Rabelais - The Fifth Book

THE FIFTH BOOK

The Author’s Prologue.

Indefatigable topers, and you, thrice precious martyrs of the smock, give

me leave to put a serious question to your worships while you are idly

striking your codpieces, and I myself not much better employed.  Pray, why

is it that people say that men are not such sots nowadays as they were in

the days of yore?  Sot is an old word that signifies a dunce, dullard,

jolthead, gull, wittol, or noddy, one without guts in his brains, whose

cockloft is unfurnished, and, in short, a fool.  Now would I know whether

you would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically

may, that formerly men were fools and in this generation are grown wise?

How many and what dispositions made them fools?  How many and what

dispositions were wanting to make ‘em wise?  Why were they fools?  How

should they be wise?  Pray, how came you to know that men were formerly

fools?  How did you find that they are now wise?  Who the devil made ‘em

fools?  Who a God’s name made ‘em wise?  Who d’ye think are most, those

that loved mankind foolish, or those that love it wise?  How long has it

been wise?  How long otherwise?  Whence proceeded the foregoing folly?

Whence the following wisdom?  Why did the old folly end now, and no later?

Why did the modern wisdom begin now, and no sooner?  What were we the worse

for the former folly?  What the better for the succeeding wisdom?  How

should the ancient folly be come to nothing?  How should this same new

wisdom be started up and established?

Now answer me, an’t please you.  I dare not adjure you in stronger terms,

reverend sirs, lest I make your pious fatherly worships in the least

uneasy.  Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.

Be cheery, my lads; and if you are for me, take me off three or five

bumpers of the best, while I make a halt at the first part of the sermon;

then answer my question.  If you are not for me, avaunt! avoid, Satan!  For

I swear by my great-grandmother’s placket (and that’s a horrid oath), that

if you don’t help me to solve that puzzling problem, I will, nay, I already

do repent having proposed it; for still I must remain nettled and

gravelled, and a devil a bit I know how to get off.  Well, what say you?

I’faith, I begin to smell you out.  You are not yet disposed to give me an

answer; nor I neither, by these whiskers.  Yet to give some light into the

business, I’ll e’en tell you what had been anciently foretold in the matter

by a venerable doctor, who, being moved by the spirit in a prophetic vein,

wrote a book ycleped the Prelatical Bagpipe.  What d’ye think the old

fornicator saith?  Hearken, you old noddies, hearken now or never.

  The jubilee’s year, when all like fools were shorn,

  Is about thirty supernumerary.

  O want of veneration! fools they seemed,

  But, persevering, with long breves, at last

  No more they shall be gaping greedy fools.

  For they shall shell the shrub’s delicious fruit,

  Whose flower they in the spring so much had feared.

Now you have it, what do you make on’t?  The seer is ancient, the style

laconic, the sentences dark like those of Scotus, though they treat of

matters dark enough in themselves.  The best commentators on that good

father take the jubilee after the thirtieth to be the years that are

included in this present age till 1550 (there being but one jubilee every

fifty years).  Men shall no longer be thought fools next green peas season.

The fools, whose number, as Solomon certifies, is infinite, shall go to pot

like a parcel of mad bedlamites as they are; and all manner of folly shall

have an end, that being also numberless, according to Avicenna, maniae

infinitae sunt species.  Having been driven back and hidden towards the

centre during the rigour of the winter, ‘tis now to be seen on the surface,

and buds out like the trees.  This is as plain as a nose in a man’s face;

you know it by experience; you see it.  And it was formerly found out by

that great good man Hippocrates, Aphorism Verae etenim maniae, &c.  This

world therefore wisifying itself, shall no longer dread the flower and

blossoms of every coming spring, that is, as you may piously believe,

bumper in hand and tears in eyes, in the woeful time of Lent, which used to

keep them company.

Whole cartloads of books that seemed florid, flourishing, and flowery, gay,

and gaudy as so many butterflies, but in the main were tiresome, dull,

soporiferous, irksome, mischievous, crabbed, knotty, puzzling, and dark as

those of whining Heraclitus, as unintelligible as the numbers of

Pythagoras, that king of the bean, according to Horace; those books, I say,

have seen their best days and shall soon come to nothing, being delivered

to the executing worms and merciless petty chandlers; such was their

destiny, and to this they were predestinated.

In their stead beans in cod are started up; that is, these merry and

fructifying Pantagruelian books, so much sought nowadays in expectation of

the following jubilee’s period; to the study of which writings all people

have given their minds, and accordingly have gained the name of wise.

Now I think I have fairly solved and resolved your problem; then reform,

and be the better for it.  Hem once or twice like hearts of oak; stand to

your pan-puddings, and take me off your bumpers, nine go-downs, and huzza!

since we are like to have a good vintage, and misers hang themselves.  Oh!

they will cost me an estate in hempen collars if fair weather hold.  For I

hereby promise to furnish them with twice as much as will do their business

on free cost, as often as they will take the pains to dance at a rope’s end

providently to save charges, to the no small disappointment of the finisher

of the law.

Now, my friends, that you may put in for a share of this new wisdom, and

shake off the antiquated folly this very moment, scratch me out of your

scrolls and quite discard the symbol of the old philosopher with the golden

thigh, by which he has forbidden you to eat beans; for you may take it for

a truth granted among all professors in the science of good eating, that he

enjoined you not to taste of them only with the same kind intent that a

certain fresh-water physician had when he did forbid to Amer, late Lord of

Camelotiere, kinsman to the lawyer of that name, the wing of the partridge,

the rump of the chicken, and the neck of the pigeon, saying, Ala mala,

rumpum dubium, collum bonum, pelle remota.  For the duncical dog-leech was

so selfish as to reserve them for his own dainty chops, and allowed his

poor patients little more than the bare bones to pick, lest they should

overload their squeamish stomachs.

To the heathen philosopher succeeded a pack of Capuchins, monks who forbid

us the use of beans, that is, Pantagruelian books.  They seem to follow the

example of Philoxenus and Gnatho, one of whom was a Sicilian of fulsome

memory, the ancient master-builders of their monastic cram-gut

voluptuousness, who, when some dainty bit was served up at a feast,

filthily used to spit on it, that none but their nasty selves might have

the stomach to eat of it, though their liquorish chops watered never so

much after it.

