace, or at least clap up a cessation of arms
and truce for many years to come, betwixt the Great King and the Venetian
State, the Emperor and the Cantons of Switzerland, the English and the
Scots, and betwixt the Pope and the Ferrarians. Shall I go yet further?
Yea, as I would have God to help me, betwixt the Turk and the Sophy, the
Tartars and the Muscoviters. Remark well what I am to say unto thee. I
would take them at that very instant nick of time when both those of the
one and the other side should be weary and tired of making war, when they
had voided and emptied their own cashes and coffers of all treasure and
coin, drained and exhausted the purses and bags of their subjects, sold and
mortgaged their domains and proper inheritances, and totally wasted, spent,
and consumed the munition, furniture, provision, and victuals that were
necessary for the continuance of a military expedition. There I am sure,
by God, or by his Mother, that, would they, would they not, in spite of all
their teeths, they should be forced to have a little respite and breathing
time to moderate the fury and cruel rage of their ambitious aims. This is
the doctrine in Gl. 37. d. c. si quando.

  Odero, si potero; si non, invitus amabo.

Chapter 3.XLII.

How suits at law are bred at first, and how they come afterwards to their
perfect growth.

For this cause, quoth Bridlegoose, going on in his discourse, I temporize
and apply myself to the times, as your other worships use to do, waiting
patiently for the maturity of the process, full growth and perfection
thereof in all its members, to wit, the writings and the bags. Arg. in l.
si major. c. commun. divid. et de cons. di. I. c. solemnitates, et ibi gl.
A suit in law at its production, birth, and first beginning, seemeth to me,
as unto your other worships, shapeless, without form or fashion,
incomplete, ugly and imperfect, even as a bear at his first coming into the
world hath neither hands, skin, hair, nor head, but is merely an inform,
rude, and ill-favoured piece and lump of flesh, and would remain still so,
if his dam, out of the abundance of her affection to her hopeful cub, did
not with much licking put his members into that figure and shape which
nature had provided for those of an arctic and ursinal kind; ut not. Doct.
ff. ad l. Aquil. l. 3. in fin. Just so do I see, as your other worships
do, processes and suits in law, at their first bringing forth, to be
numberless, without shape, deformed, and disfigured, for that then they
consist only of one or two writings, or copies of instruments, through
which defect they appear unto me, as to your other worships, foul,
loathsome, filthy, and misshapen beasts. But when there are heaps of these
legiformal papers packed, piled, laid up together, impoked, insatchelled,
and put up in bags, then is it that with a good reason we may term that
suit, to which, as pieces, parcels, parts, portions, and members thereof,
they do pertain and belong, well-formed and fashioned, big-limbed, strong-
set, and in all and each of its dimensions most completely membered.
Because forma dat esse. rei. l. si is qui. ff. ad leg. Falcid. in c. cum
dilecta. de rescript. Barbat. consil. 12. lib. 2, and before him, Baldus,
in c. ult. extra. de consuet. et l. Julianus ad exhib. ff. et l. quaesitum.
ff. de leg. 3. The manner is such as is set down in gl. p. quaest. I. c.
Paulus.

  Debile principium melior fortuna sequetur.

Like your other worships, also the sergeants, catchpoles, pursuivants,
messengers, summoners, apparitors, ushers, door-keepers, pettifoggers,
attorneys, proctors, commissioners, justices of the peace, judge delegates,
arbitrators, overseers, sequestrators, advocates, inquisitors, jurors,
searchers, examiners, notaries, tabellions, scribes, scriveners, clerks,
pregnotaries, secondaries, and expedanean judges, de quibus tit. est. l. 3.
c., by sucking very much, and that exceeding forcibly, and licking at the
purses of the pleading parties, they, to the suits already begot and
engendered, form, fashion, and frame head, feet, claws, talons, beaks,
bills, teeth, hands, veins, sinews, arteries, muscles, humours, and so
forth, through all the similary and dissimilary parts of the whole; which
parts, particles, pendicles, and appurtenances are the law pokes and bags,
gl. de cons. d. 4. c. accepisti. Qualis vestis erit, talia corda gerit.
Hic notandum est, that in this respect the pleaders, litigants, and law-
suitors are happier than the officers, ministers, and administrators of
justice. For beatius est dare quam accipere. ff. commun. l. 3. extra. de
celebr. Miss. c. cum Marthae. et 24. quaest. I. cap. Od. gl.

  Affectum dantis pensat censura tonantis.

Thus becometh the action or process by their care and industry to be of a
complete and goodly bulk, well shaped, framed, formed, and fashioned
according to the canonical gloss.

  Accipe, sume, cape, sunt verba placentia Papae.

Which speech hath been more clearly explained by Albert de Ros, in verbo
Roma.

  Roma manus rodit, quas rodere non valet, odit.
  Dantes custodit, non dantes spernit, et odit.

The reason whereof is thought to be this:

  Ad praesens ova cras pullis sunt meliora.

ut est gl. in l. quum hi. ff. de transact. Nor is this all; for the
inconvenience of the contrary is set down in gloss. c. de allu. l. fin.

  Quum labor in damno est, crescit mortalis egestas.

In confirmation whereof we find that the true etymology and exposition of
the word process is purchase, viz. of good store of money to the lawyers,
and of many pokes--id est, prou-sacks--to the pleaders, upon which subject
we have most celestial quips, gibes, and girds.

  Ligitando jura crescunt; litigando jus acquiritur.

Item gl. in cap. illud extrem. de praesumpt. et c. de prob. l. instrum. l.
non epistolis. l. non nudis.

  Et si non prosunt singula, multa juvant.

Yea but, asked Trinquamelle, how do you proceed, my friend, in criminal
causes, the culpable and guilty party being taken and seized upon flagrante
crimine? Even as your other worships use to do, answered Bridlegoose.
First, I permit the plaintiff to depart from the court, enjoining him not
to presume to return thither till he preallably should have taken a good
sound and profound sleep, which is to serve for the prime entry and
introduction to the legal carrying on of the business. In the next place,
a formal report is to be made to me of his having slept. Thirdly, I issue
forth a warrant to convene him before me. Fourthly, he is to produce a
sufficient and authentic attestation of his having thoroughly and entirely
slept, conform to the Gloss. 37. Quest. 7. c. Si quis cum.

  Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.

Being thus far advanced in the formality of the process, I find that this
consopiating act engendereth another act, whence ariseth the articulating
of a member. That again produceth a third act, fashionative of another
member; which third bringing forth a fourth, procreative of another act.
New members in a no fewer number are shapen and framed, one still breeding
and begetting another--as, link after link, the coat of mail at length is
made--till thus, piece after piece, by little and little, by information
upon information, the process be completely well formed and perfect in all
his members. Finally, having proceeded this length, I have recourse to my
dice, nor is it to be thought that this interruption, respite, or
interpellation is by me occasioned without very good reason inducing me
thereunto, and a notable experience of a most convincing and irrefragable
force.

I remember, on a time, that in the camp at Stockholm there was a certain
Gascon named Gratianauld, native of the town of Saint Sever, who having
lost all his money at play, and consecutively being very angry thereat--as
you know, Pecunia est alter sanguis, ut ait Anto. de Burtio, in c.
accedens. 2. extra ut lit. non contest. et Bald. in l. si tuis. c. de opt.
leg. per tot.in l. advocati. c. de advoc. div. jud. Pecunia est vita
hominis et optimus fide-jussor in necessitatibus--did, at his coming forth
of the gaming-house, in the presence of the whole company that was there,
with a very loud voice speak in his own language these following words:
Pao cap de bious hillots, que maux de pipes bous tresbire: ares que de
pergudes sont les mires bingt, et quouatre bagnelles, ta pla donnerien
pics, trucs, et patacts, Sey degun de bous aulx, qui boille truquar ambe
iou a bels embis. Finding that none would make him any answer, he passed
from thence to that part of the leaguer where the huff-snuff, honder
sponder, swashbuckling High Germans were, to whom he renewed these very
terms, provoking them to fight with him; but all the return he had from
them to his stout challenge was only, Der Gasconner thut sich ausz mit ein
iedem zu schlagen, aber er ist geneigter zu stehlen, darum, liebe frawen,
habt sorg zu euerm hauszrath. Finding also that none of that band of
Teutonic soldiers offered himself to the combat, he passed to that quarter
of the leaguer where the French freebooting adventurers were encamped, and
reiterating unto them what he had before repeated to the Dutch warriors,
challenged them likewise to fight with him, and therewithal made some
pretty little Gasconado frisking gambols to oblige them the more cheerfully
and gallantly to cope with him in the lists of a duellizing engagement; but
no answer at all was made unto him. Whereupon the Gascon, despairing of
meeting with any antagonists, departed from thence, and laying himself down
not far from the pavilions of the grand Christian cavalier Crissie, fell
fast asleep. When he had thoroughly slept an hour or two, another
adventurous and all-hazarding blade of the forlorn hope of the lavishingly
wasting gamesters, having also lost all his moneys, sallied forth with
sword in his hand, of a firm resolution to fight with the aforesaid Gascon,
seeing he had lost as well as he.

  Ploratur lachrymis amissa pecunia veris,

saith the Gl. de poenitent. distinct. 3. c. sunt plures. To this effect
having made inquiry and search for him throughout the whole camp, and in
sequel thereof found him asleep, he said unto him, Up, ho, good fellow, in
the name of all the devils of hell, rise up, rise up, get up! I have lost
my money as well as thou hast done; let us therefore go fight lustily
together, grapple and scuffle it to some purpose. Thou mayest look and see
that my tuck is no longer than thy rapier. The Gascon, altogether
astonished at his unexpected provocation, without altering his former
dialect spoke thus: Cap de Saint Arnault, quau seys to you, qui me
rebeillez? Que mau de taberne te gire. Ho Saint Siobe, cap de Gascoigne,
ta pla dormy jou, quand aquoest taquain me bingut estee. The venturous
roister inviteth him again to the duel, but the Gascon, without
condescending to his desire, said only this: He paovret jou tesquinerie
ares, que son pla reposat. Vayne un pauque te pausar com jou, peusse
truqueren. Thus, in forgetting his loss, he forgot the eagerness which he
had to fight. In conclusion, after that the other had likewise slept a
little, they, instead of fighting, and possibly killing one another, went
jointly to a sutler's tent, where they drank together very amicably, each
upon the pawn of his sword. Thus by a little sleep was pacified the ardent
fury of two warlike champions. There, gossip, comes the golden word of
John Andr. in cap. ult. de sent. et re. judic. l. sexto.

  Sedendo, et dormiendo fit anima prudens.

Chapter 3.XLIII.

How Pantagruel excuseth Bridlegoose in the matter of sentencing actions at
law by the chance of the dice.

With this Bridlegoose held his peace. Whereupon Trinquamelle bid him
withdraw from the court--which accordingly was done--and then directed his
discourse to Pantagruel after this manner: It is fitting, most illustrious
prince, not only by reason of the deep obligations wherein this present
parliament, together with the whole marquisate of Mirelingues, stand bound
to your royal highness for the innumerable benefits which, as effects of
mere grace, they have received from your incomparable bounty, but for that
excellent wit also, prime judgment, and admirable learning wherewith
Almighty God, the giver of all good things, hath most richly qualified and
endowed you, we tender and present unto you the decision of this new,
strange, and paradoxical case of Bridlegoose; who, in your presence, to
your both hearing and seeing, hath plainly confessed his final judging and
determinating of suits of law by the mere chance and fortune of the dice.
Therefore do we beseech you that you may be pleased to give sentence
therein as unto you shall seem most just and equitable. To this Pantagruel
answered: Gentlemen, it is not unknown to you how my condition is somewhat
remote from the profession of deciding law controversies; yet, seeing you
are pleased to do me the honour to put that task upon me, instead of
undergoing the office of a judge I will become your humble supplicant. I
observe, gentlemen, in this Bridlegoose several things which induce me to
represent before you that it is my opinion he should be pardoned. In the
first place, his old age; secondly, his simplicity; to both which qualities
our statute and common laws, civil and municipal together, allow many
excuses for any slips or escapes which, through the invincible imperfection
of either, have been inconsiderately stumbled upon by a person so
qualified. Thirdly, gentlemen, I must needs display before you another
case, which in equity and justice maketh much for the advantage of
Bridlegoose, to wit, that this one, sole, and single fault of his ought to
be quite forgotten, abolished, and swallowed up by that immense and vast
ocean of just dooms and sentences which heretofore he hath given and
pronounced; his demeanours, for these forty years and upwards that he hath
been a judge, having been so evenly balanced in the scales of uprightness,
that envy itself till now could not have been so impudent as to accuse and
twit him with any act worthy of a check or reprehension; as, if a drop of
the sea were thrown into the Loire, none could perceive or say that by this
single drop the whole river should be salt and brackish.

Truly, it seemeth unto me, that in the whole series of Bridlegoose's
juridical decrees there hath been I know not what of extraordinary
savouring of the unspeakable benignity of God, that all those his preceding
sentences, awards, and judgments, have been confirmed and approved of by
yourselves in this your own venerable and sovereign court. For it is
usual, as you know well, with him whose ways are inscrutable, to manifest
his own ineffable glory in blunting the perspicacy of the eyes of the wise,
in weakening the strength of potent oppressors, in depressing the pride of
rich extortioners, and in erecting, comforting, protecting, supporting,
upholding, and shoring up the poor, feeble, humble, silly, and foolish ones
of the earth. But, waiving all these matters, I shall only beseech you,
not by the obligations which you pretend to owe to my family, for which I
thank you, but for that constant and unfeigned love and affection which you
have always found in me, both on this and on the other side of Loire, for
the maintenance and establishment of your places, offices, and dignities,
that for this one time you would pardon and forgive him upon these two
conditions. First, that he satisfy, or put a sufficient surety for the
satisfaction of the party wronged by the injustice of the sentence in
question. For the fulfilment of this article I will provide sufficiently.
And, secondly, that for his subsidiary aid in the weighty charge of
administrating justice you would be pleased to appoint and assign unto him
some pretty little virtuous counsellor, younger, learneder, and wiser than
he, by the square and rule of whose advice he may regulate, guide, temper,
and moderate in times coming all his judiciary procedures; or otherwise, if
you intend totally to depose him from his office, and to deprive him
altogether of the state and dignity of a judge, I shall cordially entreat
you to make a present and free gift of him to me, who shall find in my
kingdoms charges and employments enough wherewith to embusy him, for the
bettering of his own fortunes and furtherance of my service. In the
meantime, I implore the Creator, Saviour, and Sanctifier of all good
things, in his grace, mercy, and kindness, to preserve you all now and
evermore, world without end.

These words thus spoken, Pantagruel, vailing his cap and making a leg with
such a majestic garb as became a person of his paramount degree and
eminency, farewelled Trinquamelle, the president and master-speaker of that
Mirelinguesian parliament, took his leave of the whole court, and went out
of the chamber; at the door whereof finding Panurge, Epistemon, Friar John,
and others, he forthwith, attended by them, walked to the outer gate, where
all of them immediately took horse to return towards Gargantua. Pantagruel
by the way related to them from point to point the manner of Bridlegoose's
sententiating differences at law. Friar John said that he had seen Peter
Dandin, and was acquainted with him at that time when he sojourned in the
monastery of Fontaine le Comte, under the noble Abbot Ardillon. Gymnast
likewise affirmed that he was in the tent of the grand Christian cavalier
De Crissie, when the Gascon, after his sleep, made answer to the
adventurer. Panurge was somewhat incredulous in the matter of believing
that it was morally possible Bridlegoose should have been for such a long
space of time so continually fortunate in that aleatory way of deciding law
debates. Epistemon said to Pantagruel, Such another story, not much unlike
to that in all the circumstances thereof, is vulgarly reported of the
provost of Montlehery. In good sooth, such a perpetuity of good luck is to
be wondered at. To have hit right twice or thrice in a judgment so given
by haphazard might have fallen out well enough, especially in controversies
that were ambiguous, intricate, abstruse, perplexed, and obscure.

Chapter 3.XLIV.

How Pantagruel relateth a strange history of the perplexity of human
judgment.

Seeing you talk, quoth Pantagruel, of dark, difficult, hard, and knotty
debates, I will tell you of one controverted before Cneius Dolabella,
proconsul in Asia. The case was this.

A wife in Smyrna had of her first husband a child named Abece. He dying,
she, after the expiring of a year and day, married again, and to her second
husband bore a boy called Effege. A pretty long time thereafter it
happened, as you know the affection of stepfathers and stepdams is very
rare towards the children of the first fathers and mothers deceased, that
this husband, with the help of his son Effege, secretly, wittingly,
willingly, and treacherously murdered Abece. The woman came no sooner to
get information of the fact, but, that it might not go unpunished, she
caused kill them both, to revenge the death of her first son. She was
apprehended and carried before Cneius Dolabella, in whose presence she,
without dissembling anything, confessed all that was laid to her charge;
yet alleged that she had both right and reason on her side for the killing
of them. Thus was the state of the question. He found the business so
dubious and intricate, that he knew not what to determine therein, nor
which of the parties to incline to. On the other hand, it was an execrable
crime to cut off at once both her second husband and her son. On the other
hand, the cause of the murder seemed to be so natural, as to be grounded
upon the law of nations and the rational instinct of all the people of the
world, seeing they two together had feloniously and murderously destroyed
her first son; not that they had been in any manner of way wronged,
outraged, or injured by him, but out of an avaricious intent to possess his
inheritance. In this doubtful quandary and uncertainty what to pitch upon,
he sent to the Areopagites then sitting at Athens to learn and obtain their
advice and judgment. That judicious senate, very sagely perpending the
reasons of his perplexity, sent him word to summon her personally to
compear before him a precise hundred years thereafter, to answer to some
interrogatories touching certain points which were not contained in the
verbal defence. Which resolution of theirs did import that it was in their
opinion a so difficult and inextricable matter that they knew not what to
say or judge therein. Who had decided that plea by the chance and fortune
of the dice, could not have erred nor awarded amiss on which side soever he
had passed his casting and condemnatory sentence. If against the woman,
she deserved punishment for usurping sovereign authority by taking that
vengeance at her own hand, the inflicting whereof was only competent to the
supreme power to administer justice in criminal cases. If for her, the
just resentment of a so atrocious injury done unto her, in murdering her
innocent son, did fully excuse and vindicate her of any trespass or offence
about that particular committed by her. But this continuation of
Bridlegoose for so many years still hitting the nail on the head, never
missing the mark, and always judging aright, by the mere throwing of the
dice and chance thereof, is that which most astonisheth and amazeth me.

To answer, quoth Pantagruel (Epistemon, says the English edition of 1694,
following the reading of the modern French editions. Le Duchat has pointed
out the mistake.--M.), categorically to that which you wonder at, I must
ingeniously confess and avow that I cannot; yet, conjecturally to guess at
the reason of it, I would refer the cause of that marvellously long-
continued happy success in the judiciary results of his definitive
sentences to the favourable aspect of the heavens and benignity of the
intelligences; who, out of their love to goodness, after having
contemplated the pure simplicity and sincere unfeignedness of Judge
Bridlegoose in the acknowledgment of his inabilities, did regulate that for
him by chance which by the profoundest act of his maturest deliberation he
was not able to reach unto. That, likewise, which possibly made him to
diffide in his own skill and capacity, notwithstanding his being an expert
and understanding lawyer, for anything that I know to the contrary, was the
knowledge and experience which he had of the antinomies, contrarieties,
antilogies, contradictions, traversings, and thwartings of laws, customs,
edicts, statutes, orders, and ordinances, in which dangerous opposition,
equity and justice being structured and founded on either of the opposite
terms, and a gap being thereby opened for the ushering in of injustice and
iniquity through the various interpretations of self-ended lawyers, being
assuredly persuaded that the infernal calumniator, who frequently
transformeth himself into the likeness of a messenger or angel of light,
maketh use of these cross glosses and expositions in the mouths and pens of
his ministers and servants, the perverse advocates, bribing judges, law-
monging attorneys, prevaricating counsellors, and other such-like law-
wresting members of a court of justice, to turn by those means black to
white, green to grey, and what is straight to a crooked ply. For the more
expedient doing whereof, these diabolical ministers make both the pleading
parties believe that their cause is just and righteous; for it is well
known that there is no cause, how bad soever, which doth not find an
advocate to patrocinate and defend it,--else would there be no process in
the world, no suits at law, nor pleadings at the bar. He did in these
extremities, as I conceive, most humbly recommend the direction of his
judicial proceedings to the upright judge of judges, God Almighty; did
submit himself to the conduct and guideship of the blessed Spirit in the
hazard and perplexity of the definitive sentence, and, by this aleatory
lot, did as it were implore and explore the divine decree of his goodwill
and pleasure, instead of that which we call the final judgment of a court.
To this effect, to the better attaining to his purpose, which was to judge
righteously, he did, in my opinion, throw and turn the dice, to the end
that by the providence aforesaid the best chance might fall to him whose
action was uprightest, and backed with greatest reason. In doing whereof
he did not stray from the sense of Talmudists, who say that there is so
little harm in that manner of searching the truth, that in the anxiety and
perplexedness of human wits God oftentimes manifesteth the secret pleasure
of his divine will.

