The Author's Prologue.

Good people, most illustrious drinkers, and you, thrice precious gouty
gentlemen, did you ever see Diogenes, and cynic philosopher?  If you have
seen him, you then had your eyes in your head, or I am very much out of my
understanding and logical sense.  It is a gallant thing to see the
clearness of (wine, gold,) the sun.  I'll be judged by the blind born so
renowned in the sacred Scriptures, who, having at his choice to ask
whatever he would from him who is Almighty, and whose word in an instant is
effectually performed, asked nothing else but that he might see.  Item, you
are not young, which is a competent quality for you to philosophate more
than physically in wine, not in vain, and henceforwards to be of the
Bacchic Council; to the end that, opining there, you may give your opinion
faithfully of the substance, colour, excellent odour, eminency, propriety,
faculty, virtue, and effectual dignity of the said blessed and desired
liquor.

If you have not seen him, as I am easily induced to believe that you have
not, at least you have heard some talk of him.  For through the air, and
the whole extent of this hemisphere of the heavens, hath his report and
fame, even until this present time, remained very memorable and renowned.
Then all of you are derived from the Phrygian blood, if I be not deceived.
If you have not so many crowns as Midas had, yet have you something, I know
not what, of him, which the Persians of old esteemed more of in all their
otacusts, and which was more desired by the Emperor Antonine, and gave
occasion thereafter to the Basilico at Rohan to be surnamed Goodly Ears.
If you have not heard of him, I will presently tell you a story to make
your wine relish.  Drink then,--so, to the purpose.  Hearken now whilst I
give you notice, to the end that you may not, like infidels, be by your
simplicity abused, that in his time he was a rare philosopher and the
cheerfullest of a thousand.  If he had some imperfection, so have you, so
have we; for there is nothing, but God, that is perfect.  Yet so it was,
that by Alexander the Great, although he had Aristotle for his instructor
and domestic, was he held in such estimation, that he wished, if he had not
been Alexander, to have been Diogenes the Sinopian.

When Philip, King of Macedon, enterprised the siege and ruin of Corinth,
the Corinthians having received certain intelligence by their spies that he
with a numerous army in battle-rank was coming against them, were all of
them, not without cause, most terribly afraid; and therefore were not
neglective of their duty in doing their best endeavours to put themselves
in a fit posture to resist his hostile approach and defend their own city.

Some from the fields brought into the fortified places their movables,
bestial, corn, wine, fruit, victuals, and other necessary provision.

Others did fortify and rampire their walls, set up little fortresses,
bastions, squared ravelins, digged trenches, cleansed countermines, fenced
themselves with gabions, contrived platforms, emptied casemates, barricaded
the false brays, erected the cavaliers, repaired the counterscarps,
plastered the curtains, lengthened ravelins, stopped parapets, morticed
barbacans, assured the portcullises, fastened the herses, sarasinesques,
and cataracts, placed their sentries, and doubled their patrol.  Everyone
did watch and ward, and not one was exempted from carrying the basket.
Some polished corslets, varnished backs and breasts, cleaned the
headpieces, mail-coats, brigandines, salads, helmets, morions, jacks,
gushets, gorgets, hoguines, brassars, and cuissars, corslets, haubergeons,
shields, bucklers, targets, greaves, gauntlets, and spurs.  Others made
ready bows, slings, crossbows, pellets, catapults, migrains or fire-balls,
firebrands, balists, scorpions, and other such warlike engines expugnatory
and destructive to the Hellepolides.  They sharpened and prepared spears,
staves, pikes, brown bills, halberds, long hooks, lances, zagayes,
quarterstaves, eelspears, partisans, troutstaves, clubs, battle-axes,
maces, darts, dartlets, glaives, javelins, javelots, and truncheons.  They
set edges upon scimitars, cutlasses, badelairs, backswords, tucks, rapiers,
bayonets, arrow-heads, dags, daggers, mandousians, poniards, whinyards,
knives, skeans, shables, chipping knives, and raillons.

Every man exercised his weapon, every man scoured off the rust from his
natural hanger; nor was there a woman amongst them, though never so
reserved or old, who made not her harness to be well furbished; as you know
the Corinthian women of old were reputed very courageous combatants.

Diogenes seeing them all so warm at work, and himself not employed by the
magistrates in any business whatsoever, he did very seriously, for many
days together, without speaking one word, consider and contemplate the
countenance of his fellow-citizens.

Then on a sudden, as if he had been roused up and inspired by a martial
spirit, he girded his cloak scarfwise about his left arm, tucked up his
sleeves to the elbow, trussed himself like a clown gathering apples, and,
giving to one of his old acquaintance his wallet, books, and opistographs,
away went he out of town towards a little hill or promontory of Corinth
called (the) Cranie; and there on the strand, a pretty level place, did he
roll his jolly tub, which served him for a house to shelter him from the
injuries of the weather:  there, I say, in a great vehemency of spirit, did
he turn it, veer it, wheel it, whirl it, frisk it, jumble it, shuffle it,
huddle it, tumble it, hurry it, jolt it, justle it, overthrow it, evert it,
invert it, subvert it, overturn it, beat it, thwack it, bump it, batter it,
knock it, thrust it, push it, jerk it, shock it, shake it, toss it, throw
it, overthrow it, upside down, topsy-turvy, arsiturvy, tread it, trample
it, stamp it, tap it, ting it, ring it, tingle it, towl it, sound it,
resound it, stop it, shut it, unbung it, close it, unstopple it.  And then
again in a mighty bustle he bandied it, slubbered it, hacked it, whittled
it, wayed it, darted it, hurled it, staggered it, reeled it, swinged it,
brangled it, tottered it, lifted it, heaved it, transformed it,
transfigured it, transposed it, transplaced it, reared it, raised it,
hoised it, washed it, dighted it, cleansed it, rinsed it, nailed it,
settled it, fastened it, shackled it, fettered it, levelled it, blocked it,
tugged it, tewed it, carried it, bedashed it, bewrayed it, parched it,
mounted it, broached it, nicked it, notched it, bespattered it, decked it,
adorned it, trimmed it, garnished it, gauged it, furnished it, bored it,
pierced it, trapped it, rumbled it, slid it down the hill, and precipitated
it from the very height of the Cranie; then from the foot to the top (like
another Sisyphus with his stone) bore it up again, and every way so banged
it and belaboured it that it was ten thousand to one he had not struck the
bottom of it out.

Which when one of his friends had seen, and asked him why he did so toil
his body, perplex his spirit, and torment his tub, the philosopher's answer
was that, not being employed in any other charge by the Republic, he
thought it expedient to thunder and storm it so tempestuously upon his tub,
that amongst a people so fervently busy and earnest at work he alone might
not seem a loitering slug and lazy fellow.  To the same purpose may I say
of myself,

  Though I be rid from fear,
  I am not void of care.

For, perceiving no account to be made of me towards the discharge of a
trust of any great concernment, and considering that through all the parts
of this most noble kingdom of France, both on this and on the other side of
the mountains, everyone is most diligently exercised and busied, some in
the fortifying of their own native country for its defence, others in the
repulsing of their enemies by an offensive war; and all this with a policy
so excellent and such admirable order, so manifestly profitable for the
future, whereby France shall have its frontiers most magnifically enlarged,
and the French assured of a long and well-grounded peace, that very little
withholds me from the opinion of good Heraclitus, which affirmeth war to be
the father of all good things; and therefore do I believe that war is in
Latin called bellum, not by antiphrasis, as some patchers of old rusty
Latin would have us to think, because in war there is little beauty to be
seen, but absolutely and simply; for that in war appeareth all that is good
and graceful, and that by the wars is purged out all manner of wickedness
and deformity.  For proof whereof the wise and pacific Solomon could no
better represent the unspeakable perfection of the divine wisdom, than by
comparing it to the due disposure and ranking of an army in battle array,
well provided and ordered.

Therefore, by reason of my weakness and inability, being reputed by my
compatriots unfit for the offensive part of warfare; and on the other side,
being no way employed in matter of the defensive, although it had been but
to carry burthens, fill ditches, or break clods, either whereof had been to
me indifferent, I held it not a little disgraceful to be only an idle
spectator of so many valorous, eloquent, and warlike persons, who in the
view and sight of all Europe act this notable interlude or tragi-comedy,
and not make some effort towards the performance of this, nothing at all
remains for me to be done ('And not exert myself, and contribute thereto
this nothing, my all, which remained for me to do.'--Ozell.).  In my
opinion, little honour is due to such as are mere lookers-on, liberal of
their eyes, and of their crowns, and hide their silver; scratching their
head with one finger like grumbling puppies, gaping at the flies like tithe
calves; clapping down their ears like Arcadian asses at the melody of
musicians, who with their very countenances in the depth of silence express
their consent to the prosopopoeia.  Having made this choice and election,
it seemed to me that my exercise therein would be neither unprofitable nor
troublesome to any, whilst I should thus set a-going my Diogenical tub,
which is all that is left me safe from the shipwreck of my former
misfortunes.

At this dingle dangle wagging of my tub, what would you have me to do?  By
the Virgin that tucks up her sleeve, I know not as yet.  Stay a little,
till I suck up a draught of this bottle; it is my true and only Helicon; it
is my Caballine fountain; it is my sole enthusiasm.  Drinking thus, I
meditate, discourse, resolve, and conclude.  After that the epilogue is
made, I laugh, I write, I compose, and drink again.  Ennius drinking wrote,
and writing drank.  Aeschylus, if Plutarch in his Symposiacs merit any
faith, drank composing, and drinking composed.  Homer never wrote fasting,
and Cato never wrote till after he had drunk.  These passages I have
brought before you to the end you may not say that I lived without the
example of men well praised and better prized.  It is good and fresh
enough, even as if you would say it is entering upon the second degree.
God, the good God Sabaoth, that is to say, the God of armies, be praised
for it eternally!  If you after the same manner would take one great
draught, or two little ones, whilst you have your gown about you, I truly
find no kind of inconveniency in it, provided you send up to God for all
some small scantling of thanks.

Since then my luck or destiny is such as you have heard--for it is not for
everybody to go to Corinth--I am fully resolved to be so little idle and
unprofitable, that I will set myself to serve the one and the other sort of
people.  Amongst the diggers, pioneers, and rampire-builders, I will do as
did Neptune and Apollo at Troy under Laomedon, or as did Renault of
Montauban in his latter days:  I will serve the masons, I'll set on the pot
to boil for the bricklayers; and, whilst the minced meat is making ready at
the sound of my small pipe, I'll measure the muzzle of the musing dotards.
Thus did Amphion with the melody of his harp found, build, and finish the
great and renowned city of Thebes.

For the use of the warriors I am about to broach of new my barrel to give
them a taste (which by two former volumes of mine, if by the deceitfulness
and falsehood of printers they had not been jumbled, marred, and spoiled,
you would have very well relished), and draw unto them, of the growth of
our own trippery pastimes, a gallant third part of a gallon, and
consequently a jolly cheerful quart of Pantagruelic sentences, which you
may lawfully call, if you please, Diogenical:  and shall have me, seeing I
cannot be their fellow-soldier, for their faithful butler, refreshing and
cheering, according to my little power, their return from the alarms of the
enemy; as also for an indefatigable extoller of their martial exploits and
glorious achievements.  I shall not fail therein, par lapathium acutum de
dieu; if Mars fail not in Lent, which the cunning lecher, I warrant you,
will be loth to do.

I remember nevertheless to have read, that Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, one
day, amongst the many spoils and booties which by his victories he had
acquired, presenting to the Egyptians, in the open view of the people, a
Bactrian camel all black, and a party-coloured slave, in such sort as that
the one half of his body was black and the other white, not in partition of
breadth by the diaphragma, as was that woman consecrated to the Indian
Venus whom the Tyanean philosopher did see between the river Hydaspes and
Mount Caucasus, but in a perpendicular dimension of altitude; which were
things never before that seen in Egypt.  He expected by the show of these
novelties to win the love of the people.  But what happened thereupon?  At
the production of the camel they were all affrighted, and offended at the
sight of the party-coloured man--some scoffed at him as a detestable
monster brought forth by the error of nature; in a word, of the hope which
he had to please these Egyptians, and by such means to increase the
affection which they naturally bore him, he was altogether frustrate and
disappointed; understanding fully by their deportments that they took more
pleasure and delight in things that were proper, handsome, and perfect,
than in misshapen, monstrous, and ridiculous creatures.  Since which time
he had both the slave and the camel in such dislike, that very shortly
thereafter, either through negligence, or for want of ordinary sustenance,
they did exchange their life with death.

This example putteth me in a suspense between hope and fear, misdoubting
that, for the contentment which I aim at, I will but reap what shall be
most distasteful to me:  my cake will be dough, and for my Venus I shall
have but some deformed puppy:  instead of serving them, I shall but vex
them, and offend them whom I purpose to exhilarate; resembling in this
dubious adventure Euclion's cook, so renowned by Plautus in his Pot, and by
Ausonius in his Griphon, and by divers others; which cook, for having by
his scraping discovered a treasure, had his hide well curried.  Put the
case I get no anger by it, though formerly such things fell out, and the
like may occur again.  Yet, by Hercules! it will not.  So I perceive in
them all one and the same specifical form, and the like individual
properties, which our ancestors called Pantagruelism; by virtue whereof
they will bear with anything that floweth from a good, free, and loyal
heart.  I have seen them ordinarily take goodwill in part of payment, and
remain satisfied therewith when one was not able to do better.  Having
despatched this point, I return to my barrel.

Up, my lads, to this wine, spare it not!  Drink, boys, and trowl it off at
full bowls!  If you do not think it good, let it alone.  I am not like
those officious and importunate sots, who by force, outrage, and violence,
constrain an easy good-natured fellow to whiffle, quaff, carouse, and what
is worse.  All honest tipplers, all honest gouty men, all such as are
a-dry, coming to this little barrel of mine, need not drink thereof if it
please them not; but if they have a mind to it, and that the wine prove
agreeable to the tastes of their worshipful worships, let them drink,
frankly, freely, and boldly, without paying anything, and welcome.  This is
my decree, my statute and ordinance.

And let none fear there shall be any want of wine, as at the marriage of
Cana in Galilee; for how much soever you shall draw forth at the faucet, so
much shall I tun in at the bung.  Thus shall the barrel remain
inexhaustible; it hath a lively spring and perpetual current.  Such was the
beverage contained within the cup of Tantalus, which was figuratively
represented amongst the Brachman sages.  Such was in Iberia the mountain of
salt so highly written of by Cato.  Such was the branch of gold consecrated
to the subterranean goddess, which Virgil treats of so sublimely.  It is a
true cornucopia of merriment and raillery.  If at any time it seem to you
to be emptied to the very lees, yet shall it not for all that be drawn
wholly dry.  Good hope remains there at the bottom, as in Pandora's bottle;
and not despair, as in the puncheon of the Danaids.  Remark well what I
have said, and what manner of people they be whom I do invite; for, to the
end that none be deceived, I, in imitation of Lucilius, who did protest
that he wrote only to his own Tarentines and Consentines, have not pierced
this vessel for any else but you honest men, who are drinkers of the first
edition, and gouty blades of the highest degree.  The great dorophages,
bribe-mongers, have on their hands occupation enough, and enough on the
hooks for their venison.  There may they follow their prey; here is no
garbage for them.  You pettifoggers, garblers, and masters of chicanery,
speak not to me, I beseech you, in the name of, and for the reverence you
bear to the four hips that engendered you and to the quickening peg which
at that time conjoined them.  As for hypocrites, much less; although they
were all of them unsound in body, pockified, scurvy, furnished with
unquenchable thirst and insatiable eating.  (And wherefore?)  Because
indeed they are not of good but of evil, and of that evil from which we
daily pray to God to deliver us.  And albeit we see them sometimes
counterfeit devotion, yet never did old ape make pretty moppet.  Hence,
mastiffs; dogs in a doublet, get you behind; aloof, villains, out of my
sunshine; curs, to the devil!  Do you jog hither, wagging your tails, to
pant at my wine, and bepiss my barrel?  Look, here is the cudgel which
Diogenes, in his last will, ordained to be set by him after his death, for
beating away, crushing the reins, and breaking the backs of these bustuary
hobgoblins and Cerberian hellhounds.  Pack you hence, therefore, you
hypocrites, to your sheep-dogs; get you gone, you dissemblers, to the
devil!  Hay!  What, are you there yet?  I renounce my part of Papimanie, if
I snatch you, Grr, Grrr, Grrrrrr.  Avaunt, avaunt!  Will you not be gone?
May you never shit till you be soundly lashed with stirrup leather, never
piss but by the strapado, nor be otherwise warmed than by the bastinado.

How Pantagruel transported a colony of Utopians into Dipsody.

Pantagruel, having wholly subdued the land of Dipsody, transported
thereunto a colony of Utopians, to the number of 9,876,543,210 men, besides
the women and little children, artificers of all trades, and professors of
all sciences, to people, cultivate, and improve that country, which
otherwise was ill inhabited, and in the greatest part thereof but a mere
desert and wilderness; and did transport them (not) so much for the
excessive multitude of men and women, which were in Utopia multiplied, for
number, like grasshoppers upon the face of the land.  You understand well
enough, nor is it needful further to explain it to you, that the Utopian
men had so rank and fruitful genitories, and that the Utopian women carried
matrixes so ample, so gluttonous, so tenaciously retentive, and so
architectonically cellulated, that at the end of every ninth month seven
children at the least, what male what female, were brought forth by every
married woman, in imitation of the people of Israel in Egypt, if Anthony
(Nicholas) de Lyra be to be trusted.  Nor yet was this transplantation made
so much for the fertility of the soil, the wholesomeness of the air, or
commodity of the country of Dipsody, as to retain that rebellious people
within the bounds of their duty and obedience, by this new transport of his
ancient and most faithful subjects, who, from all time out of mind, never
knew, acknowledged, owned, or served any other sovereign lord but him; and
who likewise, from the very instant of their birth, as soon as they were
entered into this world, had, with the milk of their mothers and nurses,
sucked in the sweetness, humanity, and mildness of his government, to which
they were all of them so nourished and habituated, that there was nothing
surer than that they would sooner abandon their lives than swerve from this
singular and primitive obedience naturally due to their prince,
whithersoever they should be dispersed or removed.

And not only should they, and their children successively descending from
their blood, be such, but also would keep and maintain in this same fealty
and obsequious observance all the nations lately annexed to his empire;
which so truly came to pass that therein he was not disappointed of his
intent.  For if the Utopians were before their transplantation thither
dutiful and faithful subjects, the Dipsodes, after some few days conversing
with them, were every whit as, if not more, loyal than they; and that by
virtue of I know not what natural fervency incident to all human creatures
at the beginning of any labour wherein they take delight:  solemnly
attesting the heavens and supreme intelligences of their being only sorry
that no sooner unto their knowledge had arrived the great renown of the
good Pantagruel.

Remark therefore here, honest drinkers, that the manner of preserving and
retaining countries newly conquered in obedience is not, as hath been the
erroneous opinion of some tyrannical spirits to their own detriment and
dishonour, to pillage, plunder, force, spoil, trouble, oppress, vex,
disquiet, ruin and destroy the people, ruling, governing and keeping them
in awe with rods of iron; and, in a word, eating and devouring them, after
the fashion that Homer calls an unjust and wicked king, Demoboron, that is
to say, a devourer of his people.

I will not bring you to this purpose the testimony of ancient writers.  It
shall suffice to put you in mind of what your fathers have seen thereof,
and yourselves too, if you be not very babes.  Newborn, they must be given
suck to, rocked in a cradle, and dandled.  Trees newly planted must be
supported, underpropped, strengthened and defended against all tempests,
mischiefs, injuries, and calamities.  And one lately saved from a long and
dangerous sickness, and new upon his recovery, must be forborn, spared, and
cherished, in such sort that they may harbour in their own breasts this
opinion, that there is not in the world a king or a prince who does not
desire fewer enemies and more friends.  Thus Osiris, the great king of the
Egyptians, conquered almost the whole earth, not so much by force of arms
as by easing the people of their troubles, teaching them how to live well,
and honestly giving them good laws, and using them with all possible
affability, courtesy, gentleness, and liberality.  Therefore was he by all
men deservedly entitled the Great King Euergetes, that is to say,
Benefactor, which style he obtained by virtue of the command of Jupiter to
(one) Pamyla.

And in effect, Hesiod, in his Hierarchy, placed the good demons (call them
angels if you will, or geniuses,) as intercessors and mediators betwixt the
gods and men, they being of a degree inferior to the gods, but superior to
men.  And for that through their hands the riches and benefits we get from
heaven are dealt to us, and that they are continually doing us good and
still protecting us from evil, he saith that they exercise the offices of
kings; because to do always good, and never ill, is an act most singularly
royal.

Just such another was the emperor of the universe, Alexander the
Macedonian.  After this manner was Hercules sovereign possessor of the
whole continent, relieving men from monstrous oppressions, exactions, and
tyrannies; governing them with discretion, maintaining them in equity and
justice, instructing them with seasonable policies and wholesome laws,
convenient for and suitable to the soil, climate, and disposition of the
country, supplying what was wanting, abating what was superfluous, and
pardoning all that was past, with a sempiternal forgetfulness of all
preceding offences, as was the amnesty of the Athenians, when by the
prowess, valour, and industry of Thrasybulus the tyrants were
exterminated; afterwards at Rome by Cicero exposed, and renewed under the
Emperor Aurelian.  These are the philtres, allurements, iynges,
inveiglements, baits, and enticements of love, by the means whereof that
may be peaceably revived which was painfully acquired.  Nor can a
conqueror reign more happily, whether he be a monarch, emperor, king,
prince, or philosopher, than by making his justice to second his valour.
His valour shows itself in victory and conquest; his justice will appear
in the goodwill and affection of the people, when he maketh laws,
publisheth ordinances, establisheth religion, and doth what is right to
everyone, as the noble poet Virgil writes of Octavian Augustus:

    Victorque volentes
  Per populos dat jura.

Therefore is it that Homer in his Iliads calleth a good prince and great
king Kosmetora laon, that is, the ornament of the people.

Such was the consideration of Numa Pompilius, the second king of the
Romans, a just politician and wise philosopher, when he ordained that to
god Terminus, on the day of his festival called Terminales, nothing should
be sacrificed that had died; teaching us thereby that the bounds, limits,
and frontiers of kingdoms should be guarded, and preserved in peace, amity,
and meekness, without polluting our hands with blood and robbery.  Who doth
otherwise, shall not only lose what he hath gained, but also be loaded with
this scandal and reproach, that he is an unjust and wicked purchaser, and
his acquests perish with him; Juxta illud, male parta, male dilabuntur.
And although during his whole lifetime he should have peaceable possession
thereof, yet if what hath been so acquired moulder away in the hands of his
heirs, the same opprobry, scandal, and imputation will be charged upon the
defunct, and his memory remain accursed for his unjust and unwarrantable
conquest; Juxta illud, de male quaesitis vix gaudet tertius haeres.

Remark, likewise, gentlemen, you gouty feoffees, in this main point worthy
of your observation, how by these means Pantagruel of one angel made two,
which was a contingency opposite to the counsel of Charlemagne, who made
two devils of one when he transplanted the Saxons into Flanders and the
Flemings into Saxony.  For, not being able to keep in such subjection the
Saxons, whose dominion he had joined to the empire, but that ever and anon
they would break forth into open rebellion if he should casually be drawn
into Spain or other remote kingdoms, he caused them to be brought unto his
own country of Flanders, the inhabitants whereof did naturally obey him,
and transported the Hainaults and Flemings, his ancient loving subjects,
into Saxony, not mistrusting their loyalty now that they were transplanted
into a strange land.  But it happened that the Saxons persisted in their
rebellion and primitive obstinacy, and the Flemings dwelling in Saxony did
imbibe the stubborn manners and conditions of the Saxons.

How Panurge was made Laird of Salmigondin in Dipsody, and did waste his
revenue before it came in.

Whilst Pantagruel was giving order for the government of all Dipsody, he
assigned to Panurge the lairdship of Salmigondin, which was yearly worth
6,789,106,789 reals of certain rent, besides the uncertain revenue of the
locusts and periwinkles, amounting, one year with another, to the value of
435,768, or 2,435,769 French crowns of Berry.  Sometimes it did amount to
1,230,554,321 seraphs, when it was a good year, and that locusts and
periwinkles were in request; but that was not every year.

Now his worship, the new laird, husbanded this his estate so providently
well and prudently, that in less than fourteen days he wasted and
dilapidated all the certain and uncertain revenue of his lairdship for
three whole years.  Yet did not he properly dilapidate it, as you might
say, in founding of monasteries, building of churches, erecting of
colleges, and setting up of hospitals, or casting his bacon-flitches to the
dogs; but spent it in a thousand little banquets and jolly collations,
keeping open house for all comers and goers; yea, to all good fellows,
young girls, and pretty wenches; felling timber, burning great logs for the
sale of the ashes, borrowing money beforehand, buying dear, selling cheap,
and eating his corn, as it were, whilst it was but grass.

Pantagruel, being advertised of this his lavishness, was in good sooth no
way offended at the matter, angry nor sorry; for I once told you, and again
tell it you, that he was the best, little, great goodman that ever girded a
sword to his side.  He took all things in good part, and interpreted every
action to the best sense.  He never vexed nor disquieted himself with the
least pretence of dislike to anything, because he knew that he must have
most grossly abandoned the divine mansion of reason if he had permitted his
mind to be never so little grieved, afflicted, or altered at any occasion
whatsoever.  For all the goods that the heaven covereth, and that the earth
containeth, in all their dimensions of height, depth, breadth, and length,
are not of so much worth as that we should for them disturb or disorder our
affections, trouble or perplex our senses or spirits.

He drew only Panurge aside, and then, making to him a sweet remonstrance
and mild admonition, very gently represented before him in strong
arguments, that, if he should continue in such an unthrifty course of
living, and not become a better mesnagier, it would prove altogether
impossible for him, or at least hugely difficult, at any time to make him
rich.  Rich! answered Panurge; have you fixed your thoughts there?  Have
you undertaken the task to enrich me in this world?  Set your mind to live
merrily, in the name of God and good folks; let no other cark nor care be
harboured within the sacrosanctified domicile of your celestial brain.  May
the calmness and tranquillity thereof be never incommodated with, or
overshadowed by any frowning clouds of sullen imaginations and displeasing
annoyance!  For if you live joyful, merry, jocund, and glad, I cannot be
but rich enough.  Everybody cries up thrift, thrift, and good husbandry.
But many speak of Robin Hood that never shot in his bow, and talk of that
virtue of mesnagery who know not what belongs to it.  It is by me that they
must be advised.  From me, therefore, take this advertisement and
information, that what is imputed to me for a vice hath been done in
imitation of the university and parliament of Paris, places in which is to
be found the true spring and source of the lively idea of Pantheology and
all manner of justice.  Let him be counted a heretic that doubteth thereof,
and doth not firmly believe it.  Yet they in one day eat up their bishop,
or the revenue of the bishopric--is it not all one?--for a whole year, yea,
sometimes for two.  This is done on the day he makes his entry, and is
installed.  Nor is there any place for an excuse; for he cannot avoid it,
unless he would be hooted at and stoned for his parsimony.

It hath been also esteemed an act flowing from the habit of the four
cardinal virtues.  Of prudence in borrowing money beforehand; for none
knows what may fall out.  Who is able to tell if the world shall last yet
three years?  But although it should continue longer, is there any man so
foolish as to have the confidence to promise himself three years?