So those hideous, snotty, phthisicky, eaves-dropping, musty, moving forms

of mortification, both in public and private, curse those dainty books, and

like toads spit their venom upon them.

Now, though we have in our mother-tongue several excellent works in verse

and prose, and, heaven be praised! but little left of the trash and

trumpery stuff of those duncical mumblers of ave-maries and the barbarous

foregoing Gothic age, I have made bold to choose to chirrup and warble my

plain ditty, or, as they say, to whistle like a goose among the swans,

rather than be thought deaf among so many pretty poets and eloquent

orators.  And thus I am prouder of acting the clown, or any other

under-part, among the many ingenious actors in that noble play, than of

herding among those mutes, who, like so many shadows and ciphers, only serve

to fill up the house and make up a number, gaping and yawning at the flies,

and pricking up their lugs, like so many Arcadian asses, at the striking up

of the music; thus silently giving to understand that their fopships are

tickled in the right place.

Having taken this resolution, I thought it would not be amiss to move my

Diogenical tub, that you might not accuse me of living without example.  I

see a swarm of our modern poets and orators, your Colinets, Marots,

Drouets, Saint Gelais, Salels, Masuels, and many more, who, having

commenced masters in Apollo’s academy on Mount Parnassus, and drunk

brimmers at the Caballin fountain among the nine merry Muses, have raised

our vulgar tongue, and made it a noble and everlasting structure.  Their

works are all Parian marble, alabaster, porphyry, and royal cement; they

treat of nothing but heroic deeds, mighty things, grave and difficult

matters, and this in a crimson, alamode, rhetorical style.  Their writings

are all divine nectar, rich, racy, sparkling, delicate, and luscious wine.

Nor does our sex wholly engross this honour; ladies have had their share of

the glory; one of them, of the royal blood of France, whom it were a

profanation but to name here, surprises the age at once by the transcendent

and inventive genius in her writings and the admirable graces of her style.

Imitate those great examples if you can; for my part I cannot.  Everyone,

you know, cannot go to Corinth.  When Solomon built the temple, all could

not give gold by handfuls.

Since then ‘tis not in my power to improve our architecture as much as

they, I am e’en resolved to do like Renault of Montauban:  I’ll wait on the

masons, set on the pot for the masons, cook for the stone-cutters; and

since it was not my good luck to be cut out for one of them, I will live

and die the admirer of their divine writings.

As for you, little envious prigs, snarling bastards, puny critics, you’ll

soon have railed your last; go hang yourselves, and choose you out some

well-spread oak, under whose shade you may swing in state, to the

admiration of the gaping mob; you shall never want rope enough.  While I

here solemnly protest before my Helicon, in the presence of my nine

mistresses the Muses, that if I live yet the age of a dog, eked out with

that of three crows, sound wind and limbs, like the old Hebrew captain

Moses, Xenophilus the musician, and Demonax the philosopher, by arguments

no ways impertinent, and reasons not to be disputed, I will prove, in the

teeth of a parcel of brokers and retailers of ancient rhapsodies and such

mouldy trash, that our vulgar tongue is not so mean, silly, inept, poor,

barren, and contemptible as they pretend.  Nor ought I to be afraid of I

know not what botchers of old threadbare stuff, a hundred and a hundred

times clouted up and pieced together; wretched bunglers that can do nothing

but new-vamp old rusty saws; beggarly scavengers that rake even the

muddiest canals of antiquity for scraps and bits of Latin as insignificant

as they are often uncertain.  Beseeching our grandees of Witland that, as

when formerly Apollo had distributed all the treasures of his poetical

exchequer to his favourites, little hulchbacked Aesop got for himself the

office of apologue-monger; in the same manner, since I do not aspire

higher, they would not deny me that of puny rhyparographer, or riffraff

follower of the sect of Pyreicus.

I dare swear they will grant me this; for they are all so kind, so

good-natured, and so generous, that they’ll ne’er boggle at so small a

request. Therefore, both dry and hungry souls, pot and trenchermen, fully

enjoying those books, perusing, quoting them in their merry conventicles,

and observing the great mysteries of which they treat, shall gain a singular

profit and fame; as in the like case was done by Alexander the Great with

the books of prime philosophy composed by Aristotle.

O rare! belly on belly! what swillers, what twisters will there be!

Then be sure all you that take care not to die of the pip, be sure, I say,

you take my advice, and stock yourselves with good store of such books as

soon as you meet with them at the booksellers; and do not only shell those

beans, but e’en swallow them down like an opiate cordial, and let them be

in you; I say, let them be within you; then you shall find, my beloved,

what good they do to all clever shellers of beans.

Here is a good handsome basketful of them, which I here lay before your

worships; they were gathered in the very individual garden whence the

former came.  So I beseech you, reverend sirs, with as much respect as was

ever paid by dedicating author, to accept of the gift, in hopes of somewhat

better against next visit the swallows give us.

THE FIFTH BOOK.

Chapter 5.I.

How Pantagruel arrived at the Ringing Island, and of the noise that we

heard.

Pursuing our voyage, we sailed three days without discovering anything; on

the fourth we made land.  Our pilot told us that it was the Ringing Island,

and indeed we heard a kind of a confused and often repeated noise, that

seemed to us at a great distance not unlike the sound of great,

middle-sized, and little bells rung all at once, as ‘tis customary at Paris,

Tours, Gergeau, Nantes, and elsewhere on high holidays; and the nearer we

came to the land the louder we heard that jangling.

Some of us doubted that it was the Dodonian kettle, or the portico called

Heptaphone in Olympia, or the eternal humming of the colossus raised on

Memnon’s tomb in Thebes of Egypt, or the horrid din that used formerly to

be heard about a tomb at Lipara, one of the Aeolian islands.  But this did

not square with chorography.