Furthermore, I will neither think nor say, nor can I believe, that the
unstraightness is so irregular, or the corruption so evident, of those of
the parliament of Mirelingois in Mirelingues, before whom Bridlegoose was
arraigned for prevarication, that they will maintain it to be a worse
practice to have the decision of a suit at law referred to the chance and
hazard of a throw of the dice, hab nab, or luck as it will, than to have it
remitted to and passed by the determination of those whose hands are full
of blood and hearts of wry affections. Besides that, their principal
direction in all law matters comes to their hands from one Tribonian, a
wicked, miscreant, barbarous, faithless and perfidious knave, so
pernicious, unjust, avaricious, and perverse in his ways, that it was his
ordinary custom to sell laws, edicts, declarations, constitutions, and
ordinances, as at an outroop or putsale, to him who offered most for them.
Thus did he shape measures for the pleaders, and cut their morsels to them
by and out of these little parcels, fragments, bits, scantlings, and shreds
of the law now in use, altogether concealing, suppressing, disannulling,
and abolishing the remainder, which did make for the total law; fearing
that, if the whole law were made manifest and laid open to the knowledge of
such as are interested in it, and the learned books of the ancient doctors
of the law upon the exposition of the Twelve Tables and Praetorian Edicts,
his villainous pranks, naughtiness, and vile impiety should come to the
public notice of the world. Therefore were it better, in my conceit, that
is to say, less inconvenient, that parties at variance in any juridical
case should in the dark march upon caltrops than submit the determination
of what is their right to such unhallowed sentences and horrible decrees;
as Cato in his time wished and advised that every judiciary court should be
paved with caltrops.

Chapter 3.XLV.

How Panurge taketh advice of Triboulet.

On the sixth day thereafter Pantagruel was returned home at the very same
hour that Triboulet was by water come from Blois. Panurge, at his arrival,
gave him a hog's bladder puffed up with wind, and resounding because of the
hard peas that were within it. Moreover he did present him with a gilt
wooden sword, a hollow budget made of a tortoise shell, an osier-wattled
wicker-bottle full of Breton wine, and five-and-twenty apples of the
orchard of Blandureau.

If he be such a fool, quoth Carpalin, as to be won with apples, there is no
more wit in his pate than in the head of an ordinary cabbage. Triboulet
girded the sword and scrip to his side, took the bladder in his hand, ate
some few of the apples, and drunk up all the wine. Panurge very wistly and
heedfully looking upon him said, I never yet saw a fool, and I have seen
ten thousand francs worth of that kind of cattle, who did not love to drink
heartily, and by good long draughts. When Triboulet had done with his
drinking, Panurge laid out before him and exposed the sum of the business
wherein he was to require his advice, in eloquent and choicely-sorted
terms, adorned with flourishes of rhetoric. But, before he had altogether
done, Triboulet with his fist gave him a bouncing whirret between the
shoulders, rendered back into his hand again the empty bottle, fillipped
and flirted him in the nose with the hog's bladder, and lastly, for a final
resolution, shaking and wagging his head strongly and disorderly, he
answered nothing else but this, By God, God, mad fool, beware the monk,
Buzansay hornpipe! These words thus finished, he slipped himself out of
the company, went aside, and, rattling the bladder, took a huge delight in
the melody of the rickling crackling noise of the peas. After which time
it lay not in the power of them all to draw out of his chaps the articulate
sound of one syllable, insomuch that, when Panurge went about to
interrogate him further, Triboulet drew his wooden sword, and would have
stuck him therewith. I have fished fair now, quoth Panurge, and brought my
pigs to a fine market. Have I not got a brave determination of all my
doubts, and a response in all things agreeable to the oracle that gave it?
He is a great fool, that is not to be denied, yet is he a greater fool who
brought him hither to me,--That bolt, quoth Carpalin, levels point-blank at
me,--but of the three I am the greatest fool, who did impart the secret of
my thoughts to such an idiot ass and native ninny.

Without putting ourselves to any stir or trouble in the least, quoth
Pantagruel, let us maturely and seriously consider and perpend the gestures
and speech which he hath made and uttered. In them, veritably, quoth he,
have I remarked and observed some excellent and notable mysteries; yea, of
such important worth and weight, that I shall never henceforth be
astonished, nor think strange, why the Turks with a great deal of worship
and reverence honour and respect natural fools equally with their primest
doctors, muftis, divines, and prophets. Did not you take heed, quoth he, a
little before he opened his mouth to speak, what a shogging, shaking, and
wagging his head did keep? By the approved doctrine of the ancient
philosophers, the customary ceremonies of the most expert magicians, and
the received opinions of the learnedest lawyers, such a brangling agitation
and moving should by us all be judged to proceed from, and be quickened and
suscitated by the coming and inspiration of the prophetizing and fatidical
spirit, which, entering briskly and on a sudden into a shallow receptacle
of a debile substance (for, as you know, and as the proverb shows it, a
little head containeth not much brains), was the cause of that commotion.
This is conform to what is avouched by the most skilful physicians, when
they affirm that shakings and tremblings fall upon the members of a human
body, partly because of the heaviness and violent impetuosity of the burden
and load that is carried, and, other part, by reason of the weakness and
imbecility that is in the virtue of the bearing organ. A manifest example
whereof appeareth in those who, fasting, are not able to carry to their
head a great goblet full of wine without a trembling and a shaking in the
hand that holds it. This of old was accounted a prefiguration and mystical
pointing out of the Pythian divineress, who used always, before the
uttering of a response from the oracle, to shake a branch of her domestic
laurel. Lampridius also testifieth that the Emperor Heliogabalus, to
acquire unto himself the reputation of a soothsayer, did, on several holy
days of prime solemnnity, in the presence of the fanatic rabble, make the
head of his idol by some slight within the body thereof publicly to shake.
Plautus, in his Asinaria, declareth likewise, that Saurias, whithersoever
he walked, like one quite distracted of his wits kept such a furious
lolling and mad-like shaking of his head, that he commonly affrighted those
who casually met with him in his way. The said author in another place,
showing a reason why Charmides shook and brangled his head, assevered that
he was transported and in an ecstasy. Catullus after the same manner
maketh mention, in his Berecynthia and Atys, of the place wherein the
Menades, Bacchical women, she-priests of the Lyaean god, and demented
prophetesses, carrying ivy boughs in their hands, did shake their heads.
As in the like case, amongst the Galli, the gelded priests of Cybele were
wont to do in the celebrating of their festivals. Whence, too, according
to the sense of the ancient theologues, she herself has her denomination,
for (Greek) signifieth to turn round, whirl about, shake the head, and play
the part of one that is wry-necked.

Semblably Titus Livius writeth that, in the solemnization time of the
Bacchanalian holidays at Rome, both men and women seemed to prophetize and
vaticinate, because of an affected kind of wagging of the head, shrugging
of the shoulders, and jectigation of the whole body, which they used then
most punctually. For the common voice of the philosophers, together with
the opinion of the people, asserteth for an irrefragable truth that
vaticination is seldom by the heavens bestowed on any without the
concomitancy of a little frenzy and a head-shaking, not only when the said
presaging virtue is infused, but when the person also therewith inspired
declareth and manifesteth it unto others. The learned lawyer Julian, being
asked on a time if that slave might be truly esteemed to be healthful and
in a good plight who had not only conversed with some furious, maniac, and
enraged people, but in their company had also prophesied, yet without a
noddle-shaking concussion, answered that, seeing there was no head-wagging
at the time of his predictions, he might be held for sound and compotent
enough. Is it not daily seen how schoolmasters, teachers, tutors, and
instructors of children shake the heads of their disciples, as one would do
a pot in holding it by the lugs, that by this erection, vellication,
stretching, and pulling their ears, which, according to the doctrine of the
sage Egyptians, is a member consecrated to the memory, they may stir them
up to recollect their scattered thoughts, bring home those fancies of
theirs which perhaps have been extravagantly roaming abroad upon strange
and uncouth objects, and totally range their judgments, which possibly by
disordinate affections have been made wild, to the rule and pattern of a
wise, discreet, virtuous, and philosophical discipline. All which Virgil
acknowledgeth to be true, in the branglement of Apollo Cynthius.

Chapter 3.XLVI.

How Pantagruel and Panurge diversely interpret the words of Triboulet.

He says you are a fool. And what kind of fool? A mad fool, who in your
old age would enslave yourself to the bondage of matrimony, and shut your
pleasures up within a wedlock whose key some ruffian carries in his
codpiece. He says furthermore, Beware of the monk. Upon mine honour, it
gives me in my mind that you will be cuckolded by a monk. Nay, I will
engage mine honour, which is the most precious pawn I could have in my
possession although I were sole and peaceable dominator over all Europe,
Asia, and Africa, that, if you marry, you will surely be one of the horned
brotherhood of Vulcan. Hereby may you perceive how much I do attribute to
the wise foolery of our morosoph Triboulet. The other oracles and
responses did in the general prognosticate you a cuckold, without
descending so near to the point of a particular determination as to pitch
upon what vocation amongst the several sorts of men he should profess who
is to be the copesmate of your wife and hornifier of your proper self.
Thus noble Triboulet tells it us plainly, from whose words we may gather
with all ease imaginable that your cuckoldry is to be infamous, and so much
the more scandalous that your conjugal bed will be incestuously
contaminated with the filthiness of a monkery lecher. Moreover, he says
that you will be the hornpipe of Buzansay, that is to say, well-horned,
hornified, and cornuted. And, as Triboulet's uncle asked from Louis the
Twelfth, for a younger brother of his own who lived at Blois, the hornpipes
of Buzansay, for the organ pipes, through the mistake of one word for
another, even so, whilst you think to marry a wise, humble, calm, discreet,
and honest wife, you shall unhappily stumble upon one witless, proud, loud,
obstreperous, bawling, clamorous, and more unpleasant than any Buzansay
hornpipe. Consider withal how he flirted you on the nose with the bladder,
and gave you a sound thumping blow with his fist upon the ridge of the
back. This denotates and presageth that you shall be banged, beaten, and
fillipped by her, and that also she will steal of your goods from you, as
you stole the hog's bladder from the little boys of Vaubreton.

Flat contrary, quoth Panurge;--not that I would impudently exempt myself
from being a vassal in the territory of folly. I hold of that
jurisdiction, and am subject thereto, I confess it. And why should I not?
For the whole world is foolish. In the old Lorraine language, fou for tou,
all and fool, were the same thing. Besides, it is avouched by Solomon that
infinite is the number of fools. From an infinity nothing can be deducted
or abated, nor yet, by the testimony of Aristotle, can anything thereto be
added or subjoined. Therefore were I a mad fool if, being a fool, I should
not hold myself a fool. After the same manner of speaking, we may aver the
number of the mad and enraged folks to be infinite. Avicenna maketh no
bones to assert that the several kinds of madness are infinite. Though
this much of Triboulet's words tend little to my advantage, howbeit the
prejudice which I sustain thereby be common with me to all other men, yet
the rest of his talk and gesture maketh altogether for me. He said to my
wife, Be wary of the monkey; that is as much as if she should be cheery,
and take as much delight in a monkey as ever did the Lesbia of Catullus in
her sparrow; who will for his recreation pass his time no less joyfully at
the exercise of snatching flies than heretofore did the merciless fly-
catcher Domitian. Withal he meant, by another part of his discourse, that
she should be of a jovial country-like humour, as gay and pleasing as a
harmonious hornpipe of Saulieau or Buzansay. The veridical Triboulet did
therein hint at what I liked well, as perfectly knowing the inclinations
and propensions of my mind, my natural disposition, and the bias of my
interior passions and affections. For you may be assured that my humour is
much better satisfied and contented with the pretty, frolic, rural,
dishevelled shepherdesses, whose bums through their coarse canvas smocks
smell of the clover grass of the field, than with those great ladies in
magnific courts, with their flandan top-knots and sultanas, their polvil,
pastillos, and cosmetics. The homely sound, likewise, of a rustical
hornpipe is more agreeable to my ears than the curious warbling and musical
quavering of lutes, theorbos, viols, rebecs, and violins. He gave me a
lusty rapping thwack on my back,--what then? Let it pass, in the name and
for the love of God, as an abatement of and deduction from so much of my
future pains in purgatory. He did it not out of any evil intent. He
thought, belike, to have hit some of the pages. He is an honest fool, and
an innocent changeling. It is a sin to harbour in the heart any bad
conceit of him. As for myself, I heartily pardon him. He flirted me on
the nose. In that there is no harm; for it importeth nothing else but that
betwixt my wife and me there will occur some toyish wanton tricks which
usually happen to all new-married folks.

Chapter 3.XLVII.

How Pantagruel and Panurge resolved to make a visit to the oracle of the
holy bottle.

There is as yet another point, quoth Panurge, which you have not at all
considered on, although it be the chief and principal head of the matter.
He put the bottle in my hand and restored it me again. How interpret you
that passage? What is the meaning of that? He possibly, quoth Pantagruel,
signifieth thereby that your wife will be such a drunkard as shall daily
take in her liquor kindly, and ply the pots and bottles apace. Quite
otherwise, quoth Panurge; for the bottle was empty. I swear to you, by the
prickling brambly thorn of St. Fiacre in Brie, that our unique morosoph,
whom I formerly termed the lunatic Triboulet, referreth me, for attaining
to the final resolution of my scruple, to the response-giving bottle.
Therefore do I renew afresh the first vow which I made, and here in your
presence protest and make oath, by Styx and Acheron, to carry still
spectacles in my cap, and never to wear a codpiece in my breeches, until
upon the enterprise in hand of my nuptial undertaking I shall have obtained
an answer from the holy bottle. I am acquainted with a prudent,
understanding, and discreet gentleman, and besides a very good friend of
mine, who knoweth the land, country, and place where its temple and oracle
is built and posited. He will guide and conduct us thither sure and
safely. Let us go thither, I beseech you. Deny me not, and say not nay;
reject not the suit I make unto you, I entreat you. I will be to you an
Achates, a Damis, and heartily accompany you all along in the whole voyage,
both in your going forth and coming back. I have of a long time known you
to be a great lover of peregrination, desirous still to learn new things,
and still to see what you had never seen before.

Very willingly, quoth Pantagruel, I condescend to your request. But before
we enter in upon our progress towards the accomplishment of so far a
journey, replenished and fraught with eminent perils, full of innumerable
hazards, and every way stored with evident and manifest dangers,--What
dangers? quoth Panurge, interrupting him. Dangers fly back, run from, and
shun me whithersoever I go, seven leagues around, as in the presence of the
sovereign a subordinate magistracy is eclipsed; or as clouds and darkness
quite evanish at the bright coming of a radiant sun; or as all sores and
sicknesses did suddenly depart at the approach of the body of St. Martin a
Quande. Nevertheless, quoth Pantagruel, before we adventure to set
forwards on the road of our projected and intended voyage, some few points
are to be discussed, expedited, and despatched. First, let us send back
Triboulet to Blois. Which was instantly done, after that Pantagruel had
given him a frieze coat. Secondly, our design must be backed with the
advice and counsel of the king my father. And, lastly, it is most needful
and expedient for us that we search for and find out some sibyl to serve us
for a guide, truchman, and interpreter. To this Panurge made answer, that
his friend Xenomanes would abundantly suffice for the plenary discharge and
performance of the sibyl's office; and that, furthermore, in passing
through the Lanternatory revelling country, they should take along with
them a learned and profitable Lanternesse, which would be no less useful to
them in their voyage than was the sibyl to Aeneas in his descent to the
Elysian fields. Carpalin, in the interim, as he was upon the conducting
away of Triboulet, in his passing by hearkened a little to the discourse
they were upon; then spoke out, saying, Ho, Panurge, master freeman, take
my Lord Debitis at Calais alongst with you, for he is goud-fallot, a good
fellow. He will not forget those who have been debitors; these are
Lanternes. Thus shall you not lack for both fallot and lanterne. I may
safely with the little skill I have, quoth Pantagruel, prognosticate that
by the way we shall engender no melancholy. I clearly perceive it already.
The only thing that vexeth me is, that I cannot speak the Lanternatory
language. I shall, answered Panurge, speak for you all. I understand it
every whit as well as I do mine own maternal tongue; I have been no less
used to it than to the vulgar French.

  Briszmarg dalgotbrick nubstzne zos.
  Isquebsz prusq: albok crinqs zacbac.
  Mizbe dilbarskz morp nipp stancz bos,
  Strombtz, Panurge, walmap quost gruszbac.

Now guess, friend Epistemon, what this is. They are, quoth Epistemon,
names of errant devils, passant devils, and rampant devils. These words of
thine, dear friend of mine, are true, quoth Panurge; yet are they terms
used in the language of the court of the Lanternish people. By the way, as
we go upon our journey, I will make to thee a pretty little dictionary,
which, notwithstanding, shall not last you much longer than a pair of new
shoes. Thou shalt have learned it sooner than thou canst perceive the
dawning of the next subsequent morning. What I have said in the foregoing
tetrastich is thus translated out of the Lanternish tongue into our vulgar
dialect:

  All miseries attended me, whilst I
  A lover was, and had no good thereby.
  Of better luck the married people tell;
  Panurge is one of those, and knows it well.

There is little more, then, quoth Pantagruel, to be done, but that we
understand what the will of the king my father will be therein, and
purchase his consent.

Chapter 3.XLVIII.

How Gargantua showeth that the children ought not to marry without the
special knowledge and advice of their fathers and mothers.

No sooner had Pantagruel entered in at the door of the great hall of the
castle, than that he encountered full butt with the good honest Gargantua
coming forth from the council board, unto whom he made a succinct and
summary narrative of what had passed and occurred, worthy of his
observation, in his travels abroad, since their last interview; then,
acquainting him with the design he had in hand, besought him that it might
stand with his goodwill and pleasure to grant him leave to prosecute and go
through-stitch with the enterprise which he had undertaken. The good man
Gargantua, having in one hand two great bundles of petitions endorsed and
answered, and in the other some remembrancing notes and bills, to put him
in mind of such other requests of supplicants, which, albeit presented, had
nevertheless been neither read nor heard, he gave both to Ulric Gallet, his
ancient and faithful Master of Requests; then drew aside Pantagruel, and,
with a countenance more serene and jovial than customary, spoke to him
thus: I praise God, and have great reason so to do, my most dear son, that
he hath been pleased to entertain in you a constant inclination to virtuous
actions. I am well content that the voyage which you have motioned to me
be by you accomplished, but withal I could wish you would have a mind and
desire to marry, for that I see you are of competent years. Panurge in the
meanwhile was in a readiness of preparing and providing for remedies,
salves, and cures against all such lets, obstacles, and impediments as he
could in the height of his fancy conceive might by Gargantua be cast in the
way of their itinerary design. Is it your pleasure, most dear father, that
you speak? answered Pantagruel. For my part, I have not yet thought upon
it. In all this affair I wholly submit and rest in your good liking and
paternal authority. For I shall rather pray unto God that he would throw
me down stark dead at your feet, in your pleasure, than that against your
pleasure I should be found married alive. I never yet heard that by any
law, whether sacred or profane, yea, amongst the rudest and most barbarous
nations in the world, it was allowed and approved of that children may be
suffered and tolerated to marry at their own goodwill and pleasure, without
the knowledge, advice, or consent asked and had thereto of their fathers,
mothers, and nearest kindred. All legislators, everywhere upon the face of
the whole earth, have taken away and removed this licentious liberty from
children, and totally reserved it to the discretion of the parents.