  What fool so confident to say,
  That he shall live one other day?

Of commutative justice, in buying dear, I say, upon trust, and selling
goods cheap, that is, for ready money.  What says Cato in his Book of
Husbandry to this purpose?  The father of a family, says he, must be a
perpetual seller; by which means it is impossible but that at last he shall
become rich, if he have of vendible ware enough still ready for sale.

Of distributive justice it doth partake, in giving entertainment to good
--remark, good--and gentle fellows, whom fortune had shipwrecked, like
Ulysses, upon the rock of a hungry stomach without provision of sustenance;
and likewise to the good--remark, the good--and young wenches.  For,
according to the sentence of Hippocrates, Youth is impatient of hunger,
chiefly if it be vigorous, lively, frolic, brisk, stirring, and bouncing.
Which wanton lasses willingly and heartily devote themselves to the
pleasure of honest men; and are in so far both Platonic and Ciceronian,
that they do acknowledge their being born into this world not to be for
themselves alone, but that in their proper persons their acquaintance may
claim one share, and their friends another.

The virtue of fortitude appears therein by the cutting down and
overthrowing of the great trees, like a second Milo making havoc of the
dark forest, which did serve only to furnish dens, caves, and shelter to
wolves, wild boars, and foxes, and afford receptacles, withdrawing corners,
and refuges to robbers, thieves, and murderers, lurking holes and skulking
places for cutthroat assassinators, secret obscure shops for coiners of
false money, and safe retreats for heretics, laying them even and level
with the plain champaign fields and pleasant heathy ground, at the sound of
the hautboys and bagpipes playing reeks with the high and stately timber,
and preparing seats and benches for the eve of the dreadful day of
judgment.

I gave thereby proof of my temperance in eating my corn whilst it was but
grass, like a hermit feeding upon salads and roots, that, so affranchising
myself from the yoke of sensual appetites to the utter disclaiming of their
sovereignty, I might the better reserve somewhat in store for the relief of
the lame, blind, crippled, maimed, needy, poor, and wanting wretches.

In taking this course I save the expense of the weed-grubbers, who gain
money,--of the reapers in harvest-time, who drink lustily, and without
water,--of gleaners, who will expect their cakes and bannocks,--of
threshers, who leave no garlic, scallions, leeks, nor onions in our
gardens, by the authority of Thestilis in Virgil,--and of the millers, who
are generally thieves,--and of the bakers, who are little better.  Is this
small saving or frugality?  Besides the mischief and damage of the
field-mice, the decay of barns, and the destruction usually made by
weasels and other vermin.

Of corn in the blade you may make good green sauce of a light concoction
and easy digestion, which recreates the brain and exhilarates the animal
spirits, rejoiceth the sight, openeth the appetite, delighteth the taste,
comforteth the heart, tickleth the tongue, cheereth the countenance,
striking a fresh and lively colour, strengthening the muscles, tempers the
blood, disburdens the midriff, refresheth the liver, disobstructs the
spleen, easeth the kidneys, suppleth the reins, quickens the joints of the
back, cleanseth the urine-conduits, dilates the spermatic vessels, shortens
the cremasters, purgeth the bladder, puffeth up the genitories, correcteth
the prepuce, hardens the nut, and rectifies the member.  It will make you
have a current belly to trot, fart, dung, piss, sneeze, cough, spit, belch,
spew, yawn, snuff, blow, breathe, snort, sweat, and set taut your Robin,
with a thousand other rare advantages.  I understand you very well, says
Pantagruel; you would thereby infer that those of a mean spirit and shallow
capacity have not the skill to spend much in a short time.  You are not the
first in whose conceit that heresy hath entered.  Nero maintained it, and
above all mortals admired most his uncle Caius Caligula, for having in a
few days, by a most wonderfully pregnant invention, totally spent all the
goods and patrimony which Tiberius had left him.

But, instead of observing the sumptuous supper-curbing laws of the Romans
--to wit, the Orchia, the Fannia, the Didia, the Licinia, the Cornelia,
the Lepidiana, the Antia, and of the Corinthians--by the which they were
inhibited, under pain of great punishment, not to spend more in one year
than their annual revenue did amount to, you have offered up the oblation
of Protervia, which was with the Romans such a sacrifice as the paschal
lamb was amongst the Jews, wherein all that was eatable was to be eaten,
and the remainder to be thrown into the fire, without reserving anything
for the next day.  I may very justly say of you, as Cato did of Albidius,
who after that he had by a most extravagant expense wasted all the means
and possessions he had to one only house, he fairly set it on fire, that he
might the better say, Consummatum est.  Even just as since his time St.
Thomas Aquinas did, when he had eaten up the whole lamprey, although there
was no necessity in it.

How Panurge praiseth the debtors and borrowers.

But, quoth Pantagruel, when will you be out of debt?  At the next ensuing
term of the Greek kalends, answered Panurge, when all the world shall be
content, and that it be your fate to become your own heir.  The Lord forbid
that I should be out of debt, as if, indeed, I could not be trusted.  Who
leaves not some leaven over night, will hardly have paste the next morning.

Be still indebted to somebody or other, that there may be somebody always
to pray for you, that the giver of all good things may grant unto you a
blessed, long, and prosperous life; fearing, if fortune should deal crossly
with you, that it might be his chance to come short of being paid by you,
he will always speak good of you in every company, ever and anon purchase
new creditors unto you; to the end, that through their means you may make a
shift by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and with other folk's earth fill
up his ditch.  When of old, in the region of the Gauls, by the institution
of the Druids, the servants, slaves, and bondmen were burnt quick at the
funerals and obsequies of their lords and masters, had not they fear
enough, think you, that their lords and masters should die?  For, perforce,
they were to die with them for company.  Did not they incessantly send up
their supplications to their great god Mercury, as likewise unto Dis, the
father of wealth, to lengthen out their days, and to preserve them long in
health?  Were not they very careful to entertain them well, punctually to
look unto them, and to attend them faithfully and circumspectly?  For by
those means were they to live together at least until the hour of death.
Believe me, your creditors with a more fervent devotion will beseech
Almighty God to prolong your life, they being of nothing more afraid than
that you should die; for that they are more concerned for the sleeve than
the arm, and love silver better than their own lives.  As it evidently
appeareth by the usurers of Landerousse, who not long since hanged
themselves because the price of the corn and wines was fallen by the return
of a gracious season.  To this Pantagruel answering nothing, Panurge went
on in his discourse, saying, Truly and in good sooth, sir, when I ponder my
destiny aright, and think well upon it, you put me shrewdly to my plunges,
and have me at a bay in twitting me with the reproach of my debts and
creditors.  And yet did I, in this only respect and consideration of being
a debtor, esteem myself worshipful, reverend, and formidable.  For against
the opinion of most philosophers, that of nothing ariseth nothing, yet,
without having bottomed on so much as that which is called the First
Matter, did I out of nothing become such (a) maker and creator, that I have
created--what?--a gay number of fair and jolly creditors.  Nay, creditors,
I will maintain it, even to the very fire itself exclusively, are fair and
goodly creatures.  Who lendeth nothing is an ugly and wicked creature, and
an accursed imp of the infernal Old Nick.  And there is made--what?  Debts.
A thing most precious and dainty, of great use and antiquity.  Debts, I
say, surmounting the number of syllables which may result from the
combinations of all the consonants, with each of the vowels heretofore
projected, reckoned, and calculated by the noble Xenocrates.  To judge of
the perfection of debtors by the numerosity of their creditors is the
readiest way for entering into the mysteries of practical arithmetic.

You can hardly imagine how glad I am, when every morning I perceive myself
environed and surrounded with brigades of creditors--humble, fawning, and
full of their reverences.  And whilst I remark that, as I look more
favourably upon and give a cheerfuller countenance to one than to another,
the fellow thereupon buildeth a conceit that he shall be the first
despatched and the foremost in the date of payment, and he valueth my
smiles at the rate of ready money, it seemeth unto me that I then act and
personate the god of the passion of Saumure, accompanied with his angels
and cherubims.

These are my flatterers, my soothers, my clawbacks, my smoothers, my
parasites, my saluters, my givers of good-morrows, and perpetual orators;
which makes me verily think that the supremest height of heroic virtue
described by Hesiod consisteth in being a debtor, wherein I held the first
degree in my commencement.  Which dignity, though all human creatures seem
to aim at and aspire thereto, few nevertheless, because of the difficulties
in the way and encumbrances of hard passages, are able to reach it, as is
easily perceivable by the ardent desire and vehement longing harboured in
the breast of everyone to be still creating more debts and new creditors.

Yet doth it not lie in the power of everyone to be a debtor.  To acquire
creditors is not at the disposure of each man's arbitrament.  You
nevertheless would deprive me of this sublime felicity.  You ask me when I
will be out of debt.  Well, to go yet further on, and possibly worse in
your conceit, may Saint Bablin, the good saint, snatch me, if I have not
all my lifetime held debt to be as a union or conjunction of the heavens
with the earth, and the whole cement whereby the race of mankind is kept
together; yea, of such virtue and efficacy that, I say, the whole progeny
of Adam would very suddenly perish without it.  Therefore, perhaps, I do
not think amiss, when I repute it to be the great soul of the universe,
which, according to the opinion of the Academics, vivifieth all manner of
things.  In confirmation whereof, that you may the better believe it to be
so, represent unto yourself, without any prejudicacy of spirit, in a clear
and serene fancy, the idea and form of some other world than this; take, if
you please, and lay hold on the thirtieth of those which the philosopher
Metrodorus did enumerate, wherein it is to be supposed there is no debtor
or creditor, that is to say, a world without debts.

There amongst the planets will be no regular course, all will be in
disorder.  Jupiter, reckoning himself to be nothing indebted unto Saturn,
will go near to detrude him out of his sphere, and with the Homeric chain
will be like to hang up the intelligences, gods, heavens, demons, heroes,
devils, earth and sea, together with the other elements.  Saturn, no doubt,
combining with Mars will reduce that so disturbed world into a chaos of
confusion.

Mercury then would be no more subjected to the other planets; he would
scorn to be any longer their Camillus, as he was of old termed in the
Etrurian tongue.  For it is to be imagined that he is no way a debtor to
them.

Venus will be no more venerable, because she shall have lent nothing.  The
moon will remain bloody and obscure.  For to what end should the sun impart
unto her any of his light?  He owed her nothing.  Nor yet will the sun
shine upon the earth, nor the stars send down any good influence, because
the terrestrial globe hath desisted from sending up their wonted
nourishment by vapours and exhalations, wherewith Heraclitus said, the
Stoics proved, Cicero maintained, they were cherished and alimented.  There
would likewise be in such a world no manner of symbolization, alteration,
nor transmutation amongst the elements; for the one will not esteem itself
obliged to the other, as having borrowed nothing at all from it.  Earth
then will not become water, water will not be changed into air, of air will
be made no fire, and fire will afford no heat unto the earth; the earth
will produce nothing but monsters, Titans, giants; no rain will descend
upon it, nor light shine thereon; no wind will blow there, nor will there
be in it any summer or harvest.  Lucifer will break loose, and issuing
forth of the depth of hell, accompanied with his furies, fiends, and horned
devils, will go about to unnestle and drive out of heaven all the gods, as
well of the greater as of the lesser nations.  Such a world without lending
will be no better than a dog-kennel, a place of contention and wrangling,
more unruly and irregular than that of the rector of Paris; a devil of an
hurlyburly, and more disordered confusion than that of the plagues of
Douay.  Men will not then salute one another; it will be but lost labour to
expect aid or succour from any, or to cry fire, water, murder, for none
will put to their helping hand.  Why?  He lent no money, there is nothing
due to him.  Nobody is concerned in his burning, in his shipwreck, in his
ruin, or in his death; and that because he hitherto had lent nothing, and
would never thereafter have lent anything.  In short, Faith, Hope, and
Charity would be quite banished from such a world--for men are born to
relieve and assist one another; and in their stead should succeed and be
introduced Defiance, Disdain, and Rancour, with the most execrable troop of
all evils, all imprecations, and all miseries.  Whereupon you will think,
and that not amiss, that Pandora had there spilt her unlucky bottle.  Men
unto men will be wolves, hobthrushers, and goblins (as were Lycaon,
Bellerophon, Nebuchodonosor), plunderers, highway robbers, cutthroats,
rapparees, murderers, poisoners, assassinators, lewd, wicked, malevolent,
pernicious haters, set against everybody, like to Ishmael, Metabus, or
Timon the Athenian, who for that cause was named Misanthropos, in such
sort that it would prove much more easy in nature to have fish entertained
in the air and bullocks fed in the bottom of the ocean, than to support or
tolerate a rascally rabble of people that will not lend.  These fellows, I
vow, do I hate with a perfect hatred; and if, conform to the pattern of
this grievous, peevish, and perverse world which lendeth nothing, you
figure and liken the little world, which is man, you will find in him a
terrible justling coil and clutter.  The head will not lend the sight of
his eyes to guide the feet and hands; the legs will refuse to bear up the
body; the hands will leave off working any more for the rest of the
members; the heart will be weary of its continual motion for the beating of
the pulse, and will no longer lend his assistance; the lungs will withdraw
the use of their bellows; the liver will desist from convoying any more
blood through the veins for the good of the whole; the bladder will not be
indebted to the kidneys, so that the urine thereby will be totally stopped.
The brains, in the interim, considering this unnatural course, will fall
into a raving dotage, and withhold all feeling from the sinews and motion
from the muscles.  Briefly, in such a world without order and array, owing
nothing, lending nothing, and borrowing nothing, you would see a more
dangerous conspiration than that which Aesop exposed in his Apologue.  Such
a world will perish undoubtedly; and not only perish, but perish very
quickly.  Were it Aesculapius himself, his body would immediately rot, and
the chafing soul, full of indignation, take its flight to all the devils of
hell after my money.

Panurge continueth his discourse in the praise of borrowers and lenders.

On the contrary, be pleased to represent unto your fancy another world,
wherein everyone lendeth and everyone oweth, all are debtors and all
creditors.  O how great will that harmony be, which shall thereby result
from the regular motions of the heavens!  Methinks I hear it every whit as
well as ever Plato did.  What sympathy will there be amongst the elements!
O how delectable then unto nature will be our own works and productions!
Whilst Ceres appeareth laden with corn, Bacchus with wines, Flora with
flowers, Pomona with fruits, and Juno fair in a clear air, wholesome and
pleasant.  I lose myself in this high contemplation.

Then will among the race of mankind peace, love, benevolence, fidelity,
tranquillity, rest, banquets, feastings, joy, gladness, gold, silver,
single money, chains, rings, with other ware and chaffer of that nature be
found to trot from hand to hand.  No suits at law, no wars, no strife,
debate, nor wrangling; none will be there a usurer, none will be there a
pinch-penny, a scrape-good wretch, or churlish hard-hearted refuser.  Good
God!  Will not this be the golden age in the reign of Saturn? the true idea
of the Olympic regions, wherein all (other) virtues cease, charity alone
ruleth, governeth, domineereth, and triumpheth?  All will be fair and
goodly people there, all just and virtuous.

O happy world!  O people of that world most happy!  Yea, thrice and four
times blessed is that people!  I think in very deed that I am amongst them,
and swear to you, by my good forsooth, that if this glorious aforesaid
world had a pope, abounding with cardinals, that so he might have the
association of a sacred college, in the space of very few years you should
be sure to see the saints much thicker in the roll, more numerous,
wonder-working and mirific, more services, more vows, more staves and
wax-candles than are all those in the nine bishoprics of Britany, St. Yves
only excepted.  Consider, sir, I pray you, how the noble Patelin, having a
mind to deify and extol even to the third heavens the father of William
Josseaulme, said no more but this, And he did lend his goods to those who
were desirous of them.

O the fine saying!  Now let our microcosm be fancied conform to this model
in all its members; lending, borrowing, and owing, that is to say,
according to its own nature.  For nature hath not to any other end created
man, but to owe, borrow, and lend; no greater is the harmony amongst the
heavenly spheres than that which shall be found in its well-ordered policy.
The intention of the founder of this microcosm is, to have a soul therein
to be entertained, which is lodged there, as a guest with its host, (that)
it may live there for a while.  Life consisteth in blood, blood is the seat
of the soul; therefore the chiefest work of the microcosm is, to be making
blood continually.

At this forge are exercised all the members of the body; none is exempted
from labour, each operates apart, and doth its proper office.  And such is
their heirarchy, that perpetually the one borrows from the other, the one
lends the other, and the one is the other's debtor.  The stuff and matter
convenient, which nature giveth to be turned into blood, is bread and wine.
All kind of nourishing victuals is understood to be comprehended in these
two, and from hence in the Gothish tongue is called companage.  To find out
this meat and drink, to prepare and boil it, the hands are put to work, the
feet do walk and bear up the whole bulk of the corporal mass; the eyes
guide and conduct all; the appetite in the orifice of the stomach, by means
of (a) little sourish black humour, called melancholy, which is transmitted
thereto from the milt, giveth warning to shut in the food.  The tongue doth
make the first essay, and tastes it; the teeth do chew it, and the stomach
doth receive, digest, and chylify it.  The mesaraic veins suck out of it
what is good and fit, leaving behind the excrements, which are, through
special conduits for that purpose, voided by an expulsive faculty.
Thereafter it is carried to the liver, where it being changed again, it by
the virtue of that new transmutation becomes blood.  What joy, conjecture
you, will then be found amongst those officers when they see this rivulet
of gold, which is their sole restorative?  No greater is the joy of
alchemists, when after long travail, toil, and expense they see in their
furnaces the transmutation.  Then is it that every member doth prepare
itself, and strive anew to purify and to refine this treasure.  The kidneys
through the emulgent veins draw that aquosity from thence which you call
urine, and there send it away through the ureters to be slipped downwards;
where, in a lower receptacle, and proper for it, to wit, the bladder, it is
kept, and stayeth there until an opportunity to void it out in his due
time.  The spleen draweth from the blood its terrestrial part, viz., the
grounds, lees, or thick substance settled in the bottom thereof, which you
term melancholy.  The bottle of the gall subtracts from thence all the
superfluous choler; whence it is brought to another shop or work-house to
be yet better purified and fined, that is, the heart, which by its
agitation of diastolic and systolic motions so neatly subtilizeth and
inflames it, that in the right side ventricle it is brought to perfection,
and through the veins is sent to all the members.  Each parcel of the body
draws it then unto itself, and after its own fashion is cherished and
alimented by it.  Feet, hands, thighs, arms, eyes, ears, back, breast, yea,
all; and then it is, that who before were lenders, now become debtors.  The
heart doth in its left side ventricle so thinnify the blood, that it
thereby obtains the name of spiritual; which being sent through the
arteries to all the members of the body, serveth to warm and winnow the
other blood which runneth through the veins.  The lights never cease with
its lappets and bellows to cool and refresh it, in acknowledgment of which
good the heart, through the arterial vein, imparts unto it the choicest of
its blood.  At last it is made so fine and subtle within the rete mirabile,
that thereafter those animal spirits are framed and composed of it, by
means whereof the imagination, discourse, judgment, resolution,
deliberation, ratiocination, and memory have their rise, actings, and
operations.

Cops body, I sink, I drown, I perish, I wander astray, and quite fly out of
myself when I enter into the consideration of the profound abyss of this
world, thus lending, thus owing.  Believe me, it is a divine thing to
lend,--to owe, an heroic virtue.  Yet is not this all.  This little world
thus lending, owing, and borrowing, is so good and charitable, that no
sooner is the above-specified alimentation finished, but that it forthwith
projecteth, and hath already forecast, how it shall lend to those who are
not as yet born, and by that loan endeavour what it may to eternize itself,
and multiply in images like the pattern, that is, children.  To this end
every member doth of the choicest and most precious of its nourishment pare
and cut off a portion, then instantly despatcheth it downwards to that
place where nature hath prepared for it very fit vessels and receptacles,
through which descending to the genitories by long ambages, circuits, and
flexuosities, it receiveth a competent form, and rooms apt enough both in
man and woman for the future conservation and perpetuating of human kind.
All this is done by loans and debts of the one unto the other; and hence
have we this word, the debt of marriage.  Nature doth reckon pain to the
refuser, with a most grievous vexation to his members and an outrageous
fury amidst his senses.  But, on the other part, to the lender a set
reward, accompanied with pleasure, joy, solace, mirth, and merry glee.

How Pantagruel altogether abhorreth the debtors and borrowers.

I understand you very well, quoth Pantagruel, and take you to be very good
at topics, and thoroughly affectioned to your own cause.  But preach it up,
and patrocinate it, prattle on it, and defend it as much as you will, even
from hence to the next Whitsuntide, if you please so to do, yet in the end
you will be astonished to find how you shall have gained no ground at all
upon me, nor persuaded me by your fair speeches and smooth talk to enter
never so little into the thraldom of debt.  You shall owe to none, saith
the holy Apostle, anything save love, friendship, and a mutual benevolence.

You serve me here, I confess, with fine graphides and diatyposes,
descriptions and figures, which truly please me very well.  But let me tell
you, if you will represent unto your fancy an impudent blustering bully and
an importunate borrower, entering afresh and newly into a town already
advertised of his manners, you shall find that at his ingress the citizens
will be more hideously affrighted and amazed, and in a greater terror and
fear, dread, and trembling, than if the pest itself should step into it in
the very same garb and accoutrement wherein the Tyanean philosopher found
it within the city of Ephesus.  And I am fully confirmed in the opinion,
that the Persians erred not when they said that the second vice was to lie,
the first being that of owing money.  For, in very truth, debts and lying
are ordinarily joined together.  I will nevertheless not from hence infer
that none must owe anything or lend anything.  For who so rich can be that
sometimes may not owe, or who can be so poor that sometimes may not lend?

Let the occasion, notwithstanding, in that case, as Plato very wisely
sayeth and ordaineth in his laws, be such that none be permitted to draw
any water out of his neighbour's well until first they by continual digging
and delving into their own proper ground shall have hit upon a kind of
potter's earth, which is called ceramite, and there had found no source or
drop of water; for that sort of earth, by reason of its substance, which is
fat, strong, firm, and close, so retaineth its humidity, that it doth not
easily evaporate it by any outward excursion or evaporation.

In good sooth, it is a great shame to choose rather to be still borrowing
in all places from everyone, than to work and win.  Then only in my
judgment should one lend, when the diligent, toiling, and industrious
person is no longer able by his labour to make any purchase unto himself,
or otherwise, when by mischance he hath suddenly fallen into an unexpected
loss of his goods.

Howsoever, let us leave this discourse, and from henceforwards do not hang
upon creditors, nor tie yourself to them.  I make account for the time past
to rid you freely of them, and from their bondage to deliver you.  The
least I should in this point, quoth Panurge, is to thank you, though it be
the most I can do.  And if gratitude and thanksgiving be to be estimated
and prized by the affection of the benefactor, that is to be done
infinitely and sempiternally; for the love which you bear me of your own
accord and free grace, without any merit of mine, goeth far beyond the
reach of any price or value.  It transcends all weight, all number, all
measure; it is endless and everlasting; therefore, should I offer to
commensurate and adjust it, either to the size and proportion of your own
noble and gracious deeds, or yet to the contentment and delight of the
obliged receivers, I would come off but very faintly and flaggingly.  You
have verily done me a great deal of good, and multiplied your favours on me
more frequently than was fitting to one of my condition.  You have been
more bountiful towards me than I have deserved, and your courtesies have by
far surpassed the extent of my merits, I must needs confess it.  But it is
not, as you suppose, in the proposed matter.  For there it is not where I
itch, it is not there where it fretteth, hurts, or vexeth me; for,
henceforth being quit and out of debt, what countenance will I be able to
keep?  You may imagine that it will become me very ill for the first month,
because I have never hitherto been brought up or accustomed to it.  I am
very much afraid of it.  Furthermore, there shall not one hereafter, native
of the country of Salmigondy, but he shall level the shot towards my nose.
All the back-cracking fellows of the world, in discharging of their postern
petarades, use commonly to say, Voila pour les quittes, that is, For the
quit.  My life will be of very short continuance, I do foresee it.  I
recommend to you the making of my epitaph; for I perceive I will die
confected in the very stench of farts.  If, at any time to come, by way of
restorative to such good women as shall happen to be troubled with the
grievous pain of the wind-colic, the ordinary medicaments prove nothing
effectual, the mummy of all my befarted body will straight be as a present
remedy appointed by the physicians; whereof they, taking any small modicum,
it will incontinently for their ease afford them a rattle of bumshot, like
a sal of muskets.

Therefore would I beseech you to leave me some few centuries of debts; as
King Louis the Eleventh, exempting from suits in law the Reverend Miles
d'Illiers, Bishop of Chartres, was by the said bishop most earnestly
solicited to leave him some few for the exercise of his mind.  I had rather
give them all my revenue of the periwinkles, together with the other
incomes of the locusts, albeit I should not thereby have any parcel abated
from off the principal sums which I owe.  Let us waive this matter, quoth
Pantagruel, I have told it you over again.

Why new married men were privileged from going to the wars.

But, in the interim, asked Panurge, by what law was it constituted,
ordained, and established, that such as should plant a new vineyard, those
that should build a new house, and the new married men, should be exempted
and discharged from the duty of warfare for the first year?  By the law,
answered Pantagruel, of Moses.  Why, replied Panurge, the lately married?
As for the vine-planters, I am now too old to reflect on them; my
condition, at this present, induceth me to remain satisfied with the care
of vintage, finishing and turning the grapes into wine.  Nor are these
pretty new builders of dead stones written or pricked down in my Book of
Life.  It is all with live stones that I set up and erect the fabrics of my
architecture, to wit, men.  It was, according to my opinion, quoth
Pantagruel, to the end, first, that the fresh married folks should for the
first year reap a full and complete fruition of their pleasures in their
mutual exercise of the act of love, in such sort, that in waiting more at
leisure on the production of posterity and propagating of their progeny,
they might the better increase their race and make provision of new heirs.
That if, in the years thereafter, the men should, upon their undergoing of
some military adventure, happen to be killed, their names and coats-of-arms
might continue with their children in the same families.  And next, that,
the wives thereby coming to know whether they were barren or fruitful--for
one year's trial, in regard of the maturity of age wherein of old they
married, was held sufficient for the discovery--they might pitch the more
suitably, in case of their first husband's decease, upon a second match.
The fertile women to be wedded to those who desire to multiply their issue;
and the sterile ones to such other mates, as, misregarding the storing of
their own lineage, choose them only for their virtues, learning, genteel
behaviour, domestic consolation, management of the house, and matrimonial
conveniences and comforts, and such like.  The preachers of Varennes, saith
Panurge, detest and abhor the second marriages, as altogether foolish and
dishonest.

Foolish and dishonest? quoth Pantagruel.  A plague take such preachers!
Yea but, quoth Panurge, the like mischief also befall the Friar Charmer,
who, in a full auditory making a sermon at Pereilly, and therein
abominating the reiteration of marriage and the entering again in the bonds
of a nuptial tie, did swear and heartily give himself to the swiftest devil
in hell, if he had not rather choose, and would much more willingly
undertake the unmaidening or depucelating of a hundred virgins, than the
simple drudgery of one widow.  Truly I find your reason in that point right
good and strongly grounded.