I do not know, said Pantagruel, but that some swarms of bees hereabouts may

be taking a ramble in the air, and so the neighbourhood make this

dingle-dangle with pans, kettles, and basins, the corybantine cymbals of

Cybele, grandmother of the gods, to call them back.  Let’s hearken.  When we

were nearer, among the everlasting ringing of these indefatigable bells we

heard the singing, as we thought, of some men.  For this reason, before we

offered to land on the Ringing Island, Pantagruel was of opinion that we

should go in the pinnace to a small rock, near which we discovered an

hermitage and a little garden.  There we found a diminutive old hermit,

whose name was Braguibus, born at Glenay.  He gave us a full account of all

the jangling, and regaled us after a strange sort of fashion--four livelong

days did he make us fast, assuring us that we should not be admitted into

the Ringing Island otherwise, because it was then one of the four fasting,

or ember weeks.  As I love my belly, quoth Panurge, I by no means understand

this riddle.  Methinks this should rather be one of the four windy weeks;

for while we fast we are only puffed up with wind.  Pray now, good father

hermit, have not you here some other pastime besides fasting? Methinks it is

somewhat of the leanest; we might well enough be without so many palace

holidays and those fasting times of yours.  In my Donatus, quoth Friar John,

I could find yet but three times or tenses, the preterit, the present, and

the future; doubtless here the fourth ought to be a work of supererogation.

That time or tense, said Epistemon, is aorist, derived from the

preter-imperfect tense of the Greeks, admitted in war (?) and odd cases.

Patience perforce is a remedy for a mad dog.  Saith the hermit:  It is, as I

told you, fatal to go against this; whosoever does it is a rank heretic, and

wants nothing but fire and faggot, that’s certain.  To deal plainly with

you, my dear pater, cried Panurge, being at sea, I much more fear being wet

than being warm, and being drowned than being burned.

Well, however, let us fast, a God’s name; yet I have fasted so long that it

has quite undermined my flesh, and I fear that at last the bastions of this

bodily fort of mine will fall to ruin.  Besides, I am much more afraid of

vexing you in this same trade of fasting; for the devil a bit I understand

anything in it, and it becomes me very scurvily, as several people have

told me, and I am apt to believe them.  For my part, I have no great

stomach to fasting; for alas! it is as easy as pissing a bed, and a trade

of which anybody may set up; there needs no tools.  I am much more inclined

not to fast for the future; for to do so there is some stock required, and

some tools are set a-work.  No matter, since you are so steadfast, and

would have us fast, let us fast as fast as we can, and then breakfast in

the name of famine.  Now we are come to these esurial idle days.  I vow I

had quite put them out of my head long ago.  If we must fast, said

Pantagruel, I see no other remedy but to get rid of it as soon as we can,

as we would out of a bad way.  I’ll in that space of time somewhat look

over my papers, and examine whether the marine study be as good as ours at

land.  For Plato, to describe a silly, raw, ignorant fellow, compares him

to those that are bred on shipboard, as we would do one bred up in a

barrel, who never saw anything but through the bung-hole.

To tell you the short and the long of the matter, our fasting was most

hideous and terrible; for the first day we fasted on fisticuffs, the second

at cudgels, the third at sharps, and the fourth at blood and wounds:  such

was the order of the fairies.

Chapter 5.II.

How the Ringing Island had been inhabited by the Siticines, who were become

birds.

Having fasted as aforesaid, the hermit gave us a letter for one whom he

called Albian Camar, Master Aedituus of the Ringing Island; but Panurge

greeting him called him Master Antitus.  He was a little queer old fellow,

bald-pated, with a snout whereat you might easily have lighted a

card-match, and a phiz as red as a cardinal’s cap.  He made us all very

welcome, upon the hermit’s recommendation, hearing that we had fasted, as I

have told you.

When we had well stuffed our puddings, he gave us an account of what was

remarkable in the island, affirming that it had been at first inhabited by

the Siticines; but that, according to the course of nature--as all things,

you know, are subject to change--they were become birds.

There I had a full account of all that Atteius Capito, Paulus, Marcellus,

A. Gellius, Athenaeus, Suidas, Ammonius, and others had writ of the

Siticines and Sicinnists; and then we thought we might as easily believe

the transmutations of Nectymene, Progne, Itys, Alcyone, Antigone, Tereus,

and other birds.  Nor did we think it more reasonable to doubt of the

transmogrification of the Macrobian children into swans, or that of the men

of Pallene in Thrace into birds, as soon as they had bathed themselves in

the Tritonic lake.  After this the devil a word could we get out of him but

of birds and cages.

The cages were spacious, costly, magnificent, and of an admirable

architecture.  The birds were large, fine, and neat accordingly, looking as

like the men in my country as one pea does like another; for they ate and

drank like men, muted like men, endued or digested like men, farted like

men, but stunk like devils; slept, billed, and trod their females like men,

but somewhat oftener:  in short, had you seen and examined them from top to

toe, you would have laid your head to a turnip that they had been mere men.

However, they were nothing less, as Master Aedituus told us; assuring us,

at the same time, that they were neither secular nor laic; and the truth

is, the diversity of their feathers and plumes did not a little puzzle us.

Some of them were all over as white as swans, others as black as crows,

many as grey as owls, others black and white like magpies, some all red

like red-birds, and others purple and white like some pigeons.  He called

the males clerg-hawks, monk-hawks, priest-hawks, abbot-hawks, bish-hawks,

cardin-hawks, and one pope-hawk, who is a species by himself.  He called

the females clerg-kites, nun-kites, priest-kites, abbess-kites, bish-kites,

cardin-kites, and pope-kites.

However, said he, as hornets and drones will get among the bees, and there

do nothing but buzz, eat, and spoil everything; so, for these last three

hundred years, a vast swarm of bigottelloes flocked, I do not know how,

among these goodly birds every fifth full moon, and have bemuted, berayed,

and conskited the whole island.  They are so hard-favoured and monstrous

that none can abide them.  For their wry necks make a figure like a crooked

billet; their paws are hairy, like those of rough-footed pigeons; their

claws and pounces, belly and breech, like those of the Stymphalid harpies.

Nor is it possible to root them out, for if you get rid of one, straight

four-and-twenty new ones fly thither.