My dearly beloved son, quoth Gargantua, I believe you, and from my heart
thank God for having endowed you with the grace of having both a perfect
notice of and entire liking to laudable and praiseworthy things; and that
through the windows of your exterior senses he hath vouchsafed to transmit
unto the interior faculties of your mind nothing but what is good and
virtuous. For in my time there hath been found on the continent a certain
country, wherein are I know not what kind of Pastophorian mole-catching
priests, who, albeit averse from engaging their proper persons into a
matrimonial duty, like the pontifical flamens of Cybele in Phrygia, as if
they were capons, and not cocks full of lasciviousness, salacity, and
wantonness, who yet have, nevertheless, in the matter of conjugal affairs,
taken upon them to prescribe laws and ordinances to married folks. I
cannot goodly determine what I should most abhor, detest, loathe, and
abominate,--whether the tyrannical presumption of those dreaded sacerdotal
mole-catchers, who, not being willing to contain and coop up themselves
within the grates and trellises of their own mysterious temples, do deal
in, meddle with, obtrude upon, and thrust their sickles into harvests of
secular businesses quite contrary and diametrically opposite to the
quality, state, and condition of their callings, professions, and
vocations; or the superstitious stupidity and senseless scrupulousness of
married folks, who have yielded obedience, and submitted their bodies,
fortunes, and estates to the discretion and authority of such odious,
perverse, barbarous, and unreasonable laws. Nor do they see that which is
clearer than the light and splendour of the morning star,--how all these
nuptial and connubial sanctions, statutes, and ordinances have been
decreed, made, and instituted for the sole benefit, profit, and advantage
of the flaminal mysts and mysterious flamens, and nothing at all for the
good, utility, or emolument of the silly hoodwinked married people. Which
administereth unto others a sufficient cause for rendering these churchmen
suspicious of iniquity, and of an unjust and fraudulent manner of dealing,
no more to be connived at nor countenanced, after that it be well weighed
in the scales of reason, than if with a reciprocal temerity the laics, by
way of compensation, would impose laws to be followed and observed by those
mysts and flamens, how they should behave themselves in the making and
performance of their rites and ceremonies, and after what manner they ought
to proceed in the offering up and immolating of their various oblations,
victims, and sacrifices; seeing that, besides the decimation and tithe-
haling of their goods, they cut off and take parings, shreddings, and
clippings of the gain proceeding from the labour of their hands and sweat
of their brows, therewith to entertain themselves the better. Upon which
consideration, in my opinion, their injunctions and commands would not
prove so pernicious and impertinent as those of the ecclesiastic power unto
which they had tendered their blind obedience. For, as you have very well
said, there is no place in the world where, legally, a licence is granted
to the children to marry without the advice and consent of their parents
and kindred. Nevertheless, by those wicked laws and mole-catching customs,
whereat there is a little hinted in what I have already spoken to you,
there is no scurvy, measly, leprous, or pocky ruffian, pander, knave,
rogue, skellum, robber, or thief, pilloried, whipped, and burn-marked in
his own country for his crimes and felonies, who may not violently snatch
away and ravish what maid soever he had a mind to pitch upon, how noble,
how fair, how rich, honest, and chaste soever she be, and that out of the
house of her own father, in his own presence, from the bosom of her mother,
and in the sight and despite of her friends and kindred looking on a so
woeful spectacle, provided that the rascal villain be so cunning as to
associate unto himself some mystical flamen, who, according to the covenant
made betwixt them two, shall be in hope some day to participate of the
prey.

Could the Goths, the Scyths, or Massagets do a worse or more cruel act to
any of the inhabitants of a hostile city, when, after the loss of many of
their most considerable commanders, the expense of a great deal of money,
and a long siege, they shall have stormed and taken it by a violent and
impetuous assault? May not these fathers and mothers, think you, be
sorrowful and heavy-hearted when they see an unknown fellow, a vagabond
stranger, a barbarous lout, a rude cur, rotten, fleshless, putrified,
scraggy, boily, botchy, poor, a forlorn caitiff and miserable sneak, by an
open rapt snatch away before their own eyes their so fair, delicate, neat,
well-behavioured, richly-provided-for and healthful daughters, on whose
breeding and education they had spared no cost nor charges, by bringing
them up in an honest discipline to all the honourable and virtuous
employments becoming one of their sex descended of a noble parentage,
hoping by those commendable and industrious means in an opportune and
convenient time to bestow them on the worthy sons of their well-deserving
neighbours and ancient friends, who had nourished, entertained, taught,
instructed, and schooled their children with the same care and solicitude,
to make them matches fit to attain to the felicity of a so happy marriage,
that from them might issue an offspring and progeny no less heirs to the
laudable endowments and exquisite qualifications of their parents, whom
they every way resemble, than to their personal and real estates, movables,
and inheritances? How doleful, trist, and plangorous would such a sight
and pageantry prove unto them? You shall not need to think that the
collachrymation of the Romans and their confederates at the decease of
Germanicus Drusus was comparable to this lamentation of theirs? Neither
would I have you to believe that the discomfort and anxiety of the
Lacedaemonians, when the Greek Helen, by the perfidiousness of the
adulterous Trojan, Paris, was privily stolen away out of their country, was
greater or more pitiful than this ruthful and deplorable collugency of
theirs? You may very well imagine that Ceres at the ravishment of her
daughter Proserpina was not more attristed, sad, nor mournful than they.
Trust me, and your own reason, that the loss of Osiris was not so
regrettable to Isis, nor did Venus so deplore the death of Adonis, nor yet
did Hercules so bewail the straying of Hylas, nor was the rapt of Polyxena
more throbbingly resented and condoled by Priamus and Hecuba, than this
aforesaid accident would be sympathetically bemoaned, grievous, ruthful,
and anxious to the woefully desolate and disconsolate parents.

Notwithstanding all this, the greater part of so vilely abused parents are
so timorous and afraid of devils and hobgoblins, and so deeply plunged in
superstition, that they dare not gainsay nor contradict, much less oppose
and resist those unnatural and impious actions, when the mole-catcher hath
been present at the perpetrating of the fact, and a party contractor and
covenanter in that detestable bargain. What do they do then? They
wretchedly stay at their own miserable homes, destitute of their well-
beloved daughters, the fathers cursing the days and the hours wherein they
were married, and the mothers howling and crying that it was not their
fortune to have brought forth abortive issues when they happened to be
delivered of such unfortunate girls, and in this pitiful plight spend at
best the remainder of their time with tears and weeping for those their
children, of and from whom they expected, (and, with good reason, should
have obtained and reaped,) in these latter days of theirs, joy and comfort.
Other parents there have been, so impatient of that affront and indignity
put upon them and their families, that, transported with the extremity of
passion, in a mad and frantic mood, through the vehemency of a grievous
fury and raging sorrow, have drowned, hanged, killed, and otherwise put
violent hands on themselves. Others, again, of that parental relation
have, upon the reception of the like injury, been of a more magnanimous and
heroic spirit, who, in imitation and at the example of the children of
Jacob revenging upon the Sichemites the rapt of their sister Dinah, having
found the rascally ruffian in the association of his mystical mole-catcher
closely and in hugger-mugger conferring, parleying, and coming with their
daughters, for the suborning, corrupting, depraving, perverting, and
enticing these innocent unexperienced maids unto filthy lewdnesses, have,
without any further advisement on the matter, cut them instantly into
pieces, and thereupon forthwith thrown out upon the fields their so
dismembered bodies, to serve for food unto the wolves and ravens. Upon the
chivalrous, bold, and courageous achievement of a so valiant, stout, and
manlike act, the other mole-catching symmysts have been so highly incensed,
and have so chafed, fretted, and fumed thereat, that, bills of complaint
and accusations having been in a most odious and detestable manner put in
before the competent judges, the arm of secular authority hath with much
importunity and impetuosity been by them implored and required, they
proudly contending that the servants of God would become contemptible if
exemplary punishment were not speedily taken upon the persons of the
perpetrators of such an enormous, horrid, sacrilegious, crying, heinous,
and execrable crime.

Yet neither by natural equity, by the law of nations, nor by any imperial
law whatsoever, hath there been found so much as one rubric, paragraph,
point, or tittle, by the which any kind of chastisement or correction hath
been adjudged due to be inflicted upon any for their delinquency in that
kind. Reason opposeth, and nature is repugnant. For there is no virtuous
man in the world who both naturally and with good reason will not be more
hugely troubled in mind, hearing of the news of the rapt, disgrace,
ignominy, and dishonour of his daughter, than of her death. Now any man,
finding in hot blood one who with a forethought felony hath murdered his
daughter, may, without tying himself to the formalities and circumstances
of a legal proceeding, kill him on a sudden and out of hand without
incurring any hazard of being attainted and apprehended by the officers of
justice for so doing. What wonder is it then? Or how little strange
should it appear to any rational man, if a lechering rogue, together with
his mole-catching abettor, be entrapped in the flagrant act of suborning
his daughter, and stealing her out of his house, though herself consent
thereto, that the father in such a case of stain and infamy by them brought
upon his family, should put them both to a shameful death, and cast their
carcasses upon dunghills to be devoured and eaten up by dogs and swine, or
otherwise fling them a little further off to the direption, tearing, and
rending asunder of their joints and members by the wild beasts of the field
(as unworthy to receive the gentle, the desired, the last kind embraces of
the great Alma Mater, the earth, commonly called burial).

Dearly beloved son, have an especial care that after my decease none of
these laws be received in any of your kingdoms; for whilst I breathe, by
the grace and assistance of God, I shall give good order. Seeing,
therefore, you have totally referred unto my discretion the disposure of
you in marriage, I am fully of an opinion that I shall provide sufficiently
well for you in that point. Make ready and prepare yourself for Panurge's
voyage. Take along with you Epistemon, Friar John, and such others as you
will choose. Do with my treasures what unto yourself shall seem most
expedient. None of your actions, I promise you, can in my manner of way
displease me. Take out of my arsenal Thalasse whatsoever equipage,
furniture, or provision you please, together with such pilots, mariners,
and truchmen as you have a mind to, and with the first fair and favourable
wind set sail and make out to sea in the name of God our Saviour. In the
meanwhile, during your absence, I shall not be neglective of providing a
wife for you, nor of those preparations which are requisite to be made for
the more sumptuous solemnizing of your nuptials with a most splendid feast,
if ever there was any in the world, since the days of Ahasuerus.

Chapter 3.XLIX.

How Pantagruel did put himself in a readiness to go to sea; and of the herb
named Pantagruelion.

Within very few days after that Pantagruel had taken his leave of the good
Gargantua, who devoutly prayed for his son's happy voyage, he arrived at
the seaport, near to Sammalo, accompanied with Panurge, Epistemon, Friar
John of the Funnels, Abbot of Theleme, and others of the royal house,
especially with Xenomanes the great traveller and thwarter of dangerous
ways, who was come at the bidding and appointment of Panurge, of whose
castlewick of Salmigondin he did hold some petty inheritance by the tenure
of a mesne fee. Pantagruel, being come thither, prepared and made ready
for launching a fleet of ships, to the number of those which Ajax of
Salamine had of old equipped in convoy of the Grecian soldiery against the
Trojan state. He likewise picked out for his use so many mariners, pilots,
sailors, interpreters, artificers, officers, and soldiers, as he thought
fitting, and therewithal made provision of so much victuals of all sorts,
artillery, munition of divers kinds, clothes, moneys, and other such
luggage, stuff, baggage, chaffer, and furniture, as he deemed needful for
carrying on the design of a so tedious, long, and perilous voyage. Amongst
other things, it was observed how he caused some of his vessels to be
fraught and loaded with a great quantity of an herb of his called
Pantagruelion, not only of the green and raw sort of it, but of the
confected also, and of that which was notably well befitted for present use
after the fashion of conserves. The herb Pantagruelion hath a little root
somewhat hard and rough, roundish, terminating in an obtuse and very blunt
point, and having some of its veins, strings, or filaments coloured with
some spots of white, never fixeth itself into the ground above the
profoundness almost of a cubit, or foot and a half. From the root thereof
proceedeth the only stalk, orbicular, cane-like, green without, whitish
within, and hollow like the stem of smyrnium, olus atrum, beans, and
gentian, full of long threads, straight, easy to be broken, jagged,
snipped, nicked, and notched a little after the manner of pillars and
columns, slightly furrowed, chamfered, guttered, and channelled, and full
of fibres, or hairs like strings, in which consisteth the chief value and
dignity of the herb, especially in that part thereof which is termed mesa,
as he would say the mean, and in that other, which hath got the
denomination of milasea. Its height is commonly of five or six foot. Yet
sometimes it is of such a tall growth as doth surpass the length of a
lance, but that is only when it meeteth with a sweet, easy, warm, wet, and
well-soaked soil--as is the ground of the territory of Olone, and that of
Rasea, near to Preneste in Sabinia--and that it want not for rain enough
about the season of the fishers' holidays and the estival solstice. There
are many trees whose height is by it very far exceeded, and you might call
it dendromalache by the authority of Theophrastus. The plant every year
perisheth,--the tree neither in the trunk, root, bark, or boughs being
durable.

From the stalk of this Pantagruelian plant there issue forth several large
and great branches, whose leaves have thrice as much length as breadth,
always green, roughish, and rugged like the orcanet, or Spanish bugloss,
hardish, slit round about like unto a sickle, or as the saxifragum, betony,
and finally ending as it were in the points of a Macedonian spear, or of
such a lancet as surgeons commonly make use of in their phlebotomizing
tiltings. The figure and shape of the leaves thereof is not much different
from that of those of the ash-tree, or of agrimony; the herb itself being
so like the Eupatorian plant that many skilful herbalists have called it
the Domestic Eupator, and the Eupator the Wild Pantagruelion. These leaves
are in equal and parallel distances spread around the stalk by the number
in every rank either of five or seven, nature having so highly favoured and
cherished this plant that she hath richly adorned it with these two odd,
divine, and mysterious numbers. The smell thereof is somewhat strong, and
not very pleasing to nice, tender, and delicate noses. The seed enclosed
therein mounteth up to the very top of its stalk, and a little above it.

This is a numerous herb; for there is no less abundance of it than of any
other whatsoever. Some of these plants are spherical, some rhomboid, and
some of an oblong shape, and all of those either black, bright-coloured, or
tawny, rude to the touch, and mantled with a quickly-blasted-away coat, yet
such a one as is of a delicious taste and savour to all shrill and sweetly-
singing birds, such as linnets, goldfinches, larks, canary birds, yellow-
hammers, and others of that airy chirping choir; but it would quite
extinguish the natural heat and procreative virtue of the semence of any
man who would eat much and often of it. And although that of old amongst
the Greeks there was certain kinds of fritters and pancakes, buns and
tarts, made thereof, which commonly for a liquorish daintiness were
presented on the table after supper to delight the palate and make the wine
relish the better; yet is it of a difficult concoction, and offensive to
the stomach. For it engendereth bad and unwholesome blood, and with its
exorbitant heat woundeth them with grievous, hurtful, smart, and noisome
vapours. And, as in divers plants and trees there are two sexes, male and
female, which is perceptible in laurels, palms, cypresses, oaks, holms, the
daffodil, mandrake, fern, the agaric, mushroom, birthwort, turpentine,
pennyroyal, peony, rose of the mount, and many other such like, even so in
this herb there is a male which beareth no flower at all, yet it is very
copious of and abundant in seed. There is likewise in it a female, which
hath great store and plenty of whitish flowers, serviceable to little or no
purpose, nor doth it carry in it seed of any worth at all, at least
comparable to that of the male. It hath also a larger leaf, and much
softer than that of the male, nor doth it altogether grow to so great a
height. This Pantagruelion is to be sown at the first coming of the
swallows, and is to be plucked out of the ground when the grasshoppers
begin to be a little hoarse.

Chapter 3.L.

How the famous Pantagruelion ought to be prepared and wrought.

The herb Pantagruelion, in September, under the autumnal equinox, is
dressed and prepared several ways, according to the various fancies of the
people and diversity of the climates wherein it groweth. The first
instruction which Pantagruel gave concerning it was to divest and despoil
the stalk and stem thereof of all its flowers and seeds, to macerate and
mortify it in pond, pool, or lake water, which is to be made run a little
for five days together (Properly--'lake water, which is to be made
stagnant, not current, for five days together.'--M.) if the season be dry
and the water hot, or for full nine or twelve days if the weather be
cloudish and the water cold. Then must it be parched before the sun till
it be drained of its moisture. After this it is in the shadow, where the
sun shines not, to be peeled and its rind pulled off. Then are the fibres
and strings thereof to be parted, wherein, as we have already said,
consisteth its prime virtue, price, and efficacy, and severed from the
woody part thereof, which is unprofitable, and serveth hardly to any other
use than to make a clear and glistering blaze, to kindle the fire, and for
the play, pastime, and disport of little children, to blow up hogs'
bladders and make them rattle. Many times some use is made thereof by
tippling sweet-lipped bibbers, who out of it frame quills and pipes,
through which they with their liquor-attractive breath suck up the new
dainty wine from the bung of the barrel. Some modern Pantagruelists, to
shun and avoid that manual labour which such a separating and partitional
work would of necessity require, employ certain cataractic instruments,
composed and formed after the same manner that the froward, pettish, and
angry Juno did hold the fingers of both her hands interwovenly clenched
together when she would have hindered the childbirth delivery of Alcmena at
the nativity of Hercules; and athwart those cataracts they break and bruise
to very trash the woody parcels, thereby to preserve the better the fibres,
which are the precious and excellent parts. In and with this sole
operation do these acquiesce and are contented, who, contrary to the
received opinion of the whole earth, and in a manner paradoxical to all
philosophers, gain their livelihoods backwards, and by recoiling. But
those that love to hold it at a higher rate, and prize it according to its
value, for their own greater profit do the very same which is told us of
the recreation of the three fatal sister Parcae, or of the nocturnal
exercise of the noble Circe, or yet of the excuse which Penelope made to
her fond wooing youngsters and effeminate courtiers during the long absence
of her husband Ulysses.

By these means is this herb put into a way to display its inestimable
virtues, whereof I will discover a part; for to relate all is a thing
impossible to do. I have already interpreted and exposed before you the
denomination thereof. I find that plants have their names given and
bestowed upon them after several ways. Some got the name of him who first
found them out, knew them, sowed them, improved them by culture, qualified
them to tractability, and appropriated them to the uses and subserviences
they were fit for, as the Mercuriale from Mercury; Panacea from Panace, the
daughter of Aesculapius; Armois from Artemis, who is Diana; Eupatoria from
the king Eupator; Telephion from Telephus; Euphorbium from Euphorbus, King
Juba's physician; Clymenos from Clymenus; Alcibiadium from Alcibiades;
Gentiane from Gentius, King of Sclavonia, and so forth, through a great
many other herbs or plants. Truly, in ancient times this prerogative of
imposing the inventor's name upon an herb found out by him was held in a so
great account and estimation, that, as a controversy arose betwixt Neptune
and Pallas from which of them two that land should receive its denomination
which had been equally found out by them both together--though thereafter
it was called and had the appellation of Athens, from Athene, which is
Minerva--just so would Lynceus, King of Scythia, have treacherously slain
the young Triptolemus, whom Ceres had sent to show unto mankind the
invention of corn, which until then had been utterly unknown, to the end
that, after the murder of the messenger, whose death he made account to
have kept secret, he might, by imposing, with the less suspicion of false
dealing, his own name upon the said found out seed, acquire unto himself an
immortal honour and glory for having been the inventor of a grain so
profitable and necessary to and for the use of human life. For the
wickedness of which treasonable attempt he was by Ceres transformed into
that wild beast which by some is called a lynx and by others an ounce.
Such also was the ambition of others upon the like occasion, as appeareth
by that very sharp wars and of a long continuance have been made of old
betwixt some residentiary kings in Cappadocia upon this only debate, of
whose name a certain herb should have the appellation; by reason of which
difference, so troublesome and expensive to them all, it was by them called
Polemonion, and by us for the same cause termed Make-bate.

Other herbs and plants there are which retain the names of the countries
from whence they were transported, as the Median apples from Media, where
they first grew; Punic apples from Punicia, that is to say, Carthage;
Ligusticum, which we call lovage, from Liguria, the coast of Genoa; Rhubarb
from a flood in Barbary, as Ammianus attesteth, called Ru; Santonica from a
region of that name; Fenugreek from Greece; Gastanes from a country so
called; Persicaria from Persia; Sabine from a territory of that
appellation; Staechas from the Staechad Islands; Spica Celtica from the
land of the Celtic Gauls, and so throughout a great many other, which were
tedious to enumerate. Some others, again, have obtained their
denominations by way of antiphrasis, or contrariety; as Absinth, because it
is contrary to (Greek), for it is bitter to the taste in drinking;
Holosteon, as if it were all bones, whilst, on the contrary, there is no
frailer, tenderer, nor brittler herb in the whole production of nature than
it.