But what would you think, if the cause why this exemption or immunity was
granted had no other foundation but that, during the whole space of the
said first year, they so lustily bobbed it with their female consorts, as
both reason and equity require they should do, that they had drained and
evacuated their spermatic vessels; and were become thereby altogether
feeble, weak, emasculated, drooping, and flaggingly pithless; yea, in such
sort that they in the day of battle, like ducks which plunge over head and
ears, would sooner hide themselves behind the baggage, than, in the company
of valiant fighters and daring military combatants, appear where stern
Bellona deals her blows and moves a bustling noise of thwacks and thumps?
Nor is it to be thought that, under the standard of Mars, they will so much
as once strike a fair stroke, because their most considerable knocks have
been already jerked and whirrited within the curtains of his sweetheart
Venus.

In confirmation whereof, amongst other relics and monuments of antiquity,
we now as yet often see, that in all great houses, after the expiring of
some few days, these young married blades are readily sent away to visit
their uncles, that in the absence of their wives reposing themselves a
little they may recover their decayed strength by the recruit of a fresh
supply, the more vigorous to return again and face about to renew the
duelling shock and conflict of an amorous dalliance, albeit for the greater
part they have neither uncle nor aunt to go to.

Just so did the King Crackart, after the battle of the Cornets, not cashier
us (speaking properly), I mean me and the Quail-caller, but for our
refreshment remanded us to our houses; and he is as yet seeking after his
own.  My grandfather's godmother was wont to say to me when I was a boy,--

  Patenostres et oraisons
  Sont pour ceux-la, qui les retiennent.
  Ung fiffre en fenaisons
  Est plus fort que deux qui en viennent.

  Not orisons nor patenotres
  Shall ever disorder my brain.
  One cadet, to the field as he flutters,
  Is worth two, when they end the campaign.

That which prompteth me to that opinion is, that the vine-planters did
seldom eat of the grapes, or drink of the wine of their labour, till the
first year was wholly elapsed.  During all which time also the builders did
hardly inhabit their new-structured dwelling-places, for fear of dying
suffocated through want of respiration; as Galen hath most learnedly
remarked, in the second book of the Difficulty of Breathing.  Under favour,
sir, I have not asked this question without cause causing and reason truly
very ratiocinant.  Be not offended, I pray you.

How Panurge had a flea in his ear, and forbore to wear any longer his
magnificent codpiece.

Panurge, the day thereafter, caused pierce his right ear after the Jewish
fashion, and thereto clasped a little gold ring, of a ferny-like kind of
workmanship, in the beazil or collet whereof was set and enchased a flea;
and, to the end you may be rid of all doubts, you are to know that the flea
was black.  O, what a brave thing it is, in every case and circumstance of
a matter, to be thoroughly well informed!  The sum of the expense hereof,
being cast up, brought in, and laid down upon his council-board carpet, was
found to amount to no more quarterly than the charge of the nuptials of a
Hircanian tigress; even, as you would say, 600,000 maravedis.  At these
vast costs and excessive disbursements, as soon as he perceived himself to
be out of debt, he fretted much; and afterwards, as tyrants and lawyers use
to do, he nourished and fed her with the sweat and blood of his subjects
and clients.

He then took four French ells of a coarse brown russet cloth, and therein
apparelling himself, as with a long, plain-seamed, and single-stitched
gown, left off the wearing of his breeches, and tied a pair of spectacles
to his cap.  In this equipage did he present himself before Pantagruel; to
whom this disguise appeared the more strange, that he did not, as before,
see that goodly, fair, and stately codpiece, which was the sole anchor of
hope wherein he was wonted to rely, and last refuge he had midst all the
waves and boisterous billows which a stormy cloud in a cross fortune would
raise up against him.  Honest Pantagruel, not understanding the mystery,
asked him, by way of interrogatory, what he did intend to personate in that
new-fangled prosopopoeia.  I have, answered Panurge, a flea in mine ear,
and have a mind to marry.  In a good time, quoth Pantagruel, you have told
me joyful tidings.  Yet would not I hold a red-hot iron in my hand for all
the gladness of them.  But it is not the fashion of lovers to be accoutred
in such dangling vestments, so as to have their shirts flagging down over
their knees, without breeches, and with a long robe of a dark brown mingled
hue, which is a colour never used in Talarian garments amongst any persons
of honour, quality, or virtue.  If some heretical persons and schismatical
sectaries have at any time formerly been so arrayed and clothed (though
many have imputed such a kind of dress to cosenage, cheat, imposture, and
an affectation of tyranny upon credulous minds of the rude multitude), I
will nevertheless not blame them for it, nor in that point judge rashly or
sinistrously of them.  Everyone overflowingly aboundeth in his own sense
and fancy; yea, in things of a foreign consideration, altogether
extrinsical and indifferent, which in and of themselves are neither
commendable nor bad, because they proceed not from the interior of the
thoughts and heart, which is the shop of all good and evil; of goodness, if
it be upright, and that its affections be regulated by the pure and clean
spirit of righteousness; and, on the other side, of wickedness, if its
inclinations, straying beyond the bounds of equity, be corrupted and
depraved by the malice and suggestions of the devil.  It is only the
novelty and new-fangledness thereof which I dislike, together with the
contempt of common custom and the fashion which is in use.

The colour, answered Panurge, is convenient, for it is conform to that
of my council-board carpet; therefore will I henceforth hold me with it,
and more narrowly and circumspectly than ever hitherto I have done look to
my affairs and business.  Seeing I am once out of debt, you never yet saw
man more unpleasing than I will be, if God help me not.  Lo, here be my
spectacles.  To see me afar off, you would readily say that it were Friar
(John) Burgess.  I believe certainly that in the next ensuing year I shall
once more preach the Crusade.  Bounce, buckram.  Do you see this russet?
Doubt not but there lurketh under it some hid property and occult virtue
known to very few in the world.  I did not take it on before this morning,
and, nevertheless, am already in a rage of lust, mad after a wife, and
vehemently hot upon untying the codpiece-point; I itch, I tingle, I
wriggle, and long exceedingly to be married, that, without the danger of
cudgel-blows, I may labour my female copes-mate with the hard push of a
bull-horned devil.  O the provident and thrifty husband that I then will
be!  After my death, with all honour and respect due to my frugality, will
they burn the sacred bulk of my body, of purpose to preserve the ashes
thereof, in memory of the choicest pattern that ever was of a perfectly
wary and complete householder.  Cops body, this is not the carpet whereon
my treasurer shall be allowed to play false in his accounts with me, by
setting down an X for a V, or an L for an S.  For in that case should I
make a hail of fisticuffs to fly into his face.  Look upon me, sir, both
before and behind,--it is made after the manner of a toga, which was the
ancient fashion of the Romans in time of peace.  I took the mode, shape,
and form thereof in Trajan's Column at Rome, as also in the Triumphant Arch
of Septimus Severus.  I am tired of the wars, weary of wearing buff-coats,
cassocks, and hoquetons.  My shoulders are pitifully worn and bruised with
the carrying of harness.  Let armour cease, and the long robe bear sway!
At least it must be so for the whole space of the succeeding year, if I be
married; as yesterday, by the Mosaic law, you evidenced.  In what
concerneth the breeches, my great-aunt Laurence did long ago tell me, that
the breeches were only ordained for the use of the codpiece, and to no
other end; which I, upon a no less forcible consequence, give credit to
every whit, as well as to the saying of the fine fellow Galen, who in his
ninth book, Of the Use and Employment of our Members, allegeth that the
head was made for the eyes.  For nature might have placed our heads in our
knees or elbows, but having beforehand determined that the eyes should
serve to discover things from afar, she for the better enabling them to
execute their designed office, fixed them in the head, as on the top of a
long pole, in the most eminent part of all the body--no otherwise than we
see the phares, or high towers erected in the mouths of havens, that
navigators may the further off perceive with ease the lights of the nightly
fires and lanterns.  And because I would gladly, for some short while, a
year at least, take a little rest and breathing time from the toilsome
labour of the military profession, that is to say, be married, I have
desisted from wearing any more a codpiece, and consequently have laid aside
my breeches.  For the codpiece is the principal and most especial piece of
armour that a warrior doth carry; and therefore do I maintain even to the
fire (exclusively, understand you me), that no Turks can properly be said
to be armed men, in regard that codpieces are by their law forbidden to be
worn.

Why the codpiece is held to be the chief piece of armour amongst warriors.

Will you maintain, quoth Pantagruel, that the codpiece is the chief piece
of a military harness?  It is a new kind of doctrine, very paradoxical; for
we say, At spurs begins the arming of a man.  Sir, I maintain it, answered
Panurge, and not wrongfully do I maintain it.  Behold how nature, having a
fervent desire, after its production of plants, trees, shrubs, herbs,
sponges, and plant-animals, to eternize and continue them unto all
succession of ages (in their several kinds or sorts, at least, although the
individuals perish) unruinable, and in an everlasting being, hath most
curiously armed and fenced their buds, sprouts, shoots, and seeds, wherein
the above-mentioned perpetuity consisteth, by strengthening, covering,
guarding, and fortifying them with an admirable industry, with husks,
cases, scurfs and swads, hulls, cods, stones, films, cartels, shells, ears,
rinds, barks, skins, ridges, and prickles, which serve them instead of
strong, fair, and natural codpieces.  As is manifestly apparent in pease,
beans, fasels, pomegranates, peaches, cottons, gourds, pumpions, melons,
corn, lemons, almonds, walnuts, filberts, and chestnuts; as likewise in all
plants, slips, or sets whatsoever, wherein it is plainly and evidently
seen, that the sperm and semence is more closely veiled, overshadowed,
corroborated, and thoroughly harnessed, than any other part, portion, or
parcel of the whole.

Nature, nevertheless, did not after that manner provide for the
sempiternizing of (the) human race; but, on the contrary, created man
naked, tender, and frail, without either offensive or defensive arms; and
that in the estate of innocence, in the first age of all, which was the
golden season; not as a plant, but living creature, born for peace, not
war, and brought forth into the world with an unquestionable right and
title to the plenary fruition and enjoyment of all fruits and vegetables,
as also to a certain calm and gentle rule and dominion over all kinds of
beasts, fowls, fishes, reptiles, and insects.  Yet afterwards it happening
in the time of the iron age, under the reign of Jupiter, when, to the
multiplication of mischievous actions, wickedness and malice began to take
root and footing within the then perverted hearts of men, that the earth
began to bring forth nettles, thistles, thorns, briars, and such other
stubborn and rebellious vegetables to the nature of man.  Nor scarce was
there any animal which by a fatal disposition did not then revolt from him,
and tacitly conspire and covenant with one another to serve him no longer,
nor, in case of their ability to resist, to do him any manner of obedience,
but rather, to the uttermost of their power, to annoy him with all the hurt
and harm they could.  The man, then, that he might maintain his primitive
right and prerogative, and continue his sway and dominion over all, both
vegetable and sensitive creatures, and knowing of a truth that he could not
be well accommodated as he ought without the servitude and subjection of
several animals, bethought himself that of necessity he must needs put on
arms, and make provision of harness against wars and violence.  By the holy
Saint Babingoose, cried out Pantagruel, you are become, since the last
rain, a great lifrelofre,--philosopher, I should say.  Take notice, sir,
quoth Panurge, when Dame Nature had prompted him to his own arming, what
part of the body it was, where, by her inspiration, he clapped on the first
harness.  It was forsooth by the double pluck of my little dog the ballock
and good Senor Don Priapos Stabo-stando--which done, he was content, and
sought no more.  This is certified by the testimony of the great Hebrew
captain (and) philosopher Moses, who affirmeth that he fenced that member
with a brave and gallant codpiece, most exquisitely framed, and by right
curious devices of a notably pregnant invention made up and composed of
fig-tree leaves, which by reason of their solid stiffness, incisory
notches, curled frizzling, sleeked smoothness, large ampleness, together
with their colour, smell, virtue, and faculty, were exceeding proper and
fit for the covering and arming of the satchels of generation--the
hideously big Lorraine cullions being from thence only excepted, which,
swaggering down to the lowermost bottom of the breeches, cannot abide, for
being quite out of all order and method, the stately fashion of the high
and lofty codpiece; as is manifest by the noble Valentine Viardiere, whom I
found at Nancy, on the first day of May--the more flauntingly to
gallantrize it afterwards--rubbing his ballocks, spread out upon a table
after the manner of a Spanish cloak.  Wherefore it is, that none should
henceforth say, who would not speak improperly, when any country bumpkin
hieth to the wars, Have a care, my roister, of the wine-pot, that is, the
skull, but, Have a care, my roister, of the milk-pot, that is, the
testicles.  By the whole rabble of the horned fiends of hell, the head
being cut off, that single person only thereby dieth.  But, if the ballocks
be marred, the whole race of human kind would forthwith perish, and be lost
for ever.

This was the motive which incited the goodly writer Galen, Lib. 1. De
Spermate, to aver with boldness that it were better, that is to say, a less
evil, to have no heart at all than to be quite destitute of genitories; for
there is laid up, conserved, and put in store, as in a secessive repository
and sacred warehouse, the semence and original source of the whole
offspring of mankind.  Therefore would I be apt to believe, for less than a
hundred francs, that those are the very same stones by means whereof
Deucalion and Pyrrha restored the human race, in peopling with men and
women the world, which a little before that had been drowned in the
overflowing waves of a poetical deluge.  This stirred up the valiant
Justinian, L. 4. De Cagotis tollendis, to collocate his Summum Bonum, in
Braguibus, et Braguetis.  For this and other causes, the Lord Humphrey de
Merville, following of his king to a certain warlike expedition, whilst he
was in trying upon his own person a new suit of armour, for of his old
rusty harness he could make no more use, by reason that some few years
since the skin of his belly was a great way removed from his kidneys, his
lady thereupon, in the profound musing of a contemplative spirit, very
maturely considering that he had but small care of the staff of love and
packet of marriage, seeing he did no otherwise arm that part of the body
than with links of mail, advised him to shield, fence, and gabionate it
with a big tilting helmet which she had lying in her closet, to her
otherwise utterly unprofitable.  On this lady were penned these subsequent
verses, which are extant in the third book of the Shitbrana of Paltry
Wenches.

  When Yoland saw her spouse equipp'd for fight,
  And, save the codpiece, all in armour dight,
  My dear, she cried, why, pray, of all the rest
  Is that exposed, you know I love the best?
  Was she to blame for an ill-managed fear,--
  Or rather pious, conscionable care?
  Wise lady, she!  In hurlyburly fight,
  Can any tell where random blows may light?

Leave off then, sir, from being astonished, and wonder no more at this new
manner of decking and trimming up of myself as you now see me.

How Panurge asketh counsel of Pantagruel whether he should marry, yea, or
no.

To this Pantagruel replying nothing, Panurge prosecuted the discourse he
had already broached, and therewithal fetching, as from the bottom of his
heart, a very deep sigh, said, My lord and master, you have heard the
design I am upon, which is to marry, if by some disastrous mischance all
the holes in the world be not shut up, stopped, closed, and bushed.  I
humbly beseech you, for the affection which of a long time you have borne
me, to give me your best advice therein.  Then, answered Pantagruel, seeing
you have so decreed, taken deliberation thereon, and that the matter is
fully determined, what need is there of any further talk thereof, but
forthwith to put it into execution what you have resolved?  Yea but, quoth
Panurge, I would be loth to act anything therein without your counsel had
thereto.  It is my judgment also, quoth Pantagruel, and I advise you to it.
Nevertheless, quoth Panurge, if I understood aright that it were much
better for me to remain a bachelor as I am, than to run headlong upon new
hairbrained undertakings of conjugal adventure, I would rather choose not
to marry.  Quoth Pantagruel, Then do not marry.  Yea but, quoth Panurge,
would you have me so solitarily drive out the whole course of my life,
without the comfort of a matrimonial consort?  You know it is written, Vae
soli! and a single person is never seen to reap the joy and solace that is
found with married folks.  Then marry, in the name of God, quoth
Pantagruel.  But if, quoth Panurge, my wife should make me a cuckold--as it
is not unknown unto you, how this hath been a very plentiful year in the
production of that kind of cattle--I would fly out, and grow impatient
beyond all measure and mean.  I love cuckolds with my heart, for they seem
unto me to be of a right honest conversation, and I truly do very willingly
frequent their company; but should I die for it, I would not be one of
their number.  That is a point for me of a too sore prickling point.  Then
do not marry, quoth Pantagruel, for without all controversy this sentence
of Seneca is infallibly true, What thou to others shalt have done, others
will do the like to thee.  Do you, quoth Panurge, aver that without all
exception?  Yes, truly, quoth Pantagruel, without all exception.  Ho, ho,
says Panurge, by the wrath of a little devil, his meaning is, either in
this world or in the other which is to come.  Yet seeing I can no more want
a wife than a blind man his staff--(for) the funnel must be in agitation,
without which manner of occupation I cannot live--were it not a great deal
better for me to apply and associate myself to some one honest, lovely, and
virtuous woman, than as I do, by a new change of females every day, run a
hazard of being bastinadoed, or, which is worse, of the great pox, if not
of both together.  For never--be it spoken by their husbands' leave and
favour--had I enjoyment yet of an honest woman.  Marry then, in God's name,
quoth Pantagruel.  But if, quoth Panurge, it were the will of God, and that
my destiny did unluckily lead me to marry an honest woman who should beat
me, I would be stored with more than two third parts of the patience of
Job, if I were not stark mad by it, and quite distracted with such rugged
dealings.  For it hath been told me that those exceeding honest women have
ordinarily very wicked head-pieces; therefore is it that their family
lacketh not for good vinegar.  Yet in that case should it go worse with me,
if I did not then in such sort bang her back and breast, so thumpingly
bethwack her gillets, to wit, her arms, legs, head, lights, liver, and
milt, with her other entrails, and mangle, jag, and slash her coats so
after the cross-billet fashion that the greatest devil of hell should wait
at the gate for the reception of her damnel soul.  I could make a shift for
this year to waive such molestation and disquiet, and be content to lay
aside that trouble, and not to be engaged in it.

Do not marry then, answered Pantagruel.  Yea but, quoth Panurge,
considering the condition wherein I now am, out of debt and unmarried; mark
what I say, free from all debt, in an ill hour, for, were I deeply on the
score, my creditors would be but too careful of my paternity, but being
quit, and not married, nobody will be so regardful of me, or carry towards
me a love like that which is said to be in a conjugal affection.  And if by
some mishap I should fall sick, I would be looked to very waywardly.  The
wise man saith, Where there is no woman--I mean the mother of a family and
wife in the union of a lawful wedlock--the crazy and diseased are in danger
of being ill used and of having much brabbling and strife about them; as by
clear experience hath been made apparent in the persons of popes, legates,
cardinals, bishops, abbots, priors, priests, and monks; but there, assure
yourself, you shall not find me.  Marry then, in the name of God, answered
Pantagruel.  But if, quoth Panurge, being ill at ease, and possibly through
that distemper made unable to discharge the matrimonial duty that is
incumbent to an active husband, my wife, impatient of that drooping
sickness and faint-fits of a pining languishment, should abandon and
prostitute herself to the embraces of another man, and not only then not
help and assist me in my extremity and need, but withal flout at and make
sport of that my grievous distress and calamity; or peradventure, which is
worse, embezzle my goods and steal from me, as I have seen it oftentimes
befall unto the lot of many other men, it were enough to undo me utterly,
to fill brimful the cup of my misfortune, and make me play the mad-pate
reeks of Bedlam.  Do not marry then, quoth Pantagruel.  Yea but, said
Panurge, I shall never by any other means come to have lawful sons and
daughters, in whom I may harbour some hope of perpetuating my name and
arms, and to whom also I may leave and bequeath my inheritances and
purchased goods (of which latter sort you need not doubt but that in some
one or other of these mornings I will make a fair and goodly show), that so
I may cheer up and make merry when otherwise I should be plunged into a
peevish sullen mood of pensive sullenness, as I do perceive daily by the
gentle and loving carriage of your kind and gracious father towards you; as
all honest folks use to do at their own homes and private dwelling-houses.
For being free from debt, and yet not married, if casually I should fret
and be angry, although the cause of my grief and displeasure were never so
just, I am afraid, instead of consolation, that I should meet with nothing
else but scoffs, frumps, gibes, and mocks at my disastrous fortune.  Marry
then, in the name of God, quoth Pantagruel.

How Pantagruel representeth unto Panurge the difficulty of giving advice in
the matter of marriage; and to that purpose mentioneth somewhat of the
Homeric and Virgilian lotteries.

Your counsel, quoth Panurge, under your correction and favour, seemeth unto
me not unlike to the song of Gammer Yea-by-nay.  It is full of sarcasms,
mockeries, bitter taunts, nipping bobs, derisive quips, biting jerks, and
contradictory iterations, the one part destroying the other.  I know not,
quoth Pantagruel, which of all my answers to lay hold on; for your
proposals are so full of ifs and buts, that I can ground nothing on them,
nor pitch upon any solid and positive determination satisfactory to what is
demanded by them.  Are not you assured within yourself of what you have a
mind to?  The chief and main point of the whole matter lieth there.  All
the rest is merely casual, and totally dependeth upon the fatal disposition
of the heavens.

We see some so happy in the fortune of this nuptial encounter, that their
family shineth as it were with the radiant effulgency of an idea, model, or
representation of the joys of paradise; and perceive others, again, to be
so unluckily matched in the conjugal yoke, that those very basest of devils
which tempt the hermits that inhabit the deserts of Thebais and Montserrat
are not more miserable than they.  It is therefore expedient, seeing you
are resolved for once to take a trial of the state of marriage, that, with
shut eyes, bowing your head, and kissing the ground, you put the business
to a venture, and give it a fair hazard, in recommending the success of the
residue to the disposure of Almighty God.  It lieth not in my power to give
you any other manner of assurance, or otherwise to certify you of what
shall ensue on this your undertaking.  Nevertheless, if it please you, this
you may do.  Bring hither Virgil's poems, that after having opened the
book, and with our fingers severed the leaves thereof three several times,
we may, according to the number agreed upon betwixt ourselves, explore the
future hap of your intended marriage.  For frequently by a Homeric lottery
have many hit upon their destinies; as is testified in the person of
Socrates, who, whilst he was in prison, hearing the recitation of this
verse of Homer, said of Achilles in the Ninth of the Iliads--

  Emati ke tritato Phthien eribolon ikoimen,

  We, the third day, to fertile Pthia came--

thereby foresaw that on the third subsequent day he was to die.  Of the
truth whereof he assured Aeschines; as Plato, in Critone, Cicero, in Primo,
de Divinatione, Diogenes Laertius, and others, have to the full recorded in
their works.  The like is also witnessed by Opilius Macrinus, to whom,
being desirous to know if he should be the Roman emperor, befell, by chance
of lot, this sentence in the Eighth of the Iliads--

  O geron, e mala de se neoi teirousi machetai,
  Ze de bin lelutai, chalepon de se geras opazei.

  Dotard, new warriors urge thee to be gone.
  Thy life decays, and old age weighs thee down.

In fact, he, being then somewhat ancient, had hardly enjoyed the
sovereignty of the empire for the space of fourteen months, when by
Heliogabalus, then both young and strong, he was dispossessed thereof,
thrust out of all, and killed.  Brutus doth also bear witness of another
experiment of this nature, who willing, through this exploratory way by
lot, to learn what the event and issue should be of the Pharsalian battle
wherein he perished, he casually encountered on this verse, said of
Patroclus in the Sixteenth of the Iliads--

  Alla me moir oloe, kai Letous ektanen uios.

  Fate, and Latona's son have shot me dead.

And accordingly Apollo was the field-word in the dreadful day of that
fight.  Divers notable things of old have likewise been foretold and known
by casting of Virgilian lots; yea, in matters of no less importance than
the obtaining of the Roman empire, as it happened to Alexander Severus,
who, trying his fortune at the said kind of lottery, did hit upon this
verse written in the Sixth of the Aeneids--

  Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.

  Know, Roman, that thy business is to reign.

He, within very few years thereafter, was effectually and in good earnest
created and installed Roman emperor.  A semblable story thereto is related
of Adrian, who, being hugely perplexed within himself out of a longing
humour to know in what account he was with the Emperor Trajan, and how
large the measure of that affection was which he did bear unto him, had
recourse, after the manner above specified, to the Maronian lottery, which
by haphazard tendered him these lines out of the Sixth of the Aeneids--

  Quis procul ille autem, ramis insignis olivae
  Sacra ferens?  Nosco crines incanaque menta
  Regis Romani.

  But who is he, conspicuous from afar,
  With olive boughs, that doth his offerings bear?
  By the white hair and beard I know him plain,
  The Roman king.

Shortly thereafter was he adopted by Trajan, and succeeded to him in the
empire.  Moreover, to the lot of the praiseworthy Emperor Claudius befell
this line of Virgil, written in the Sixth of his Aeneids--

  Tertia dum Latio regnantem viderit aestas.

  Whilst the third summer saw him reign, a king
  In Latium.

And in effect he did not reign above two years.  To the said Claudian also,
inquiring concerning his brother Quintilius, whom he proposed as a
colleague with himself in the empire, happened the response following in
the Sixth of the Aeneids--

  Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata.

    Whom Fate let us see,
  And would no longer suffer him to be.

And it so fell out; for he was killed on the seventeenth day after he had
attained unto the management of the imperial charge.  The very same lot,
also, with the like misluck, did betide the Emperor Gordian the younger.
To Claudius Albinus, being very solicitous to understand somewhat of his
future adventures, did occur this saying, which is written in the Sixth of
the Aeneids--

  Hic rem Romanam magno turbante tumultu
  Sistet Eques, &c.

  The Romans, boiling with tumultuous rage,
  This warrior shall the dangerous storm assuage:
  With victories he the Carthaginian mauls,
  And with strong hand shall crush the rebel Gauls.

Likewise, when the Emperor D. Claudius, Aurelian's predecessor, did with
great eagerness research after the fate to come of his posterity, his hap
was to alight on this verse in the First of the Aeneids--

  Hic ego nec metas rerum, nec tempora pono.

  No bounds are to be set, no limits here.

Which was fulfilled by the goodly genealogical row of his race.  When Mr.
Peter Amy did in like manner explore and make trial if he should escape the
ambush of the hobgoblins who lay in wait all-to-bemaul him, he fell upon
this verse in the Third of the Aeneids--

  Heu! fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum!

  Oh, flee the bloody land, the wicked shore!

Which counsel he obeying, safe and sound forthwith avoided all these
ambuscades.

Were it not to shun prolixity, I could enumerate a thousand such like
adventures, which, conform to the dictate and verdict of the verse, have by
that manner of lot-casting encounter befallen to the curious researchers of
them.  Do not you nevertheless imagine, lest you should be deluded, that I
would upon this kind of fortune-flinging proof infer an uncontrollable and
not to be gainsaid infallibility of truth.

How Pantagruel showeth the trial of one's fortune by the throwing of dice
to be unlawful.