There had been need of another monster-hunter such as was Hercules; for

Friar John had like to have run distracted about it, so much he was nettled

and puzzled in the matter.  As for the good Pantagruel, he was even served

as was Messer Priapus, contemplating the sacrifices of Ceres, for want of

skin.

Chapter 5.III.

How there is but one pope-hawk in the Ringing Island.

We then asked Master Aedituus why there was but one pope-hawk among such

venerable birds multiplied in all their species.  He answered that such was

the first institution and fatal destiny of the stars that the clerg-hawks

begot the priest-hawks and monk-hawks without carnal copulation, as some

bees are born of a young bull; the priest-hawks begat the bish-hawks, the

bish-hawks the stately cardin-hawks, and the stately cardin-hawks, if they

live long enough, at last come to be pope-hawk.

Of this last kind there never is more than one at a time, as in a beehive

there is but one king, and in the world is but one sun.

When the pope-hawk dies, another arises in his stead out of the whole brood

of cardin-hawks, that is, as you must understand it all along, without

carnal copulation.  So that there is in that species an individual unity,

with a perpetuity of succession, neither more or less than in the Arabian

phoenix.

‘Tis true that, about two thousand seven hundred and sixty moons ago, two

pope-hawks were seen upon the face of the earth; but then you never saw in

your lives such a woeful rout and hurly-burly as was all over this island.

For all these same birds did so peck, clapperclaw, and maul one another all

that time, that there was the devil and all to do, and the island was in a

fair way of being left without inhabitants.  Some stood up for this

pope-hawk, some for t’other.  Some, struck with a dumbness, were as mute as

so many fishes; the devil a note was to be got out of them; part of the

merry bells here were as silent as if they had lost their tongues, I mean

their clappers.

During these troublesome times they called to their assistance the

emperors, kings, dukes, earls, barons, and commonwealths of the world that

live on t’other side the water; nor was this schism and sedition at an end

till one of them died, and the plurality was reduced to a unity.

We then asked what moved those birds to be thus continually chanting and

singing.  He answered that it was the bells that hung on the top of their

cages.  Then he said to us, Will you have me make these monk-hawks whom you

see bardocuculated with a bag such as you use to still brandy, sing like

any woodlarks?  Pray do, said we.  He then gave half-a-dozen pulls to a

little rope, which caused a diminutive bell to give so many ting-tangs; and

presently a parcel of monk-hawks ran to him as if the devil had drove ‘em,

and fell a-singing like mad.

Pray, master, cried Panurge, if I also rang this bell could I make those

other birds yonder, with red-herring-coloured feathers, sing?  Ay, marry

would you, returned Aedituus.  With this Panurge hanged himself (by the

hands, I mean) at the bell-rope’s end, and no sooner made it speak but

those smoked birds hied them thither and began to lift up their voices and

make a sort of untowardly hoarse noise, which I grudge to call singing.

Aedituus indeed told us that they fed on nothing but fish, like the herns

and cormorants of the world, and that they were a fifth kind of cucullati

newly stamped.

He added that he had been told by Robert Valbringue, who lately passed that

way in his return from Africa, that a sixth kind was to fly hither out of

hand, which he called capus-hawks, more grum, vinegar-faced, brain-sick,

froward, and loathsome than any kind whatsoever in the whole island.

Africa, said Pantagruel, still uses to produce some new and monstrous

thing.

Chapter 5.IV.

How the birds of the Ringing Island were all passengers.

Since you have told us, said Pantagruel, how the pope-hawk is begot by the

cardin-hawks, the cardin-hawks by the bish-hawks, and the bish-hawks by the

priest-hawks, and the priest-hawks by the clerg-hawks, I would gladly know

whence you have these same clerg-hawks.  They are all of them passengers,

or travelling birds, returned Aedituus, and come hither from t’other world;

part out of a vast country called Want-o’-bread, the rest out of another

toward the west, which they style Too-many-of-’em.  From these two

countries flock hither, every year, whole legions of these clerg-hawks,

leaving their fathers, mothers, friends, and relations.

This happens when there are too many children, whether male or female, in

some good family of the latter country; insomuch that the house would come

to nothing if the paternal estate were shared among them all (as reason

requires, nature directs, and God commands).  For this cause parents use to

rid themselves of that inconveniency by packing off the younger fry, and

forcing them to seek their fortune in this isle Bossart (Crooked Island).

I suppose he means L’Isle Bouchart, near Chinon, cried Panurge.  No,

replied t’other, I mean Bossart (Crooked), for there is not one in ten

among them but is either crooked, crippled, blinking, limping,

ill-favoured, deformed, or an unprofitable load to the earth.

‘Twas quite otherwise among the heathens, said Pantagruel, when they used

to receive a maiden among the number of vestals; for Leo Antistius affirms

that it was absolutely forbidden to admit a virgin into that order if she

had any vice in her soul or defect in her body, though it were but the

smallest spot on any part of it.  I can hardly believe, continued Aedituus,

that their dams on t’other side the water go nine months with them; for

they cannot endure them nine years, nay, scarce seven sometimes, in the

house, but by putting only a shirt over the other clothes of the young

urchins, and lopping off I don’t well know how many hairs from their

crowns, mumbling certain apostrophized and expiatory words, they visibly,

openly, and plainly, by a Pythagorical metempsychosis, without the least

hurt, transmogrify them into such birds as you now see; much after the

fashion of the Egyptian heathens, who used to constitute their isiacs by

shaving them and making them put on certain linostoles, or surplices.

However, I don’t know, my good friends, but that these she-things, whether

clerg-kites, monk-kites, and abbess-kites, instead of singing pleasant

verses and charisteres, such as used to be sung to Oromasis by Zoroaster’s

institution, may be bellowing out such catarates and scythropys (cursed

lamentable and wretched imprecations) as were usually offered to the

Arimanian demon; being thus in devotion for their kind friends and

relations that transformed them into birds, whether when they were maids,

or thornbacks, in their prime, or at their last prayers.