There are some other sorts of herbs which have got their names from their
virtues and operations, as Aristolochia, because it helpeth women in
childbirth; Lichen, for that it cureth the disease of that name; Mallow,
because it mollifieth; Callithricum, because it maketh the hair of a bright
colour; Alyssum, Ephemerum, Bechium, Nasturtium, Aneban (Henbane), and so
forth through many more.

Other some there are which have obtained their names from the admirable
qualities that are found to be in them, as Heliotropium, which is the
marigold, because it followeth the sun, so that at the sun rising it
displayeth and spreads itself out, at his ascending it mounteth, at his
declining it waneth, and when he is set it is close shut; Adianton,
because, although it grow near unto watery places, and albeit you should
let it lie in water a long time, it will nevertheless retain no moisture
nor humidity; Hierachia, Eringium, and so throughout a great many more.
There are also a great many herbs and plants which have retained the very
same names of the men and women who have been metamorphosed and transformed
in them, as from Daphne the laurel is called also Daphne; Myrrh from
Myrrha, the daughter of Cinarus; Pythis from Pythis; Cinara, which is the
artichoke, from one of that name; Narcissus, with Saffron, Smilax, and
divers others.

Many herbs likewise have got their names of those things which they seem to
have some resemblance to; as Hippuris, because it hath the likeness of a
horse's tail; Alopecuris, because it representeth in similitude the tail of
a fox; Psyllion, from a flea which it resembleth; Delphinium, for that it
is like a dolphin fish; Bugloss is so called because it is an herb like an
ox's tongue; Iris, so called because in its flowers it hath some
resemblance of the rainbow; Myosota, because it is like the ear of a mouse;
Coronopus, for that it is of the likeness of a crow's foot. A great many
other such there are, which here to recite were needless. Furthermore, as
there are herbs and plants which have had their names from those of men, so
by a reciprocal denomination have the surnames of many families taken their
origin from them, as the Fabii, a fabis, beans; the Pisons, a pisis, peas;
the Lentuli from lentils; the Cicerons; a ciceribus, vel ciceris, a sort of
pulse called chickpease, and so forth. In some plants and herbs the
resemblance or likeness hath been taken from a higher mark or object, as
when we say Venus' navel, Venus' hair, Venus' tub, Jupiter's beard,
Jupiter's eye, Mars' blood, the Hermodactyl or Mercury's fingers, which are
all of them names of herbs, as there are a great many more of the like
appellation. Others, again, have received their denomination from their
forms, such as the Trefoil, because it is three-leaved; Pentaphylon, for
having five leaves; Serpolet, because it creepeth along the ground;
Helxine, Petast, Myrobalon, which the Arabians called Been, as if you would
say an acorn, for it hath a kind of resemblance thereto, and withal is very
oily.

Chapter 3.LI.

Why it is called Pantagruelion, and of the admirable virtues thereof.

By such-like means of attaining to a denomination--the fabulous ways being
only from thence excepted, for the Lord forbid that we should make use of
any fables in this a so veritable history--is this herb called
Pantagruelion, for Pantagruel was the inventor thereof. I do not say of
the plant itself, but of a certain use which it serves for, exceeding
odious and hateful to thieves and robbers, unto whom it is more contrarious
and hurtful than the strangle-weed and chokefitch is to the flax, the cats-
tail to the brakes, the sheave-grass to the mowers of hay, the fitches to
the chickney-pease, the darnel to barley, the hatchet-fitch to the lentil
pulse, the antramium to the beans, tares to wheat, ivy to walls, the water-
lily to lecherous monks, the birchen rod to the scholars of the college of
Navarre in Paris, colewort to the vine-tree, garlic to the loadstone,
onions to the sight, fern-seed to women with child, willow-grain to vicious
nuns, the yew-tree shade to those that sleep under it, wolfsbane to wolves
and libbards, and smell of fig-tree to mad bulls, hemlock to goslings,
purslane to the teeth, or oil to trees. For we have seen many of those
rogues, by virtue and right application of this herb, finish their lives
short and long, after the manner of Phyllis, Queen of Thracia, of Bonosus,
Emperor of Rome, of Amata, King Latinus's wife, of Iphis, Autolycus,
Lycambe, Arachne, Paedra, Leda, Achius, King of Lydia, and many thousands
more, who were chiefly angry and vexed at this disaster therein, that,
without being otherwise sick or evil-disposed in their bodies, by a touch
only of the Pantagruelion they came on a sudden to have the passage
obstructed, and their pipes, through which were wont to bolt so many jolly
sayings and to enter so many luscious morsels, stopped, more cleverly than
ever could have done the squinancy.

Others have been heard most woefully to lament, at the very instant when
Atropos was about to cut the thread of their life, that Pantagruel held
them by the gorge. But, well-a-day, it was not Pantagruel; he never was an
executioner. It was the Pantagruelion, manufactured and fashioned into an
halter; and serving in the place and office of a cravat. In that, verily,
they solecized and spoke improperly, unless you would excuse them by a
trope, which alloweth us to posit the inventor in the place of the thing
invented, as when Ceres is taken for bread, and Bacchus put instead of
wine. I swear to you here, by the good and frolic words which are to issue
out of that wine-bottle which is a-cooling below in the copper vessel full
of fountain water, that the noble Pantagruel never snatched any man by the
throat, unless it was such a one as was altogether careless and neglective
of those obviating remedies which were preventive of the thirst to come.

It is also termed Pantagruelion by a similitude. For Pantagruel, at the
very first minute of his birth, was no less tall than this herb is long
whereof I speak unto you, his measure having been then taken the more easy
that he was born in the season of the great drought, when they were busiest
in the gathering of the said herb, to wit, at that time when Icarus's dog,
with his fiery bawling and barking at the sun, maketh the whole world
Troglodytic, and enforceth people everywhere to hide themselves in dens and
subterranean caves. It is likewise called Pantagruelion because of the
notable and singular qualities, virtues, and properties thereof. For as
Pantagruel hath been the idea, pattern, prototype, and exemplary of all
jovial perfection and accomplishment--in the truth whereof I believe there
is none of you gentlemen drinkers that putteth any question--so in this
Pantagruelion have I found so much efficacy and energy, so much
completeness and excellency, so much exquisiteness and rarity, and so many
admirable effects and operations of a transcendent nature, that if worth
and virtue thereof had been known when those trees, by the relation of the
prophet, made election of a wooden king to rule and govern over them, it
without all doubt would have carried away from all the rest the plurality
of votes and suffrages.

Shall I yet say more? If Oxylus, the son of Orius, had begotten this plant
upon his sister Hamadryas, he had taken more delight in the value and
perfection of it alone than in all his eight children, so highly renowned
by our ablest mythologians that they have sedulously recommended their
names to the never-failing tuition of an eternal remembrance. The eldest
child was a daughter, whose name was Vine; the next born was a boy, and his
name was Fig-tree; the third was called Walnut-tree; the fourth Oak; the
fifth Sorbapple-tree; the sixth Ash; the seventh Poplar, and the last had
the name of Elm, who was the greatest surgeon in his time. I shall forbear
to tell you how the juice or sap thereof, being poured and distilled within
the ears, killeth every kind of vermin that by any manner of putrefaction
cometh to be bred and engendered there, and destroyeth also any whatsoever
other animal that shall have entered in thereat. If, likewise, you put a
little of the said juice within a pail or bucket full of water, you shall
see the water instantly turn and grow thick therewith as if it were milk-
curds, whereof the virtue is so great that the water thus curded is a
present remedy for horses subject to the colic, and such as strike at their
own flanks. The root thereof well boiled mollifieth the joints, softeneth
the hardness of shrunk-in sinews, is every way comfortable to the nerves,
and good against all cramps and convulsions, as likewise all cold and
knotty gouts. If you would speedily heal a burning, whether occasioned by
water or fire, apply thereto a little raw Pantagruelion, that is to say,
take it so as it cometh out of the ground, without bestowing any other
preparation or composition upon it; but have a special care to change it
for some fresher in lieu thereof as soon as you shall find it waxing dry
upon the sore.

Without this herb kitchens would be detested, the tables of dining-rooms
abhorred, although there were great plenty and variety of most dainty and
sumptuous dishes of meat set down upon them, and the choicest beds also,
how richly soever adorned with gold, silver, amber, ivory, porphyry, and
the mixture of most precious metals, would without it yield no delight or
pleasure to the reposers in them. Without it millers could neither carry
wheat, nor any other kind of corn to the mill, nor would they be able to
bring back from thence flour, or any other sort of meal whatsoever.
Without it, how could the papers and writs of lawyers' clients be brought
to the bar? Solemn is the mortar, lime, or plaster brought to the
workhouse without it. Without it, how should the water be got out of a
draw-well? In what case would tabellions, notaries, copists, makers of
counterpanes, writers, clerks, secretaries, scriveners, and such-like
persons be without it? Were it not for it, what would become of the toll-
rates and rent-rolls? Would not the noble art of printing perish without
it? Whereof could the chassis or paper-windows be made? How should the
bells be rung? The altars of Isis are adorned therewith, the Pastophorian
priests are therewith clad and accoutred, and whole human nature covered
and wrapped therein at its first position and production in and into this
world. All the lanific trees of Seres, the bumbast and cotton bushes in
the territories near the Persian Sea and Gulf of Bengala, the Arabian
swans, together with the plants of Malta, do not all the them clothe,
attire, and apparel so many persons as this one herb alone. Soldiers are
nowadays much better sheltered under it than they were in former times,
when they lay in tents covered with skins. It overshadows the theatres and
amphitheatres from the heat of a scorching sun. It begirdeth and
encompasseth forests, chases, parks, copses, and groves, for the pleasure
of hunters. It descendeth into the salt and fresh of both sea and river-
waters for the profit of fishers. By it are boots of all sizes, buskins,
gamashes, brodkins, gambadoes, shoes, pumps, slippers, and every cobbled
ware wrought and made steadable for the use of man. By it the butt and
rover-bows are strung, the crossbows bended, and the slings made fixed.
And, as if it were an herb every whit as holy as the vervain, and
reverenced by ghosts, spirits, hobgoblins, fiends, and phantoms, the bodies
of deceased men are never buried without it.

I will proceed yet further. By the means of this fine herb the invisible
substances are visibly stopped, arrested, taken, detained, and prisoner-
like committed to their receptive gaols. Heavy and ponderous weights are
by it heaved, lifted up, turned, veered, drawn, carried, and every way
moved quickly, nimbly, and easily, to the great profit and emolument of
humankind. When I perpend with myself these and such-like marvellous
effects of this wonderful herb, it seemeth strange unto me how the
invention of so useful a practice did escape through so many by-past ages
the knowledge of the ancient philosophers, considering the inestimable
utility which from thence proceeded, and the immense labour which without
it they did undergo in their pristine elucubrations. By virtue thereof,
through the retention of some aerial gusts, are the huge rambarges, mighty
galleons, the large floats, the Chiliander, the Myriander ships launched
from their stations and set a-going at the pleasure and arbitrament of
their rulers, conders, and steersmen. By the help thereof those remote
nations whom nature seemed so unwilling to have discovered to us, and so
desirous to have kept them still in abscondito and hidden from us, that the
ways through which their countries were to be reached unto were not only
totally unknown, but judged also to be altogether impermeable and
inaccessible, are now arrived to us, and we to them.

Those voyages outreached flights of birds and far surpassed the scope of
feathered fowls, how swift soever they had been on the wing, and
notwithstanding that advantage which they have of us in swimming through
the air. Taproban hath seen the heaths of Lapland, and both the Javas and
Riphaean mountains; wide distant Phebol shall see Theleme, and the
Islanders drink of the flood Euphrates. By it the chill-mouthed Boreas
hath surveyed the parched mansions of the torrid Auster, and Eurus visited
the regions which Zephyrus hath under his command; yea, in such sort have
interviews been made by the assistance of this sacred herb, that, maugre
longitudes and latitudes, and all the variations of the zones, the
Periaecian people, and Antoecian, Amphiscian, Heteroscian, and Periscian
had oft rendered and received mutual visits to and from other, upon all the
climates. These strange exploits bred such astonishment to the celestial
intelligences, to all the marine and terrestrial gods, that they were on a
sudden all afraid. From which amazement, when they saw how, by means of
this blest Pantagruelion, the Arctic people looked upon the Antarctic,
scoured the Atlantic Ocean, passed the tropics, pushed through the torrid
zone, measured all the zodiac, sported under the equinoctial, having both
poles level with their horizon, they judged it high time to call a council
for their own safety and preservation.

The Olympic gods, being all and each of them affrighted at the sight of
such achievements, said: Pantagruel hath shapen work enough for us, and
put us more to a plunge and nearer our wits' end by this sole herb of his
than did of old the Aloidae by overturning mountains. He very speedily is
to be married, and shall have many children by his wife. It lies not in
our power to oppose this destiny; for it hath passed through the hands and
spindles of the Fatal Sisters, necessity's inexorable daughters. Who knows
but by his sons may be found out an herb of such another virtue and
prodigious energy, as that by the aid thereof, in using it aright according
to their father's skill, they may contrive a way for humankind to pierce
into the high aerian clouds, get up unto the springhead of the hail, take
an inspection of the snowy sources, and shut and open as they please the
sluices from whence proceed the floodgates of the rain; then, prosecuting
their aethereal voyage, they may step in unto the lightning workhouse and
shop, where all the thunderbolts are forged, where, seizing on the magazine
of heaven and storehouse of our warlike fire-munition, they may discharge a
bouncing peal or two of thundering ordnance for joy of their arrival to
these new supernal places, and, charging those tonitrual guns afresh, turn
the whole force of that artillery against ourselves wherein we most
confided. Then is it like they will set forward to invade the territories
of the Moon, whence, passing through both Mercury and Venus, the Sun will
serve them for a torch, to show the way from Mars to Jupiter and Saturn.
We shall not then be able to resist the impetuosity of their intrusion, nor
put a stoppage to their entering in at all, whatever regions, domiciles, or
mansions of the spangled firmament they shall have any mind to see, to stay
in, to travel through for their recreation. All the celestial signs
together, with the constellations of the fixed stars, will jointly be at
their devotion then. Some will take up their lodging at the Ram, some at
the Bull, and others at the Twins; some at the Crab, some at the Lion Inn,
and others at the sign of the Virgin; some at the Balance, others at the
Scorpion, and others will be quartered at the Archer; some will be
harboured at the Goat, some at the Water-pourer's sign, some at the Fishes;
some will lie at the Crown, some at the Harp, some at the Golden Eagle and
the Dolphin; some at the Flying Horse, some at the Ship, some at the great,
some at the little Bear; and so throughout the glistening hostelries of the
whole twinkling asteristic welkin. There will be sojourners come from the
earth, who, longing after the taste of the sweet cream, of their own
skimming off, from the best milk of all the dairy of the Galaxy, will set
themselves at table down with us, drink of our nectar and ambrosia, and
take to their own beds at night for wives and concubines our fairest
goddesses, the only means whereby they can be deified. A junto hereupon
being convocated, the better to consult upon the manner of obviating a so
dreadful danger, Jove, sitting in his presidential throne, asked the votes
of all the other gods, which, after a profound deliberation amongst
themselves on all contingencies, they freely gave at last, and then
resolved unanimously to withstand the shocks of all whatsoever sublunary
assaults.

Chapter 3.LII.

How a certain kind of Pantagruelion is of that nature that the fire is not
able to consume it.

I have already related to you great and admirable things; but, if you might
be induced to adventure upon the hazard of believing some other divinity of
this sacred Pantagruelion, I very willingly would tell it you. Believe it,
if you will, or otherwise, believe it not, I care not which of them you do,
they are both alike to me. It shall be sufficient for my purpose to have
told you the truth, and the truth I will tell you. But to enter in
thereat, because it is of a knaggy, difficult, and rugged access, this is
the question which I ask of you. If I had put within this bottle two
pints, the one of wine and the other of water, thoroughly and exactly
mingled together, how would you unmix them? After what manner would you go
about to sever them, and separate the one liquor from the other, in such
sort that you render me the water apart, free from the wine, and the wine
also pure, without the intermixture of one drop of water, and both of them
in the same measure, quantity, and taste that I had embottled them? Or, to
state the question otherwise. If your carmen and mariners, entrusted for
the provision of your houses with the bringing of a certain considerable
number of tuns, puncheons, pipes, barrels, and hogsheads of Graves wine, or
of the wine of Orleans, Beaune, and Mireveaux, should drink out the half,
and afterwards with water fill up the other empty halves of the vessels as
full as before, as the Limosins use to do in their carriages by wains and
carts of the wines of Argenton and Sangaultier; after that, how would you
part the water from the wine, and purify them both in such a case? I
understand you well enough. Your meaning is, that I must do it with an ivy
funnel. That is written, it is true, and the verity thereof explored by a
thousand experiments; you have learned to do this feat before, I see it.
But those that have never known it, nor at any time have seen the like,
would hardly believe that it were possible. Let us nevertheless proceed.

But put the case, we were now living in the age of Sylla, Marius, Caesar,
and other such Roman emperors, or that we were in the time of our ancient
Druids, whose custom was to burn and calcine the dead bodies of their
parents and lords, and that you had a mind to drink the ashes or cinders of
your wives or fathers in the infused liquor of some good white-wine, as
Artemisia drunk the dust and ashes of her husband Mausolus; or otherwise,
that you did determine to have them reserved in some fine urn or reliquary
pot; how would you save the ashes apart, and separate them from those other
cinders and ashes into which the fuel of the funeral and bustuary fire hath
been converted? Answer, if you can. By my figgins, I believe it will
trouble you so to do.

Well, I will despatch, and tell you that, if you take of this celestial
Pantagruelion so much as is needful to cover the body of the defunct, and
after that you shall have enwrapped and bound therein as hard and closely
as you can the corpse of the said deceased persons, and sewed up the
folding-sheet with thread of the same stuff, throw it into the fire, how
great or ardent soever it be it matters not a straw, the fire through this
Pantagruelion will burn the body and reduce to ashes the bones thereof, and
the Pantagruelion shall be not only not consumed nor burnt, but also shall
neither lose one atom of the ashes enclosed within it, nor receive one atom
of the huge bustuary heap of ashes resulting from the blazing conflagration
of things combustible laid round about it, but shall at last, when taken
out of the fire, be fairer, whiter, and much cleaner than when you did put
it in at first. Therefore it is called Asbeston, which is as much to say
as incombustible. Great plenty is to be found thereof in Carpasia, as
likewise in the climate Dia Sienes, at very easy rates. O how rare and
admirable a thing it is, that the fire which devoureth, consumeth, and
destroyeth all such things else, should cleanse, purge, and whiten this
sole Pantagruelion Carpasian Asbeston! If you mistrust the verity of this
relation, and demand for further confirmation of my assertion a visible
sign, as the Jews and such incredulous infidels use to do, take a fresh
egg, and orbicularly, or rather ovally, enfold it within this divine
Pantagruelion. When it is so wrapped up, put it in the hot embers of a
fire, how great or ardent soever it be, and having left it there as long as
you will, you shall at last, at your taking it out of the fire, find the
egg roasted hard, and as it were burnt, without any alteration, change,
mutation, or so much as a calefaction of the sacred Pantagruelion. For
less than a million of pounds sterling, modified, taken down, and
amoderated to the twelfth part of one fourpence halfpenny farthing, you are
able to put it to a trial and make proof thereof.