It would be sooner done, quoth Panurge, and more expeditely, if we should
try the matter at the chance of three fair dice.  Quoth Pantagruel, That
sort of lottery is deceitful, abusive, illicitous, and exceedingly
scandalous.  Never trust in it.  The accursed book of the Recreation of
Dice was a great while ago excogitated in Achaia, near Bourre, by that
ancient enemy of mankind, the infernal calumniator, who, before the statue
or massive image of the Bourraic Hercules, did of old, and doth in several
places of the world as yet, make many simple souls to err and fall into his
snares.  You know how my father Gargantua hath forbidden it over all his
kingdoms and dominions; how he hath caused burn the moulds and draughts
thereof, and altogether suppressed, abolished, driven forth, and cast it
out of the land, as a most dangerous plague and infection to any
well-polished state or commonwealth.  What I have told you of dice, I say
the same of the play at cockall.  It is a lottery of the like guile and
deceitfulness; and therefore do not for convincing of me allege in
opposition to this my opinion, or bring in the example of the fortunate cast
of Tiberius, within the fountain of Aponus, at the oracle of Gerion. These
are the baited hooks by which the devil attracts and draweth unto him the
foolish souls of silly people into eternal perdition.

Nevertheless, to satisfy your humour in some measure, I am content you
throw three dice upon this table, that, according to the number of the
blots which shall happen to be cast up, we may hit upon a verse of that
page which in the setting open of the book you shall have pitched upon.

Have you any dice in your pocket?  A whole bagful, answered Panurge.  That
is provision against the devil, as is expounded by Merlin Coccaius, Lib.
2. De Patria Diabolorum.  The devil would be sure to take me napping, and
very much at unawares, if he should find me without dice.  With this, the
three dice being taken out, produced, and thrown, they fell so pat upon the
lower points that the cast was five, six, and five.  These are, quoth
Panurge, sixteen in all.  Let us take the sixteenth line of the page.  The
number pleaseth me very well; I hope we shall have a prosperous and happy
chance.  May I be thrown amidst all the devils of hell, even as a great
bowl cast athwart at a set of ninepins, or cannon-ball shot among a
battalion of foot, in case so many times I do not boult my future wife the
first night of our marriage!  Of that, forsooth, I make no doubt at all,
quoth Pantagruel.  You needed not to have rapped forth such a horrid
imprecation, the sooner to procure credit for the performance of so small a
business, seeing possibly the first bout will be amiss, and that you know
is usually at tennis called fifteen.  At the next justling turn you may
readily amend that fault, and so complete your reckoning of sixteen.  Is it
so, quoth Panurge, that you understand the matter?  And must my words be
thus interpreted?  Nay, believe me never yet was any solecism committed by
that valiant champion who often hath for me in Belly-dale stood sentry at
the hypogastrian cranny.  Did you ever hitherto find me in the
confraternity of the faulty?  Never, I trow; never, nor ever shall, for
ever and a day.  I do the feat like a goodly friar or father confessor,
without default.  And therein am I willing to be judged by the players.  He
had no sooner spoke these words than the works of Virgil were brought in.
But before the book was laid open, Panurge said to Pantagruel, My heart,
like the furch of a hart in a rut, doth beat within my breast.  Be pleased
to feel and grope my pulse a little on this artery of my left arm. At its
frequent rise and fall you would say that they swinge and belabour me after
the manner of a probationer, posed and put to a peremptory trial in the
examination of his sufficiency for the discharge of the learned duty of a
graduate in some eminent degree in the college of the Sorbonists.

But would you not hold it expedient, before we proceed any further, that we
should invocate Hercules and the Tenetian goddesses who in the chamber of
lots are said to rule, sit in judgment, and bear a presidential sway?
Neither him nor them, answered Pantagruel; only open up the leaves of the
book with your fingers, and set your nails awork.

How Pantagruel doth explore by the Virgilian lottery what fortune Panurge
shall have in his marriage.

Then at the opening of the book in the sixteenth row of the lines of the
disclosed page did Panurge encounter upon this following verse:

  Nec Deus hunc mensa, Dea nec dignata cubili est.

  The god him from his table banished,
  Nor would the goddess have him in her bed.

This response, quoth Pantagruel, maketh not very much for your benefit or
advantage; for it plainly signifies and denoteth that your wife shall be a
strumpet, and yourself by consequence a cuckold.  The goddess, whom you
shall not find propitious nor favourable unto you, is Minerva, a most
redoubtable and dreadful virgin, a powerful and fulminating goddess, an
enemy to cuckolds and effeminate youngsters, to cuckold-makers and
adulterers.  The god is Jupiter, a terrible and thunder-striking god from
heaven.  And withal it is to be remarked, that, conform to the doctrine of
the ancient Etrurians, the manubes, for so did they call the darting hurls
or slinging casts of the Vulcanian thunderbolts, did only appertain to her
and to Jupiter her father capital.  This was verified in the conflagration
of the ships of Ajax Oileus, nor doth this fulminating power belong to any
other of the Olympic gods.  Men, therefore, stand not in such fear of them.
Moreover, I will tell you, and you may take it as extracted out of the
profoundest mysteries of mythology, that, when the giants had enterprised
the waging of a war against the power of the celestial orbs, the gods at
first did laugh at those attempts, and scorned such despicable enemies, who
were, in their conceit, not strong enough to cope in feats of warfare with
their pages; but when they saw by the gigantine labour the high hill Pelion
set on lofty Ossa, and that the mount Olympus was made shake to be erected
on the top of both, then was it that Jupiter held a parliament, or general
convention, wherein it was unanimously resolved upon and condescended to by
all the gods, that they should worthily and valiantly stand to their
defence.  And because they had often seen battles lost by the cumbersome
lets and disturbing encumbrances of women confusedly huddled in amongst
armies, it was at that time decreed and enacted that they should expel and
drive out of heaven into Egypt and the confines of Nile that whole crew of
goddesses, disguised in the shapes of weasels, polecats, bats, shrew-mice,
ferrets, fulmarts, and other such like odd transformations; only Minerva
was reserved to participate with Jupiter in the horrific fulminating power,
as being the goddess both of war and learning, of arts and arms, of counsel
and despatch--a goddess armed from her birth, a goddess dreaded in heaven,
in the air, by sea and land.  By the belly of Saint Buff, quoth Panurge,
should I be Vulcan, whom the poet blazons?  Nay, I am neither a cripple,
coiner of false money, nor smith, as he was.  My wife possibly will be as
comely and handsome as ever was his Venus, but not a whore like her, nor I
a cuckold like him.  The crook-legged slovenly slave made himself to be
declared a cuckold by a definite sentence and judgment, in the open view of
all the gods.  For this cause ought you to interpret the afore-mentioned
verse quite contrary to what you have said.  This lot importeth that my
wife will be honest, virtuous, chaste, loyal, and faithful; not armed,
surly, wayward, cross, giddy, humorous, heady, hairbrained, or extracted
out of the brains, as was the goddess Pallas; nor shall this fair jolly
Jupiter be my co-rival.  He shall never dip his bread in my broth, though
we should sit together at one table.

Consider his exploits and gallant actions.  He was the manifest ruffian,
wencher, whoremonger, and most infamous cuckold-maker that ever breathed.
He did always lecher it like a boar, and no wonder, for he was fostered by
a sow in the Isle of Candia, if Agathocles the Babylonian be not a liar,
and more rammishly lascivious than a buck; whence it is that he is said by
others to have been suckled and fed with the milk of the Amalthaean goat.
By the virtue of Acheron, he justled, bulled, and lastauriated in one day
the third part of the world, beasts and people, floods and mountains; that
was Europa.  For this grand subagitatory achievement the Ammonians caused
draw, delineate, and paint him in the figure and shape of a ram ramming,
and horned ram.  But I know well enough how to shield and preserve myself
from that horned champion.  He will not, trust me, have to deal in my
person with a sottish, dunsical Amphitryon, nor with a silly witless Argus,
for all his hundred spectacles, nor yet with the cowardly meacock Acrisius,
the simple goose-cap Lycus of Thebes, the doting blockhead Agenor, the
phlegmatic pea-goose Aesop, rough-footed Lycaon, the luskish misshapen
Corytus of Tuscany, nor with the large-backed and strong-reined Atlas.  Let
him alter, change, transform, and metamorphose himself into a hundred
various shapes and figures, into a swan, a bull, a satyr, a shower of gold,
or into a cuckoo, as he did when he unmaidened his sister Juno; into an
eagle, ram, or dove, as when he was enamoured of the virgin Phthia, who
then dwelt in the Aegean territory; into fire, a serpent, yea, even into a
flea; into Epicurean and Democratical atoms, or, more
Magistronostralistically, into those sly intentions of the mind, which in
the schools are called second notions,--I'll catch him in the nick, and
take him napping.  And would you know what I would do unto him?  Even that
which to his father Coelum Saturn did--Seneca foretold it of me, and
Lactantius hath confirmed it--what the goddess Rhea did to Athis.  I would
make him two stone lighter, rid him of his Cyprian cymbals, and cut so
close and neatly by the breech, that there shall not remain thereof so much
as one--, so cleanly would I shave him, and disable him for ever from being
Pope, for Testiculos non habet.  Hold there, said Pantagruel; ho, soft and
fair, my lad!  Enough of that,--cast up, turn over the leaves, and try your
fortune for the second time.  Then did he fall upon this ensuing verse:

  Membra quatit, gelidusque coit formidine sanguis.

  His joints and members quake, he becomes pale,
  And sudden fear doth his cold blood congeal.

This importeth, quoth Pantagruel, that she will soundly bang your back and
belly.  Clean and quite contrary, answered Panurge; it is of me that he
prognosticates, in saying that I will beat her like a tiger if she vex me.
Sir Martin Wagstaff will perform that office, and in default of a cudgel,
the devil gulp him, if I should not eat her up quick, as Candaul the Lydian
king did his wife, whom he ravened and devoured.

You are very stout, says Pantagruel, and courageous; Hercules himself durst
hardly adventure to scuffle with you in this your raging fury.  Nor is it
strange; for the Jan is worth two, and two in fight against Hercules are
too too strong.  Am I a Jan? quoth Panurge.  No, no, answered Pantagruel.
My mind was only running upon the lurch and tricktrack.  Thereafter did he
hit, at the third opening of the book, upon this verse:

  Foemineo praedae, et spoliorum ardebat amore.

  After the spoil and pillage, as in fire,
  He burnt with a strong feminine desire.

This portendeth, quoth Pantagruel, that she will steal your goods, and rob
you.  Hence this, according to these three drawn lots, will be your future
destiny, I clearly see it,--you will be a cuckold, you will be beaten, and
you will be robbed.  Nay, it is quite otherwise, quoth Panurge; for it is
certain that this verse presageth that she will love me with a perfect
liking.  Nor did the satyr-writing poet lie in proof hereof, when he
affirmed that a woman, burning with extreme affection, takes sometimes
pleasure to steal from her sweetheart.  And what, I pray you?  A glove, a
point, or some such trifling toy of no importance, to make him keep a
gentle kind of stirring in the research and quest thereof.  In like manner,
these small scolding debates and petty brabbling contentions, which
frequently we see spring up and for a certain space boil very hot betwixt a
couple of high-spirited lovers, are nothing else but recreative diversions
for their refreshment, spurs to and incentives of a more fervent amity than
ever.  As, for example, we do sometimes see cutlers with hammers maul their
finest whetstones, therewith to sharpen their iron tools the better.  And
therefore do I think that these three lots make much for my advantage;
which, if not, I from their sentence totally appeal.  There is no
appellation, quoth Pantagruel, from the decrees of fate or destiny, of lot
or chance; as is recorded by our ancient lawyers, witness Baldus, Lib. ult.
Cap. de Leg.  The reason hereof is, Fortune doth not acknowledge a
superior, to whom an appeal may be made from her or any of her substitutes.
And in this case the pupil cannot be restored to his right in full, as
openly by the said author is alleged in L. Ait Praetor, paragr. ult. ff. de
minor.

How Pantagruel adviseth Panurge to try the future good or bad luck of his
marriage by dreams.

Now, seeing we cannot agree together in the manner of expounding or
interpreting the sense of the Virgilian lots, let us bend our course
another way, and try a new sort of divination.  Of what kind? asked
Panurge.  Of a good ancient and authentic fashion, answered Pantagruel; it
is by dreams.  For in dreaming, such circumstances and conditions being
thereto adhibited, as are clearly enough described by Hippocrates, in Lib.
Peri ton enupnion, by Plato, Plotin, Iamblicus, Sinesius, Aristotle,
Xenophon, Galen, Plutarch, Artemidorus, Daldianus, Herophilus, Q. Calaber,
Theocritus, Pliny, Athenaeus, and others, the soul doth oftentimes foresee
what is to come.  How true this is, you may conceive by a very vulgar and
familiar example; as when you see that at such a time as suckling babes,
well nourished, fed, and fostered with good milk, sleep soundly and
profoundly, the nurses in the interim get leave to sport themselves, and
are licentiated to recreate their fancies at what range to them shall seem
most fitting and expedient, their presence, sedulity, and attendance on
the cradle being, during all that space, held unnecessary.  Even just so,
when our body is at rest, that the concoction is everywhere accomplished,
and that, till it awake, it lacks for nothing, our soul delighteth to
disport itself and is well pleased in that frolic to take a review of its
native country, which is the heavens, where it receiveth a most notable
participation of its first beginning with an imbuement from its divine
source, and in contemplation of that infinite and intellectual sphere,
whereof the centre is everywhere, and the circumference in no place of the
universal world, to wit, God, according to the doctrine of Hermes
Trismegistus, to whom no new thing happeneth, whom nothing that is past
escapeth, and unto whom all things are alike present, remarketh not only
what is preterit and gone in the inferior course and agitation of sublunary
matters, but withal taketh notice what is to come; then bringing a relation
of those future events unto the body of the outward senses and exterior
organs, it is divulged abroad unto the hearing of others.  Whereupon the
owner of that soul deserveth to be termed a vaticinator, or prophet.
Nevertheless, the truth is, that the soul is seldom able to report those
things in such sincerity as it hath seen them, by reason of the
imperfection and frailty of the corporeal senses, which obstruct the
effectuating of that office; even as the moon doth not communicate unto
this earth of ours that light which she receiveth from the sun with so much
splendour, heat, vigour, purity, and liveliness as it was given her.  Hence
it is requisite for the better reading, explaining, and unfolding of these
somniatory vaticinations and predictions of that nature, that a dexterous,
learned, skilful, wise, industrious, expert, rational, and peremptory
expounder or interpreter be pitched upon, such a one as by the Greeks is
called onirocrit, or oniropolist.  For this cause Heraclitus was wont to
say that nothing is by dreams revealed to us, that nothing is by dreams
concealed from us, and that only we thereby have a mystical signification
and secret evidence of things to come, either for our own prosperous or
unlucky fortune, or for the favourable or disastrous success of another.
The sacred Scriptures testify no less, and profane histories assure us of
it, in both which are exposed to our view a thousand several kinds of
strange adventures, which have befallen pat according to the nature of the
dream, and that as well to the party dreamer as to others.  The Atlantic
people, and those that inhabit the (is)land of Thasos, one of the Cyclades,
are of this grand commodity deprived; for in their countries none yet ever
dreamed.  Of this sort (were) Cleon of Daulia, Thrasymedes, and in our days
the learned Frenchman Villanovanus, neither of all which knew what dreaming
was.

Fail not therefore to-morrow, when the jolly and fair Aurora with her rosy
fingers draweth aside the curtains of the night to drive away the sable
shades of darkness, to bend your spirits wholly to the task of sleeping
sound, and thereto apply yourself.  In the meanwhile you must denude your
mind of every human passion or affection, such as are love and hatred, fear
and hope, for as of old the great vaticinator, most famous and renowned
prophet Proteus, was not able in his disguise or transformation into fire,
water, a tiger, a dragon, and other such like uncouth shapes and visors, to
presage anything that was to come till he was restored to his own first
natural and kindly form; just so doth man; for, at his reception of the art
of divination and faculty of prognosticating future things, that part in
him which is the most divine, to wit, the Nous, or Mens, must be calm,
peaceable, untroubled, quiet, still, hushed, and not embusied or distracted
with foreign, soul-disturbing perturbations.  I am content, quoth Panurge.
But, I pray you, sir, must I this evening, ere I go to bed, eat much or
little?  I do not ask this without cause.  For if I sup not well, large,
round, and amply, my sleeping is not worth a forked turnip.  All the night
long I then but doze and rave, and in my slumbering fits talk idle
nonsense, my thoughts being in a dull brown study, and as deep in their
dumps as is my belly hollow.

Not to sup, answered Pantagruel, were best for you, considering the state
of your complexion and healthy constitution of your body.  A certain very
ancient prophet, named Amphiaraus, wished such as had a mind by dreams to
be imbued with any oracle, for four-and-twenty hours to taste no victuals,
and to abstain from wine three days together.  Yet shall not you be put to
such a sharp, hard, rigorous, and extreme sparing diet.  I am truly right
apt to believe that a man whose stomach is replete with various cheer, and
in a manner surfeited with drinking, is hardly able to conceive aright of
spiritual things; yet am not I of the opinion of those who, after long and
pertinacious fastings, think by such means to enter more profoundly into
the speculation of celestial mysteries.  You may very well remember how my
father Gargantua (whom here for honour sake I name) hath often told us that
the writings of abstinent, abstemious, and long-fasting hermits were every
whit as saltless, dry, jejune, and insipid as were their bodies when they
did compose them.  It is a most difficult thing for the spirits to be in a
good plight, serene and lively, when there is nothing in the body but a
kind of voidness and inanity; seeing the philosophers with the physicians
jointly affirm that the spirits which are styled animal spring from, and
have their constant practice in and through the arterial blood, refined and
purified to the life within the admirable net which, wonderfully framed,
lieth under the ventricles and tunnels of the brain.  He gave us also the
example of the philosopher who, when he thought most seriously to have
withdrawn himself unto a solitary privacy, far from the rustling
clutterments of the tumultuous and confused world, the better to improve
his theory, to contrive, comment, and ratiocinate, was, notwithstanding his
uttermost endeavours to free himself from all untoward noises, surrounded
and environed about so with the barking of curs, bawling of mastiffs,
bleating of sheep, prating of parrots, tattling of jackdaws, grunting of
swine, girning of boars, yelping of foxes, mewing of cats, cheeping of
mice, squeaking of weasels, croaking of frogs, crowing of cocks, cackling
of hens, calling of partridges, chanting of swans, chattering of jays,
peeping of chickens, singing of larks, creaking of geese, chirping of
swallows, clucking of moorfowls, cucking of cuckoos, bumbling of bees,
rammage of hawks, chirming of linnets, croaking of ravens, screeching of
owls, whicking of pigs, gushing of hogs, curring of pigeons, grumbling of
cushat-doves, howling of panthers, curkling of quails, chirping of
sparrows, crackling of crows, nuzzing of camels, wheening of whelps,
buzzing of dromedaries, mumbling of rabbits, cricking of ferrets, humming
of wasps, mioling of tigers, bruzzing of bears, sussing of kitlings,
clamouring of scarfs, whimpering of fulmarts, booing of buffaloes, warbling
of nightingales, quavering of mavises, drintling of turkeys, coniating of
storks, frantling of peacocks, clattering of magpies, murmuring of
stock-doves, crouting of cormorants, cigling of locusts, charming of
beagles, guarring of puppies, snarling of messens, rantling of rats,
guerieting of apes, snuttering of monkeys, pioling of pelicans, quacking of
ducks, yelling of wolves, roaring of lions, neighing of horses, crying of
elephants, hissing of serpents, and wailing of turtles, that he was much
more troubled than if he had been in the middle of the crowd at the fair of
Fontenay or Niort.  Just so is it with those who are tormented with the
grievous pangs of hunger.  The stomach begins to gnaw, and bark, as it were,
the eyes to look dim, and the veins, by greedily sucking some refection to
themselves from the proper substance of all the members of a fleshy
consistence, violently pull down and draw back that vagrant, roaming spirit,
careless and neglecting of his nurse and natural host, which is the body; as
when a hawk upon the fist, willing to take her flight by a soaring aloft in
the open spacious air, is on a sudden drawn back by a leash tied to her
feet.

To this purpose also did he allege unto us the authority of Homer, the
father of all philosophy, who said that the Grecians did not put an end to
their mournful mood for the death of Patroclus, the most intimate friend of
Achilles, till hunger in a rage declared herself, and their bellies
protested to furnish no more tears unto their grief.  For from bodies
emptied and macerated by long fasting there could not be such supply of
moisture and brackish drops as might be proper on that occasion.

Mediocrity at all times is commendable; nor in this case are you to abandon
it.  You may take a little supper, but thereat must you not eat of a hare,
nor of any other flesh.  You are likewise to abstain from beans, from the
preak, by some called the polyp, as also from coleworts, cabbage, and all
other such like windy victuals, which may endanger the troubling of your
brains and the dimming or casting a kind of mist over your animal spirits.
For, as a looking-glass cannot exhibit the semblance or representation of
the object set before it, and exposed to have its image to the life
expressed, if that the polished sleekedness thereof be darkened by gross
breathings, dampish vapours, and foggy, thick, infectious exhalations, even
so the fancy cannot well receive the impression of the likeness of those
things which divination doth afford by dreams, if any way the body be
annoyed or troubled with the fumish steam of meat which it had taken in a
while before; because betwixt these two there still hath been a mutual
sympathy and fellow-feeling of an indissolubly knit affection.  You shall
eat good Eusebian and Bergamot pears, one apple of the short-shank pippin
kind, a parcel of the little plums of Tours, and some few cherries of the
growth of my orchard.  Nor shall you need to fear that thereupon will ensue
doubtful dreams, fallacious, uncertain, and not to be trusted to, as by
some peripatetic philosophers hath been related; for that, say they, men do
more copiously in the season of harvest feed on fruitages than at any other
time.  The same is mystically taught us by the ancient prophets and poets,
who allege that all vain and deceitful dreams lie hid and in covert under
the leaves which are spread on the ground--by reason that the leaves fall
from the trees in the autumnal quarter.  For the natural fervour which,
abounding in ripe, fresh, recent fruits, cometh by the quickness of its
ebullition to be with ease evaporated into the animal parts of the dreaming
person--the experiment is obvious in most--is a pretty while before it be
expired, dissolved, and evanished.  As for your drink, you are to have it
of the fair, pure water of my fountain.

The condition, quoth Panurge, is very hard.  Nevertheless, cost what price
it will, or whatsoever come of it, I heartily condescend thereto;
protesting that I shall to-morrow break my fast betimes after my somniatory
exercitations.  Furthermore, I recommend myself to Homer's two gates, to
Morpheus, to Iselon, to Phantasus, and unto Phobetor.  If they in this my
great need succour me and grant me that assistance which is fitting, I will
in honour of them all erect a jolly, genteel altar, composed of the softest
down.  If I were now in Laconia, in the temple of Juno, betwixt Oetile and
Thalamis, she suddenly would disentangle my perplexity, resolve me of my
doubts, and cheer me up with fair and jovial dreams in a deep sleep.

Then did he say thus unto Pantagruel:  Sir, were it not expedient for my
purpose to put a branch or two of curious laurel betwixt the quilt and
bolster of my bed, under the pillow on which my head must lean?  There is
no need at all of that, quoth Pantagruel; for, besides that it is a thing
very superstitious, the cheat thereof hath been at large discovered unto us
in the writings of Serapion, Ascalonites, Antiphon, Philochorus, Artemon,
and Fulgentius Planciades.  I could say as much to you of the left shoulder
of a crocodile, as also of a chameleon, without prejudice be it spoken to
the credit which is due to the opinion of old Democritus; and likewise of
the stone of the Bactrians, called Eumetrides, and of the Ammonian horn;
for so by the Aethiopians is termed a certain precious stone, coloured like
gold, and in the fashion, shape, form, and proportion of a ram's horn, as
the horn of Jupiter Ammon is reported to have been:  they over and above
assuredly affirming that the dreams of those who carry it about them are no
less veritable and infallible than the truth of the divine oracles.  Nor is
this much unlike to what Homer and Virgil wrote of these two gates of
sleep, to which you have been pleased to recommend the management of what
you have in hand.  The one is of ivory, which letteth in confused,
doubtful, and uncertain dreams; for through ivory, how small and slender
soever it be, we can see nothing, the density, opacity, and close
compactedness of its material parts hindering the penetration of the visual
rays and the reception of the specieses of such things as are visible.  The
other is of horn, at which an entry is made to sure and certain dreams,
even as through horn, by reason of the diaphanous splendour and bright
transparency thereof, the species of all objects of the sight distinctly
pass, and so without confusion appear, that they are clearly seen.  Your
meaning is, and you would thereby infer, quoth Friar John, that the dreams
of all horned cuckolds, of which number Panurge, by the help of God and his
future wife, is without controversy to be one, are always true and
infallible.

Panurge's dream, with the interpretation thereof.

At seven o'clock of the next following morning Panurge did not fail to
present himself before Pantagruel, in whose chamber were at that time
Epistemon, Friar John of the Funnels, Ponocrates, Eudemon, Carpalin, and
others, to whom, at the entry of Panurge, Pantagruel said, Lo! here cometh
our dreamer.  That word, quoth Epistemon, in ancient times cost very much,
and was dearly sold to the children of Jacob.  Then said Panurge, I have
been plunged into my dumps so deeply, as if I had been lodged with Gaffer
Noddy-cap.  Dreamed indeed I have, and that right lustily; but I could take
along with me no more thereof that I did goodly understand save only that I
in my vision had a pretty, fair, young, gallant, handsome woman, who no
less lovingly and kindly treated and entertained me, hugged, cherished,
cockered, dandled, and made much of me, as if I had been another neat
dilly-darling minion, like Adonis.  Never was man more glad than I was
then; my joy at that time was incomparable.  She flattered me, tickled me,
stroked me, groped me, frizzled me, curled me, kissed me, embraced me, laid
her hands about my neck, and now and then made jestingly pretty little
horns above my forehead.  I told her in the like disport, as I did play the
fool with her, that she should rather place and fix them in a little below
mine eyes, that I might see the better what I should stick at with them;
for, being so situated, Momus then would find no fault therewith, as he did
once with the position of the horns of bulls.  The wanton, toying girl,
notwithstanding any remonstrance of mine to the contrary, did always drive
and thrust them further in; yet thereby, which to me seemed wonderful, she
did not do me any hurt at all.  A little after, though I know not how, I
thought I was transformed into a tabor, and she into a chough.

My sleeping there being interrupted, I awaked in a start, angry,
displeased, perplexed, chafing, and very wroth.  There have you a large
platterful of dreams, make thereupon good cheer, and, if you please, spare
not to interpret them according to the understanding which you may have in
them.  Come, Carpalin, let us to breakfast.  To my sense and meaning, quoth
Pantagruel, if I have skill or knowledge in the art of divination by
dreams, your wife will not really, and to the outward appearance of the
world, plant or set horns, and stick them fast in your forehead, after a
visible manner, as satyrs use to wear and carry them; but she will be so
far from preserving herself loyal in the discharge and observance of a
conjugal duty, that, on the contrary, she will violate her plighted faith,
break her marriage-oath, infringe all matrimonial ties, prostitute her body
to the dalliance of other men, and so make you a cuckold.  This point is
clearly and manifestly explained and expounded by Artemidorus just as I
have related it.  Nor will there be any metamorphosis or transmutation made
of you into a drum or tabor, but you will surely be as soundly beaten as
ever was tabor at a merry wedding.  Nor yet will she be changed into a
chough, but will steal from you, chiefly in the night, as is the nature of
that thievish bird.  Hereby may you perceive your dreams to be in every jot
conform and agreeable to the Virgilian lots.  A cuckold you will be, beaten
and robbed.  Then cried out Father John with a loud voice, He tells the
truth; upon my conscience, thou wilt be a cuckold--an honest one, I warrant
thee.  O the brave horns that will be borne by thee!  Ha, ha, ha!  Our good
Master de Cornibus.  God save thee, and shield thee!  Wilt thou be pleased
to preach but two words of a sermon to us, and I will go through the parish
church to gather up alms for the poor.