But the greatest numbers of our birds came out of Want-o’-bread, which,

though a barren country, where the days are of a most tedious lingering

length, overstocks this whole island with the lower class of birds.  For

hither fly the asapheis that inhabit that land, either when they are in

danger of passing their time scurvily for want of belly-timber, being

unable, or, what’s more likely, unwilling to take heart of grace and follow

some honest lawful calling, or too proud-hearted and lazy to go to service

in some sober family.  The same is done by your frantic inamoradoes, who,

when crossed in their wild desires, grow stark staring mad, and choose this

life suggested to them by their despair, too cowardly to make them swing,

like their brother Iphis of doleful memory.  There is another sort, that

is, your gaol-birds, who, having done some rogue’s trick or other heinous

villainy, and being sought up and down to be trussed up and made to ride

the two or three-legged mare that groans for them, warily scour off and

come here to save their bacon; because all these sorts of birds are here

provided for, and grow in an instant as fat as hogs, though they came as

lean as rakes; for having the benefit of the clergy, they are as safe as

thieves in a mill within this sanctuary.

But, asked Pantagruel, do these birds never return to the world where they

were hatched?  Some do, answered Aedituus; formerly very few, very seldom,

very late, and very unwillingly; however, since some certain eclipses, by

the virtue of the celestial constellations, a great crowd of them fled back

to the world.  Nor do we fret or vex ourselves a jot about it; for those

that stay wisely sing, The fewer the better cheer; and all those that fly

away, first cast off their feathers here among these nettles and briars.

Accordingly we found some thrown by there; and as we looked up and down, we

chanced to light on what some people will hardly thank us for having

discovered; and thereby hangs a tale.

Chapter 5.V.

Of the dumb Knight-hawks of the Ringing Island.

These words were scarce out of his mouth when some five-and-twenty or

thirty birds flew towards us; they were of a hue and feather like which we

had not seen anything in the whole island.  Their plumes were as changeable

as the skin of the chameleon, and the flower of tripolion, or teucrion.

They had all under the left wing a mark like two diameters dividing a

circle into equal parts, or, if you had rather have it so, like a

perpendicular line falling on a right line.  The marks which each of them

bore were much of the same shape, but of different colours; for some were

white, others green, some red, others purple, and some blue.  Who are

those? asked Panurge; and how do you call them?  They are mongrels, quoth

Aedituus.

We call them knight-hawks, and they have a great number of rich

commanderies (fat livings) in your world.  Good your worship, said I, make

them give us a song, an’t please you, that we may know how they sing.  They

scorn your words, cried Aedituus; they are none of your singing-birds; but,

to make amends, they feed as much as the best two of them all.  Pray where

are their hens? where are their females? said I.  They have none, answered

Aedituus.  How comes it to pass then, asked Panurge, that they are thus

bescabbed, bescurfed, all embroidered o’er the phiz with carbuncles,

pushes, and pock-royals, some of which undermine the handles of their

faces?  This same fashionable and illustrious disease, quoth Aedituus, is

common among that kind of birds, because they are pretty apt to be tossed

on the salt deep.

He then acquainted us with the occasion of their coming.  This next to us,

said he, looks so wistfully upon you to see whether he may not find among

your company a stately gaudy kind of huge dreadful birds of prey, which yet

are so untoward that they ne’er could be brought to the lure nor to perch

on the glove.  They tell us that there are such in your world, and that

some of them have goodly garters below the knee with an inscription about

them which condemns him (qui mal y pense) who shall think ill of it to be

berayed and conskited.  Others are said to wear the devil in a string

before their paunches; and others a ram’s skin.  All that’s true enough,

good Master Aedituus, quoth Panurge; but we have not the honour to be

acquainted with their knightships.

Come on, cried Aedituus in a merry mood, we have had chat enough o’

conscience! let’s e’en go drink.  And eat, quoth Panurge.  Eat, replied

Aedituus, and drink bravely, old boy; twist like plough-jobbers and swill

like tinkers.  Pull away and save tide, for nothing is so dear and precious

as time; therefore we will be sure to put it to a good use.

He would fain have carried us first to bathe in the bagnios of the

cardin-hawks, which are goodly delicious places, and have us licked over

with precious ointments by the alyptes, alias rubbers, as soon as we should

come out of the bath.  But Pantagruel told him that he could drink but too

much without that.  He then led us into a spacious delicate refectory, or

fratery-room, and told us:  Braguibus the hermit made you fast four days

together; now, contrariwise, I’ll make you eat and drink of the best four

days through stitch before you budge from this place.  But hark ye me, cried

Panurge, may not we take a nap in the mean time?  Ay, ay, answered Aedituus;

that is as you shall think good; for he that sleeps, drinks. Good Lord! how

we lived! what good bub! what dainty cheer!  O what a honest cod was this

same Aedituus!

Chapter 5.VI.

How the birds are crammed in the Ringing Island.

Pantagruel looked I don’t know howish, and seemed not very well pleased

with the four days’ junketting which Aedituus enjoined us.  Aedituus, who

soon found it out, said to him, You know, sir, that seven days before

winter, and seven days after, there is no storm at sea; for then the

elements are still out of respect for the halcyons, or king-fishers, birds

sacred to Thetis, which then lay their eggs and hatch their young near the

shore.  Now here the sea makes itself amends for this long calm; and

whenever any foreigners come hither it grows boisterous and stormy for four

days together.  We can give no other reason for it but that it is a piece

of its civility, that those who come among us may stay whether they will or

no, and be copiously feasted all the while with the incomes of the ringing.

Therefore pray don’t think your time lost; for, willing, nilling, you’ll be

forced to stay, unless you are resolved to encounter Juno, Neptune, Doris,

Aeolus, and his fluster-busters, and, in short, all the pack of ill-natured

left-handed godlings and vejoves.  Do but resolve to be cheery, and fall-to

briskly.