Do not think to overmatch me here, by paragoning with it in the way of a
more eminent comparison the Salamander. That is a fib; for, albeit a
little ordinary fire, such as is used in dining-rooms and chambers,
gladden, cheer up, exhilarate, and quicken it, yet may I warrantably enough
assure that in the flaming fire of a furnace it will, like any other
animated creature, be quickly suffocated, choked, consumed, and destroyed.
We have seen the experiment thereof, and Galen many ages ago hath clearly
demonstrated and confirmed it, Lib. 3, De temperamentis, and Dioscorides
maintaineth the same doctrine, Lib. 2. Do not here instance in competition
with this sacred herb the feather alum or the wooden tower of Pyraeus,
which Lucius Sylla was never able to get burnt; for that Archelaus,
governor of the town for Mithridates, King of Pontus, had plastered it all
over on the outside with the said alum. Nor would I have you to compare
therewith the herb which Alexander Cornelius called Eonem, and said that it
had some resemblance with that oak which bears the mistletoe, and that it
could neither be consumed nor receive any manner of prejudice by fire nor
by water, no more than the mistletoe, of which was built, said he, the so
renowned ship Argos. Search where you please for those that will believe
it. I in that point desire to be excused. Neither would I wish you to
parallel therewith--although I cannot deny but that it is of a very
marvellous nature--that sort of tree which groweth alongst the mountains of
Brianson and Ambrun, which produceth out of his root the good agaric. From
its body it yieldeth unto us a so excellent rosin, that Galen hath been
bold to equal it to the turpentine. Upon the delicate leaves thereof it
retaineth for our use that sweet heavenly honey which is called the manna,
and, although it be of a gummy, oily, fat, and greasy substance, it is,
notwithstanding, unconsumable by any fire. It is in Greek and Latin called
Larix. The Alpinese name is Melze. The Antenorides and Venetians term it
Larege; which gave occasion to that castle in Piedmont to receive the
denomination of Larignum, by putting Julius Caesar to a stand at his return
from amongst the Gauls.

Julius Caesar commanded all the yeomen, boors, hinds, and other inhabitants
in, near unto, and about the Alps and Piedmont, to bring all manner of
victuals and provision for an army to those places which on the military
road he had appointed to receive them for the use of his marching soldiery.
To which ordinance all of them were obedient, save only those as were
within the garrison of Larignum, who, trusting in the natural strength of
the place, would not pay their contribution. The emperor, purposing to
chastise them for their refusal, caused his whole army to march straight
towards that castle, before the gate whereof was erected a tower built of
huge big spars and rafters of the larch-tree, fast bound together with pins
and pegs of the same wood, and interchangeably laid on one another, after
the fashion of a pile or stack of timber, set up in the fabric thereof to
such an apt and convenient height that from the parapet above the
portcullis they thought with stones and levers to beat off and drive away
such as should approach thereto.

When Caesar had understood that the chief defence of those within the
castle did consist in stones and clubs, and that it was not an easy matter
to sling, hurl, dart, throw, or cast them so far as to hinder the
approaches, he forthwith commanded his men to throw great store of bavins,
faggots, and fascines round about the castle, and when they had made the
heap of a competent height, to put them all in a fair fire; which was
thereupon incontinently done. The fire put amidst the faggots was so great
and so high that it covered the whole castle, that they might well imagine
the tower would thereby be altogether burnt to dust, and demolished.
Nevertheless, contrary to all their hopes and expectations, when the flame
ceased, and that the faggots were quite burnt and consumed, the tower
appeared as whole, sound, and entire as ever. Caesar, after a serious
consideration had thereof, commanded a compass to be taken without the
distance of a stone cast from the castle round about it there, with ditches
and entrenchments to form a blockade; which when the Larignans understood,
they rendered themselves upon terms. And then by a relation from them it
was that Caesar learned the admirable nature and virtue of this wood, which
of itself produceth neither fire, flame, nor coal, and would, therefore, in
regard of that rare quality of incombustibility, have been admitted into
this rank and degree of a true Pantagruelional plant; and that so much the
rather, for that Pantagruel directed that all the gates, doors, angiports,
windows, gutters, fretticed and embowed ceilings, cans, (cants?) and other
whatsoever wooden furniture in the abbey of Theleme, should be all
materiated of this kind of timber. He likewise caused to cover therewith
the sterns, stems, cook-rooms or laps, hatches, decks, courses, bends, and
walls of his carricks, ships, galleons, galleys, brigantines, foists,
frigates, crears, barques, floats, pinks, pinnaces, hoys, ketches, capers,
and other vessels of his Thalassian arsenal; were it not that the wood or
timber of the larch-tree, being put within a large and ample furnace full
of huge vehemently flaming fire proceeding from the fuel of other sorts and
kinds of wood, cometh at last to be corrupted, consumed, dissipated, and
destroyed, as are stones in a lime-kiln. But this Pantagruelion Asbeston
is rather by the fire renewed and cleansed than by the flames thereof
consumed or changed. Therefore,

  Arabians, Indians, Sabaeans,
  Sing not, in hymns and Io Paeans,
  Your incense, myrrh, or ebony.
  Come here, a nobler plant to see,
  And carry home, at any rate,
  Some seed, that you may propagate.
  If in your soil it takes, to heaven
  A thousand thousand thanks be given;
  And say with France, it goodly goes,
  Where the Pantagruelion grows.

END Of BOOK III

BOOK IV.

THE FOURTH BOOK

The Translator's Preface.

Reader,--I don't know what kind of a preface I must write to find thee
courteous, an epithet too often bestowed without a cause. The author of
this work has been as sparing of what we call good nature, as most readers
are nowadays. So I am afraid his translator and commentator is not to
expect much more than has been showed them. What's worse, there are but
two sorts of taking prefaces, as there are but two kinds of prologues to
plays; for Mr. Bays was doubtless in the right when he said that if thunder
and lightning could not fright an audience into complaisance, the sight of
the poet with a rope about his neck might work them into pity. Some,
indeed, have bullied many of you into applause, and railed at your faults
that you might think them without any; and others, more safely, have spoken
kindly of you, that you might think, or at least speak, as favourably of
them, and be flattered into patience. Now, I fancy, there's nothing less
difficult to attempt than the first method; for, in this blessed age, 'tis
as easy to find a bully without courage, as a whore without beauty, or a
writer without wit; though those qualifications are so necessary in their
respective professions. The mischief is, that you seldom allow any to rail
besides yourselves, and cannot bear a pride which shocks your own. As for
wheedling you into a liking of a work, I must confess it seems the safest
way; but though flattery pleases you well when it is particular, you hate
it, as little concerning you, when it is general. Then we knights of the
quill are a stiff-necked generation, who as seldom care to seem to doubt
the worth of our writings, and their being liked, as we love to flatter
more than one at a time; and had rather draw our pens, and stand up for the
beauty of our works (as some arrant fools use to do for that of their
mistresses) to the last drop of our ink. And truly this submission, which
sometimes wheedles you into pity, as seldom decoys you into love, as the
awkward cringing of an antiquated fop, as moneyless as he is ugly, affects
an experienced fair one. Now we as little value your pity as a lover his
mistress's, well satisfied that it is only a less uncivil way of dismissing
us. But what if neither of these two ways will work upon you, of which
doleful truth some of our playwrights stand so many living monuments? Why,
then, truly I think on no other way at present but blending the two into
one; and, from this marriage of huffing and cringing, there will result a
new kind of careless medley, which, perhaps, will work upon both sorts of
readers, those who are to be hectored, and those whom we must creep to. At
least, it is like to please by its novelty; and it will not be the first
monster that has pleased you when regular nature could not do it.

If uncommon worth, lively wit, and deep learning, wove into wholesome
satire, a bold, good, and vast design admirably pursued, truth set out in
its true light, and a method how to arrive to its oracle, can recommend a
work, I am sure this has enough to please any reasonable man. The three
books published some time since, which are in a manner an entire work, were
kindly received; yet, in the French, they come far short of these two,
which are also entire pieces; for the satire is all general here, much more
obvious, and consequently more entertaining. Even my long explanatory
preface was not thought improper. Though I was so far from being allowed
time to make it methodical, that at first only a few pages were intended;
yet as fast as they were printed I wrote on, till it proved at last like
one of those towns built little at first, then enlarged, where you see
promiscuously an odd variety of all sorts of irregular buildings. I hope
the remarks I give now will not please less; for, as I have translated the
work which they explain, I had more time to make them, though as little to
write them. It would be needless to give here a large account of my
performance; for, after all, you readers care no more for this or that
apology, or pretence of Mr. Translator, if the version does not please you,
than we do for a blundering cook's excuse after he has spoiled a good dish
in the dressing. Nor can the first pretend to much praise, besides that of
giving his author's sense in its full extent, and copying his style, if it
is to be copied; since he has no share in the invention or disposition of
what he translates. Yet there was no small difficulty in doing Rabelais
justice in that double respect; the obsolete words and turns of phrase, and
dark subjects, often as darkly treated, make the sense hard to be
understood even by a Frenchman, and it cannot be easy to give it the free
easy air of an original; for even what seems most common talk in one
language, is what is often the most difficult to be made so in another; and
Horace's thoughts of comedy may be well applied to this:

  Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere
  Sudoris minimum; sed habet commoedia tantum
  Plus oneris, quanto veniae minus.

Far be it from me, for all this, to value myself upon hitting the words of
cant in which my drolling author is so luxuriant; for though such words
have stood me in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself unhappy
in having insensibly hoarded up so much gibberish and Billingsgate trash in
my memory; nor could I forbear asking of myself, as an Italian cardinal
said on another account, D'onde hai tu pigliato tante coglionerie? Where
the devil didst thou rake up all these fripperies?

It was not less difficult to come up to the author's sublime expressions.
Nor would I have attempted such a task, but that I was ambitious of giving
a view of the most valuable work of the greatest genius of his age, to the
Mecaenas and best genius of this. For I am not overfond of so ungrateful a
task as translating, and would rejoice to see less versions and more
originals; so the latter were not as bad as many of the first are, through
want of encouragement. Some indeed have deservedly gained esteem by
translating; yet not many condescend to translate, but such as cannot
invent; though to do the first well requires often as much genius as to do
the latter.

I wish, reader, thou mayest be as willing to do my author justice, as I
have strove to do him right. Yet, if thou art a brother of the quill, it
is ten to one thou art too much in love with thy own dear productions to
admire those of one of thy trade. However, I know three or four who have
not such a mighty opinion of themselves; but I'll not name them, lest I
should be obliged to place myself among them. If thou art one of those
who, though they never write, criticise everyone that does; avaunt!--Thou
art a professed enemy of mankind and of thyself, who wilt never be pleased
nor let anybody be so, and knowest no better way to fame than by striving
to lessen that of others; though wouldst thou write thou mightst be soon
known, even by the butterwomen, and fly through the world in bandboxes. If
thou art of the dissembling tribe, it is thy office to rail at those books
which thou huggest in a corner. If thou art one of those eavesdroppers,
who would have their moroseness be counted gravity, thou wilt condemn a
mirth which thou art past relishing; and I know no other way to quit the
score than by writing (as like enough I may) something as dull, or duller
than thyself, if possible. If thou art one of those critics in dressing,
those extempores of fortune, who, having lost a relation and got an estate,
in an instant set up for wit and every extravagance, thou'lt either praise
or discommend this book, according to the dictates of some less foolish
than thyself, perhaps of one of those who, being lodged at the sign of the
box and dice, will know better things than to recommend to thee a work
which bids thee beware of his tricks. This book might teach thee to leave
thy follies; but some will say it does not signify much to some fools
whether they are so or not; for when was there a fool that thought himself
one? If thou art one of those who would put themselves upon us for learned
men in Greek and Hebrew, yet are mere blockheads in English, and patch
together old pieces of the ancients to get themselves clothes out of them,
thou art too severely mauled in this work to like it. Who then will? some
will cry. Nay, besides these, many societies that make a great figure in
the world are reflected on in this book; which caused Rabelais to study to
be dark, and even bedaub it with many loose expressions, that he might not
be thought to have any other design than to droll; in a manner bewraying
his book that his enemies might not bite it. Truly, though now the riddle
is expounded, I would advise those who read it not to reflect on the
author, lest he be thought to have been beforehand with them, and they be
ranked among those who have nothing to show for their honesty but their
money, nothing for their religion but their dissembling, or a fat benefice,
nothing for their wit but their dressing, for their nobility but their
title, for their gentility but their sword, for their courage but their
huffing, for their preferment but their assurance, for their learning but
their degrees, or for their gravity but their wrinkles or dulness. They
had better laugh at one another here, as it is the custom of the world.
Laughing is of all professions; the miser may hoard, the spendthrift
squander, the politician plot, the lawyer wrangle, and the gamester cheat;
still their main design is to be able to laugh at one another; and here
they may do it at a cheap and easy rate. After all, should this work fail
to please the greater number of readers, I am sure it cannot miss being
liked by those who are for witty mirth and a chirping bottle; though not by
those solid sots who seem to have drudged all their youth long only that
they might enjoy the sweet blessing of getting drunk every night in their
old age. But those men of sense and honour who love truth and the good of
mankind in general above all other things will undoubtedly countenance this
work. I will not gravely insist upon its usefulness, having said enough of
it in the preface (Motteux' Preface to vol. I of Rabelais, ed. 1694.) to
the first part. I will only add, that as Homer in his Odyssey makes his
hero wander ten years through most parts of the then known world, so
Rabelais, in a three months' voyage, makes Pantagruel take a view of almost
all sorts of people and professions; with this difference, however, between
the ancient mythologist and the modern, that while the Odyssey has been
compared to a setting sun in respect to the Iliads, Rabelais' last work,
which is this Voyage to the Oracle of the Bottle (by which he means truth)
is justly thought his masterpiece, being wrote with more spirit, salt, and
flame, than the first part of his works. At near seventy years of age, his
genius, far from being drained, seemed to have acquired fresh vigour and
new graces the more it exerted itself; like those rivers which grow more
deep, large, majestic, and useful by their course. Those who accuse the
French of being as sparing of their wit as lavish of their words will find
an Englishman in our author. I must confess indeed that my countrymen and
other southern nations temper the one with the other in a manner as they do
their wine with water, often just dashing the latter with a little of the
first. Now here men love to drink their wine pure; nay, sometimes it will
not satisfy unless in its very quintessence, as in brandies; though an
excess of this betrays want of sobriety, as much as an excess of wit
betrays a want of judgment. But I must conclude, lest I be justly taxed
with wanting both. I will only add, that as every language has its
peculiar graces, seldom or never to be acquired by a foreigner, I cannot
think I have given my author those of the English in every place; but as
none compelled me to write, I fear to ask a pardon which yet the generous
temper of this nation makes me hope to obtain. Albinus, a Roman, who had
written in Greek, desired in his preface to be forgiven his faults of
language; but Cato asked him in derision whether any had forced him to
write in a tongue of which he was not an absolute master. Lucullus wrote a
history in the same tongue, and said he had scattered some false Greek in
it to let the world know it was the work of a Roman. I will not say as
much of my writings, in which I study to be as little incorrect as the
hurry of business and shortness of time will permit; but I may better say,
as Tully did of the history of his consulship, which he also had written in
Greek, that what errors may be found in the diction are crept in against my
intent. Indeed, Livius Andronicus and Terence, the one a Greek, the other
a Carthaginian, wrote successfully in Latin, and the latter is perhaps the
most perfect model of the purity and urbanity of that tongue; but I ought
not to hope for the success of those great men. Yet am I ambitious of
being as subservient to the useful diversion of the ingenious of this
nation as I can, which I have endeavoured in this work, with hopes to
attempt some greater tasks if ever I am happy enough to have more leisure.
In the meantime it will not displease me, if it is known that this is given
by one who, though born and educated in France, has the love and veneration
of a loyal subject for this nation, one who, by a fatality, which with many
more made him say,

  Nos patriam fugimus et dulcia linquimus arva,

is obliged to make the language of these happy regions as natural to him as
he can, and thankfully say with the rest, under this Protestant government,

  Deus nobis haec otia fecit.

The Author's Epistle Dedicatory.

To the most Illustrious Prince and most Reverend Lord Odet, Cardinal de
Chastillon.

You know, most illustrious prince, how often I have been, and am daily
pressed and required by great numbers of eminent persons, to proceed in the
Pantagruelian fables; they tell me that many languishing, sick, and
disconsolate persons, perusing them, have deceived their grief, passed
their time merrily, and been inspired with new joy and comfort. I commonly
answer that I aimed not at glory and applause when I diverted myself with
writing, but only designed to give by my pen, to the absent who labour
under affliction, that little help which at all times I willingly strive to
give to the present that stand in need of my art and service. Sometimes I
at large relate to them how Hippocrates in several places, and particularly
in lib. 6. Epidem., describing the institution of the physician his
disciple, and also Soranus of Ephesus, Oribasius, Galen, Hali Abbas, and
other authors, have descended to particulars, in the prescription of his
motions, deportment, looks, countenance, gracefulness, civility,
cleanliness of face, clothes, beard, hair, hands, mouth, even his very
nails; as if he were to play the part of a lover in some comedy, or enter
the lists to fight some enemy. And indeed the practice of physic is
properly enough compared by Hippocrates to a fight, and also to a farce
acted between three persons, the patient, the physician, and the disease.
Which passage has sometimes put me in mind of Julia's saying to Augustus
her father. One day she came before him in a very gorgeous, loose,
lascivious dress, which very much displeased him, though he did not much
discover his discontent. The next day she put on another, and in a modest
garb, such as the chaste Roman ladies wore, came into his presence. The
kind father could not then forbear expressing the pleasure which he took to
see her so much altered, and said to her: Oh! how much more this garb
becomes and is commendable in the daughter of Augustus. But she, having
her excuse ready, answered: This day, sir, I dressed myself to please my
father's eye; yesterday, to gratify that of my husband. Thus disguised in
looks and garb, nay even, as formerly was the fashion, with a rich and
pleasant gown with four sleeves, which was called philonium according to
Petrus Alexandrinus in 6. Epidem., a physician might answer to such as
might find the metamorphosis indecent: Thus have I accoutred myself, not
that I am proud of appearing in such a dress, but for the sake of my
patient, whom alone I wholly design to please, and no wise offend or
dissatisfy. There is also a passage in our father Hippocrates, in the book
I have named, which causes some to sweat, dispute, and labour; not indeed
to know whether the physician's frowning, discontented, and morose Catonian
look render the patient sad, and his joyful, serene, and pleasing
countenance rejoice him; for experience teaches us that this is most
certain; but whether such sensations of grief or pleasure are produced by
the apprehension of the patient observing his motions and qualities in his
physician, and drawing from thence conjectures of the end and catastrophe
of his disease; as, by his pleasing look, joyful and desirable events, and
by his sorrowful and unpleasing air, sad and dismal consequences; or
whether those sensations be produced by a transfusion of the serene or
gloomy, aerial or terrestrial, joyful or melancholic spirits of the
physician into the person of the patient, as is the opinion of Plato,
Averroes, and others.

Above all things, the forecited authors have given particular directions to
physicians about the words, discourse, and converse which they ought to
have with their patients; everyone aiming at one point, that is, to rejoice
them without offending God, and in no wise whatsoever to vex or displease
them. Which causes Herophilus much to blame the physician Callianax, who,
being asked by a patient of his, Shall I die? impudently made him this
answer:

  Patroclus died, whom all allow
  By much a better man than you.

Another, who had a mind to know the state of his distemper, asking him,
after our merry Patelin's way: Well, doctor, does not my water tell you I
shall die? He foolishly answered, No; if Latona, the mother of those
lovely twins, Phoebus and Diana, begot thee. Galen, lib. 4, Comment. 6.
Epidem., blames much also Quintus his tutor, who, a certain nobleman of
Rome, his patient, saying to him, You have been at breakfast, my master,
your breath smells of wine; answered arrogantly, Yours smells of fever;
which is the better smell of the two, wine or a putrid fever? But the
calumny of certain cannibals, misanthropes, perpetual eavesdroppers, has
been so foul and excessive against me, that it had conquered my patience,
and I had resolved not to write one jot more. For the least of their
detractions were that my books are all stuffed with various heresies, of
which, nevertheless, they could not show one single instance; much, indeed,
of comical and facetious fooleries, neither offending God nor the king (and
truly I own they are the only subject and only theme of these books), but
of heresy not a word, unless they interpreted wrong, and against all use of
reason and common language, what I had rather suffer a thousand deaths, if
it were possible, than have thought; as who should make bread to be stone,
a fish to be a serpent, and an egg to be a scorpion. This, my lord,
emboldened me once to tell you, as I was complaining of it in your
presence, that if I did not esteem myself a better Christian than they show
themselves towards me, and if my life, writings, words, nay thoughts,
betrayed to me one single spark of heresy, or I should in a detestable
manner fall into the snares of the spirit of detraction, (Greek), who, by
their means, raises such crimes against me; I would then, like the phoenix,
gather dry wood, kindle a fire, and burn myself in the midst of it. You
were then pleased to say to me that King Francis, of eternal memory, had
been made sensible of those false accusations; and that having caused my
books (mine, I say, because several, false and infamous, have been wickedly
laid to me) to be carefully and distinctly read to him by the most learned
and faithful anagnost in this kingdom, he had not found any passage
suspicious; and that he abhorred a certain envious, ignorant, hypocritical
informer, who grounded a mortal heresy on an n put instead of an m by the
carelessness of the printers.