You are, quoth Panurge, very far mistaken in your interpretation; for the
matter is quite contrary to your sense thereof.  My dream presageth that I
shall by marriage be stored with plenty of all manner of goods--the
hornifying of me showing that I will possess a cornucopia, that Amalthaean
horn which is called the horn of abundance, whereof the fruition did still
portend the wealth of the enjoyer.  You possibly will say that they are
rather like to be satyr's horns; for you of these did make some mention.
Amen, Amen, Fiat, fiatur, ad differentiam papae.  Thus shall I have my
touch-her-home still ready.  My staff of love, sempiternally in a good
case, will, satyr-like, be never toiled out--a thing which all men wish
for, and send up their prayers to that purpose, but such a thing as
nevertheless is granted but to a few.  Hence doth it follow by a
consequence as clear as the sunbeams that I will never be in the danger of
being made a cuckold, for the defect hereof is Causa sine qua non; yea, the
sole cause, as many think, of making husbands cuckolds.  What makes poor
scoundrel rogues to beg, I pray you?  Is it not because they have not
enough at home wherewith to fill their bellies and their pokes?  What is it
makes the wolves to leave the woods?  Is it not the want of flesh meat?
What maketh women whores?  You understand me well enough.  And herein may I
very well submit my opinion to the judgment of learned lawyers, presidents,
counsellors, advocates, procurers, attorneys, and other glossers and
commentators on the venerable rubric, De frigidis et maleficiatis.  You
are, in truth, sir, as it seems to me (excuse my boldness if I have
transgressed), in a most palpable and absurd error to attribute my horns to
cuckoldry.  Diana wears them on her head after the manner of a crescent.
Is she a cucquean for that?  How the devil can she be cuckolded who never
yet was married?  Speak somewhat more correctly, I beseech you, lest she,
being offended, furnish you with a pair of horns shapen by the pattern of
those which she made for Actaeon.  The goodly Bacchus also carries horns,
--Pan, Jupiter Ammon, with a great many others.  Are they all cuckolds?  If
Jove be a cuckold, Juno is a whore.  This follows by the figure metalepsis:
as to call a child, in the presence of his father and mother, a bastard, or
whore's son, is tacitly and underboard no less than if he had said openly
the father is a cuckold and his wife a punk.  Let our discourse come nearer
to the purpose.  The horns that my wife did make me are horns of abundance,
planted and grafted in my head for the increase and shooting up of all good
things.  This will I affirm for truth, upon my word, and pawn my faith and
credit both upon it.  As for the rest, I will be no less joyful, frolic,
glad, cheerful, merry, jolly, and gamesome, than a well-bended tabor in the
hands of a good drummer at a nuptial feast, still making a noise, still
rolling, still buzzing and cracking.  Believe me, sir, in that consisteth
none of my least good fortunes.  And my wife will be jocund, feat, compt,
neat, quaint, dainty, trim, tricked up, brisk, smirk, and smug, even as a
pretty little Cornish chough.  Who will not believe this, let hell or the
gallows be the burden of his Christmas carol.

I remark, quoth Pantagruel, the last point or particle which you did speak
of, and, having seriously conferred it with the first, find that at the
beginning you were delighted with the sweetness of your dream; but in the
end and final closure of it you startingly awaked, and on a sudden were
forthwith vexed in choler and annoyed.  Yea, quoth Panurge, the reason of
that was because I had fasted too long.  Flatter not yourself, quoth
Pantagruel; all will go to ruin.  Know for a certain truth, that every
sleep that endeth with a starting, and leaves the person irksome, grieved,
and fretting, doth either signify a present evil, or otherwise presageth
and portendeth a future imminent mishap.  To signify an evil, that is to
say, to show some sickness hardly curable, a kind of pestilentious or
malignant boil, botch, or sore, lying and lurking hid, occult, and latent
within the very centre of the body, which many times doth by the means of
sleep, whose nature is to reinforce and strengthen the faculty and virtue
of concoction, being according to the theorems of physic to declare itself,
and moves toward the outward superficies.  At this sad stirring is the
sleeper's rest and ease disturbed and broken, whereof the first feeling and
stinging smart admonisheth that he must patiently endure great pain and
trouble, and thereunto provide some remedy; as when we say proverbially, to
incense hornets, to move a stinking puddle, and to awake a sleeping lion,
instead of these more usual expressions, and of a more familiar and plain
meaning, to provoke angry persons, to make a thing the worse by meddling
with it, and to irritate a testy choleric man when he is at quiet.  On the
other part, to presage or foretell an evil, especially in what concerneth
the exploits of the soul in matter of somnial divinations, is as much to
say as that it giveth us to understand that some dismal fortune or
mischance is destinated and prepared for us, which shortly will not fail to
come to pass.  A clear and evident example hereof is to be found in the
dream and dreadful awaking of Hecuba, as likewise in that of Eurydice, the
wife of Orpheus, neither of which was (no) sooner finished, saith Ennius,
but that incontinently thereafter they awaked in a start, and were
affrighted horribly.  Thereupon these accidents ensued:  Hecuba had her
husband Priamus, together with her children, slain before her eyes, and saw
then the destruction of her country; and Eurydice died speedily thereafter
in a most miserable manner.  Aeneas, dreaming that he spoke to Hector a
little after his decease, did on a sudden in a great start awake, and was
afraid.  Now hereupon did follow this event:  Troy that same night was
spoiled, sacked, and burnt.  At another time the same Aeneas dreaming that
he saw his familiar geniuses and penates, in a ghastly fright and
astonishment awaked, of which terror and amazement the issue was, that the
very next day subsequent, by a most horrible tempest on the sea, he was
like to have perished and been cast away.  Moreover, Turnus being prompted,
instigated, and stirred up by the fantastic vision of an infernal fury to
enter into a bloody war against Aeneas, awaked in a start much troubled and
disquieted in spirit; in sequel whereof, after many notable and famous
routs, defeats, and discomfitures in open field, he came at last to be
killed in a single combat by the said Aeneas.  A thousand other instances I
could afford, if it were needful, of this matter.  Whilst I relate these
stories of Aeneas, remark the saying of Fabius Pictor, who faithfully
averred that nothing had at any time befallen unto, was done, or
enterprised by him, whereof he preallably had not notice, and beforehand
foreseen it to the full, by sure predictions altogether founded on the
oracles of somnial divination.  To this there is no want of pregnant
reasons, no more than of examples.  For if repose and rest in sleeping be a
special gift and favour of the gods, as is maintained by the philosophers,
and by the poet attested in these lines,

  Then sleep, that heavenly gift, came to refresh
  Of human labourers the wearied flesh;

such a gift or benefit can never finish or terminate in wrath and
indignation without portending some unlucky fate and most disastrous
fortune to ensue.  Otherwise it were a molestation, and not an ease; a
scourge, and not a gift; at least, (not) proceeding from the gods above,
but from the infernal devils our enemies, according to the common vulgar
saying.

Suppose the lord, father, or master of a family, sitting at a very
sumptuous dinner, furnished with all manner of good cheer, and having at
his entry to the table his appetite sharp set upon his victuals, whereof
there was great plenty, should be seen rise in a start, and on a sudden
fling out of his chair, abandoning his meat, frighted, appalled, and in a
horrid terror, who should not know the cause hereof would wonder, and be
astonished exceedingly.  But what? he heard his male servants cry, Fire,
fire, fire, fire! his serving-maids and women yell, Stop thief, stop thief!
and all his children shout as loud as ever they could, Murder, O murder,
murder!  Then was it not high time for him to leave his banqueting, for
application of a remedy in haste, and to give speedy order for succouring
of his distressed household?  Truly I remember that the Cabalists and
Massorets, interpreters of the sacred Scriptures, in treating how with
verity one might judge of evangelical apparitions (because oftentimes the
angel of Satan is disguised and transfigured into an angel of light), said
that the difference of these two mainly did consist in this:  the
favourable and comforting angel useth in his appearing unto man at first to
terrify and hugely affright him, but in the end he bringeth consolation,
leaveth the person who hath seen him joyful, well-pleased, fully content,
and satisfied; on the other side, the angel of perdition, that wicked,
devilish, and malignant spirit, at his appearance unto any person in the
beginning cheereth up the heart of his beholder, but at last forsakes him,
and leaves him troubled, angry, and perplexed.

Panurge's excuse and exposition of the monastic mystery concerning powdered
beef.

The Lord save those who see, and do not hear! quoth Panurge.  I see you
well enough, but know not what it is that you have said.  The
hunger-starved belly wanteth ears.  For lack of victuals, before God, I
roar, bray, yell, and fume as in a furious madness.  I have performed too
hard a task to-day, an extraordinary work indeed.  He shall be craftier, and
do far greater wonders than ever did Mr. Mush, who shall be able any more
this year to bring me on the stage of preparation for a dreaming verdict.
Fie! not to sup at all, that is the devil.  Pox take that fashion!  Come,
Friar John, let us go break our fast; for, if I hit on such a round
refection in the morning as will serve thoroughly to fill the mill-hopper
and hogs-hide of my stomach, and furnish it with meat and drink sufficient,
then at a pinch, as in the case of some extreme necessity which presseth, I
could make a shift that day to forbear dining.  But not to sup!  A plague
rot that base custom, which is an error offensive to Nature!  That lady made
the day for exercise, to travel, work, wait on and labour in each his
negotiation and employment; and that we may with the more fervency and
ardour prosecute our business, she sets before us a clear burning candle, to
wit, the sun's resplendency; and at night, when she begins to take the light
from us, she thereby tacitly implies no less than if she would have spoken
thus unto us:  My lads and lasses, all of you are good and honest folks, you
have wrought well to-day, toiled and turmoiled enough,--the night
approacheth,--therefore cast off these moiling cares of yours, desist from
all your swinking painful labours, and set your minds how to refresh your
bodies in the renewing of their vigour with good bread, choice wine, and
store of wholesome meats; then may you take some sport and recreation, and
after that lie down and rest yourselves, that you may strongly, nimbly,
lustily, and with the more alacrity to-morrow attend on your affairs as
formerly.

Falconers, in like manner, when they have fed their hawks, will not suffer
them to fly on a full gorge, but let them on a perch abide a little, that
they may rouse, bait, tower, and soar the better.  That good pope who was
the first institutor of fasting understood this well enough; for he
ordained that our fast should reach but to the hour of noon; all the
remainder of that day was at our disposure, freely to eat and feed at any
time thereof.  In ancient times there were but few that dined, as you would
say, some church men, monks and canons; for they have little other
occupation.  Each day is a festival unto them, who diligently heed the
claustral proverb, De missa ad mensam.  They do not use to linger and defer
their sitting down and placing of themselves at table, only so long as they
have a mind in waiting for the coming of the abbot; so they fell to without
ceremony, terms, or conditions; and everybody supped, unless it were some
vain, conceited, dreaming dotard.  Hence was a supper called coena, which
showeth that it is common to all sorts of people.  Thou knowest it well,
Friar John.  Come, let us go, my dear friend, in the name of all the devils
of the infernal regions, let us go.  The gnawings of my stomach in this
rage of hunger are so tearing, that they make it bark like a mastiff.  Let
us throw some bread and beef into his throat to pacify him, as once the
sibyl did to Cerberus.  Thou likest best monastical brewis, the prime, the
flower of the pot.  I am for the solid, principal verb that comes after
--the good brown loaf, always accompanied with a round slice of the
nine-lecture-powdered labourer.  I know thy meaning, answered Friar John;
this metaphor is extracted out of the claustral kettle.  The labourer is the
ox that hath wrought and done the labour; after the fashion of nine
lectures, that is to say, most exquisitely well and thoroughly boiled.
These holy religious fathers, by a certain cabalistic institution of the
ancients, not written, but carefully by tradition conveyed from hand to
hand, rising betimes to go to morning prayers, were wont to flourish that
their matutinal devotion with some certain notable preambles before their
entry into the church, viz., they dunged in the dungeries, pissed in the
pisseries, spit in the spitteries, melodiously coughed in the cougheries,
and doted in their dotaries, that to the divine service they might not bring
anything that was unclean or foul.  These things thus done, they very
zealously made their repair to the Holy Chapel, for so was in their canting
language termed the convent kitchen, where they with no small earnestness
had care that the beef-pot should be put on the crook for the breakfast of
the religious brothers of our Lord and Saviour; and the fire they would
kindle under the pot themselves.  Now, the matins consisting of nine
lessons, (it) it was so incumbent on them, that must have risen the rather
for the more expedite despatching of them all.  The sooner that they rose,
the sharper was their appetite and the barkings of their stomachs, and the
gnawings increased in the like proportion, and consequently made these godly
men thrice more a-hungered and athirst than when their matins were hemmed
over only with three lessons.  The more betimes they rose, by the said
cabal, the sooner was the beef-pot put on; the longer that the beef was on
the fire, the better it was boiled; the more it boiled, it was the tenderer;
the tenderer that it was, the less it troubled the teeth, delighted more the
palate, less charged the stomach, and nourished our good religious men the
more substantially; which is the only end and prime intention of the first
founders, as appears by this, that they eat not to live, but live to eat,
and in this world have nothing but their life.  Let us go, Panurge.

Now have I understood thee, quoth Panurge, my plushcod friar, my caballine
and claustral ballock.  I freely quit the costs, interest, and charges,
seeing you have so egregiously commented upon the most especial chapter of
the culinary and monastic cabal.  Come along, my Carpalin, and you, Friar
John, my leather-dresser.  Good morrow to you all, my good lords; I have
dreamed too much to have so little.  Let us go.  Panurge had no sooner done
speaking than Epistemon with a loud voice said these words:  It is a very
ordinary and common thing amongst men to conceive, foresee, know, and
presage the misfortune, bad luck, or disaster of another; but to have the
understanding, providence, knowledge, and prediction of a man's own mishap
is very scarce and rare to be found anywhere.  This is exceeding
judiciously and prudently deciphered by Aesop in his Apologues, who there
affirmeth that every man in the world carrieth about his neck a wallet, in
the fore-bag whereof were contained the faults and mischances of others
always exposed to his view and knowledge; and in the other scrip thereof,
which hangs behind, are kept the bearer's proper transgressions and
inauspicious adventures, at no time seen by him, nor thought upon, unless
he be a person that hath a favourable aspect from the heavens.

How Pantagruel adviseth Panurge to consult with the Sibyl of Panzoust.

A little while thereafter Pantagruel sent for Panurge and said unto him,
The affection which I bear you being now inveterate and settled in my mind
by a long continuance of time, prompteth me to the serious consideration of
your welfare and profit; in order whereto, remark what I have thought
thereon.  It hath been told me that at Panzoust, near Crouly, dwelleth a
very famous sibyl, who is endowed with the skill of foretelling all things
to come.  Take Epistemon in your company, repair towards her, and hear what
she will say unto you.  She is possibly, quoth Epistemon, some Canidia,
Sagana, or Pythonissa, either whereof with us is vulgarly called a witch,
--I being the more easily induced to give credit to the truth of this
character of her, that the place of her abode is vilely stained with the
abominable repute of abounding more with sorcerers and witches than ever
did the plains of Thessaly.  I should not, to my thinking, go thither
willingly, for that it seems to me a thing unwarrantable, and altogether
forbidden in the law of Moses.  We are not Jews, quoth Pantagruel, nor is
it a matter judiciously confessed by her, nor authentically proved by
others that she is a witch.  Let us for the present suspend our judgment,
and defer till after your return from thence the sifting and garbling of
those niceties.  Do we know but that she may be an eleventh sibyl or a
second Cassandra?  But although she were neither, and she did not merit the
name or title of any of these renowned prophetesses, what hazard, in the
name of God, do you run by offering to talk and confer with her of the
instant perplexity and perturbation of your thoughts?  Seeing especially,
and which is most of all, she is, in the estimation of those that are
acquainted with her, held to know more, and to be of a deeper reach of
understanding, than is either customary to the country wherein she liveth
or to the sex whereof she is.  What hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the
laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, were it from a sot, a pot, a
fool, a stool, a winter mitten, a truckle for a pulley, the lid of a
goldsmith's crucible, an oil-bottle, or old slipper?  You may remember to
have read, or heard at least, that Alexander the Great, immediately after
his having obtained a glorious victory over the King Darius in Arbela,
refused, in the presence of the splendid and illustrious courtiers that
were about him, to give audience to a poor certain despicable-like fellow,
who through the solicitations and mediation of some of his royal attendants
was admitted humbly to beg that grace and favour of him.  But sore did he
repent, although in vain, a thousand and ten thousand times thereafter, the
surly state which he then took upon him to the denial of so just a suit,
the grant whereof would have been worth unto him the value of a brace of
potent cities.  He was indeed victorious in Persia, but withal so far
distant from Macedonia, his hereditary kingdom, that the joy of the one did
not expel the extreme grief which through occasion of the other he had
inwardly conceived; for, not being able with all his power to find or
invent a convenient mean and expedient how to get or come by the certainty
of any news from thence, both by reason of the huge remoteness of the
places from one to another, as also because of the impeditive interposition
of many great rivers, the interjacent obstacle of divers wild deserts, and
obstructive interjection of sundry almost inaccessible mountains,--whilst
he was in this sad quandary and solicitous pensiveness, which, you may
suppose, could not be of a small vexation to him, considering that it was a
matter of no great difficulty to run over his whole native soil, possess
his country, seize on his kingdom, install a new king in the throne, and
plant thereon foreign colonies, long before he could come to have any
advertisement of it:  for obviating the jeopardy of so dreadful
inconveniency, and putting a fit remedy thereto, a certain Sidonian
merchant of a low stature but high fancy, very poor in show, and to the
outward appearance of little or no account, having presented himself before
him, went about to affirm and declare that he had excogitated and hit upon
a ready mean and way by the which those of his territories at home should
come to the certain notice of his Indian victories, and himself be
perfectly informed of the state and condition of Egypt and Macedonia within
less than five days.  Whereupon the said Alexander, plunged into a sullen
animadvertency of mind, through his rash opinion of the improbability of
performing a so strange and impossible-like undertaking, dismissed the
merchant without giving ear to what he had to say, and vilified him.  What
could it have cost him to hearken unto what the honest man had invented and
contrived for his good?  What detriment, annoyance, damage, or loss could
he have undergone to listen to the discovery of that secret which the good
fellow would have most willingly revealed unto him?  Nature, I am
persuaded, did not without a cause frame our ears open, putting thereto no
gate at all, nor shutting them up with any manner of enclosures, as she
hath done unto the tongue, the eyes, and other such out-jetting parts of
the body.  The cause, as I imagine, is to the end that every day and every
night, and that continually, we may be ready to hear, and by a perpetual
hearing apt to learn.  For, of all the senses, it is the fittest for the
reception of the knowledge of arts, sciences, and disciplines; and it may
be that man was an angel, that is to say, a messenger sent from God, as
Raphael was to Tobit.  Too suddenly did he contemn, despise, and misregard
him; but too long thereafter, by an untimely and too late repentance, did
he do penance for it.  You say very well, answered Epistemon, yet shall you
never for all that induce me to believe that it can tend any way to the
advantage or commodity of a man to take advice and counsel of a woman,
namely, of such a woman, and the woman of such a country.  Truly I have
found, quoth Panurge, a great deal of good in the counsel of women, chiefly
in that of the old wives amongst them; for every time I consult with them I
readily get a stool or two extraordinary, to the great solace of my bumgut
passage.  They are as sleuthhounds in the infallibility of their scent, and
in their sayings no less sententious than the rubrics of the law.
Therefore in my conceit it is not an improper kind of speech to call them
sage or wise women.  In confirmation of which opinion of mine, the
customary style of my language alloweth them the denomination of presage
women.  The epithet of sage is due unto them because they are surpassing
dexterous in the knowledge of most things.  And I give them the title of
presage, for that they divinely foresee and certainly foretell future
contingencies and events of things to come.  Sometimes I call them not
maunettes, but monettes, from their wholesome monitions.  Whether it be so,
ask Pythagoras, Socrates, Empedocles, and our master Ortuinus.  I
furthermore praise and commend above the skies the ancient memorable
institution of the pristine Germans, who ordained the responses and
documents of old women to be highly extolled, most cordially reverenced,
and prized at a rate in nothing inferior to the weight, test, and standard
of the sanctuary.  And as they were respectfully prudent in receiving of
these sound advices, so by honouring and following them did they prove no
less fortunate in the happy success of all their endeavours.  Witness the
old wife Aurinia, and the good mother Velled, in the days of Vespasian.
You need not any way doubt but that feminine old age is always fructifying
in qualities sublime--I would have said sibylline.  Let us go, by the help,
let us go, by the virtue of God, let us go.  Farewell, Friar John, I
recommend the care of my codpiece to you.  Well, quoth Epistemon, I will
follow you, with this protestation nevertheless, that if I happen to get a
sure information, or otherwise find that she doth use any kind of charm or
enchantment in her responses, it may not be imputed to me for a blame to
leave you at the gate of her house, without accompanying you any further
in.

How Panurge spoke to the Sibyl of Panzoust.

Their voyage was three days journeying.  On the third whereof was shown
unto them the house of the vaticinatress standing on the knap or top of a
hill, under a large and spacious walnut-tree.  Without great difficulty
they entered into that straw-thatched cottage, scurvily built, naughtily
movabled, and all besmoked.  It matters not, quoth Epistemon; Heraclitus,
the grand Scotist and tenebrous darksome philosopher, was nothing
astonished at his introit into such a coarse and paltry habitation; for he
did usually show forth unto his sectators and disciples that the gods made
as cheerfully their residence in these mean homely mansions as in sumptuous
magnific palaces, replenished with all manner of delight, pomp, and
pleasure.  I withal do really believe that the dwelling-place of the so
famous and renowned Hecate was just such another petty cell as this is,
when she made a feast therein to the valiant Theseus; and that of no other
better structure was the cot or cabin of Hyreus, or Oenopion, wherein
Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury were not ashamed, all three together, to
harbour and sojourn a whole night, and there to take a full and hearty
repast; for the payment of the shot they thankfully pissed Orion.  They
finding the ancient woman at a corner of her own chimney, Epistemon said,
She is indeed a true sibyl, and the lively portrait of one represented by
the Grei kaminoi of Homer.  The old hag was in a pitiful bad plight and
condition in matter of the outward state and complexion of her body, the
ragged and tattered equipage of her person in the point of accoutrement,
and beggarly poor provision of fare for her diet and entertainment;
for she was ill apparelled, worse nourished, toothless, blear-eyed,
crook-shouldered, snotty, her nose still dropping, and herself still
drooping, faint, and pithless; whilst in this woefully wretched case she was
making ready for her dinner porridge of wrinkled green coleworts, with a bit
skin of yellow bacon, mixed with a twice-before-cooked sort of waterish,
unsavoury broth, extracted out of bare and hollow bones.  Epistemon said,
By the cross of a groat, we are to blame, nor shall we get from her any
response at all, for we have not brought along with us the branch of gold.
I have, quoth Panurge, provided pretty well for that, for here I have it
within my bag, in the substance of a gold ring, accompanied with some fair
pieces of small money.  No sooner were these words spoken, when Panurge
coming up towards her, after the ceremonial performance of a profound and
humble salutation, presented her with six neat's tongues dried in the smoke,
a great butter-pot full of fresh cheese, a borachio furnished with good
beverage, and a ram's cod stored with single pence, newly coined.  At last
he, with a low courtesy, put on her medical finger a pretty handsome golden
ring, whereinto was right artificially enchased a precious toadstone of
Beausse.  This done, in few words and very succinctly, did he set open and
expose unto her the motive reason of his coming, most civilly and
courteously entreating her that she might be pleased to vouchsafe to give
him an ample and plenary intelligence concerning the future good luck of his
intended marriage.

The old trot for a while remained silent, pensive, and grinning like a dog;
then, after she had set her withered breech upon the bottom of a bushel,
she took into her hands three old spindles, which when she had turned and
whirled betwixt her fingers very diversely and after several fashions, she
pried more narrowly into, by the trial of their points, the sharpest
whereof she retained in her hand, and threw the other two under a stone
trough.  After this she took a pair of yarn windles, which she nine times
unintermittedly veered and frisked about; then at the ninth revolution or
turn, without touching them any more, maturely perpending the manner of
their motion, she very demurely waited on their repose and cessation from
any further stirring.  In sequel whereof she pulled off one of her wooden
pattens, put her apron over her head, as a priest uses to do his amice when
he is going to sing mass, and with a kind of antique, gaudy, party-coloured
string knit it under her neck.  Being thus covered and muffled, she whiffed
off a lusty good draught out of the borachio, took three several pence
forth of the ramcod fob, put them into so many walnut-shells, which she set
down upon the bottom of a feather-pot, and then, after she had given them
three whisks of a broom besom athwart the chimney, casting into the fire
half a bavin of long heather, together with a branch of dry laurel, she
observed with a very hush and coy silence in what form they did burn, and
saw that, although they were in a flame, they made no kind of noise or
crackling din.  Hereupon she gave a most hideous and horribly dreadful
shout, muttering betwixt her teeth some few barbarous words of a strange
termination.

This so terrified Panurge that he forthwith said to Epistemon, The devil
mince me into a gallimaufry if I do not tremble for fear!  I do not think
but that I am now enchanted; for she uttereth not her voice in the terms of
any Christian language.  O look, I pray you, how she seemeth unto me to be
by three full spans higher than she was when she began to hood herself with
her apron.  What meaneth this restless wagging of her slouchy chaps?  What
can be the signification of the uneven shrugging of her hulchy shoulders?
To what end doth she quaver with her lips, like a monkey in the
dismembering of a lobster?  My ears through horror glow; ah! how they
tingle!  I think I hear the shrieking of Proserpina; the devils are
breaking loose to be all here.  O the foul, ugly, and deformed beasts!  Let
us run away!  By the hook of God, I am like to die for fear!  I do not love
the devils; they vex me, and are unpleasant fellows.  Now let us fly, and
betake us to our heels.  Farewell, gammer; thanks and gramercy for your
goods!  I will not marry; no, believe me, I will not.  I fairly quit my
interest therein, and totally abandon and renounce it from this time
forward, even as much as at present.  With this, as he endeavoured to make
an escape out of the room, the old crone did anticipate his flight and make
him stop.  The way how she prevented him was this:  whilst in her hand she
held the spindle, she flung out to a back-yard close by her lodge, where,
after she had peeled off the barks of an old sycamore three several times,
she very summarily, upon eight leaves which dropped from thence, wrote with
the spindle-point some curt and briefly-couched verses, which she threw
into the air, then said unto them, Search after them if you will; find them
if you can; the fatal destinies of your marriage are written in them.

No sooner had she done thus speaking than she did withdraw herself unto her
lurking-hole, where on the upper seat of the porch she tucked up her gown,
her coats, and smock, as high as her armpits, and gave them a full
inspection of the nockandroe; which being perceived by Panurge, he said to
Epistemon, God's bodikins, I see the sibyl's hole!  She suddenly then
bolted the gate behind her, and was never since seen any more.  They
jointly ran in haste after the fallen and dispersed leaves, and gathered
them at last, though not without great labour and toil, for the wind had
scattered them amongst the thorn-bushes of the valley.  When they had
ranged them each after other in their due places, they found out their
sentence, as it is metrified in this octastich:

  Thy fame upheld
  (Properly, as corrected by Ozell:
  Thy fame will be shell'd
    By her, I trow.),
    Even so, so:
  And she with child
    Of thee:  No.
  Thy good end
    Suck she shall,
  And flay thee, friend,
    But not all.