After we had pretty well stayed our stomachs with some tight snatches,

Friar John said to Aedituus, For aught I see, you have none but a parcel of

birds and cages in this island of yours, and the devil a bit of one of them

all that sets his hand to the plough, or tills the land whose fat he

devours; their whole business is to be frolic, to chirp it, to whistle it,

to warble it, tossing it, and roar it merrily night and day.  Pray then, if

I may be so bold, whence comes this plenty and overflowing of all dainty

bits and good things which we see among you?  From all the other world,

returned Aedituus, if you except some part of the northern regions, who of

late years have stirred up the jakes.  Mum! they may chance ere long to rue

the day they did so; their cows shall have porridge, and their dogs oats;

there will be work made among them, that there will.  Come, a fig for’t,

let’s drink.  But pray what countrymen are you?  Touraine is our country,

answered Panurge.  Cod so, cried Aedituus, you were not then hatched of an

ill bird, I will say that for you, since the blessed Touraine is your

mother; for from thence there comes hither every year such a vast store of

good things, that we were told by some folks of the place that happened to

touch at this island, that your Duke of Touraine’s income will not afford

him to eat his bellyful of beans and bacon (a good dish spoiled between

Moses and Pythagoras) because his predecessors have been more than liberal

to these most holy birds of ours, that we might here munch it, twist it,

cram it, gorge it, craw it, riot it, junket it, and tickle it off, stuffing

our puddings with dainty pheasants, partridges, pullets with eggs, fat

capons of Loudunois, and all sorts of venison and wild fowl.  Come, box it

about; tope on, my friends.  Pray do you see yon jolly birds that are

perched together, how fat, how plump, and in good case they look, with the

income that Touraine yields us!  And in faith they sing rarely for their

good founders, that is the truth on’t.  You never saw any Arcadian birds

mumble more fairly than they do over a dish when they see these two gilt

batons, or when I ring for them those great bells that you see above their

cages.  Drink on, sirs, whip it away.  Verily, friends, ‘tis very fine

drinking to-day, and so ‘tis every day o’ the week; then drink on, toss it

about, here’s to you with all my soul.  You are most heartily welcome;

never spare it, I pray you; fear not we should ever want good bub and

belly-timber; for, look here, though the sky were of brass, and the earth

of iron, we should not want wherewithal to stuff the gut, though they were

to continue so seven or eight years longer than the famine in Egypt.  Let

us then, with brotherly love and charity, refresh ourselves here with the

creature.

Woons, man, cried Panurge, what a rare time you have on’t in this world!

Psha, returned Aedituus, this is nothing to what we shall have in t’other;

the Elysian fields will be the least that can fall to our lot.  Come, in

the meantime let us drink here; come, here’s to thee, old fuddlecap.

Your first Siticines, said I, were superlatively wise in devising thus a

means for you to compass whatever all men naturally covet so much, and so

few, or, to speak more properly, none can enjoy together--I mean, a

paradise in this life, and another in the next.  Sure you were born wrapt

in your mother’s smickets!  O happy creatures!  O more than men!  Would I

had the luck to fare like you!  (Motteux inserts Chapter XVI. after Chapter

VI.)

Chapter 5.VII.

How Panurge related to Master Aedituus the fable of the horse and the ass.

When we had crammed and crammed again, Aedituus took us into a chamber that

was well furnished, hung with tapestry, and finely gilt.  Thither he caused

to be brought store of mirobolans, cashou, green ginger preserved, with

plenty of hippocras, and delicious wine.  With those antidotes, that were

like a sweet Lethe, he invited us to forget the hardships of our voyage;

and at the same time he sent plenty of provisions on board our ship that

rid in the harbour.  After this, we e’en jogged to bed for that night; but

the devil a bit poor pilgarlic could sleep one wink--the everlasting

jingle-jangle of the bells kept me awake whether I would or no.

About midnight Aedituus came to wake us that we might drink.  He himself

showed us the way, saying:  You men of t’other world say that ignorance is

the mother of all evil, and so far you are right; yet for all that you do

not take the least care to get rid of it, but still plod on, and live in

it, with it, and by it; for which a plaguy deal of mischief lights on you

every day, and you are right enough served--you are perpetually ailing

somewhat, making a moan, and never right.  It is what I was ruminating upon

just now.  And, indeed, ignorance keeps you here fastened in bed, just as

that bully-rock Mars was detained by Vulcan’s art; for all the while you do

not mind that you ought to spare some of your rest, and be as lavish as you

can of the goods of this famous island.  Come, come, you should have eaten

three breakfasts already; and take this from me for a certain truth, that

if you would consume the mouth-ammunition of this island, you must rise

betimes; eat them, they multiply; spare them, they diminish.

For example, mow a field in due season, and the grass will grow thicker and

better; don’t mow it, and in a short time ‘twill be floored with moss.

Let’s drink, and drink again, my friends; come, let’s all carouse it.  The

leanest of our birds are now singing to us all; we’ll drink to them, if you

please.  Let’s take off one, two, three, nine bumpers.  Non zelus, sed

caritas.

When day, peeping in the east, made the sky turn from black to red like a

boiling lobster, he waked us again to take a dish of monastical brewis.

From that time we made but one meal, that only lasted the whole day; so

that I cannot well tell how I may call it, whether dinner, supper,

nunchion, or after-supper; only, to get a stomach, we took a turn or two in

the island, to see and hear the blessed singing-birds.

At night Panurge said to Aedituus:  Give me leave, sweet sir, to tell you a

merry story of something that happened some three and twenty moons ago in

the country of Chastelleraud.

One day in April, a certain gentleman’s groom, Roger by name, was walking

his master’s horses in some fallow ground.  There ‘twas his good fortune to

find a pretty shepherdess feeding her bleating sheep and harmless lambkins

on the brow of a neighbouring mountain, in the shade of an adjacent grove;

near her, some frisking kids tripped it over a green carpet of nature’s own

spreading, and, to complete the landscape, there stood an ass.  Roger, who

was a wag, had a dish of chat with her, and after some ifs, ands, and buts,

hems and heighs on her side, got her in the mind to get up behind him, to

go and see his stable, and there take a bit by the bye in a civil way.

While they were holding a parley, the horse, directing his discourse to the

ass (for all brute beasts spoke that year in divers places), whispered

these words in his ear:  Poor ass, how I pity thee! thou slavest like any

hack, I read it on thy crupper.  Thou dost well, however, since God has

created thee to serve mankind; thou art a very honest ass, but not to be

better rubbed down, currycombed, trapped, and fed than thou art, seems to

me indeed to be too hard a lot.  Alas! thou art all rough-coated, in ill

plight, jaded, foundered, crestfallen, and drooping, like a mooting duck,

and feedest here on nothing but coarse grass, or briars and thistles.