As much was done by his son, our most gracious, virtuous, and blessed
sovereign, Henry, whom Heaven long preserve! so that he granted you his
royal privilege and particular protection for me against my slandering
adversaries.

You kindly condescended since to confirm me these happy news at Paris; and
also lately, when you visited my Lord Cardinal du Bellay, who, for the
benefit of his health, after a lingering distemper, was retired to St.
Maur, that place (or rather paradise) of salubrity, serenity, conveniency,
and all desirable country pleasures.

Thus, my lord, under so glorious a patronage, I am emboldened once more to
draw my pen, undaunted now and secure; with hopes that you will still prove
to me, against the power of detraction, a second Gallic Hercules in
learning, prudence, and eloquence; an Alexicacos in virtue, power, and
authority; you, of whom I may truly say what the wise monarch Solomon saith
of Moses, that great prophet and captain of Israel, Ecclesiast. 45: A man
fearing and loving God, who found favour in the sight of all flesh, well-
beloved both of God and man; whose memorial is blessed. God made him like
to the glorious saints, and magnified him so, that his enemies stood in
fear of him; and for him made wonders; made him glorious in the sight of
kings, gave him a commandment for his people, and by him showed his light;
he sanctified him in his faithfulness and meekness, and chose him out of
all men. By him he made us to hear his voice, and caused by him the law of
life and knowledge to be given.

Accordingly, if I shall be so happy as to hear anyone commend those merry
composures, they shall be adjured by me to be obliged and pay their thanks
to you alone, as also to offer their prayers to Heaven for the continuance
and increase of your greatness; and to attribute no more to me than my
humble and ready obedience to your commands; for by your most honourable
encouragement you at once have inspired me with spirit and with invention;
and without you my heart had failed me, and the fountain-head of my animal
spirits had been dry. May the Lord keep you in his blessed mercy!

               My Lord,

  Your most humble, and most devoted Servant,

                   Francis Rabelais, Physician.

  Paris, this 28th of January, MDLII.

The Author's Prologue.

Good people, God save and keep you! Where are you? I can't see you:
stay--I'll saddle my nose with spectacles--oh, oh! 'twill be fair anon: I
see you. Well, you have had a good vintage, they say: this is no bad news
to Frank, you may swear. You have got an infallible cure against thirst:
rarely performed of you, my friends! You, your wives, children, friends,
and families are in as good case as hearts can wish; it is well, it is as I
would have it: God be praised for it, and if such be his will, may you
long be so. For my part, I am thereabouts, thanks to his blessed goodness;
and by the means of a little Pantagruelism (which you know is a certain
jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune), you see me now hale and
cheery, as sound as a bell, and ready to drink, if you will. Would you
know why I'm thus, good people? I will even give you a positive answer--
Such is the Lord's will, which I obey and revere; it being said in his
word, in great derision to the physician neglectful of his own health,
Physician, heal thyself.

Galen had some knowledge of the Bible, and had conversed with Christians of
his time, as appears lib. II. De Usu Partium; lib. 2. De Differentiis
Pulsuum, cap. 3, and ibid. lib. 3. cap. 2. and lib. De Rerum Affectibus (if
it be Galen's). Yet 'twas not for any such veneration of holy writ that he
took care of his own health. No, it was for fear of being twitted with the
saying so well known among physicians:

  (Greek).

  He boasts of healing poor and rich,
  Yet is himself all over itch.

This made him boldly say, that he did not desire to be esteemed a
physician, if from his twenty-eighth year to his old age he had not lived
in perfect health, except some ephemerous fevers, of which he soon rid
himself; yet he was not naturally of the soundest temper, his stomach being
evidently bad. Indeed, as he saith, lib. 5, De Sanitate tuenda, that
physician will hardly be thought very careful of the health of others who
neglects his own. Asclepiades boasted yet more than this; for he said that
he had articled with fortune not to be reputed a physician if he could be
said to have been sick since he began to practise physic to his latter age,
which he reached, lusty in all his members and victorious over fortune;
till at last the old gentleman unluckily tumbled down from the top of a
certain ill-propped and rotten staircase, and so there was an end of him.

If by some disaster health is fled from your worships to the right or to
the left, above or below, before or behind, within or without, far or near,
on this side or the other side, wheresoever it be, may you presently, with
the help of the Lord, meet with it. Having found it, may you immediately
claim it, seize it, and secure it. The law allows it; the king would have
it so; nay, you have my advice for it. Neither more nor less than the law-
makers of old did fully empower a master to claim and seize his runaway
servant wherever he might be found. Odds-bodikins, is it not written and
warranted by the ancient customs of this noble, so rich, so flourishing
realm of France, that the dead seizes the quick? See what has been
declared very lately in that point by that learned, wise, courteous, humane
and just civilian, Andrew Tiraqueau, one of the judges in the most
honourable court of Parliament at Paris. Health is our life, as Ariphron
the Sicyonian wisely has it; without health life is not life, it is not
living life: (Greek). Without health life is only a languishment and an
image of death. Therefore, you that want your health, that is to say, that
are dead, seize the quick; secure life to yourselves, that is to say,
health.

I have this hope in the Lord, that he will hear our supplications,
considering with what faith and zeal we pray, and that he will grant this
our wish because it is moderate and mean. Mediocrity was held by the
ancient sages to be golden, that is to say, precious, praised by all men,
and pleasing in all places. Read the sacred Bible, you will find the
prayers of those who asked moderately were never unanswered. For example,
little dapper Zaccheus, whose body and relics the monks of St. Garlick,
near Orleans, boast of having, and nickname him St. Sylvanus; he only
wished to see our blessed Saviour near Jerusalem. It was but a small
request, and no more than anybody then might pretend to. But alas! he was
but low-built; and one of so diminutive a size, among the crowd, could not
so much as get a glimpse of him. Well then he struts, stands on tiptoes,
bustles, and bestirs his stumps, shoves and makes way, and with much ado
clambers up a sycamore. Upon this, the Lord, who knew his sincere
affection, presented himself to his sight, and was not only seen by him,
but heard also; nay, what is more, he came to his house and blessed his
family.

One of the sons of the prophets in Israel felling would near the river
Jordan, his hatchet forsook the helve and fell to the bottom of the river;
so he prayed to have it again ('twas but a small request, mark ye me), and
having a strong faith, he did not throw the hatchet after the helve, as
some spirits of contradiction say by way of scandalous blunder, but the
helve after the hatchet, as you all properly have it. Presently two great
miracles were seen: up springs the hatchet from the bottom of the water,
and fixes itself to its old acquaintance the helve. Now had he wished to
coach it to heaven in a fiery chariot like Elias, to multiply in seed like
Abraham, be as rich as Job, strong as Samson, and beautiful as Absalom,
would he have obtained it, d'ye think? I' troth, my friends, I question it
very much.

Now I talk of moderate wishes in point of hatchet (but harkee me, be sure
you don't forget when we ought to drink), I will tell you what is written
among the apologues of wise Aesop the Frenchman. I mean the Phrygian and
Trojan, as Max. Planudes makes him; from which people, according to the
most faithful chroniclers, the noble French are descended. Aelian writes
that he was of Thrace and Agathias, after Herodotus, that he was of Samos;
'tis all one to Frank.

In his time lived a poor honest country fellow of Gravot, Tom Wellhung by
name, a wood-cleaver by trade, who in that low drudgery made shift so to
pick up a sorry livelihood. It happened that he lost his hatchet. Now
tell me who ever had more cause to be vexed than poor Tom? Alas, his whole
estate and life depended on his hatchet; by his hatchet he earned many a
fair penny of the best woodmongers or log-merchants among whom he went a-
jobbing; for want of his hatchet he was like to starve; and had death but
met with him six days after without a hatchet, the grim fiend would have
mowed him down in the twinkling of a bedstaff. In this sad case he began
to be in a heavy taking, and called upon Jupiter with the most eloquent
prayers--for you know necessity was the mother of eloquence. With the
whites of his eyes turned up towards heaven, down on his marrow-bones, his
arms reared high, his fingers stretched wide, and his head bare, the poor
wretch without ceasing was roaring out, by way of litany, at every
repetition of his supplications, My hatchet, Lord Jupiter, my hatchet! my
hatchet! only my hatchet, O Jupiter, or money to buy another, and nothing
else! alas, my poor hatchet!

Jupiter happened then to be holding a grand council about certain urgent
affairs, and old gammer Cybele was just giving her opinion, or, if you
would rather have it so, it was young Phoebus the beau; but, in short,
Tom's outcries and lamentations were so loud that they were heard with no
small amazement at the council-board, by the whole consistory of the gods.
What a devil have we below, quoth Jupiter, that howls so horridly? By the
mud of Styx, have not we had all along, and have not we here still enough
to do, to set to rights a world of damned puzzling businesses of
consequence? We made an end of the fray between Presthan, King of Persia,
and Soliman the Turkish emperor, we have stopped up the passages between
the Tartars and the Muscovites; answered the Xeriff's petition; done the
same to that of Golgots Rays; the state of Parma's despatched; so is that
of Maidenburg, that of Mirandola, and that of Africa, that town on the
Mediterranean which we call Aphrodisium; Tripoli by carelessness has got a
new master; her hour was come.

Here are the Gascons cursing and damning, demanding the restitution of
their bells.

In yonder corner are the Saxons, Easterlings, Ostrogoths, and Germans,
nations formerly invincible, but now aberkeids, bridled, curbed, and
brought under a paltry diminutive crippled fellow; they ask us revenge,
relief, restitution of their former good sense and ancient liberty.

But what shall we do with this same Ramus and this Galland, with a pox to
them, who, surrounded with a swarm of their scullions, blackguard
ragamuffins, sizars, vouchers, and stipulators, set together by the ears
the whole university of Paris? I am in a sad quandary about it, and for
the heart's blood of me cannot tell yet with whom of the two to side.

Both seem to me notable fellows, and as true cods as ever pissed. The one
has rose-nobles, I say fine and weighty ones; the other would gladly have
some too. The one knows something; the other's no dunce. The one loves
the better sort of men; the other's beloved by 'em. The one is an old
cunning fox; the other with tongue and pen, tooth and nail, falls foul on
the ancient orators and philosophers, and barks at them like a cur.

What thinkest thou of it, say, thou bawdy Priapus? I have found thy
counsel just before now, et habet tua mentula mentem.

King Jupiter, answered Priapus, standing up and taking off his cowl, his
snout uncased and reared up, fiery and stiffly propped, since you compare
the one to a yelping snarling cur and the other to sly Reynard the fox, my
advice is, with submission, that without fretting or puzzling your brains
any further about 'em, without any more ado, even serve 'em both as, in the
days of yore, you did the dog and the fox. How? asked Jupiter; when? who
were they? where was it? You have a rare memory, for aught I see! returned
Priapus. This right worshipful father Bacchus, whom we have here nodding
with his crimson phiz, to be revenged on the Thebans had got a fairy fox,
who, whatever mischief he did, was never to be caught or wronged by any
beast that wore a head.

The noble Vulcan here present had framed a dog of Monesian brass, and with
long puffing and blowing put the spirit of life into him; he gave it to
you, you gave it your Miss Europa, Miss Europa gave it Minos, Minos gave it
Procris, Procris gave it Cephalus. He was also of the fairy kind; so that,
like the lawyers of our age, he was too hard for all other sorts of
creatures; nothing could scape the dog. Now who should happen to meet but
these two? What do you think they did? Dog by his destiny was to take
fox, and fox by his fate was not to be taken.

The case was brought before your council: you protested that you would not
act against the fates; and the fates were contradictory. In short, the end
and result of the matter was, that to reconcile two contradictions was an
impossibility in nature. The very pang put you into a sweat; some drops of
which happening to light on the earth, produced what the mortals call
cauliflowers. All our noble consistory, for want of a categorical
resolution, were seized with such a horrid thirst, that above seventy-eight
hogsheads of nectar were swilled down at that sitting. At last you took my
advice, and transmogrified them into stones; and immediately got rid of
your perplexity, and a truce with thirst was proclaimed through this vast
Olympus. This was the year of flabby cods, near Teumessus, between Thebes
and Chalcis.

After this manner, it is my opinion that you should petrify this dog and
this fox. The metamorphosis will not be incongruous; for they both bear
the name of Peter. And because, according to the Limosin proverb, to make
an oven's mouth there must be three stones, you may associate them with
Master Peter du Coignet, whom you formerly petrified for the same cause.
Then those three dead pieces shall be put in an equilateral trigone
somewhere in the great temple at Paris--in the middle of the porch, if you
will--there to perform the office of extinguishers, and with their noses
put out the lighted candles, torches, tapers, and flambeaux; since, while
they lived, they still lighted, ballock-like, the fire of faction,
division, ballock sects, and wrangling among those idle bearded boys, the
students. And this will be an everlasting monument to show that those puny
self-conceited pedants, ballock-framers, were rather contemned than
condemned by you. Dixi, I have said my say.

You deal too kindly by them, said Jupiter, for aught I see, Monsieur
Priapus. You do not use to be so kind to everybody, let me tell you; for
as they seek to eternize their names, it would be much better for them to
be thus changed into hard stones than to return to earth and putrefaction.
But now to other matters. Yonder behind us, towards the Tuscan sea and the
neighbourhood of Mount Apennine, do you see what tragedies are stirred up
by certain topping ecclesiastical bullies? This hot fit will last its
time, like the Limosins' ovens, and then will be cooled, but not so fast.

We shall have sport enough with it; but I foresee one inconveniency; for
methinks we have but little store of thunder ammunition since the time that
you, my fellow gods, for your pastime lavished them away to bombard new
Antioch, by my particular permission; as since, after your example, the
stout champions who had undertaken to hold the fortress of Dindenarois
against all comers fairly wasted their powder with shooting at sparrows,
and then, not having wherewith to defend themselves in time of need,
valiantly surrendered to the enemy, who were already packing up their awls,
full of madness and despair, and thought on nothing but a shameful retreat.
Take care this be remedied, son Vulcan; rouse up your drowsy Cyclopes,
Asteropes, Brontes, Arges, Polyphemus, Steropes, Pyracmon, and so forth,
set them at work, and make them drink as they ought.

Never spare liquor to such as are at hot work. Now let us despatch this
bawling fellow below. You, Mercury, go see who it is, and know what he
wants. Mercury looked out at heaven's trapdoor, through which, as I am
told, they hear what is said here below. By the way, one might well enough
mistake it for the scuttle of a ship; though Icaromenippus said it was like
the mouth of a well. The light-heeled deity saw that it was honest Tom,
who asked for his lost hatchet; and accordingly he made his report to the
synod. Marry, said Jupiter, we are finely helped up, as if we had now
nothing else to do here but to restore lost hatchets. Well, he must have
it then for all this, for so 'tis written in the Book of Fate (do you
hear?), as well as if it was worth the whole duchy of Milan. The truth is,
the fellow's hatchet is as much to him as a kingdom to a king. Come, come,
let no more words be scattered about it; let him have his hatchet again.

Now, let us make an end of the difference betwixt the Levites and mole-
catchers of Landerousse. Whereabouts were we? Priapus was standing in the
chimney-corner, and having heard what Mercury had reported, said in a most
courteous and jovial manner: King Jupiter, while by your order and
particular favour I was garden-keeper-general on earth, I observed that
this word hatchet is equivocal to many things; for it signifies a certain
instrument by the means of which men fell and cleave timber. It also
signifies (at least I am sure it did formerly) a female soundly and
frequently thumpthumpriggletickletwiddletobyed. Thus I perceived that
every cock of the game used to call his doxy his hatchet; for with that
same tool (this he said lugging out and exhibiting his nine-inch knocker)
they so strongly and resolutely shove and drive in their helves, that the
females remain free from a fear epidemical amongst their sex, viz., that
from the bottom of the male's belly the instrument should dangle at his
heel for want of such feminine props. And I remember, for I have a member,
and a memory too, ay, and a fine memory, large enough to fill a butter-
firkin; I remember, I say, that one day of tubilustre (horn-fair) at the
festivals of goodman Vulcan in May, I heard Josquin Des Prez, Olkegan,
Hobrecht, Agricola, Brumel, Camelin, Vigoris, De la Fage, Bruyer, Prioris,
Seguin, De la Rue, Midy, Moulu, Mouton, Gascogne, Loyset, Compere, Penet,
Fevin, Rousee, Richard Fort, Rousseau, Consilion, Constantio Festi, Jacquet
Bercan, melodiously singing the following catch on a pleasant green:

  Long John to bed went to his bride,
  And laid a mallet by his side:
  What means this mallet, John? saith she.
  Why! 'tis to wedge thee home, quoth he.
  Alas! cried she, the man's a fool:
  What need you use a wooden tool?
  When lusty John does to me come,
  He never shoves but with his bum.

Nine Olympiads, and an intercalary year after (I have a rare member, I
would say memory; but I often make blunders in the symbolization and
colligance of those two words), I heard Adrian Villart, Gombert, Janequin,
Arcadet, Claudin, Certon, Manchicourt, Auxerre, Villiers, Sandrin, Sohier,
Hesdin, Morales, Passereau, Maille, Maillart, Jacotin, Heurteur, Verdelot,
Carpentras, L'Heritier, Cadeac, Doublet, Vermont, Bouteiller, Lupi,
Pagnier, Millet, Du Moulin, Alaire, Maraut, Morpain, Gendre, and other
merry lovers of music, in a private garden, under some fine shady trees,
round about a bulwark of flagons, gammons, pasties, with several coated
quails, and laced mutton, waggishly singing:

  Since tools without their hafts are useless lumber,
  And hatchets without helves are of that number;
  That one may go in t'other, and may match it,
  I'll be the helve, and thou shalt be the hatchet.

Now would I know what kind of hatchet this bawling Tom wants? This threw
all the venerable gods and goddesses into a fit of laughter, like any
microcosm of flies; and even set limping Vulcan a-hopping and jumping
smoothly three or four times for the sake of his dear. Come, come, said
Jupiter to Mercury, run down immediately, and cast at the poor fellow's
feet three hatchets: his own, another of gold, and a third of massy
silver, all of one size; then having left it to his will to take his
choice, if he take his own, and be satisfied with it, give him the other
two; if he take another, chop his head off with his own; and henceforth
serve me all those losers of hatchets after that manner. Having said this,
Jupiter, with an awkward turn of his head, like a jackanapes swallowing of
pills, made so dreadful a phiz that all the vast Olympus quaked again.
Heaven's foot messenger, thanks to his low-crowned narrow-brimmed hat, his
plume of feathers, heel-pieces, and running stick with pigeon wings, flings
himself out at heaven's wicket, through the idle deserts of the air, and in
a trice nimbly alights upon the earth, and throws at friend Tom's feet the
three hatchets, saying unto him: Thou hast bawled long enough to be a-dry;
thy prayers and request are granted by Jupiter: see which of these three
is thy hatchet, and take it away with thee. Wellhung lifts up the golden
hatchet, peeps upon it, and finds it very heavy; then staring on Mercury,
cries, Codszouks, this is none of mine; I won't ha't: the same he did with
the silver one, and said, 'Tis not this neither, you may e'en take them
again. At last he takes up his own hatchet, examines the end of the helve,
and finds his mark there; then, ravished with joy, like a fox that meets
some straggling poultry, and sneering from the tip of the nose, he cried,
By the mass, this is my hatchet, master god; if you will leave it me, I
will sacrifice to you a very good and huge pot of milk brimful, covered
with fine strawberries, next ides of May.