How Pantagruel and Panurge did diversely expound the verses of the Sibyl of
Panzoust.

The leaves being thus collected and orderly disposed, Epistemon and Panurge
returned to Pantagruel's court, partly well pleased and other part
discontented; glad for their being come back, and vexed for the trouble
they had sustained by the way, which they found to be craggy, rugged,
stony, rough, and ill-adjusted.  They made an ample and full relation of
their voyage unto Pantagruel, as likewise of the estate and condition of
the sibyl.  Then, having presented to him the leaves of the sycamore, they
show him the short and twattle verses that were written in them.
Pantagruel, having read and considered the whole sum and substance of the
matter, fetched from his heart a deep and heavy sigh; then said to Panurge,
You are now, forsooth, in a good taking, and have brought your hogs to a
fine market.  The prophecy of the sibyl doth explain and lay out before us
the same very predictions which have been denoted, foretold, and presaged
to us by the decree of the Virgilian lots and the verdict of your own
proper dreams, to wit, that you shall be very much disgraced, shamed, and
discredited by your wife; for that she will make you a cuckold in
prostituting herself to others, being big with child by another than you,
--will steal from you a great deal of your goods, and will beat you, scratch
and bruise you, even to plucking the skin in a part from off you,--will
leave the print of her blows in some member of your body.  You understand
as much, answered Panurge, in the veritable interpretation and expounding
of recent prophecies as a sow in the matter of spicery.  Be not offended,
sir, I beseech you, that I speak thus boldly; for I find myself a little in
choler, and that not without cause, seeing it is the contrary that is true.
Take heed, and give attentive ear unto my words.  The old wife said that,
as the bean is not seen till first it be unhusked, and that its swad or
hull be shelled and peeled from off it, so is it that my virtue and
transcendent worth will never come by the mouth of fame to be blazed abroad
proportionable to the height, extent, and measure of the excellency
thereof, until preallably I get a wife and make the full half of a married
couple.  How many times have I heard you say that the function of a
magistrate, or office of dignity, discovereth the merits, parts, and
endowments of the person so advanced and promoted, and what is in him.
That is to say, we are then best able to judge aright of the deservings of
a man when he is called to the management of affairs; for when before he
lived in a private condition, we could have no more certain knowledge of
him than of a bean within his husk.  And thus stands the first article
explained; otherwise, could you imagine that the good fame, repute, and
estimation of an honest man should depend upon the tail of a whore?

Now to the meaning of the second article!  My wife will be with child,
--here lies the prime felicity of marriage,--but not of me.  Copsody, that I
do believe indeed!  It will be of a pretty little infant.  O how heartily I
shall love it!  I do already dote upon it; for it will be my dainty feedle-
darling, my genteel dilly-minion.  From thenceforth no vexation, care, or
grief shall take such deep impression in my heart, how hugely great or
vehement soever it otherwise appear, but that it shall evanish forthwith at
the sight of that my future babe, and at the hearing of the chat and
prating of its childish gibberish.  And blessed be the old wife.  By my
truly, I have a mind to settle some good revenue or pension upon her out of
the readiest increase of the lands of my Salmigondinois; not an inconstant
and uncertain rent-seek, like that of witless, giddy-headed bachelors, but
sure and fixed, of the nature of the well-paid incomes of regenting
doctors.  If this interpretation doth not please you, think you my wife
will bear me in her flanks, conceive with me, and be of me delivered, as
women use in childbed to bring forth their young ones; so as that it may be
said, Panurge is a second Bacchus, he hath been twice born; he is re-born,
as was Hippolytus,--as was Proteus, one time of Thetis, and secondly, of
the mother of the philosopher Apollonius,--as were the two Palici, near the
flood Simaethos in Sicily.  His wife was big of child with him.  In him is
renewed and begun again the palintocy of the Megarians and the palingenesy
of Democritus.  Fie upon such errors!  To hear stuff of that nature rends
mine ears.

The words of the third article are:  She will suck me at my best end.  Why
not?  That pleaseth me right well.  You know the thing; I need not tell you
that it is my intercrural pudding with one end.  I swear and promise that,
in what I can, I will preserve it sappy, full of juice, and as well
victualled for her use as may be.  She shall not suck me, I believe, in
vain, nor be destitute of her allowance; there shall her justum both in
peck and lippy be furnished to the full eternally.  You expound this
passage allegorically, and interpret it to theft and larceny.  I love the
exposition, and the allegory pleaseth me; but not according to the sense
whereto you stretch it.  It may be that the sincerity of the affection
which you bear me moveth you to harbour in your breast those refractory
thoughts concerning me, with a suspicion of my adversity to come.  We have
this saying from the learned, That a marvellously fearful thing is love,
and that true love is never without fear.  But, sir, according to my
judgment, you do understand both of and by yourself that here stealth
signifieth nothing else, no more than in a thousand other places of Greek
and Latin, old and modern writings, but the sweet fruits of amorous
dalliance, which Venus liketh best when reaped in secret, and culled by
fervent lovers filchingly.  Why so, I prithee tell?  Because, when the feat
of the loose-coat skirmish happeneth to be done underhand and privily,
between two well-disposed, athwart the steps of a pair of stairs lurkingly,
and in covert behind a suit of hangings, or close hid and trussed upon an
unbound faggot, it is more pleasing to the Cyprian goddess, and to me also
--I speak this without prejudice to any better or more sound opinion--than
to perform that culbusting art after the Cynic manner, in the view of the
clear sunshine, or in a rich tent, under a precious stately canopy, within
a glorious and sublime pavilion, or yet on a soft couch betwixt rich
curtains of cloth of gold, without affrightment, at long intermediate
respites, enjoying of pleasures and delights a bellyfull, at all great
ease, with a huge fly-flap fan of crimson satin and a bunch of feathers of
some East-Indian ostrich serving to give chase unto the flies all round
about; whilst, in the interim, the female picks her teeth with a stiff
straw picked even then from out of the bottom of the bed she lies on.  If
you be not content with this my exposition, are you of the mind that my
wife will suck and sup me up as people use to gulp and swallow oysters out
of the shell? or as the Cilician women, according to the testimony of
Dioscorides, were wont to do the grain of alkermes?  Assuredly that is an
error.  Who seizeth on it, doth neither gulch up nor swill down, but takes
away what hath been packed up, catcheth, snatcheth, and plies the play of
hey-pass, repass.

The fourth article doth imply that my wife will flay me, but not all.  O
the fine word!  You interpret this to beating strokes and blows.  Speak
wisely.  Will you eat a pudding?  Sir, I beseech you to raise up your
spirits above the low-sized pitch of earthly thoughts unto that height of
sublime contemplation which reacheth to the apprehension of the mysteries
and wonders of Dame Nature.  And here be pleased to condemn yourself, by a
renouncing of those errors which you have committed very grossly and
somewhat perversely in expounding the prophetic sayings of the holy sibyl.
Yet put the case (albeit I yield not to it) that, by the instigation of the
devil, my wife should go about to wrong me, make me a cuckold downwards to
the very breech, disgrace me otherwise, steal my goods from me, yea, and
lay violently her hands upon me;--she nevertheless should fail of her
attempts and not attain to the proposed end of her unreasonable
undertakings.  The reason which induceth me hereto is grounded totally on
this last point, which is extracted from the profoundest privacies of a
monastic pantheology, as good Friar Arthur Wagtail told me once upon a
Monday morning, as we were (if I have not forgot) eating a bushel of
trotter-pies; and I remember well it rained hard.  God give him the good
morrow!  The women at the beginning of the world, or a little after,
conspired to flay the men quick, because they found the spirit of mankind
inclined to domineer it, and bear rule over them upon the face of the whole
earth; and, in pursuit of this their resolution, promised, confirmed,
swore, and covenanted amongst them all, by the pure faith they owe to the
nocturnal Sanct Rogero.  But O the vain enterprises of women!  O the great
fragility of that sex feminine!  They did begin to flay the man, or peel
him (as says Catullus), at that member which of all the body they loved
best, to wit, the nervous and cavernous cane, and that above five thousand
years ago; yet have they not of that small part alone flayed any more till
this hour but the head.  In mere despite whereof the Jews snip off that
parcel of the skin in circumcision, choosing far rather to be called
clipyards, rascals, than to be flayed by women, as are other nations.  My
wife, according to this female covenant, will flay it to me, if it be not
so already.  I heartily grant my consent thereto, but will not give her
leave to flay it all.  Nay, truly will I not, my noble king.

Yea but, quoth Epistemon, you say nothing of her most dreadful cries and
exclamations when she and we both saw the laurel-bough burn without
yielding any noise or crackling.  You know it is a very dismal omen, an
inauspicious sign, unlucky indice, and token formidable, bad, disastrous,
and most unhappy, as is certified by Propertius, Tibullus, the quick
philosopher Porphyrius, Eustathius on the Iliads of Homer, and by many
others.  Verily, verily, quoth Panurge, brave are the allegations which you
bring me, and testimonies of two-footed calves.  These men were fools, as
they were poets; and dotards, as they were philosophers; full of folly, as
they were of philosophy.

How Pantagruel praiseth the counsel of dumb men.

Pantagruel, when this discourse was ended, held for a pretty while his
peace, seeming to be exceeding sad and pensive, then said to Panurge, The
malignant spirit misleads, beguileth, and seduceth you.  I have read that
in times past the surest and most veritable oracles were not those which
either were delivered in writing or uttered by word of mouth in speaking.
For many times, in their interpretation, right witty, learned, and
ingenious men have been deceived through amphibologies, equivoques, and
obscurity of words, no less than by the brevity of their sentences.  For
which cause Apollo, the god of vaticination, was surnamed Loxias.  Those
which were represented then by signs and outward gestures were accounted
the truest and the most infallible.  Such was the opinion of Heraclitus.
And Jupiter did himself in this manner give forth in Ammon frequently
predictions.  Nor was he single in this practice; for Apollo did the like
amongst the Assyrians.  His prophesying thus unto those people moved them
to paint him with a large long beard, and clothes beseeming an old settled
person of a most posed, staid, and grave behaviour; not naked, young, and
beardless, as he was portrayed most usually amongst the Grecians.  Let us
make trial of this kind of fatidicency; and go you take advice of some dumb
person without any speaking.  I am content, quoth Panurge.  But, says
Pantagruel, it were requisite that the dumb you consult with be such as
have been deaf from the hour of their nativity, and consequently dumb; for
none can be so lively, natural, and kindly dumb as he who never heard.

How is it, quoth Panurge, that you conceive this matter?  If you apprehend
it so, that never any spoke who had not before heard the speech of others,
I will from that antecedent bring you to infer very logically a most absurd
and paradoxical conclusion.  But let it pass; I will not insist on it.  You
do not then believe what Herodotus wrote of two children, who, at the
special command and appointment of Psammeticus, King of Egypt, having been
kept in a petty country cottage, where they were nourished and entertained
in a perpetual silence, did at last, after a certain long space of time,
pronounce this word Bec, which in the Phrygian language signifieth bread.
Nothing less, quoth Pantagruel, do I believe than that it is a mere abusing
of our understandings to give credit to the words of those who say that
there is any such thing as a natural language.  All speeches have had their
primary origin from the arbitrary institutions, accords, and agreements of
nations in their respective condescendments to what should be noted and
betokened by them.  An articulate voice, according to the dialecticians,
hath naturally no signification at all; for that the sense and meaning
thereof did totally depend upon the good will and pleasure of the first
deviser and imposer of it.  I do not tell you this without a cause; for
Bartholus, Lib. 5. de Verb. Oblig., very seriously reporteth that even in
his time there was in Eugubia one named Sir Nello de Gabrielis, who,
although he by a sad mischance became altogether deaf, understood
nevertheless everyone that talked in the Italian dialect howsoever he
expressed himself; and that only by looking on his external gestures, and
casting an attentive eye upon the divers motions of his lips and chaps.  I
have read, I remember also, in a very literate and eloquent author, that
Tyridates, King of Armenia, in the days of Nero, made a voyage to Rome,
where he was received with great honour and solemnity, and with all manner
of pomp and magnificence.  Yea, to the end there might be a sempiternal
amity and correspondence preserved betwixt him and the Roman senate, there
was no remarkable thing in the whole city which was not shown unto him.  At
his departure the emperor bestowed upon him many ample donatives of an
inestimable value; and besides, the more entirely to testify his affection
towards him, heartily entreated him to be pleased to make choice of any
whatsoever thing in Rome was most agreeable to his fancy, with a promise
juramentally confirmed that he should not be refused of his demand.
Thereupon, after a suitable return of thanks for a so gracious offer, he
required a certain Jack-pudding whom he had seen to act his part most
egregiously upon the stage, and whose meaning, albeit he knew not what it
was he had spoken, he understood perfectly enough by the signs and
gesticulations which he had made.  And for this suit of his, in that he
asked nothing else, he gave this reason, that in the several wide and
spacious dominions which were reduced under the sway and authority of his
sovereign government, there were sundry countries and nations much
differing from one another in language, with whom, whether he was to speak
unto them or give any answer to their requests, he was always necessitated
to make use of divers sorts of truchman and interpreters.  Now with this
man alone, sufficient for supplying all their places, will that great
inconveniency hereafter be totally removed; seeing he is such a fine
gesticulator, and in the practice of chirology an artist so complete,
expert, and dexterous, that with his very fingers he doth speak.
Howsoever, you are to pitch upon such a dumb one as is deaf by nature and
from his birth; to the end that his gestures and signs may be the more
vively and truly prophetic, and not counterfeit by the intermixture of some
adulterate lustre and affectation.  Yet whether this dumb person shall be
of the male or female sex is in your option, lieth at your discretion, and
altogether dependeth on your own election.

I would more willingly, quoth Panurge, consult with and be advised by a
dumb woman, were it not that I am afraid of two things.  The first is, that
the greater part of women, whatever be that they see, do always represent
unto their fancies, think, and imagine, that it hath some relation to the
sugared entering of the goodly ithyphallos, and graffing in the cleft of
the overturned tree the quickset imp of the pin of copulation.  Whatever
signs, shows, or gestures we shall make, or whatever our behaviour,
carriage, or demeanour shall happen to be in their view and presence, they
will interpret the whole in reference to the act of androgynation and the
culbutizing exercise, by which means we shall be abusively disappointed of
our designs, in regard that she will take all our signs for nothing else
but tokens and representations of our desire to entice her unto the lists
of a Cyprian combat or catsenconny skirmish.  Do you remember what happened
at Rome two hundred and threescore years after the foundation thereof?  A
young Roman gentleman encountering by chance, at the foot of Mount Celion,
with a beautiful Latin lady named Verona, who from her very cradle upwards
had always been both deaf and dumb, very civilly asked her, not without a
chironomatic Italianizing of his demand, with various jectigation of his
fingers and other gesticulations as yet customary amongst the speakers of
that country, what senators in her descent from the top of the hill she had
met with going up thither.  For you are to conceive that he, knowing no
more of her deafness than dumbness, was ignorant of both.  She in the
meantime, who neither heard nor understood so much as one word of what he
had said, straight imagined, by all that she could apprehend in the lovely
gesture of his manual signs, that what he then required of her was what
herself had a great mind to, even that which a young man doth naturally
desire of a woman.  Then was it that by signs, which in all occurrences of
venereal love are incomparably more attractive, valid, and efficacious than
words, she beckoned to him to come along with her to her house; which when
he had done, she drew him aside to a privy room, and then made a most
lively alluring sign unto him to show that the game did please her.
Whereupon, without any more advertisement, or so much as the uttering of
one word on either side, they fell to and bringuardized it lustily.

The other cause of my being averse from consulting with dumb women is, that
to our signs they would make no answer at all, but suddenly fall backwards
in a divarication posture, to intimate thereby unto us the reality of their
consent to the supposed motion of our tacit demands.  Or if they should
chance to make any countersigns responsory to our propositions, they would
prove so foolish, impertinent, and ridiculous, that by them ourselves
should easily judge their thoughts to have no excursion beyond the duffling
academy.  You know very well how at Brignoles, when the religious nun,
Sister Fatbum, was made big with child by the young Stiffly-stand-to't, her
pregnancy came to be known, and she cited by the abbess, and, in a full
convention of the convent, accused of incest.  Her excuse was that she did
not consent thereto, but that it was done by the violence and impetuous
force of the Friar Stiffly-stand-to't.  Hereto the abbess very austerely
replying, Thou naughty wicked girl, why didst thou not cry, A rape, a rape!
then should all of us have run to thy succour.  Her answer was that the
rape was committed in the dortour, where she durst not cry because it was a
place of sempiternal silence.  But, quoth the abbess, thou roguish wench,
why didst not thou then make some sign to those that were in the next
chamber beside thee?  To this she answered that with her buttocks she made
a sign unto them as vigorously as she could, yet never one of them did so
much as offer to come to her help and assistance.  But, quoth the abbess,
thou scurvy baggage, why didst thou not tell it me immediately after the
perpetration of the fact, that so we might orderly, regularly, and
canonically have accused him?  I would have done so, had the case been
mine, for the clearer manifestation of mine innocency.  I truly, madam,
would have done the like with all my heart and soul, quoth Sister Fatbum,
but that fearing I should remain in sin, and in the hazard of eternal
damnation, if prevented by a sudden death, I did confess myself to the
father friar before he went out of the room, who, for my penance, enjoined
me not to tell it, or reveal the matter unto any.  It were a most enormous
and horrid offence, detestable before God and the angels, to reveal a
confession.  Such an abominable wickedness would have possibly brought down
fire from heaven, wherewith to have burnt the whole nunnery, and sent us
all headlong to the bottomless pit, to bear company with Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram.

You will not, quoth Pantagruel, with all your jesting, make me laugh.  I
know that all the monks, friars, and nuns had rather violate and infringe
the highest of the commandments of God than break the least of their
provincial statutes.  Take you therefore Goatsnose, a man very fit for your
present purpose; for he is, and hath been, both dumb and deaf from the very
remotest infancy of his childhood.

How Goatsnose by signs maketh answer to Panurge.

Goatsnose being sent for, came the day thereafter to Pantagruel's court; at
his arrival to which Panurge gave him a fat calf, the half of a hog, two
puncheons of wine, one load of corn, and thirty francs of small money;
then, having brought him before Pantagruel, in presence of the gentlemen of
the bed-chamber he made this sign unto him.  He yawned a long time, and in
yawning made without his mouth with the thumb of his right hand the figure
of the Greek letter Tau by frequent reiterations.  Afterwards he lifted up
his eyes to heavenwards, then turned them in his head like a she-goat in
the painful fit of an absolute birth, in doing whereof he did cough and
sigh exceeding heavily.  This done, after that he had made demonstration of
the want of his codpiece, he from under his shirt took his placket-racket
in a full grip, making it therewithal clack very melodiously betwixt his
thighs; then, no sooner had he with his body stooped a little forwards, and
bowed his left knee, but that immediately thereupon holding both his arms
on his breast, in a loose faint-like posture, the one over the other, he
paused awhile.  Goatsnose looked wistly upon him, and having heedfully
enough viewed him all over, he lifted up into the air his left hand, the
whole fingers whereof he retained fistwise close together, except the thumb
and the forefinger, whose nails he softly joined and coupled to one
another.  I understand, quoth Pantagruel, what he meaneth by that sign.  It
denotes marriage, and withal the number thirty, according to the profession
of the Pythagoreans.  You will be married.  Thanks to you, quoth Panurge,
in turning himself towards Goatsnose, my little sewer, pretty master's
mate, dainty bailie, curious sergeant-marshal, and jolly catchpole-leader.
Then did he lift higher up than before his said left hand, stretching out
all the five fingers thereof, and severing them as wide from one another as
he possibly could get done.  Here, says Pantagruel, doth he more amply and
fully insinuate unto us, by the token which he showeth forth of the quinary
number, that you shall be married.  Yea, that you shall not only be
affianced, betrothed, wedded, and married, but that you shall furthermore
cohabit and live jollily and merrily with your wife; for Pythagoras called
five the nuptial number, which, together with marriage, signifieth the
consummation of matrimony, because it is composed of a ternary, the first
of the odd, and binary, the first of the even numbers, as of a male and
female knit and united together.  In very deed it was the fashion of old in
the city of Rome at marriage festivals to light five wax tapers; nor was it
permitted to kindle any more at the magnific nuptials of the most potent
and wealthy, nor yet any fewer at the penurious weddings of the poorest and
most abject of the world.  Moreover, in times past, the heathen or paynims
implored the assistance of five deities, or of one helpful, at least, in
five several good offices to those that were to be married.  Of this sort
were the nuptial Jove, Juno, president of the feast, the fair Venus, Pitho,
the goddess of eloquence and persuasion, and Diana, whose aid and succour
was required to the labour of child-bearing.  Then shouted Panurge, O the
gentle Goatsnose, I will give him a farm near Cinais, and a windmill hard
by Mirebalais!  Hereupon the dumb fellow sneezeth with an impetuous
vehemency and huge concussion of the spirits of the whole body, withdrawing
himself in so doing with a jerking turn towards the left hand.  By the body
of a fox new slain, quoth Pantagruel, what is that?  This maketh nothing
for your advantage; for he betokeneth thereby that your marriage will be
inauspicious and unfortunate.  This sneezing, according to the doctrine of
Terpsion, is the Socratic demon.  If done towards the right side, it
imports and portendeth that boldly and with all assurance one may go
whither he will and do what he listeth, according to what deliberation he
shall be pleased to have thereupon taken; his entries in the beginning,
progress in his proceedings, and success in the events and issues will be
all lucky, good, and happy.  The quite contrary thereto is thereby implied
and presaged if it be done towards the left.  You, quoth Panurge, do take
always the matter at the worst, and continually, like another Davus,
casteth in new disturbances and obstructions; nor ever yet did I know this
old paltry Terpsion worthy of citation but in points only of cosenage and
imposture.  Nevertheless, quoth Pantagruel, Cicero hath written I know not
what to the same purpose in his Second Book of Divination.

Panurge then, turning himself towards Goatsnose, made this sign unto him.
He inverted his eyelids upwards, wrenched his jaws from the right to the
left side, and drew forth his tongue half out of his mouth.  This done, he
posited his left hand wholly open, the mid-finger wholly excepted, which
was perpendicularly placed upon the palm thereof, and set it just in the
room where his codpiece had been.  Then did he keep his right hand
altogether shut up in a fist, save only the thumb, which he straight turned
backwards directly under the right armpit, and settled it afterwards on
that most eminent part of the buttocks which the Arabs call the Al-Katim.
Suddenly thereafter he made this interchange:  he held his right hand after
the manner of the left, and posited it on the place wherein his codpiece
sometime was, and retaining his left hand in the form and fashion of the
right, he placed it upon his Al-Katim.  This altering of hands did he
reiterate nine several times; at the last whereof he reseated his eyelids
into their own first natural position.  Then doing the like also with his
jaws and tongue, he did cast a squinting look upon Goatsnose, diddering and
shivering his chaps, as apes use to do nowadays, and rabbits, whilst,
almost starved with hunger, they are eating oats in the sheaf.

Then was it that Goatsnose, lifting up into the air his right hand wholly
open and displayed, put the thumb thereof, even close unto its first
articulation, between the two third joints of the middle and ring fingers,
pressing about the said thumb thereof very hard with them both, and, whilst
the remanent joints were contracted and shrunk in towards the wrist, he
stretched forth with as much straightness as he could the fore and little
fingers.  That hand thus framed and disposed of he laid and posited upon
Panurge's navel, moving withal continually the aforesaid thumb, and bearing
up, supporting, or under-propping that hand upon the above-specified fore
and little fingers, as upon two legs.  Thereafter did he make in this
posture his hand by little and little, and by degrees and pauses,
successively to mount from athwart the belly to the stomach, from whence he
made it to ascend to the breast, even upwards to Panurge's neck, still
gaining ground, till, having reached his chin, he had put within the
concave of his mouth his afore-mentioned thumb; then fiercely brandishing
the whole hand, which he made to rub and grate against his nose, he heaved
it further up, and made the fashion as if with the thumb thereof he would
have put out his eyes.  With this Panurge grew a little angry, and went
about to withdraw and rid himself from this ruggedly untoward dumb devil.
But Goatsnose in the meantime, prosecuting the intended purpose of his
prognosticatory response, touched very rudely, with the above-mentioned
shaking thumb, now his eyes, then his forehead, and after that the borders
and corners of his cap.  At last Panurge cried out, saying, Before God,
master fool, if you do not let me alone, or that you will presume to vex me
any more, you shall receive from the best hand I have a mask wherewith to
cover your rascally scroundrel face, you paltry shitten varlet.  Then said
Friar John, He is deaf, and doth not understand what thou sayest unto him.
Bulliballock, make sign to him of a hail of fisticuffs upon the muzzle.

What the devil, quoth Panurge, means this busy restless fellow?  What is it
that this polypragmonetic ardelion to all the fiends of hell doth aim at?
He hath almost thrust out mine eyes, as if he had been to poach them in a
skillet with butter and eggs.  By God, da jurandi, I will feast you with
flirts and raps on the snout, interlarded with a double row of bobs and
finger-fillipings!  Then did he leave him in giving him by way of salvo a
volley of farts for his farewell.  Goatsnose, perceiving Panurge thus to
slip away from him, got before him, and, by mere strength enforcing him to
stand, made this sign unto him.  He let fall his right arm toward his knee
on the same side as low as he could, and, raising all the fingers of that
hand into a close fist, passed his dexter thumb betwixt the foremost and
mid fingers thereto belonging.  Then scrubbing and swingeing a little with
his left hand alongst and upon the uppermost in the very bough of the elbow
of the said dexter arm, the whole cubit thereof, by leisure, fair and
softly, at these thumpatory warnings, did raise and elevate itself even to
the elbow, and above it; on a sudden did he then let it fall down as low as
before, and after that, at certain intervals and such spaces of time,
raising and abasing it, he made a show thereof to Panurge.  This so
incensed Panurge that he forthwith lifted his hand to have stricken him the
dumb roister and given him a sound whirret on the ear, but that the respect
and reverence which he carried to the presence of Pantagruel restrained his
choler and kept his fury within bounds and limits.  Then said Pantagruel,
If the bare signs now vex and trouble you, how much more grievously will
you be perplexed and disquieted with the real things which by them are
represented and signified!  All truths agree and are consonant with one
another.  This dumb fellow prophesieth and foretelleth that you will be
married, cuckolded, beaten, and robbed.  As for the marriage, quoth
Panurge, I yield thereto, and acknowledge the verity of that point of his
prediction; as for the rest, I utterly abjure and deny it:  and believe,
sir, I beseech you, if it may please you so to do, that in the matter of
wives and horses never any man was predestinated to a better fortune than
I.

How Panurge consulteth with an old French poet, named Raminagrobis.