Therefore do but pace it along with me, and thou shalt see how we noble

steeds, made by nature for war, are treated.  Come, thou’lt lose nothing by

coming; I’ll get thee a taste of my fare.  I’ troth, sir, I can but love

you and thank you, returned the ass; I’ll wait on you, good Mr. Steed.

Methinks, gaffer ass, you might as well have said Sir Grandpaw Steed.  O!

cry mercy, good Sir Grandpaw, returned the ass; we country clowns are

somewhat gross, and apt to knock words out of joint.  However, an’t please

you, I will come after your worship at some distance, lest for taking this

run my side should chance to be firked and curried with a vengeance, as it

is but too often, the more is my sorrow.

The shepherdess being got behind Roger, the ass followed, fully resolved to

bait like a prince with Roger’s steed; but when they got to the stable, the

groom, who spied the grave animal, ordered one of his underlings to welcome

him with a pitchfork and currycomb him with a cudgel.  The ass, who heard

this, recommended himself mentally to the god Neptune, and was packing off,

thinking and syllogizing within himself thus:  Had not I been an ass, I had

not come here among great lords, when I must needs be sensible that I was

only made for the use of the small vulgar.  Aesop had given me a fair

warning of this in one of his fables.  Well, I must e’en scamper or take

what follows.  With this he fell a-trotting, and wincing, and yerking, and

calcitrating, alias kicking, and farting, and funking, and curvetting, and

bounding, and springing, and galloping full drive, as if the devil had come

for him in propria persona.

The shepherdess, who saw her ass scour off, told Roger that it was her

cattle, and desired he might be kindly used, or else she would not stir her

foot over the threshold.  Friend Roger no sooner knew this but he ordered

him to be fetched in, and that my master’s horses should rather chop straw

for a week together than my mistress’s beast should want his bellyful of

corn.

The most difficult point was to get him back; for in vain the youngsters

complimented and coaxed him to come.  I dare not, said the ass; I am

bashful.  And the more they strove by fair means to bring him with them,

the more the stubborn thing was untoward, and flew out at the heels;

insomuch that they might have been there to this hour, had not his mistress

advised them to toss oats in a sieve or in a blanket, and call him; which

was done, and made him wheel about and say, Oats, with a witness! oats

shall go to pot.  Adveniat; oats will do, there’s evidence in the case; but

none of the rubbing down, none of the firking.  Thus melodiously singing

(for, as you know, that Arcadian bird’s note is very harmonious) he came to

the young gentleman of the horse, alias black garb, who brought him to the

stable.

When he was there, they placed him next to the great horse his friend,

rubbed him down, currycombed him, laid clean straw under him up to the

chin, and there he lay at rack and manger, the first stuffed with sweet

hay, the latter with oats; which when the horse’s valet-dear-chambre

sifted, he clapped down his lugs, to tell them by signs that he could eat

it but too well without sifting, and that he did not deserve so great an

honour.

When they had well fed, quoth the horse to the ass;  Well, poor ass, how is

it with thee now?  How dost thou like this fare?  Thou wert so nice at

first, a body had much ado to get thee hither.  By the fig, answered the

ass, which, one of our ancestors eating, Philemon died laughing, this is

all sheer ambrosia, good Sir Grandpaw; but what would you have an ass say?

Methinks all this is yet but half cheer.  Don’t your worships here now and

then use to take a leap?  What leaping dost thou mean? asked the horse; the

devil leap thee! dost thou take me for an ass?  In troth, Sir Grandpaw,

quoth the ass, I am somewhat of a blockhead, you know, and cannot, for the

heart’s blood of me, learn so fast the court way of speaking of you

gentlemen horses; I mean, don’t you stallionize it sometimes here among

your mettled fillies?  Tush, whispered the horse, speak lower; for, by

Bucephalus, if the grooms but hear thee they will maul and belam thee

thrice and threefold, so that thou wilt have but little stomach to a

leaping bout.  Cod so, man, we dare not so much as grow stiff at the tip of

the lowermost snout, though it were but to leak or so, for fear of being

jerked and paid out of our lechery.  As for anything else, we are as happy

as our master, and perhaps more.  By this packsaddle, my old acquaintance,

quoth the ass, I have done with you; a fart for thy litter and hay, and a

fart for thy oats; give me the thistles of our fields, since there we leap

when we list.  Eat less, and leap more, I say; it is meat, drink, and cloth

to us.  Ah! friend Grandpaw, it would do thy heart good to see us at a

fair, when we hold our provincial chapter!  Oh! how we leap it, while our

mistresses are selling their goslings and other poultry!  With this they

parted.  Dixi; I have done.

Panurge then held his peace.  Pantagruel would have had him to have gone on

to the end of the chapter; but Aedituus said, A word to the wise is enough;

I can pick out the meaning of that fable, and know who is that ass, and who

the horse; but you are a bashful youth, I perceive.  Well, know that

there’s nothing for you here; scatter no words.  Yet, returned Panurge, I

saw but even now a pretty kind of a cooing abbess-kite as white as a dove,

and her I had rather ride than lead.  May I never stir if she is not a

dainty bit, and very well worth a sin or two.  Heaven forgive me! I meant

no more harm in it than you; may the harm I meant in it befall me

presently.

Chapter 5.VIII.

How with much ado we got a sight of the pope-hawk.

Our junketting and banqueting held on at the same rate the third day as the

two former.  Pantagruel then earnestly desired to see the pope-hawk; but

Aedituus told him it was not such an easy matter to get a sight of him.

How, asked Pantagruel, has he Plato’s helmet on his crown, Gyges’s ring on

his pounces, or a chameleon on his breast, to make him invisible when he

pleases?  No, sir, returned Aedituus; but he is naturally of pretty

difficult access.  However, I’ll see and take care that you may see him, if

possible.  With this he left us piddling; then within a quarter of an hour

came back, and told us the pope-hawk is now to be seen.  So he led us,

without the least noise, directly to the cage wherein he sat drooping, with

his feathers staring about him, attended by a brace of little cardin-hawks

and six lusty fusty bish-hawks.