Honest fellow, said Mercury, I leave it thee; take it; and because thou
hast wished and chosen moderately in point of hatchet, by Jupiter's command
I give thee these two others; thou hast now wherewith to make thyself rich:
be honest. Honest Tom gave Mercury a whole cartload of thanks, and revered
the most great Jupiter. His old hatchet he fastens close to his leathern
girdle, and girds it above his breech like Martin of Cambray; the two
others, being more heavy, he lays on his shoulder. Thus he plods on,
trudging over the fields, keeping a good countenance amongst his neighbours
and fellow-parishioners, with one merry saying or other after Patelin's
way. The next day, having put on a clean white jacket, he takes on his
back the two precious hatchets and comes to Chinon, the famous city, noble
city, ancient city, yea, the first city in the world, according to the
judgment and assertion of the most learned Massorets. At Chinon he turned
his silver hatchet into fine testons, crown-pieces, and other white cash;
his golden hatchet into fine angels, curious ducats, substantial ridders,
spankers, and rose-nobles; then with them purchases a good number of farms,
barns, houses, out-houses, thatched houses, stables, meadows, orchards,
fields, vineyards, woods, arable lands, pastures, ponds, mills, gardens,
nurseries, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, swine, hogs, asses, horses, hens,
cocks, capons, chickens, geese, ganders, ducks, drakes, and a world of all
other necessaries, and in a short time became the richest man in the
country, nay, even richer than that limping scrape-good Maulevrier. His
brother bumpkins, and the other yeomen and country-puts thereabouts,
perceiving his good fortune, were not a little amazed, insomuch that their
former pity of poor Tom was soon changed into an envy of his so great and
unexpected rise; and as they could not for their souls devise how this came
about, they made it their business to pry up and down, and lay their heads
together, to inquire, seek, and inform themselves by what means, in what
place, on what day, what hour, how, why, and wherefore, he had come by this
great treasure.

At last, hearing it was by losing his hatchet, Ha, ha! said they, was there
no more to do but to lose a hatchet to make us rich? Mum for that; 'tis as
easy as pissing a bed, and will cost but little. Are then at this time the
revolutions of the heavens, the constellations of the firmament, and
aspects of the planets such, that whosoever shall lose a hatchet shall
immediately grow rich? Ha, ha, ha! by Jove, you shall e'en be lost, an't
please you, my dear hatchet. With this they all fairly lost their hatchets
out of hand. The devil of one that had a hatchet left; he was not his
mother's son that did not lose his hatchet. No more was wood felled or
cleaved in that country through want of hatchets. Nay, the Aesopian
apologue even saith that certain petty country gents of the lower class,
who had sold Wellhung their little mill and little field to have
wherewithal to make a figure at the next muster, having been told that his
treasure was come to him by that only means, sold the only badge of their
gentility, their swords, to purchase hatchets to go lose them, as the silly
clodpates did, in hopes to gain store of chink by that loss.

You would have truly sworn they had been a parcel of your petty spiritual
usurers, Rome-bound, selling their all, and borrowing of others, to buy
store of mandates, a pennyworth of a new-made pope.

Now they cried out and brayed, and prayed and bawled, and lamented, and
invoked Jupiter: My hatchet! my hatchet! Jupiter, my hatchet! on this
side, My hatchet! on that side, My hatchet! Ho, ho, ho, ho, Jupiter, my
hatchet! The air round about rung again with the cries and howlings of
these rascally losers of hatchers.

Mercury was nimble in bringing them hatchets; to each offering that which
he had lost, as also another of gold, and a third of silver.

Every he still was for that of gold, giving thanks in abundance to the
great giver, Jupiter; but in the very nick of time that they bowed and
stooped to take it from the ground, whip, in a trice, Mercury lopped off
their heads, as Jupiter had commanded; and of heads thus cut off the number
was just equal to that of the lost hatchets.

You see how it is now; you see how it goes with those who in the simplicity
of their hearts wish and desire with moderation. Take warning by this, all
you greedy, fresh-water sharks, who scorn to wish for anything under ten
thousand pounds; and do not for the future run on impudently, as I have
sometimes heard you wishing, Would to God I had now one hundred seventy-
eight millions of gold! Oh! how I should tickle it off. The deuce on you,
what more might a king, an emperor, or a pope wish for? For that reason,
indeed, you see that after you have made such hopeful wishes, all the good
that comes to you of it is the itch or the scab, and not a cross in your
breeches to scare the devil that tempts you to make these wishes: no more
than those two mumpers, wishers after the custom of Paris; one of whom only
wished to have in good old gold as much as hath been spent, bought, and
sold in Paris, since its first foundations were laid, to this hour; all of
it valued at the price, sale, and rate of the dearest year in all that
space of time. Do you think the fellow was bashful? Had he eaten sour
plums unpeeled? Were his teeth on edge, I pray you? The other wished Our
Lady's Church brimful of steel needles, from the floor to the top of the
roof, and to have as many ducats as might be crammed into as many bags as
might be sewed with each and everyone of those needles, till they were all
either broke at the point or eye. This is to wish with a vengeance! What
think you of it? What did they get by't, in your opinion? Why at night
both my gentlemen had kibed heels, a tetter in the chin, a churchyard cough
in the lungs, a catarrh in the throat, a swingeing boil at the rump, and
the devil of one musty crust of a brown george the poor dogs had to scour
their grinders with. Wish therefore for mediocrity, and it shall be given
unto you, and over and above yet; that is to say, provided you bestir
yourself manfully, and do your best in the meantime.

Ay, but say you, God might as soon have given me seventy-eight thousand as
the thirteenth part of one half; for he is omnipotent, and a million of
gold is no more to him than one farthing. Oh, ho! pray tell me who taught
you to talk at this rate of the power and predestination of God, poor silly
people? Peace, tush, st, st, st! fall down before his sacred face and own
the nothingness of your nothing.

Upon this, O ye that labour under the affliction of the gout, I ground my
hopes; firmly believing, that if so it pleases the divine goodness, you
shall obtain health; since you wish and ask for nothing else, at least for
the present. Well, stay yet a little longer with half an ounce of
patience.

The Genoese do not use, like you, to be satisfied with wishing health
alone, when after they have all the livelong morning been in a brown study,
talked, pondered, ruminated, and resolved in the counting-houses of whom
and how they may squeeze the ready, and who by their craft must be hooked
in, wheedled,  bubbled, sharped, overreached, and choused; they go to the
exchange, and greet one another with a Sanita e guadagno, Messer! health
and gain to you, sir! Health alone will not go down with the greedy
curmudgeons; they over and above must wish for gain, with a pox to 'em; ay,
and for the fine crowns, or scudi di Guadaigne; whence, heaven be praised!
it happens many a time that the silly wishers and woulders are baulked, and
get neither.

Now, my lads, as you hope for good health, cough once aloud with lungs of
leather; take me off three swingeing bumpers; prick up your ears; and you
shall hear me tell wonders of the noble and good Pantagruel.

THE FOURTH BOOK.

Chapter 4.I.

How Pantagruel went to sea to visit the oracle of Bacbuc, alias the Holy
Bottle.

In the month of June, on Vesta's holiday, the very numerical day on which
Brutus, conquering Spain, taught its strutting dons to truckle under him,
and that niggardly miser Crassus was routed and knocked on the head by the
Parthians, Pantagruel took his leave of the good Gargantua, his royal
father. The old gentleman, according to the laudable custom of the
primitive Christians, devoutly prayed for the happy voyage of his son and
his whole company, and then they took shipping at the port of Thalassa.
Pantagruel had with him Panurge, Friar John des Entomeures, alias of the
Funnels, Epistemon, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, Carpalin, cum multis
aliis, his ancient servants and domestics; also Xenomanes, the great
traveller, who had crossed so many dangerous roads, dikes, ponds, seas, and
so forth, and was come some time before, having been sent for by Panurge.

For certain good causes and considerations him thereunto moving, he had
left with Gargantua, and marked out, in his great and universal
hydrographical chart, the course which they were to steer to visit the
Oracle of the Holy Bottle Bacbuc. The number of ships were such as I
described in the third book, convoyed by a like number of triremes, men of
war, galleons, and feluccas, well-rigged, caulked, and stored with a good
quantity of Pantagruelion.

All the officers, droggermen, pilots, captains, mates, boatswains,
midshipmen, quartermasters, and sailors, met in the Thalamege, Pantagruel's
principal flag-ship, which had in her stern for her ensign a huge large
bottle, half silver well polished, the other half gold enamelled with
carnation; whereby it was easy to guess that white and red were the colours
of the noble travellers, and that they went for the word of the Bottle.

On the stern of the second was a lantern like those of the ancients,
industriously made with diaphanous stone, implying that they were to pass
by Lanternland. The third ship had for her device a fine deep china ewer.
The fourth, a double-handed jar of gold, much like an ancient urn. The
fifth, a famous can made of sperm of emerald. The sixth, a monk's mumping
bottle made of the four metals together. The seventh, an ebony funnel, all
embossed and wrought with gold after the Tauchic manner. The eighth, an
ivy goblet, very precious, inlaid with gold. The ninth, a cup of fine
Obriz gold. The tenth, a tumbler of aromatic agoloch (you call it lignum
aloes) edged with Cyprian gold, after the Azemine make. The eleventh, a
golden vine-tub of mosaic work. The twelfth, a runlet of unpolished gold,
covered with a small vine of large Indian pearl of Topiarian work.
Insomuch that there was not a man, however in the dumps, musty, sour-
looked, or melancholic he were, not even excepting that blubbering whiner
Heraclitus, had he been there, but seeing this noble convoy of ships and
their devices, must have been seized with present gladness of heart, and,
smiling at the conceit, have said that the travellers were all honest
topers, true pitcher-men, and have judged by a most sure prognostication
that their voyage, both outward and homeward-bound, would be performed in
mirth and perfect health.

In the Thalamege, where was the general meeting, Pantagruel made a short
but sweet exhortation, wholly backed with authorities from Scripture upon
navigation; which being ended, with an audible voice prayers were said in
the presence and hearing of all the burghers of Thalassa, who had flocked
to the mole to see them take shipping. After the prayers was melodiously
sung a psalm of the holy King David, which begins, When Israel went out of
Egypt; and that being ended, tables were placed upon deck, and a feast
speedily served up. The Thalassians, who had also borne a chorus in the
psalm, caused store of belly-timber to be brought out of their houses. All
drank to them; they drank to all; which was the cause that none of the
whole company gave up what they had eaten, nor were sea-sick, with a pain
at the head and stomach; which inconveniency they could not so easily have
prevented by drinking, for some time before, salt water, either alone or
mixed with wine; using quinces, citron peel, juice of pomegranates, sourish
sweetmeats, fasting a long time, covering their stomachs with paper, or
following such other idle remedies as foolish physicians prescribe to those
that go to sea.

Having often renewed their tipplings, each mother's son retired on board
his own ship, and set sail all so fast with a merry gale at south-east; to
which point of the compass the chief pilot, James Brayer by name, had
shaped his course, and fixed all things accordingly. For seeing that the
Oracle of the Holy Bottle lay near Cathay, in the Upper India, his advice,
and that of Xenomanes also, was not to steer the course which the
Portuguese use, while sailing through the torrid zone, and Cape Bona
Speranza, at the south point of Africa, beyond the equinoctial line, and
losing sight of the northern pole, their guide, they make a prodigious long
voyage; but rather to keep as near the parallel of the said India as
possible, and to tack to the westward of the said pole, so that winding
under the north, they might find themselves in the latitude of the port of
Olone, without coming nearer it for fear of being shut up in the frozen
sea; whereas, following this canonical turn, by the said parallel, they
must have that on the right to the eastward, which at their departure was
on their left.

This proved a much shorter cut; for without shipwreck, danger, or loss of
men, with uninterrupted good weather, except one day near the island of the
Macreons, they performed in less than four months the voyage of Upper
India, which the Portuguese, with a thousand inconveniences and innumerable
dangers, can hardly complete in three years. And it is my opinion, with
submission to better judgments, that this course was perhaps steered by
those Indians who sailed to Germany, and were honourably received by the
King of the Swedes, while Quintus Metellus Celer was proconsul of the
Gauls; as Cornelius Nepos, Pomponius Mela, and Pliny after them tell us.

Chapter 4.II.

How Pantagruel bought many rarities in the island of Medamothy.

That day and the two following they neither discovered land nor anything
new; for they had formerly sailed that way: but on the fourth they made an
island called Medamothy, of a fine and delightful prospect, by reason of
the vast number of lighthouses and high marble towers in its circuit, which
is not less than that of Canada (sic). Pantagruel, inquiring who governed
there, heard that it was King Philophanes, absent at that time upon account
of the marriage of his brother Philotheamon with the infanta of the kingdom
of Engys.

Hearing this, he went ashore in the harbour, and while every ship's crew
watered, passed his time in viewing divers pictures, pieces of tapestry,
animals, fishes, birds, and other exotic and foreign merchandises, which
were along the walks of the mole and in the markets of the port. For it
was the third day of the great and famous fair of the place, to which the
chief merchants of Africa and Asia resorted. Out of these Friar John
bought him two rare pictures; in one of which the face of a man that brings
in an appeal was drawn to the life; and in the other a servant that wants a
master, with every needful particular, action, countenance, look, gait,
feature, and deportment, being an original by Master Charles Charmois,
principal painter to King Megistus; and he paid for them in the court
fashion, with conge and grimace. Panurge bought a large picture, copied
and done from the needle-work formerly wrought by Philomela, showing to her
sister Progne how her brother-in-law Tereus had by force handselled her
copyhold, and then cut out her tongue that she might not (as women will)
tell tales. I vow and swear by the handle of my paper lantern that it was
a gallant, a mirific, nay, a most admirable piece. Nor do you think, I
pray you, that in it was the picture of a man playing the beast with two
backs with a female; this had been too silly and gross: no, no; it was
another-guise thing, and much plainer. You may, if you please, see it at
Theleme, on the left hand as you go into the high gallery. Epistemon
bought another, wherein were painted to the life the ideas of Plato and the
atoms of Epicurus. Rhizotome purchased another, wherein Echo was drawn to
the life. Pantagruel caused to be bought, by Gymnast, the life and deeds
of Achilles, in seventy-eight pieces of tapestry, four fathom long, and
three fathom broad, all of Phrygian silk, embossed with gold and silver;
the work beginning at the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, continuing to the
birth of Achilles; his youth, described by Statius Papinius; his warlike
achievements, celebrated by Homer; his death and obsequies, written by Ovid
and Quintus Calaber; and ending at the appearance of his ghost, and
Polyxena's sacrifice, rehearsed by Euripides.

He also caused to be bought three fine young unicorns; one of them a male
of a chestnut colour, and two grey dappled females; also a tarand, whom he
bought of a Scythian of the Gelones' country.

A tarand is an animal as big as a bullock, having a head like a stag, or a
little bigger, two stately horns with large branches, cloven feet, hair
long like that of a furred Muscovite, I mean a bear, and a skin almost as
hard as steel armour. The Scythian said that there are but few tarands to
be found in Scythia, because it varieth its colour according to the
diversity of the places where it grazes and abides, and represents the
colour of the grass, plants, trees, shrubs, flowers, meadows, rocks, and
generally of all things near which it comes. It hath this common with the
sea-pulp, or polypus, with the thoes, with the wolves of India, and with
the chameleon, which is a kind of a lizard so wonderful that Democritus
hath written a whole book of its figure and anatomy, as also of its virtue
and propriety in magic. This I can affirm, that I have seen it change its
colour, not only at the approach of things that have a colour, but by its
own voluntary impulse, according to its fear or other affections; as, for
example, upon a green carpet I have certainly seen it become green; but
having remained there some time, it turned yellow, blue, tanned, and purple
in course, in the same manner as you see a turkey-cock's comb change colour
according to its passions. But what we find most surprising in this tarand
is, that not only its face and skin, but also its hair could take whatever
colour was about it. Near Panurge, with his kersey coat, its hair used to
turn grey; near Pantagruel, with his scarlet mantle, its hair and skin grew
red; near the pilot, dressed after the fashion of the Isiacs of Anubis in
Egypt, its hair seemed all white, which two last colours the chameleons
cannot borrow.

When the creature was free from any fear or affection, the colour of its
hair was just such as you see that of the asses of Meung.

Chapter 4.III.

How Pantagruel received a letter from his father Gargantua, and of the
strange way to have speedy news from far distant places.

While Pantagruel was taken up with the purchase of those foreign animals,
the noise of ten guns and culverins, together with a loud and joyful cheer
of all the fleet, was heard from the mole. Pantagruel looked towards the
haven, and perceived that this was occasioned by the arrival of one of his
father Gargantua's celoces, or advice-boats, named the Chelidonia; because
on the stern of it was carved in Corinthian brass a sea-swallow, which is a
fish as large as a dare-fish of Loire, all flesh, without scale, with
cartilaginous wings (like a bat's) very long and broad, by the means of
which I have seen them fly about three fathom above water, about a bow-
shot. At Marseilles 'tis called lendole. And indeed that ship was as
light as a swallow, so that it rather seemed to fly on the sea than to
sail. Malicorne, Gargantua's esquire carver, was come in her, being sent
expressly by his master to have an account of his son's health and
circumstances, and to bring him credentials. When Malicorne had saluted
Pantagruel, before the prince opened the letters, the first thing he said
to him was, Have you here the Gozal, the heavenly messenger? Yes, sir,
said he; here it is swaddled up in this basket. It was a grey pigeon,
taken out of Gargantua's dove-house, whose young ones were just hatched
when the advice-boat was going off.

If any ill fortune had befallen Pantagruel, he would have fastened some
black ribbon to his feet; but because all things had succeeded happily
hitherto, having caused it to be undressed, he tied to its feet a white
ribbon, and without any further delay let it loose. The pigeon presently
flew away, cutting the air with an incredible speed, as you know that there
is no flight like a pigeon's, especially when it hath eggs or young ones,
through the extreme care which nature hath fixed in it to relieve and be
with its young; insomuch that in less than two hours it compassed in the
air the long tract which the advice-boat, with all her diligence, with oars
and sails, and a fair wind, could not go through in less than three days
and three nights; and was seen as it went into the dove-house in its nest.
Whereupon Gargantua, hearing that it had the white ribbon on, was joyful
and secure of his son's welfare. This was the custom of the noble
Gargantua and Pantagruel when they would have speedy news of something of
great concern; as the event of some battle, either by sea or land; the
surrendering or holding out of some strong place; the determination of some
difference of moment; the safe or unhappy delivery of some queen or great
lady; the death or recovery of their sick friends or allies, and so forth.
They used to take the gozal, and had it carried from one to another by the
post, to the places whence they desired to have news. The gozal, bearing
either a black or white ribbon, according to the occurrences and accidents,
used to remove their doubts at its return, making in the space of one hour
more way through the air than thirty postboys could have done in one
natural day. May not this be said to redeem and gain time with a
vengeance, think you? For the like service, therefore, you may believe as
a most true thing that in the dove-houses of their farms there were to be
found all the year long store of pigeons hatching eggs or rearing their
young. Which may be easily done in aviaries and voleries by the help of
saltpetre and the sacred herb vervain.

The gozal being let fly, Pantagruel perused his father Gargantua's letter,
the contents of which were as followeth:

My dearest Son,--The affection that naturally a father bears a beloved son
is so much increased in me by reflecting on the particular gifts which by
the divine goodness have been heaped on thee, that since thy departure it
hath often banished all other thoughts out of my mind, leaving my heart
wholly possessed with fear lest some misfortune has attended thy voyage;
for thou knowest that fear was ever the attendant of true and sincere love.
Now because, as Hesiod saith, A good beginning of anything is the half of
it; or, Well begun's half done, according to the old saying; to free my
mind from this anxiety I have expressly despatched Malicorne, that he may
give me a true account of thy health at the beginning of thy voyage. For
if it be good, and such as I wish it, I shall easily foresee the rest.

I have met with some diverting books, which the bearer will deliver thee;
thou mayest read them when thou wantest to unbend and ease thy mind from
thy better studies. He will also give thee at large the news at court.
The peace of the Lord be with thee. Remember me to Panurge, Friar John,
Epistemon, Xenomanes, Gymnast, and thy other principal domestics. Dated at
our paternal seat, this 13th day of June.

            Thy father and friend, Gargantua.

Chapter 4.IV.

How Pantagruel writ to his father Gargantua, and sent him several
curiosities.