I never thought, said Pantagruel, to have encountered with any man so
headstrong in his apprehensions, or in his opinions so wilful, as I have
found you to be and see you are.  Nevertheless, the better to clear and
extricate your doubts, let us try all courses, and leave no stone unturned
nor wind unsailed by.  Take good heed to what I am to say unto you.  The
swans, which are fowls consecrated to Apollo, never chant but in the hour
of their approaching death, especially in the Meander flood, which is a
river that runneth along some of the territories of Phrygia.  This I say,
because Aelianus and Alexander Myndius write that they had seen several
swans in other places die, but never heard any of them sing or chant before
their death.  However, it passeth for current that the imminent death of a
swan is presaged by his foregoing song, and that no swan dieth until
preallably he have sung.

After the same manner, poets, who are under the protection of Apollo, when
they are drawing near their latter end do ordinarily become prophets, and
by the inspiration of that god sing sweetly in vaticinating things which
are to come.  It hath been likewise told me frequently, that old decrepit
men upon the brinks of Charon's banks do usher their decease with a
disclosure all at ease, to those that are desirous of such informations, of
the determinate and assured truth of future accidents and contingencies.  I
remember also that Aristophanes, in a certain comedy of his, calleth the
old folks Sibyls, Eith o geron Zibullia.  For as when, being upon a pier by
the shore, we see afar off mariners, seafaring men, and other travellers
alongst the curled waves of azure Thetis within their ships, we then
consider them in silence only, and seldom proceed any further than to wish
them a happy and prosperous arrival; but when they do approach near to the
haven, and come to wet their keels within their harbour, then both with
words and  gestures we salute them, and heartily congratulate their access
safe to the port wherein we are ourselves.  Just so the angels, heroes, and
good demons, according to the doctrine of the Platonics, when they see
mortals drawing near unto the harbour of the grave, as the most sure and
calmest port of any, full of repose, ease, rest, tranquillity, free from
the  troubles and solicitudes of this tumultuous and tempestuous world; then
is  it that they with alacrity hail and salute them, cherish and comfort
them, and, speaking to them lovingly, begin even then to bless them with
illuminations, and to communicate unto them the abstrusest mysteries of
divination.  I will not offer here to confound your memory by quoting
antique examples of Isaac, of Jacob, of Patroclus towards Hector, of Hector
towards Achilles, of Polymnestor towards Agamemnon, of Hecuba, of the
Rhodian renowned by Posidonius, of Calanus the Indian towards Alexander the
Great, of Orodes towards Mezentius, and of many others.  It shall suffice
for the present that I commemorate unto you the learned and valiant knight
and cavalier William of Bellay, late Lord of Langey, who died on the Hill
of Tarara, the 10th of January, in the climacteric year of his age, and of
our supputation 1543, according to the Roman account.  The last three or
four hours of his life he did employ in the serious utterance of a very
pithy discourse, whilst with a clear judgment and spirit void of all
trouble he did foretell several important things, whereof a great deal is
come to pass, and the rest we wait for.  Howbeit, his prophecies did at
that time seem unto us somewhat strange, absurd, and unlikely, because
there did not then appear any sign of efficacy enough to engage our faith
to the belief of what he did prognosticate.  We have here, near to the town
of Villomere, a man that is both old and a poet, to wit, Raminagrobis, who
to his second wife espoused my Lady Broadsow, on whom he begot the fair
Basoche.  It hath been told me he is a-dying, and so near unto his latter
end that he is almost upon the very last moment, point, and article thereof.
Repair thither as fast as you can, and be ready to give an attentive ear to
what he shall chant unto you.  It may be that you shall obtain from him what
you desire, and that Apollo will be pleased by his means to clear your
scruples.  I am content, quoth Panurge.  Let us go thither, Epistemon, and
that both instantly and in all haste, lest otherwise his death prevent our
coming.  Wilt thou come along with us, Friar John?  Yes, that I will, quoth
Friar John, right heartily to do thee a courtesy, my billy-ballocks; for I
love thee with the best of my milt and liver.

Thereupon, incontinently, without any further lingering, to the way they
all three went, and quickly thereafter--for they made good speed--arriving
at the poetical habitation, they found the jolly old man, albeit in the
agony of his departure from this world, looking cheerfully, with an open
countenance, splendid aspect, and behaviour full of alacrity.  After that
Panurge had very civilly saluted him, he in a free gift did present him
with a gold ring, which he even then put upon the medical finger of his
left hand, in the collet or bezel whereof was enchased an Oriental
sapphire, very fair and large.  Then, in imitation of Socrates, did he make
an oblation unto him of a fair white cock, which was no sooner set upon the
tester of his bed, than that, with a high raised head and crest, lustily
shaking his feather-coat, he crowed stentoriphonically loud.  This done,
Panurge very courteously required of him that he would vouchsafe to favour
him with the grant and report of his sense and judgment touching the future
destiny of his intended marriage.  For answer hereto, when the honest old
man had forthwith commanded pen, paper, and ink to be brought unto him, and
that he was at the same call conveniently served with all the three, he
wrote these following verses:

  Take, or not take her,
    Off, or on:
  Handy-dandy is your lot.
  When her name you write, you blot.
  'Tis undone, when all is done,
  Ended e'er it was begun:
  Hardly gallop, if you trot,
  Set not forward when you run,
  Nor be single, though alone,
    Take, or not take her.

  Before you eat, begin to fast;
  For what shall be was never past.
  Say, unsay, gainsay, save your breath:
  Then wish at once her life and death.
    Take, or not take her.

These lines he gave out of his own hands unto them, saying unto them, Go,
my lads, in peace! the great God of the highest heavens be your guardian
and preserver! and do not offer any more to trouble or disquiet me with
this or any other business whatsoever.  I have this same very day, which is
the last both of May and of me, with a greal deal of labour, toil, and
difficulty, chased out of my house a rabble of filthy, unclean, and
plaguily pestilentious rake-hells, black beasts, dusk, dun, white,
ash-coloured, speckled, and a foul vermin of other hues, whose obtrusive
importunity would not permit me to die at my own ease; for by fraudulent
and deceitful pricklings, ravenous, harpy-like graspings, waspish
stingings, and such-like unwelcome approaches, forged in the shop of I know
not what kind of insatiabilities, they went about to withdraw and call me
out of those sweet thoughts wherein I was already beginning to repose
myself and acquiesce in the contemplation and vision, yea, almost in the
very touch and taste of the happiness and felicity which the good God hath
prepared for his faithful saints and elect in the other life and state of
immortality.  Turn out of their courses and eschew them, step forth of
their ways and do not resemble them; meanwhile, let me be no more troubled
by you, but leave me now in silence, I beseech you.

How Panurge patrocinates and defendeth the Order of the Begging Friars.

Panurge, at his issuing forth of Raminagrobis's chamber, said, as if he had
been horribly affrighted, By the virtue of God, I believe that he is an
heretic; the devil take me, if I do not! he doth so villainously rail at
the Mendicant Friars and Jacobins, who are the two hemispheres of the
Christian world; by whose gyronomonic circumbilvaginations, as by two
celivagous filopendulums, all the autonomatic metagrobolism of the Romish
Church, when tottering and emblustricated with the gibble-gabble gibberish
of this odious error and heresy, is homocentrically poised.  But what harm,
in the devil's name, have these poor devils the Capuchins and Minims done
unto him?  Are not these beggarly devils sufficiently wretched already?
Who can imagine that these poor snakes, the very extracts of ichthyophagy,
are not thoroughly enough besmoked and besmeared with misery, distress, and
calamity?  Dost thou think, Friar John, by thy faith, that he is in the
state of salvation?  He goeth, before God, as surely damned to thirty
thousand basketsful of devils as a pruning-bill to the lopping of a
vine-branch.  To revile with opprobrious speeches the good and courageous
props and pillars of the Church,--is that to be called a poetical fury?  I
cannot rest satisfied with him; he sinneth grossly, and blasphemeth against
the true religion.  I am very much offended at his scandalizing words and
contumelious obloquy.  I do not care a straw, quoth Friar John, for what he
hath said; for although everybody should twit and jerk them, it were but a
just retaliation, seeing all persons are served by them with the like sauce:
therefore do I pretend no interest therein.  Let us see, nevertheless, what
he hath written.  Panurge very attentively read the paper which the old man
had penned; then said to his two fellow-travellers, The poor drinker doteth.
Howsoever, I excuse him, for that I believe he is now drawing near to the
end and final closure of his life.  Let us go make his epitaph.  By the
answer which he hath given us, I am not, I protest, one jot wiser than I
was.  Hearken here, Epistemon, my little bully, dost not thou hold him to be
very resolute in his responsory verdicts?  He is a witty, quick, and subtle
sophister.  I will lay an even wager that he is a miscreant apostate.  By
the belly of a stalled ox, how careful he is not to be mistaken in his
words.  He answered but by disjunctives, therefore can it not be true which
he saith; for the verity of such-like propositions is inherent only in one
of its two members.  O the cozening prattler that he is!  I wonder if
Santiago of Bressure be one of these cogging shirks.  Such was of old, quoth
Epistemon, the custom of the grand vaticinator and prophet Tiresias, who
used always, by way of a preface, to say openly and plainly at the beginning
of his divinations and predictions that what he was to tell would either
come to pass or not.  And such is truly the style of all prudently presaging
prognosticators.  He was nevertheless, quoth Panurge, so unfortunately
misadventurous in the lot of his own destiny, that Juno thrust out both his
eyes.

Yes, answered Epistemon, and that merely out of a spite and spleen for
having pronounced his award more veritable than she, upon the question
which was merrily proposed by Jupiter.  But, quoth Panurge, what archdevil
is it that hath possessed this Master Raminagrobis, that so unreasonably,
and without any occasion, he should have so snappishly and bitterly
inveighed against these poor honest fathers, Jacobins, Minors, and Minims?
It vexeth me grievously, I assure you; nor am I able to conceal my
indignation.  He hath transgressed most enormously; his soul goeth
infallibly to thirty thousand panniersful of devils.  I understand you not,
quoth Epistemon, and it disliketh me very much that you should so absurdly
and perversely interpret that of the Friar Mendicants which by the harmless
poet was spoken of black beasts, dun, and other sorts of other coloured
animals.  He is not in my opinion guilty of such a sophistical and
fantastic allegory as by that phrase of his to have meant the Begging
Brothers.  He in downright terms speaketh absolutely and properly of fleas,
punies, hand worms, flies, gnats, and other such-like scurvy vermin,
whereof some are black, some dun, some ash-coloured, some tawny, and some
brown and dusky, all noisome, molesting, tyrannous, cumbersome, and
unpleasant creatures, not only to sick and diseased folks, but to those
also who are of a sound, vigorous, and healthful temperament and
constitution.  It is not unlikely that he may have the ascarids, and the
lumbrics, and worms within the entrails of his body.  Possibly doth he
suffer, as it is frequent and usual amongst the Egyptians, together with
all those who inhabit the Erythraean confines, and dwell along the shores
and coasts of the Red Sea, some sour prickings and smart stingings in his
arms and legs of those little speckled dragons which the Arabians call
meden.  You are to blame for offering to expound his words otherwise, and
wrong the ingenuous poet, and outrageously abuse and miscall the said
fraters, by an imputation of baseness undeservedly laid to their charge.
We still should, in such like discourses of fatiloquent soothsayers,
interpret all things to the best.  Will you teach me, quoth Panurge, how to
discern flies among milk, or show your father the way how to beget
children?  He is, by the virtue of God, an arrant heretic, a resolute,
formal heretic; I say, a rooted, combustible heretic, one as fit to burn as
the little wooden clock at Rochelle.  His soul goeth to thirty thousand
cartsful of devils.  Would you know whither?  Cocks-body, my friend,
straight under Proserpina's close-stool, to the very middle of the
self-same infernal pan within which she, by an excrementitious evacuation,
voideth the faecal stuff of her stinking clysters, and that just upon the
left side of the great cauldron of three fathom height, hard by the claws
and talons of Lucifer, in the very darkest of the passage which leadeth
towards the black chamber of Demogorgon.  O the villain!

How Panurge maketh the motion of a return to Raminagrobis.

Let us return, quoth Panurge, not ceasing, to the uttermost of our
abilities, to ply him with wholesome admonitions for the furtherance of his
salvation.  Let us go back, for God's sake; let us go, in the name of God.
It will be a very meritorious work, and of great charity in us to deal so
in the matter, and provide so well for him that, albeit he come to lose
both body and life, he may at least escape the risk and danger of the
eternal damnation of his soul.  We will by our holy persuasions bring him
to a sense and feeling of his escapes, induce him to acknowledge his
faults, move him to a cordial repentance of his errors, and stir up in him
such a sincere contrition of heart for his offences, as will prompt him
with all earnestness to cry mercy, and to beg pardon at the hands of the
good fathers, as well of the absent as of such as are present.  Whereupon
we will take instrument formally and authentically extended, to the end he
be not, after his decease, declared an heretic, and condemned, as were the
hobgoblins of the provost's wife of Orleans, to the undergoing of such
punishments, pains, and tortures as are due to and inflicted on those that
inhabit the horrid cells of the infernal regions; and withal incline,
instigate, and persuade him to bequeath and leave in legacy (by way of an
amends and satisfaction for the outrage and injury done to those good
religious fathers throughout all the convents, cloisters, and monasteries
of this province), many bribes, a great deal of mass-singing, store of
obits, and that sempiternally, on the anniversary day of his decease, every
one of them all be furnished with a quintuple allowance, and that the great
borachio replenished with the best liquor trudge apace along the tables, as
well of the young duckling monkitoes, lay brothers, and lowermost degree of
the abbey lubbards, as of the learned priests and reverend clerks,--the
very meanest of the novices and mitiants unto the order being equally
admitted to the benefit of those funerary and obsequial festivals with the
aged rectors and professed fathers.  This is the surest ordinary means
whereby from God he may obtain forgiveness.  Ho, ho, I am quite mistaken; I
digress from the purpose, and fly out of my discourse, as if my spirits
were a-wool-gathering.  The devil take me, if I go thither!  Virtue God!
The chamber is already full of devils.  O what a swinging, thwacking noise
is now amongst them!  O the terrible coil that they keep!  Hearken, do you
not hear the rustling, thumping bustle of their strokes and blows, as they
scuffle with one another, like true devils indeed, who shall gulp up the
Raminagrobis soul, and be the first bringer of it, whilst it is hot, to
Monsieur Lucifer?  Beware, and get you hence! for my part, I will not go
thither.  The devil roast me if I go!  Who knows but that these hungry mad
devils may in the haste of their rage and fury of their impatience take a
qui for a quo, and instead of Raminagrobis snatch up poor Panurge frank and
free?  Though formerly, when I was deep in debt, they always failed.  Get
you hence!  I will not go thither.  Before God, the very bare apprehension
thereof is like to kill me.  To be in a place where there are greedy,
famished, and hunger-starved devils; amongst factious devils--amidst
trading and trafficking devils--O the Lord preserve me!  Get you hence!  I
dare pawn my credit on it, that no Jacobin, Cordelier, Carmelite, Capuchin,
Theatin, or Minim will bestow any personal presence at his interment.  The
wiser they, because he hath ordained nothing for them in his latter will
and testament.  The devil take me, if I go thither.  If he be damned, to
his own loss and hindrance be it.  What the deuce moved him to be so
snappish and depravedly bent against the good fathers of the true religion?
Why did he cast them off, reject them, and drive them quite out of his
chamber, even in that very nick of time when he stood in greatest need of
the aid, suffrage, and assistance of their devout prayers and holy
admonitions?  Why did not he by testament leave them, at least, some jolly
lumps and cantles of substantial meat, a parcel of cheek-puffing victuals,
and a little belly-timber and provision for the guts of these poor folks,
who have nothing but their life in this world?  Let him go thither who
will, the devil take me if I go; for, if I should, the devil would not fail
to snatch me up.  Cancro.  Ho, the pox!  Get you hence, Friar John!  Art
thou content that thirty thousand wainload of devils should get away with
thee at this same very instant?  If thou be, at my request do these three
things.  First, give me thy purse; for besides that thy money is marked
with crosses, and the cross is an enemy to charms, the same may befall to
thee which not long ago happened to John Dodin, collector of the excise of
Coudray, at the ford of Vede, when the soldiers broke the planks.  This
moneyed fellow, meeting at the very brink of the bank of the ford with
Friar Adam Crankcod, a Franciscan observantin of Mirebeau, promised him a
new frock, provided that in the transporting of him over the water he would
bear him upon his neck and shoulders, after the manner of carrying dead
goats; for he was a lusty, strong-limbed, sturdy rogue.  The condition
being agreed upon, Friar Crankcod trusseth himself up to his very ballocks,
and layeth upon his back, like a fair little Saint Christopher, the load of
the said supplicant Dodin, and so carried him gaily and with a good will,
as Aeneas bore his father Anchises through the conflagration of Troy,
singing in the meanwhile a pretty Ave Maris Stella.  When they were in the
very deepest place of all the ford, a little above the master-wheel of the
water-mill, he asked if he had any coin about him.  Yes, quoth Dodin, a
whole bagful; and that he needed not to mistrust his ability in the
performance of the promise which he had made unto him concerning a new
frock.  How! quoth Friar Crankcod, thou knowest well enough that by the
express rules, canons, and injunctions of our order we are forbidden to
carry on us any kind of money.  Thou art truly unhappy, for having made me
in this point to commit a heinous trespass.  Why didst thou not leave thy
purse with the miller?  Without fail thou shalt presently receive thy
reward for it; and if ever hereafter I may but lay hold upon thee within
the limits of our chancel at Mirebeau, thou shalt have the Miserere even to
the Vitulos.  With this, suddenly discharging himself of his burden, he
throws me down your Dodin headlong.  Take example by this Dodin, my dear
friend Friar John, to the end that the devils may the better carry thee
away at thine own ease.  Give me thy purse.  Carry no manner of cross upon
thee.  Therein lieth an evident and manifestly apparent danger.  For if you
have any silver coined with a cross upon it, they will cast thee down
headlong upon some rocks, as the eagles use to do with the tortoises for
the breaking of their shells, as the bald pate of the poet Aeschylus can
sufficiently bear witness.  Such a fall would hurt thee very sore, my sweet
bully, and I would be sorry for it.  Or otherwise they will let thee fall
and tumble down into the high swollen waves of some capacious sea, I know
not where; but, I warrant thee, far enough hence, as Icarus fell, which
from thy name would afterwards get the denomination of the Funnelian Sea.

Secondly, be out of debt.  For the devils carry a great liking to those
that are out of debt.  I have sore felt the experience thereof in mine own
particular; for now the lecherous varlets are always wooing me, courting
me, and making much of me, which they never did when I was all to pieces.
The soul of one in debt is insipid, dry, and heretical altogether.

Thirdly, with the cowl and Domino de Grobis, return to Raminagrobis; and in
case, being thus qualified, thirty thousand boatsful of devils forthwith
come not to carry thee quite away, I shall be content to be at the charge
of paying for the pint and faggot.  Now, if for the more security thou
wouldst some associate to bear thee company, let not me be the comrade thou
searchest for; think not to get a fellow-traveller of me,--nay, do not.  I
advise thee for the best.  Get you hence; I will not go thither.  The devil
take me if I go.  Notwithstanding all the fright that you are in, quoth
Friar John, I would not care so much as might possibly be expected I
should, if I once had but my sword in my hand.  Thou hast verily hit the
nail on the head, quoth Panurge, and speakest like a learned doctor, subtle
and well-skilled in the art of devilry.  At the time when I was a student
in the University of Toulouse (Tolette), that same reverend father in the
devil, Picatrix, rector of the diabological faculty, was wont to tell us
that the devils did naturally fear the bright glancing of swords as much as
the splendour and light of the sun.  In confirmation of the verity whereof
he related this story, that Hercules, at his descent into hell to all the
devils of those regions, did not by half so much terrify them with his club
and lion's skin as afterwards Aeneas did with his clear shining armour upon
him, and his sword in his hand well-furbished and unrusted, by the aid,
counsel, and assistance of the Sybilla Cumana.  That was perhaps the reason
why the senior John Jacomo di Trivulcio, whilst he was a-dying at Chartres,
called for his cutlass, and died with a drawn sword in his hand, laying
about him alongst and athwart around the bed and everywhere within his
reach, like a stout, doughty, valorous and knight-like cavalier; by which
resolute manner of fence he scared away and put to flight all the devils
that were then lying in wait for his soul at the passage of his death.
When the Massorets and Cabalists are asked why it is that none of all the
devils do at any time enter into the terrestrial paradise? their answer
hath been, is, and will be still, that there is a cherubin standing at the
gate thereof with a flame-like glistering sword in his hand.  Although, to
speak in the true diabological sense or phrase of Toledo, I must needs
confess and acknowledge that veritably the devils cannot be killed or die
by the stroke of a sword, I do nevertheless avow and maintain, according to
the doctrine of the said diabology, that they may suffer a solution of
continuity (as if with thy shable thou shouldst cut athwart the flame of a
burning fire, or the gross opacous exhalations of a thick and obscure
smoke), and cry out like very devils at their sense and feeling of this
dissolution, which in real deed I must aver and affirm is devilishly
painful, smarting, and dolorous.

When thou seest the impetuous shock of two armies, and vehement violence of
the push in their horrid encounter with one another, dost thou think,
Ballockasso, that so horrible a noise as is heard there proceedeth from the
voice and shouts of men, the dashing and jolting of harness, the clattering
and clashing of armies, the hacking and slashing of battle-axes, the
justling and crashing of pikes, the bustling and breaking of lances, the
clamour and shrieks of the wounded, the sound and din of drums, the
clangour and shrillness of trumpets, the neighing and rushing in of horses,
with the fearful claps and thundering of all sorts of guns, from the double
cannon to the pocket pistol inclusively?  I cannot goodly deny but that in
these various things which I have rehearsed there may be somewhat
occasionative of the huge yell and tintamarre of the two engaged bodies.
But the most fearful and tumultuous coil and stir, the terriblest and most
boisterous garboil and hurry, the chiefest rustling black santus of all,
and most principal hurlyburly springeth from the grievously plangorous
howling and lowing of devils, who pell-mell, in a hand-over-head confusion,
waiting for the poor souls of the maimed and hurt soldiery, receive
unawares some strokes with swords, and so by those means suffer a solution
of and division in the continuity of their aerial and invisible substances;
as if some lackey, snatching at the lard-slices stuck in a piece of roast
meat on the spit, should get from Mr. Greasyfist a good rap on the knuckles
with a cudgel.  They cry out and shout like devils, even as Mars did when
he was hurt by Diomedes at the siege of Troy, who, as Homer testifieth of
him, did then raise his voice more horrifically loud and sonoriferously
high than ten thousand men together would have been able to do.  What
maketh all this for our present purpose?  I have been speaking here of
well-furbished armour and bright shining swords.  But so is it not, Friar
John, with thy weapon; for by a long discontinuance of work, cessation from
labour, desisting from making it officiate, and putting it into that
practice wherein it had been formerly accustomed, and, in a word, for want
of occupation, it is, upon my faith, become more rusty than the key-hole of
an old powdering-tub.  Therefore it is expedient that you do one of these
two things:  either furbish your weapon bravely, and as it ought to be, or
otherwise have a care that, in the rusty case it is in, you do not presume
to return to the house of Raminagrobis.  For my part, I vow I will not go
thither.  The devil take me if I go.

How Panurge consulteth with Epistemon.

Having left the town of Villomere, as they were upon their return towards
Pantagruel, Panurge, in addressing his discourse to Epistemon, spoke thus:
My most ancient friend and gossip, thou seest the perplexity of my
thoughts, and knowest many remedies for the removal thereof; art thou not
able to help and succour me?  Epistemon, thereupon taking the speech in
hand, represented unto Panurge how the open voice and common fame of the
whole country did run upon no other discourse but the derision and mockery
of his new disguise; wherefore his counsel unto him was that he would in
the first place be pleased to make use of a little hellebore for the
purging of his brain of that peccant humour which, through that extravagant
and fantastic mummery of his, had furnished the people with a too just
occasion of flouting and gibing, jeering and scoffing him, and that next he
would resume his ordinary fashion of accoutrement, and go apparelled as he
was wont to do.  I am, quoth Panurge, my dear gossip Epistemon, of a mind
and resolution to marry, but am afraid of being a cuckold and to be
unfortunate in my wedlock.  For this cause have I made a vow to young St.
Francis--who at Plessis-les-Tours is much reverenced of all women,
earnestly cried unto by them, and with great devotion, for he was the first
founder of the confraternity of good men, whom they naturally covet,
affect, and long for--to wear spectacles in my cap, and to carry no
codpiece in my breeches, until the present inquietude and perturbation of
my spirits be fully settled.

Truly, quoth Epistemon, that is a pretty jolly vow of thirteen to a dozen.
It is a shame to you, and I wonder much at it, that you do not return unto
yourself, and recall your senses from this their wild swerving and straying
abroad to that rest and stillness which becomes a virtuous man.  This
whimsical conceit of yours brings me to the remembrance of a solemn promise
made by the shag-haired Argives, who, having in their controversy against
the Lacedaemonians for the territory of Thyrea, lost the battle which they
hoped should have decided it for their advantage, vowed to carry never any
hair on their heads till preallably they had recovered the loss of both
their honour and lands.  As likewise to the memory of the vow of a pleasant
Spaniard called Michael Doris, who vowed to carry in his hat a piece of the
shin of his leg till he should be revenged of him who had struck it off.
Yet do not I know which of these two deserveth most to wear a green and
yellow hood with a hare's ears tied to it, either the aforesaid
vainglorious champion, or that Enguerrant, who having forgot the art and
manner of writing histories set down by the Samosatian philosopher, maketh
a most tediously long narrative and relation thereof.  For, at the first
reading of such a profuse discourse, one would think it had been broached
for the introducing of a story of great importance and moment concerning
the waging of some formidable war, or the notable change and mutation of
potent states and kingdoms; but, in conclusion, the world laugheth at the
capricious champion, at the Englishman who had affronted him, as also at
their scribbler Enguerrant, more drivelling at the mouth than a mustard
pot.  The jest and scorn thereof is not unlike to that of the mountain of
Horace, which by the poet was made to cry out and lament most enormously as
a woman in the pangs and labour of child-birth, at which deplorable and
exorbitant cries and lamentations the whole neighbourhood being assembled
in expectation to see some marvellous monstrous production, could at last
perceive no other but the paltry, ridiculous mouse.

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.

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, Ptochalazon, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 it 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 of 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.

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.

  Panurge.  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.

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. 1. 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. 1.--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. 1. 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. 1.  Et de regul. jur. in
6.  Qui prior est tempore potior est jure.

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. 1. 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. 1. 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. 1.  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. 1. cod. de spect. l. 11.  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. 1. 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. 1. 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. 1. 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. 1. 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.

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. 1.  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. 1. 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. 1.  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.

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. 1. 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. 1. 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. 1. 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.

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.

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 one 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.

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 kubistan 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.

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.

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.

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 any 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.

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.

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 Psinthos, 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.

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, the 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, Phaedra, 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 the
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?  Seldom 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.

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, Diabolos, 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.