Pantagruel, having perused the letter, had a long conference with the
esquire Malicorne; insomuch that Panurge, at last interrupting them, asked
him, Pray, sir, when do you design to drink? When shall we drink? When
shall the worshipful esquire drink? What a devil! have you not talked long
enough to drink? It is a good motion, answered Pantagruel: go, get us
something ready at the next inn; I think 'tis the Centaur. In the meantime
he writ to Gargantua as followeth, to be sent by the aforesaid esquire:

Most gracious Father,--As our senses and animal faculties are more
discomposed at the news of events unexpected, though desired (even to an
immediate dissolution of the soul from the body), than if those accidents
had been foreseen, so the coming of Malicorne hath much surprised and
disordered me. For I had no hopes to see any of your servants, or to hear
from you, before I had finished our voyage; and contented myself with the
dear remembrance of your august majesty, deeply impressed in the hindmost
ventricle of my brain, often representing you to my mind.

But since you have made me happy beyond expectation by the perusal of your
gracious letter, and the faith I have in your esquire hath revived my
spirits by the news of your welfare, I am as it were compelled to do what
formerly I did freely, that is, first to praise the blessed Redeemer, who
by his divine goodness preserves you in this long enjoyment of perfect
health; then to return you eternal thanks for the fervent affection which
you have for me your most humble son and unprofitable servant.

Formerly a Roman, named Furnius, said to Augustus, who had received his
father into favour, and pardoned him after he had sided with Antony, that
by that action the emperor had reduced him to this extremity, that for want
of power to be grateful, both while he lived and after it, he should be
obliged to be taxed with ingratitude. So I may say, that the excess of
your fatherly affection drives me into such a strait, that I shall be
forced to live and die ungrateful; unless that crime be redressed by the
sentence of the Stoics, who say that there are three parts in a benefit,
the one of the giver, the other of the receiver, the third of the
remunerator; and that the receiver rewards the giver when he freely
receives the benefit and always remembers it; as, on the contrary, that man
is most ungrateful who despises and forgets a benefit. Therefore, being
overwhelmed with infinite favours, all proceeding from your extreme
goodness, and on the other side wholly incapable of making the smallest
return, I hope at least to free myself from the imputation of ingratitude,
since they can never be blotted out of my mind; and my tongue shall never
cease to own that to thank you as I ought transcends my capacity.

As for us, I have this assurance in the Lord's mercy and help, that the end
of our voyage will be answerable to its beginning, and so it will be
entirely performed in health and mirth. I will not fail to set down in a
journal a full account of our navigation, that at our return you may have
an exact relation of the whole.

I have found here a Scythian tarand, an animal strange and wonderful for
the variations of colour on its skin and hair, according to the distinction
of neighbouring things; it is as tractable and easily kept as a lamb. Be
pleased to accept of it.

I also send you three young unicorns, which are the tamest of creatures.

I have conferred with the esquire, and taught him how they must be fed.
These cannot graze on the ground by reason of the long horn on their
forehead, but are forced to browse on fruit trees, or on proper racks, or
to be fed by hand, with herbs, sheaves, apples, pears, barley, rye, and
other fruits and roots, being placed before them.

I am amazed that ancient writers should report them to be so wild, furious,
and dangerous, and never seen alive; far from it, you will find that they
are the mildest things in the world, provided they are not maliciously
offended. Likewise I send you the life and deeds of Achilles in curious
tapestry; assuring you whatever rarities of animals, plants, birds, or
precious stones, and others, I shall be able to find and purchase in our
travels, shall be brought to you, God willing, whom I beseech, by his
blessed grace, to preserve you.

From Medamothy, this 15th of June. Panurge, Friar John, Epistemon,
Zenomanes, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, and Carpalin, having most humbly
kissed your hand, return your salute a thousand times.

       Your most dutiful son and servant, Pantagruel.

While Pantagruel was writing this letter, Malicorne was made welcome by all
with a thousand goodly good-morrows and how-d'ye's; they clung about him so
that I cannot tell you how much they made of him, how many humble services,
how many from my love and to my love were sent with him. Pantagruel,
having writ his letters, sat down at table with him, and afterwards
presented him with a large chain of gold, weighing eight hundred crowns,
between whose septenary links some large diamonds, rubies, emeralds,
turquoise stones, and unions were alternately set in. To each of his
bark's crew he ordered to be given five hundred crowns. To Gargantua, his
father, he sent the tarand covered with a cloth of satin, brocaded with
gold, and the tapestry containing the life and deeds of Achilles, with the
three unicorns in friezed cloth of gold trappings; and so they left
Medamothy--Malicorne to return to Gargantua, Pantagruel to proceed in his
voyage, during which Epistemon read to him the books which the esquire had
brought, and because he found them jovial and pleasant, I shall give you an
account of them, if you earnestly desire it.

Chapter 4.V.

How Pantagruel met a ship with passengers returning from Lanternland.

On the fifth day we began already to wind by little and little about the
pole; going still farther from the equinoctial line, we discovered a
merchant-man to the windward of us. The joy for this was not small on both
sides; we in hopes to hear news from sea, and those in the merchant-man
from land. So we bore upon 'em, and coming up with them we hailed them;
and finding them to be Frenchmen of Xaintonge, backed our sails and lay by
to talk to them. Pantagruel heard that they came from Lanternland; which
added to his joy, and that of the whole fleet. We inquired about the state
of that country, and the way of living of the Lanterns; and were told that
about the latter end of the following July was the time prefixed for the
meeting of the general chapter of the Lanterns; and that if we arrived
there at that time, as we might easily, we should see a handsome,
honourable, and jolly company of Lanterns; and that great preparations were
making, as if they intended to lanternize there to the purpose. We were
told also that if we touched at the great kingdom of Gebarim, we should be
honourably received and treated by the sovereign of that country, King
Ohabe, who, as well as all his subjects, speaks Touraine French.

While we were listening to these news, Panurge fell out with one Dingdong,
a drover or sheep-merchant of Taillebourg. The occasion of the fray was
thus:

This same Dingdong, seeing Panurge without a codpiece, with his spectacles
fastened to his cap, said to one of his comrades, Prithee, look, is there
not a fine medal of a cuckold? Panurge, by reason of his spectacles, as
you may well think, heard more plainly by half with his ears than usually;
which caused him (hearing this) to say to the saucy dealer in mutton, in a
kind of a pet:

How the devil should I be one of the hornified fraternity, since I am not
yet a brother of the marriage-noose, as thou art; as I guess by thy ill-
favoured phiz?

Yea, verily, quoth the grazier, I am married, and would not be otherwise
for all the pairs of spectacles in Europe; nay, not for all the magnifying
gimcracks in Africa; for I have got me the cleverest, prettiest,
handsomest, properest, neatest, tightest, honestest, and soberest piece of
woman's flesh for my wife that is in all the whole country of Xaintonge;
I'll say that for her, and a fart for all the rest. I bring her home a
fine eleven-inch-long branch of red coral for her Christmas-box. What hast
thou to do with it? what's that to thee? who art thou? whence comest thou,
O dark lantern of Antichrist? Answer, if thou art of God. I ask thee, by
the way of question, said Panurge to him very seriously, if with the
consent and countenance of all the elements, I had gingumbobbed, codpieced,
and thumpthumpriggledtickledtwiddled thy so clever, so pretty, so handsome,
so proper, so neat, so tight, so honest, and so sober female importance,
insomuch that the stiff deity that has no forecast, Priapus (who dwells
here at liberty, all subjection of fastened codpieces, or bolts, bars, and
locks, abdicated), remained sticking in her natural Christmas-box in such a
lamentable manner that it were never to come out, but eternally should
stick there unless thou didst pull it out with thy teeth; what wouldst thou
do? Wouldst thou everlastingly leave it there, or wouldst thou pluck it
out with thy grinders? Answer me, O thou ram of Mahomet, since thou art
one of the devil's gang. I would, replied the sheepmonger, take thee such
a woundy cut on this spectacle-bearing lug of thine with my trusty bilbo as
would smite thee dead as a herring. Thus, having taken pepper in the nose,
he was lugging out his sword, but, alas!--cursed cows have short horns,--it
stuck in the scabbard; as you know that at sea cold iron will easily take
rust by reason of the excessive and nitrous moisture. Panurge, so smitten
with terror that his heart sunk down to his midriff, scoured off to
Pantagruel for help; but Friar John laid hand on his flashing scimitar that
was new ground, and would certainly have despatched Dingdong to rights, had
not the skipper and some of his passengers beseeched Pantagruel not to
suffer such an outrage to be committed on board his ship. So the matter
was made up, and Panurge and his antagonist shaked fists, and drank in
course to one another in token of a perfect reconciliation.

Chapter 4.VI.

How, the fray being over, Panurge cheapened one of Dingdong's sheep.

This quarrel being hushed, Panurge tipped the wink upon Epistemon and Friar
John, and taking them aside, Stand at some distance out of the way, said
he, and take your share of the following scene of mirth. You shall have
rare sport anon, if my cake be not dough, and my plot do but take. Then
addressing himself to the drover, he took off to him a bumper of good
lantern wine. The other pledged him briskly and courteously. This done,
Panurge earnestly entreated him to sell him one of his sheep.

But the other answered him, Is it come to that, friend and neighbour?
Would you put tricks upon travellers? Alas, how finely you love to play
upon poor folk! Nay, you seem a rare chapman, that's the truth on't. Oh,
what a mighty sheep-merchant you are! In good faith, you look liker one of
the diving trade than a buyer of sheep. Adzookers, what a blessing it
would be to have one's purse well lined with chink near your worship at a
tripe-house when it begins to thaw! Humph, humph, did not we know you
well, you might serve one a slippery trick! Pray do but see, good people,
what a mighty conjuror the fellow would be reckoned. Patience, said
Panurge; but waiving that, be so kind as to sell me one of your sheep.
Come, how much? What do you mean, master of mine? answered the other.
They are long-wool sheep; from these did Jason take his golden fleece. The
gold of the house of Burgundy was drawn from them. Zwoons, man, they are
oriental sheep, topping sheep, fatted sheep, sheep of quality. Be it so,
said Panurge; but sell me one of them, I beseech you; and that for a cause,
paying you ready money upon the nail, in good and lawful occidental current
cash. Wilt say how much? Friend, neighbour, answered the seller of
mutton, hark ye me a little, on the ear.

  Panurge. On which side you please; I hear you.

  Dingdong. You are going to Lanternland, they say.

  Panurge. Yea, verily.

  Dingdong. To see fashions?

  Panurge. Even so.

  Dingdong. And be merry?

  Panurge. And be merry.

  Dingdong. Your name is, as I take it, Robin Mutton?

  Panurge. As you please for that, sweet sir.

  Dingdong. Nay, without offence.

  Panurge. So I would have it.

  Dingdong. You are, as I take it, the king's jester; aren't you?

  Panurge. Ay, ay, anything.

  Dingdong. Give me your hand--humph, humph, you go to see fashions, you
are the king's jester, your name is Robin Mutton! Do you see this same
ram? His name, too, is Robin. Here, Robin, Robin, Robin! Baea, baea,
baea. Hath he not a rare voice?

  Panurge. Ay, marry has he, a very fine and harmonious voice.

  Dingdong. Well, this bargain shall be made between you and me, friend
and neighbour; we will get a pair of scales, then you Robin Mutton shall be
put into one of them, and Tup Robin into the other. Now I will hold you a
peck of Busch oysters that in weight, value, and price he shall outdo you,
and you shall be found light in the very numerical manner as when you shall
be hanged and suspended.

Patience, said Panurge; but you would do much for me and your whole
posterity if you would chaffer with me for him, or some other of his
inferiors. I beg it of you; good your worship, be so kind. Hark ye,
friend of mine, answered the other; with the fleece of these your fine
Rouen cloth is to be made; your Leominster superfine wool is mine arse to
it; mere flock in comparison. Of their skins the best cordovan will be
made, which shall be sold for Turkey and Montelimart, or for Spanish
leather at least. Of the guts shall be made fiddle and harp strings that
will sell as dear as if they came from Munican or Aquileia. What do you
think on't, hah? If you please, sell me one of them, said Panurge, and I
will be yours for ever. Look, here's ready cash. What's the price? This
he said exhibiting his purse stuffed with new Henricuses.

Chapter 4.VII.

Which if you read you'll find how Panurge bargained with Dingdong.

Neighbour, my friend, answered Dingdong, they are meat for none but kings
and princes; their flesh is so delicate, so savoury, and so dainty that one
would swear it melted in the mouth. I bring them out of a country where
the very hogs, God be with us, live on nothing but myrobolans. The sows in
the styes when they lie-in (saving the honour of this good company) are fed
only with orange-flowers. But, said Panurge, drive a bargain with me for
one of them, and I will pay you for't like a king, upon the honest word of
a true Trojan; come, come, what do you ask? Not so fast, Robin, answered
the trader; these sheep are lineally descended from the very family of the
ram that wafted Phryxus and Helle over the sea since called the Hellespont.
A pox on't, said Panurge, you are clericus vel addiscens! Ita is a
cabbage, and vere a leek, answered the merchant. But, rr, rrr, rrrr,
rrrrr, hoh Robin, rr, rrrrrrr, you don't understand that gibberish, do you?
Now I think on't, over all the fields where they piss, corn grows as fast
as if the Lord had pissed there; they need neither be tilled nor dunged.
Besides, man, your chemists extract the best saltpetre in the world out of
their urine. Nay, with their very dung (with reverence be it spoken) the
doctors in our country make pills that cure seventy-eight kinds of
diseases, the least of which is the evil of St. Eutropius of Xaintes, from
which, good Lord, deliver us! Now what do you think on't, neighbour, my
friend? The truth is, they cost me money, that they do. Cost what they
will, cried Panurge, trade with me for one of them, paying you well. Our
friend, quoth the quacklike sheepman, do but mind the wonders of nature
that are found in those animals, even in a member which one would think
were of no use. Take me but these horns, and bray them a little with an
iron pestle, or with an andiron, which you please, it is all one to me;
then bury them wherever you will, provided it be where the sun may shine,
and water them frequently; in a few months I'll engage you will have the
best asparagus in the world, not even excepting those of Ravenna. Now,
come and tell me whether the horns of your other knights of the bull's
feather have such a virtue and wonderful propriety?

Patience, said Panurge. I don't know whether you be a scholar or no,
pursued Dingdong; I have seen a world of scholars, I say great scholars,
that were cuckolds, I'll assure you. But hark you me, if you were a
scholar, you should know that in the most inferior members of those
animals, which are the feet, there is a bone, which is the heel, the
astragalus, if you will have it so, wherewith, and with that of no other
creature breathing, except the Indian ass and the dorcades of Libya, they
used in old times to play at the royal game of dice, whereat Augustus the
emperor won above fifty thousand crowns one evening. Now such cuckolds as
you will be hanged ere you get half so much at it. Patience, said Panurge;
but let us despatch. And when, my friend and neighbour, continued the
canting sheepseller, shall I have duly praised the inward members, the
shoulders, the legs, the knuckles, the neck, the breast, the liver, the
spleen, the tripes, the kidneys, the bladder, wherewith they make
footballs; the ribs, which serve in Pigmyland to make little crossbows to
pelt the cranes with cherry-stones; the head, which with a little brimstone
serves to make a miraculous decoction to loosen and ease the belly of
costive dogs? A turd on't, said the skipper to his preaching passenger,
what a fiddle-faddle have we here? There is too long a lecture by half:
sell him if thou wilt; if thou won't, don't let the man lose more time. I
hate a gibble-gabble and a rimble-ramble talk. I am for a man of brevity.
I will, for your sake, replied the holder-forth; but then he shall give me
three livres, French money, for each pick and choose. It is a woundy
price, cried Panurge; in our country I could have five, nay six, for the
money; see that you do not overreach me, master. You are not the first man
whom I have known to have fallen, even sometimes to the endangering, if not
breaking, of his own neck, for endeavouring to rise all at once. A murrain
seize thee for a blockheaded booby, cried the angry seller of sheep; by the
worthy vow of Our Lady of Charroux, the worst in this flock is four times
better than those which the Coraxians in Tuditania, a country of Spain,
used to sell for a gold talent each; and how much dost thou think, thou
Hibernian fool, that a talent of gold was worth? Sweet sir, you fall into
a passion, I see, returned Panurge; well, hold, here is your money.
Panurge, having paid his money, chose him out of all the flock a fine
topping ram; and as he was hauling it along, crying out and bleating, all
the rest, hearing and bleating in concert, stared to see whither their
brother-ram should be carried. In the meanwhile the drover was saying to
his shepherds: Ah! how well the knave could choose him out a ram; the
whoreson has skill in cattle. On my honest word, I reserved that very
piece of flesh for the Lord of Cancale, well knowing his disposition; for
the good man is naturally overjoyed when he holds a good-sized handsome
shoulder of mutton, instead of a left-handed racket, in one hand, with a
good sharp carver in the other. God wot, how he belabours himself then.

Chapter 4.VIII.

How Panurge caused Dingdong and his sheep to be drowned in the sea.

On a sudden, you would wonder how the thing was so soon done--for my part I
cannot tell you, for I had not leisure to mind it--our friend Panurge,
without any further tittle-tattle, throws you his ram overboard into the
middle of the sea, bleating and making a sad noise. Upon this all the
other sheep in the ship, crying and bleating in the same tone, made all the
haste they could to leap nimbly into the sea, one after another; and great
was the throng who should leap in first after their leader. It was
impossible to hinder them; for you know that it is the nature of sheep
always to follow the first wheresoever it goes; which makes Aristotle, lib.
9. De. Hist. Animal., mark them for the most silly and foolish animals in
the world. Dingdong, at his wits' end, and stark staring mad, as a man who
saw his sheep destroy and drown themselves before his face, strove to
hinder and keep them back with might and main; but all in vain: they all
one after t'other frisked and jumped into the sea, and were lost. At last
he laid hold on a huge sturdy one by the fleece, upon the deck of the ship,
hoping to keep it back, and so save that and the rest; but the ram was so
strong that it proved too hard for him, and carried its master into the
herring pond in spite of his teeth--where it is supposed he drank somewhat
more than his fill, so that he was drowned--in the same manner as one-eyed
Polyphemus' sheep carried out of the den Ulysses and his companions. The
like happened to the shepherds and all their gang, some laying hold on
their beloved tup, this by the horns, t'other by the legs, a third by the
rump, and others by the fleece; till in fine they were all of them forced
to sea, and drowned like so many rats. Panurge, on the gunnel of the ship,
with an oar in his hand, not to help them you may swear, but to keep them
from swimming to the ship and saving themselves from drowning, preached and
canted to them all the while like any little Friar (Oliver) Maillard, or
another Friar John Burgess; laying before them rhetorical commonplaces
concerning the miseries of this life and the blessings and felicity of the
next; assuring them that the dead were much happier than the living in this
vale of misery, and promised to erect a stately cenotaph and honorary tomb
to every one of them on the highest summit of Mount Cenis at his return
from Lanternland; wishing them, nevertheless, in case they were not yet
disposed to shake hands with this life, and did not like their salt liquor,
they might have the good luck to meet with some kind whale which might set
them ashore safe and sound on some blessed land of Gotham, after a famous
example.

The ship being cleared of Dingdong and his tups: Is there ever another
sheepish soul left lurking on board? cried Panurge. Where are those of
Toby Lamb and Robin Ram that sleep while the rest are a-feeding? Faith, I
can't tell myself. This was an old coaster's trick. What think'st of it,
Friar John, hah? Rarely performed, answered Friar John; only methinks that
as formerly in war, on the day of battle, a double pay was commonly
promised the soldiers for that day; for if they overcame, there was enough
to pay them; and if they lost, it would have been shameful for them to
demand it, as the cowardly foresters did after the battle of Cerizoles;
likewise, my friend, you ought not to have paid your man, and the money had
been saved. A fart for the money, said Panurge; have I not had above fifty
thousand pounds' worth of sport? Come now, let's be gone; the wind is
fair. Hark you me, my friend John; never did man do me a good turn, but I
returned, or at least acknowledged it; no, I scorn to be ungrateful; I
never was, nor ever will be. Never did man do me an ill one without rueing
the day that he did it, either in this world or the next. I am not yet so
much a fool neither. Thou damn'st thyself like any old devil, quoth Friar
John; it is written, Mihi vindictam, &c. Matter of breviary, mark ye me
(Motteux adds unnecessarily (by way of explanation), 'that's holy stuff.').

Chapter 4.IX.

How Pantagruel arrived at the island of Ennasin, and of the strange ways of
being akin in that country.

We had still the wind at south-south-west, and had been a whole day without
making land. On the third day, at the flies' uprising (which, you