Returning back to the characters presented in the second book, book three begins with Pantagruel, who is in the process of relocating some of his own people from Utopia into the country of Dipsody, which he had recently conquered. There is an allusion to other conquerors that have made similar choices about colonizing newly conquered lands. In essence, the idea is to create loyalists out of the newly conquered people by putting already loyal subjects in their midst. Beyond putting some of the people of Utopia into this newly conquered country, Pantagruel also puts his dear friend, Panurge, in charge as the Lord of the land. Unfortunately, with Panurge's preference for decadent living and his inability to save money, Panurge quickly spends all the money that came with his newly acquired position. Worse than that, not only does he waste all the money, but he borrows against the money he will earn over the next several years. After seeing how Panurge has spent all his wealth within a short amount of time, Pantagruel steps in and politely attempts to start a conversation to encourage Panurge to modify his spending habits. This action starts a long debate between Panurge and Pantagruel concerning the pros and cons of debt and debtors. Panurge discusses his love for debtors and borrowers. He claims he would never want to be a man who is out of debt, for when he is deep in debt, all of his debtors treat him kindly with much attention, for they wish to be repaid, and therefore must stay around. Panurge argues that without his debtors, he would be a lonely man, and that no one would care about him when he died. Panurge then addresses the idea of debtors and borrowers from a philosophical approach. Instead of discussing the capitalistic transaction of money borrowing, Panurge examines multiple systems, including the human body, nature, and so forth. He explains that all of the elements within these systems borrow from other elements within the system, and therefore all the elements are forever in debt to each other. As an example, the lungs borrow air so that they may lend that air to the heart, and the heart borrows that air from the lungs to lend that air to the blood. Throughout Panurge's lengthy discussion, he argues that everyone borrows from one another and is therefore always in each other's debt, at least through a socialist perspective. His argument is in favor of debtors and borrowers, but he provides more of an argument in favor of reciprocity rather than an argument in support of money borrowing. Pantagruel disagrees with Panurge and explains as such. As the good and noble character in the story, Pantagruel argues in favor of what the scriptures say against borrowing and lending. He also explains to Panurge that his dislike of debtors and borrowers is an opinion that cannot be changed, and that Panurge's arguments will not change him. Pantagruel views the acts of borrowing and accruing debts as akin to letting the devil slowly entice a person into sinful behavior. Pantagruel does provide a story that explains when it is acceptable to borrow from others, but his story implies that it is only acceptable after one has worked diligently to support oneself. Even then, the example Pantagruel provides only promotes borrowing the bare necessities for survival. Since Pantagruel accepts that he and his friend do not see eye-to-eye, Pantagruel states that they should agree to disagree and close the topic for the time being. They then move on to a new topic concerning military service laws in relation to marriage. According to the laws of the land, a newly married soldier cannot be called into service for the first year of his marriage. Panurge asks Pantagruel why this law is in practice. Pantagruel explains that not only does it promote the creation of progeny, so that the father may pass on his name and his heritage to his children, but it also protects the woman, so that if she is made a widow at a young age, she is still young enough to attract a second husband who will support her and the children of her first husband. Panurge argues against the idea of marrying a widow, implying that it is better to marry a virgin then to forbear a woman of such experience as a widow. Again, Pantagruel and Panurge have differing opinions, but it does not affect their friendship. After all of these discussions, some amount of time has elapsed, and suddenly Panurge finds himself completely debt-free. As a result, he develops a sudden desire to become married, so that he will not be alone. As he goes to pursue a wife, he dresses strangely. Pantagruel asks him to explain his manner of dress, for it is not normally what people wear when they wish to court ladies. Panurge explains that his manner of dress is necessary, since it makes him look like a frugal man, which is who he must become, since now he is debt-free and does not wish to go back into debt, if he is to marry and have children. Panurge explains that he would be happy to find a wife, for he would no longer have to wear his ornate codpiece. Panurge then goes off on a rant about codpieces, stating that all plants and animals in nature have been given protection over their sexual organs. Humans, however, were not given this luxury. Fortunately, after the Fall, when Adam and Eve were thrown out of Paradise, Adam was given a fig leaf, which was the first codpiece. Ever since, the protection of one's member has been ever apparent and necessary for the continuation of human life. Therefore, the codpiece is amongst the most important part of a warrior's armor, according to Panurge. Although Panurge praises the codpiece, his desire to become married and no longer wear his codpiece creates a strange dissonance between his thoughts and his intentions. As Panurge considers getting married, he asks Pantagruel for advice on whether or not he should get married. The two proceed in a drawn-out discussion where Panurge provides a reason he should not get married, to which Pantagruel tells him that if this is how he feels, he should not get married. Panurge then states a reason as to why he should get married, and then Pantagruel replies that if this is how he feels, then he should get married. The two go back and forth in this manner for some time, proving that Panurge really has no idea about whether he wants to get married. Pantagruel suggests that if they really want to get some sage advice on the matter, they should do a Virgilian lottery, which is a process in which a person faces a difficult decision and goes to the Iliad to help them find sage advice. The troubled person opens the Iliad and randomly chooses a line, and that line will supposedly provide guidance. Pantagruel explains how this is a practice that has helped many great people over the centuries. Panurge argues that perhaps they should just use dice or dice games, since they are just as random; but Pantagruel explains the evils of dice games, how his father outlawed them, and says such methods of chance are inappropriate. Nevertheless, he's not against using the dice to determine which line of the Iliad to review. Thus agreed, Pantagruel and Panurge roll the dice to determine that line 16 on any random page will be the line to provide advice. They open the Iliad three times and read three different passages. After reading and interpreting the three different passages, Pantagruel tells Panurge that if he gets married, he "will be a cuckold, will be beaten, and will be robbed." . Panurge, on the other hand, interprets the passages in quite the opposite way, so, once again, Pantagruel and Panurge cannot agree on an answer. Since the Virgilian lottery method did not work, Pantagruel suggests resorting to dream interpretation. Panurge likes the idea, and the two discuss how Panurge should prepare for the dream. The men discuss the difference between eating and fasting before dreams. Both Pantagruel and Panurge completely disagree with some common beliefs about fasting before dreams, because hunger pains will turn dreams into nightmares. However, both men know that if you eat too much, or if you eat the wrong things, it will affect your dreams in different ways. Therefore, they decide upon a moderate amount of food to eat that will stave off hunger but not cause upset stomachs. Panurge takes the advice, follows it, and goes to sleep in hopes of having a prophetic dream. The next day, Panurge goes to Pantagruel and finds Pantagruel in the company of their regular friends as well as Pantagruel's father's best friends, namely Friar John of the Funnels, Ponocrates, and Eudemon. Panurge explains his dream to everyone so that they may interpret it. Once again, Pantagruel interprets Panurge's dream to mean he will be cuckolded, beaten, and robbed. Just like before, Panurge is certain that this interpretation is false, for he could interpret his dream in a very different way. So, once more, Pantagruel and Panurge find themselves on opposite ends of the argument and are thus unable to come to a conclusion. Pantagruel then suggests that Panurge visit the Sibyl of Panzoust, for she is known as a witch with the power of prophecy. Panurge agrees that this woman may have insight concerning whether marriage will make him a cuckold. Pantagruel suggests that Panurge take Epistemon on his journey to the Sibyl. Upon arriving at the Sibyl's hut, Panurge and Epistemon find the woman huddled in a corner of her fireplace. As payment, they offer her precious items, which she accepts. She then conducts her peculiar ritual, pulls off the bark from an old sycamore tree, and scribbles verses onto the bark to provide Panurge his answer. The woman then retreats back to her corner of the fireplace. Panurge and Epistemon retrieved the pieces of bark and bring them back to Pantagruel. Pantagruel reads over the verses written by the Sibyl, and once again he comes to the same conclusion that if Panurge chooses to marry, he will be a cuckold, be beaten, and then he will be robbed. Just as before, Panurge does not accept Pantagruel's interpretation and believes that the verses must mean something else. Next, Pantagruel suggests that deaf people are often known for providing sagely advice. Pantagruel directs Panurge to invite a local deaf person by the name of Goatsnose to come and visit them and provide answers. Goatsnose arrives, and Panurge gives him tribute in hopes that Goatsnose will be able to provide him with answers. Since Goatsnose cannot hear, Panurge and Pantagruel must use hand gestures to explain the situation, and Goatsnose provides hand gestures in response. Unfortunately, Panurge and Goatsnose do not seem to communicate well, or at least Panurge finds it difficult to understand Goatsnose's gestures. Pantagruel, fortunately, understands the gestures quite well, and explains that Goatsnose's gestures have implied that Panurge will get married, he will be made into a cuckold, he will no doubt be beaten, and then he will be robbed. Panurge agrees with the fact that he will be married, but once again, Panurge denies the other allegations. Pantagruel then suggests that Panurge may find answers to his questions by speaking with a man who is close to death, and therefore able to see beyond the veil. Panurge likes this suggestion and agrees to go and speak with a dying man. Pantagruel suggests that Panurge take Friar John with him, which Panurge agrees to do. Panurge and Friar John make their way to visit the poet Raminagrobis, who is reportedly close to death. They provide him with payment, and ask Raminagrobis to provide them with advice on whether Panurge will be a cuckold upon marriage. Raminagrobis seems upset that they would waste his time with such a question, but he nonetheless writes down some verses to provide them with an answer. Unlike the previous answers, Raminagrobis's answers amounts to an ambivalent reply of either get married or don't get married, she will either make you happy or you will wish she is dead. Throughout the course of their visit with Raminagrobis, the dying man makes many heretical statements, so after receiving the answer, Panurge and Friar John leave immediately. As they consider the answer and think back about their visit, both Panurge and Friar John believe Raminagrobis to be plagued by devils. Panurge than considers whether they should go back to Raminagrobis's house to provide him some absolution and prevent his soul from being damned. Although he claims he wants to save this man, Panurge cannot bear the thought of going back to Raminagrobis's house, for the devils that plague Raminagrobis may latch onto innocent souls who walk into the house. Panurge instructs Friar John that he must go and save this man, but that he cannot go alone and without protection. Panurge refuses to go, but he gives Friar John a bag of coins, since the coins have crosses carved on them that may repel devils. Panurge worries that the coins will not scare away the devils, but that they may enrage the devils all the more. Panurge then goes on to say that only a man out of debt should try to attack devils, for the devils will see a debtor as weak and vulnerable. Thus, Panurge thinks Friar John should not go alone, but at the same time he tells Friar John that he will never willingly go with him back to that place. Panurge then asks Epistemon directly whether he should get married. Although a well-learned man, Epistemon does not feel he has the skills adequate enough to answer the question. He exclaims there are too many factors to consider, and he does not wish to offer bad advice. Epistemon comments that he wishes that they could go to all the oracles mentioned in antiquity, but since the Christian religion and Jesus came, apparently all the oracles no longer work. Desperate for an answer, Panurge begs that they should travel to some far-off land where there are still oracles, and try to find the answers there. Epistemon, as a man of logic and a man of religion, cannot abide seeking out more soothsayers who are false prophets, and he refuses to go on any such quests. Epistemon will not go looking for soothsayers in some strange part of the world, but he will take Panurge to a local man noted for his skills with astrology and similar divination arts. Panurge points out that the supposed fortuneteller, Herr Trippa, cannot possess much skill, since he brags about having a virtuous and loyal wife, even though everyone knows that his wife regularly sleeps around with other men. Nevertheless, Panurge agrees to talk with Herr Trippa. At Herr Trippa's home, Panurge and Epistemon learn about the many kinds of divination arts and how they can be used to find answers. However, as Herr Trippa explains each type of divination art, either Panurge or Epistemon mocks the methodologies and points out the obvious flaws of the processes. In the end, they gain no clearer answers. After speaking with Epistemon and Herr Trippa, Panurge decides to seek counsel with Friar John. During this conversation, Friar John points out that Panurge is no longer a young man, and that he has much grey hair. Panurge argues that his grey hair symbolizes his virility. Friar John goes on to say that Panurge should consider marriage, for it is a holy act that will guarantee him and his wife a spot in paradise. While Panurge agrees with the religious part of the argument concerning marriage, it's clear that Friar John does not understand what Panurge is really asking. Panurge quite bluntly asks if his marriage will lead to him becoming a cuckold. Friar John believes that becoming a cuckold is beside the point, since it either will or won't happen. The important part, according to Friar John and the church, is that Panurge be married in the eyes of God. Panurge seems unsatisfied with this answer, so Friar John decides to provide Panurge with some comfort through an interesting, albeit crass anecdote about how to ensure a man does not become a cuckold. According to Friar John, there once was a man by the name of Hans Carvel, and Hans was also afraid that his wife would cheat on him. One night, Hans had a dream, and in his dream the devil came to him. The devil explained that he could ease Hans's worries about becoming a cuckold by giving him a magic ring. In the dream, the devil promised that as long as Hans wore the ring that his wife would never be unfaithful. When Hans woke up from the dream, his finger was inserted inside of his wife's vaginal opening. Thus, Friar John implies that there is no true guarantee to prevent against cuckoldry, except for rather extreme measures. Panurge has spoken with many people, and still he finds himself no closer to an answer about whether he will be cuckolded in marriage. Pantagruel explains that perhaps it is time to speak with more respected authorities. Panurge agrees to listen to anyone at this point, for surely someone must have an answer to this problem. Pantagruel recommends that they speak with a religious scholar, a physician, a lawyer, and a philosopher. Pantagruel knows of four such individuals, and sends out invitations to them to assemble at a dinner party. All except the lawyer are able to attend the dinner. The lawyer, however, is currently being placed on trial, due to questionable verdicts he gave while in the position of being a judge. Although Pantagruel is worried about his lawyer friend, he decides to go ahead with the dinner party with these three guests in hopes that they will provide Panurge with some answers. All of the men arrive at the dinner party and are greeted by Pantagruel and Panurge. Pantagruel explains that they have been asked to dinner to help Panurge solve his problem. Panurge then asks the first man, the religious scholar, Father Hippothadee, about whether he will become a cuckold if he gets married. Much like Friar John, Father Hippothadee promotes getting married, because it is a holy act. He explains to Panurge that if he wishes to avoid being cuckolded that he should choose a worthy woman who is dedicated to God. Panurge claims to have never seen or met such a woman. He thanks Father Hippothadee for his advice, but Panurge's words of thanks are said in a bout of frustration rather than appreciation. Panurge then directs his attention to Rondibilis, the physician. Panurge explains that he wants to get married, because he has urges that only a wife could subdue. Rondibilis explains that there are five ways to handle excessive sexual desires, including drinking, using medicinal drugs or herbs, physically exerting oneself, dedicating oneself to scholarly work, or masturbation. Panurge then questions Rondibilis about if getting married will result in becoming a cuckold. Rondibilis replies that marriage always results in the possibility of cuckoldry, for he views women as incapable of resisting temptation. Rondibilis advises Panurge that the only way to avoid being cuckolded is to monitor one's wife at all times. To do so, however, would require that a man give up all of his pursuits and obligations, which is not practical. Therefore, men must accept the likelihood of becoming a cuckold as part of marriage. Rondibilis also points out that if you try and forbid a woman from doing something, she will surely do what has been forbidden, which is a clear reference to Eve's responsibility for the Fall. Panurge thanks Rondibilis for his advice, although he once again offers his thanks in a rude but polite fashion. Finally, Panurge questions the philosopher, Trouillogan, concerning whether he should marry. Like a true philosopher, Trouillogan never provides a direct answer, and instead argues that people should and should not get married at the same time. Although Trouillogan's philosophical filibustering temporarily amuses Pantagruel, and the other guests, as well as Pantagruel's father, Gargantua, who randomly walks into the meal, Panurge remains unsatisfied, for Trouillogan refuses to provide a definite answer, and instead only wishes to quibble philosophically. After talking to soothsayers, a dying man, a deaf man, and learned men, Panurge is no closer to making a decision. Pantagruel suggests that perhaps Panurge would benefit from speaking with a fool, since fools are known for their mad-but-straightforward perspectives. Panurge agrees to speak with a fool, and so he and Pantagruel plan to seek out the fool known as Triboulet. Before they can speak with the fool, however, Pantagruel must visit his lawyer friend, Judge Bridlegoose, who is currently on trial. Pantagruel sits in at Bridlegoose's trial. Bridlegoose is an elderly man who has been a lawyer and a judge for many decades. He is on trial because some of his recent verdicts have proven very questionable. During the trial, Bridlegoose reveals that it is difficult for him to read through the materials these days, due to his eyes. Therefore, he uses dice to decide the verdict of court trials. As Bridlegoose explains his methodology, he makes the implication that all judges use dice to determine guilt or innocence. The panel of judges questioning him during this trial seems rather shocked at Bridlegoose's methodology. As the panel of judges starts to deliberate, they excuse Bridlegoose from the chambers, but they invite Pantagruel to offer his opinion on the matter. Basically, Pantagruel acknowledges that Bridlegoose's methods are questionable, but he would ask that the matter be excused, because of Bridlegoose's advanced age and simple nature. Pantagruel also asks that, out of the panel's debt to Pantagruel and his family, that they clear Bridlegoose of all charges. Pantagruel acknowledges that those parties who Bridlegoose unjustly sentenced will need to be compensated in accordance with the law, and Pantagruel offers to provide that compensation. As to what the court should do with Bridlegoose, Pantagruel suggests that they may assign Bridlegoose a younger legal counselor to supervise his future decisions. If the panel does not choose to maintain Bridlegoose as a judge, Pantagruel offers to provide Bridlegoose a position in his own lands. Pantagruel and his colleagues leave the courtroom and discuss Bridlegoose's case. They then defend Bridlegoose's actions, and they reason that, since so many court cases are convoluted and ambiguous, that sometimes there is truly no fair or just verdict possible. Furthermore, by leaving it up to chance, it is akin to giving God divine control over the situation. Lastly, Pantagruel and his companions feel that Bridlegoose's decision to use the dice was justified, since they believe that most of the legal workers are corrupt, especially those working within the province in which Bridlegoose has presided in for over forty years. Therefore, by allowing some of the cases to be decided by chance, Pantagruel and his companions argue that Bridlegoose, either knowingly or unknowingly, has diminished the power of those corrupt legal workers. After supporting Bridlegoose at his trial, Pantagruel returns home so that he and Panurge may question the fool, Triboulet. Upon meeting with Triboulet, Panurge provides him a payment of wine, food, and other trinkets. Triboulet accepts the payment and starts to get excessively drunk. In his drunken haze, he speaks gibberish, which Pantagruel and the others interpret as a potential answer to Panurge's question about whether he will be cuckolded after marriage. Similar to before, Pantagruel interprets the gibberish to mean that Panurge will indeed be cuckolded. Panurge, on the other hand, interprets the gibberish quite differently, and therefore the two friends once again cannot settle on an answer. After disagreeing so many times, Pantagruel and Panurge finally decide that they need a definitive answer, and that they must agree upon a method to find and interpret that answer. They decide to seek out the legendary Oracle of the Holy Bottle, which is located in a faraway land known as Lantern Land, which is also referred to as Lanternatory or Lantern-land. Pantagruel explains that he will journey with Panurge to the mythical oracle, provided he can gain his father's blessing on the matter. Pantagruel goes off to speak with his father about Panurge's quest for answers. Gargantua respects Pantagruel for being such a good friend, and gives him leave to go on this adventure with Panurge and his other companions. Gargantua also advises that Pantagruel take Friar John and a few others, along with as many ships and supplies as are required for the journey. As Pantagruel and his father are vaguely on the topic of marriage, Gargantua begins to explain the importance of parents protecting their children from rogues, especially in regards to marriage. Although the conversation focuses more on fathers protecting their daughters from being raped or tricked into marriage with ruffians, there is still information applicable to Pantagruel, in that Gargantua wishes to protect him from choosing to marry the wrong person. Gargantua advises that children should never choose a spouse without the guidance of their parents. Pantagruel replies that he is in no hurry to choose a wife, nor does he have anyone in mind for his future wife. Nevertheless, he explains that if his father wishes him to be married, then his father need only choose his future wife, for Pantagruel will marry whomever his father selects. Gargantua seems satisfied with his son's answer, and implies that he will make plans to set up a royal wedding upon Pantagruel's return from his adventure to the oracle in Lantern Land. Pantagruel, Panurge, and the other companions prepare for their sea voyage to Lantern Land. Panurge suggests that they employ the services of a well-traveled man by the name of Xenomanes. Likewise, Carpalin suggests that they also bring Lord Debitis at Calais, for he is skilled with a lantern and is noted as a good fellow to have around. Pantagruel and the others agree to these two new additions to their company. As Pantagruel's servants prepare the ships, the narrator discusses how the ships are carefully packed with a healthy stock of Pantagruelion, which is an herb or a plant very similar to marijuana. The narrator discusses the many uses of Pantagruelion, and some of these descriptions talk about how the plant can be used for making the modern equivalent of hemp fabric. The narrator also discusses the pleasant and euphoric effects of Pantagruelion in herbal form. Supposedly the juice or the sap of the plant can be used medicinally within the ear to kill parasites and other ear-related pests. If Pantagruelion is put into water, it causes the water to curdle, which makes a good remedy for horses suffering from colic. Boiled Pantagruelion roots can be made into a medicine used for treating muscle pain, joint pain, cramps, gout, and it also proves effective for calming the nerves. Raw Pantagruelion supposedly also heals and treats burns. The narrator also comments about how the herb helps everyone to be more productive, because it puts people in a joyful, open state of mind, which supposedly allows them to perceive more ideas. Finally, the narrator comments on Pantagruelion's asbestos-like qualities. He claims that if a dead body is wrapped in Pantagruelion and then set ablaze, the body will cremate inside the plant fibers, but the actual fibers will remain unharmed, keeping the cremated ashes safely inside. After this discussion of the amazing properties of the Pantagruelion plant, the narrator finishes this third book with a discussion about herbalism lore and myths about types of wood that do not burn easily.

After reading the first two books, the format, style, and direction of book three takes a drastic left turn. As Arthur Augustus Tilley points out, the end of book two left readers with the promise of what exciting events were to come in the following adventures. Practically all of those promises remain unfulfilled within book three. Tilley comments, "the whole tone of the book becomes more philosophical; there is less action and more discussion; there is less fun and more learning, more heaping up, sometimes to the point of tediousness, of citations from classical and other learned authorities" . Furthermore, the character focus has changed significantly. Instead of the book's namesake, Pantagruel, being treated as the main character, the story focuses predominantly on Panurge and his problems. Although the focus may have moved slightly to Panurge, Pantagruel still shares the stage, but aspects of Pantagruel's character seem considerably different from how he was portrayed in the previous book. His manner of discourse with Panurge, for instance, has completely changed. In the second book, it felt as if Pantagruel was always in agreement with his good friend, and that he never suspected Panurge of wrongdoing. In this third installment of the story, however, Pantagruel possesses an overtly serious tone, as if he never laughs anymore. Furthermore, as E. Bruce Hayes argues, Pantagruel in the third book uses his words not necessarily to help his friend, but to torment him. Instead of offering Panurge useful advice, or, at the very least, telling Panurge what he wants to hear, Pantagruel chooses to tell Panurge exactly what he fears most. Hayes comments that "Pantagruel tortures his companion with interpretations that heighten Panurge's alarm," and, as a result, Hayes explains that readers should interpret such "tongue-in-cheek" comments as Pantagruel's method for making Panurge "understand the futility of his quest" . To put it more simply, Pantagruel has grown tired of Panurge's indecisive behavior, so therefore he chooses to punish Panurge into action. Unfortunately, though Pantagruel successfully torments his friend, Panurge remains annoyingly undecided. One cannot discuss the change in the third book's format without discussing factors that possibly motivated Rabelais to address such a philosophical argument. Throughout the early part of the 1500s, various writers published treatises about marriage in relationship to religion and social class. They were also writing documents about women, some of which praised women, whereas others portrayed women as childish, irrational, thoughtless beings. Tilley comments that Rabelais no doubt read these documents, which may have influenced his decision to treat this topic through a fictitious story. In addition, Tilley argues that much of the inspiration for this conversation about marriage came from Rabelais's involvement with the work of one of his friends, Andre Tiraqueau, who wrote a 600-page treatise entitled On the Laws of Marriage. By the time Rabelais got involved with Tiraqueau's work, Tiraqueau was producing the third edition of his book, which was released in 1524, per Tilley. A large portion of the conversations between Panurge, the physician, and the religious scholar are reminiscent of Tiraqueau's work. In fact, Tiraqueau's entire argument is built upon the axiom "that woman is by nature inferior to man, and that it is her part to obey his part to command," and that viewpoint toward women is expressed almost verbatim through the characters of the physician and the religious scholar . Tilley does argue, however, that although Tiraqueau's text certainly places women in the subordinate position, his treatise argues that men must remain faithful as well, and that their status as male does not give them permission to act sinfully toward their wives. Another major distinction between the style of the first two books and the style of this third book includes the treatment of Christian and pagan ideologies. In the previous books, although giants existed, it is implied that the Christian God created them. The narrator even provides a lineage line similar to the lineage line presented in the Old Testament. Although there are some mythical beasts in the first two books, it is noted that those beasts come from Africa, a land identified as a place full of secrets. For the most part, however, the first two books function under the religious structure of Christianity. In this third book, while Christianity still remains in the more powerful position, pagan beliefs and symbolism abound. As Panurge seeks answers to his questions, instead of seeking help directly from the church, he questions a fortune-telling witch and a man who specializes in astrology and other forms of non-Christian sanctioned divination. By the end of the story, Panurge even plans to go on an Odysseus-like adventure to seek out an oracle dedicated to the Greek God Bacchus. Granted, there are moments when Panurge seems to favor Christianity. For example, when he believes that Raminagrobis is tormented by demons, he begs Friar John to save the man's soul from damnation. Although this chapter portrays Panurge as piously dedicated to the Christian faith, the very next chapter shows him begging Epistemon to go with him on a journey to some mythical pagan oracle. Panurge's trust in Christianity wavers, because the religion and the authorities within it do not provide him with the answers or comfort he wants. Panurge is not the only character that wavers, though. Half of the time, both Epistemon and Pantagruel insist that Panurge adhere to Christian law, but in almost the next breath, both of these characters immediately suggest that Panurge seek out answers from people practicing pagan arts. By the end of the third book, they even agree to voyage with Panurge halfway around the world to some pagan oracle. One could argue, though, that this repeating theme of wavering between pagan and Christian ideologies underscores a satirical treatment that mocks non-Christian beliefs, but this same treatment makes fun of and chastises less devout Christians at the same time. Perhaps the strange juxtaposition of the two faiths is meant to emphasize the problems with divine and spiritual interpretation. Prophetic messages, be them Christian, pagan, or anything else, almost always appear open-ended, and thus open to multiple types of interpretation. These interpretations and the methodologies involved therein take center stage in the story. Therefore, the main argument in this third book is not necessarily whether marriage leads to cuckoldry, but rather the main conflict is about who is the better interpreter, Pantagruel or Panurge? Pantagruel uses a fairly analytical and straightforward approach to his interpretation of the signs and messages. His methodology reflects his serious scholar nature, as portrayed in this book. Panurge's approaches to interpreting the signs, however, do not always appear sound. In fact, his interpretations seem to misconstrue the messages to result in only positive messages for him. Thus it becomes an Aristotelian argument between logos  and pathos . Although Pantagruel presents the same results to Panurge time and time again, namely that Panurge will be cuckolded, beaten, and robbed, Panurge refuses to see logic, because his emotions outweigh his senses. Throughout the entire third book, his main emotional state is fear, including fear of being alone and fear of being cuckolded. Thus, the only element truly stopping him from making a decision is his overwhelming sense of fear. By refusing to accept Pantagruel's logical interpretations, Panurge further avoids facing his fears. Panurge's decision to go on the long voyage to the Oracle of the Holy Bottle represents yet another strategy for either avoiding his fears or seeking out only the interpretations that will subdue his fears.