Panurge stared at him like a dead pig, examining exactly his figure, size,

and motions.  Then with a loud voice he said, A curse light on the hatcher

of the ill bird; o’ my word, this is a filthy whoop-hooper.  Tush, speak

softly, said Aedituus; by G--, he has a pair of ears, as formerly Michael

de Matiscones remarked.  What then? returned Panurge; so hath a whoopcat.

So, said Aedituus; if he but hear you speak such another blasphemous word,

you had as good be damned.  Do you see that basin yonder in his cage?  Out

of it shall sally thunderbolts and lightnings, storms, bulls, and the devil

and all, that will sink you down to Peg Trantum’s, an hundred fathom under

ground.  It were better to drink and be merry, quoth Friar John.

Panurge was still feeding his eyes with the sight of the pope-hawk and his

attendants, when somewhere under his cage he perceived a madge-howlet.

With this he cried out, By the devil’s maker, master, there’s roguery in

the case; they put tricks upon travellers here more than anywhere else, and

would make us believe that a t--d’s a sugarloaf.  What damned cozening,

gulling, and coney-catching have we here!  Do you see this madge-howlet?

By Minerva, we are all beshit.  Odsoons, said Aedituus, speak softly, I

tell you.  It is no madge-howlet, no she-thing on my honest word; but a

male, and a noble bird.

May we not hear the pope-hawk sing? asked Pantagruel.  I dare not promise

that, returned Aedituus; for he only sings and eats at his own hours.  So

don’t I, quoth Panurge; poor pilgarlic is fain to make everybody’s time his

own; if they have time, I find time.  Come, then, let us go drink, if you

will.  Now this is something like a tansy, said Aedituus; you begin to talk

somewhat like; still speak in that fashion, and I’ll secure you from being

thought a heretic.  Come on, I am of your mind.

As we went back to have t’other fuddling bout, we spied an old green-headed

bish-hawk, who sat moping with his mate and three jolly bittern attendants,

all snoring under an arbour.  Near the old cuff stood a buxom abbess-kite

that sung like any linnet; and we were so mightily tickled with her singing

that I vow and swear we could have wished all our members but one turned

into ears, to have had more of the melody.  Quoth Panurge, This pretty

cherubim of cherubims is here breaking her head with chanting to this huge,

fat, ugly face, who lies grunting all the while like a hog as he is.  I

will make him change his note presently, in the devil’s name.  With this he

rang a bell that hung over the bish-hawk’s head; but though he rang and

rang again, the devil a bit bish-hawk would hear; the louder the sound, the

louder his snoring.  There was no making him sing.  By G--, quoth Panurge,

you old buzzard, if you won’t sing by fair means, you shall by foul.

Having said this, he took up one of St. Stephen’s loaves, alias a stone,

and was going to hit him with it about the middle.  But Aedituus cried to

him, Hold, hold, honest friend! strike, wound, poison, kill, and murder all

the kings and princes in the world, by treachery or how thou wilt, and as

soon as thou wouldst unnestle the angels from their cockloft.  Pope-hawk

will pardon thee all this.  But never be so mad as to meddle with these

sacred birds, as much as thou lovest the profit, welfare, and life not only

of thyself, and thy friends and relations alive or dead, but also of those

that may be born hereafter to the thousandth generation; for so long thou

wouldst entail misery upon them.  Do but look upon that basin.  Catso! let

us rather drink, then, quoth Panurge.  He that spoke last, spoke well, Mr.

Antitus, quoth Friar John; while we are looking on these devilish birds we

do nothing but blaspheme; and while we are taking a cup we do nothing but

praise God.  Come on, then, let’s go drink; how well that word sounds!

The third day (after we had drank, as you must understand) Aedituus

dismissed us.  We made him a present of a pretty little Perguois knife,

which he took more kindly than Artaxerxes did the cup of cold water that

was given him by a clown.  He most courteously thanked us, and sent all

sorts of provisions aboard our ships, wished us a prosperous voyage and

success in our undertakings, and made us promise and swear by Jupiter of

stone to come back by his territories.  Finally he said to us, Friends,

pray note that there are many more stones in the world than men; take care

you don’t forget it.

Chapter 5.IX.

How we arrived at the island of Tools.

Having well ballasted the holds of our human vessels, we weighed anchor,

hoised up sail, stowed the boats, set the land, and stood for the offing

with a fair loom gale, and for more haste unpareled the mizen-yard, and

launched it and the sail over the lee-quarter, and fitted gyves to keep it

steady, and boomed it out; so in three days we made the island of Tools,

that is altogether uninhabited.  We saw there a great number of trees which

bore mattocks, pickaxes, crows, weeding-hooks, scythes, sickles, spades,

trowels, hatchets, hedging-bills, saws, adzes, bills, axes, shears,

pincers, bolts, piercers, augers, and wimbles.

Others bore dags, daggers, poniards, bayonets, square-bladed tucks,

stilettoes, poniardoes, skeans, penknives, puncheons, bodkins, swords,

rapiers, back-swords, cutlasses, scimitars, hangers, falchions, glaives,

raillons, whittles, and whinyards.

Whoever would have any of these needed but to shake the tree, and

immediately they dropped down as thick as hops, like so many ripe plums;

nay, what’s more, they fell on a kind of grass called scabbard, and

sheathed themselves in it cleverly.  But when they came down, there was

need of taking care lest they happened to touch the head, feet, or other

parts of the body.  For they fell with the point downwards, and in they

stuck, or slit the continuum of some member, or lopped it off like a twig;

either of which generally was enough to have killed a man, though he were a

hundred years old, and worth as many thousand spankers, spur-royals, and

rose-nobles.

Under some other trees, whose names I cannot justly tell you, I saw some

certain sorts of weeds that grew and sprouted like pikes, lances, javelins,

javelots, darts, dartlets, halberds, boar-spears, eel-spears, partizans,

tridents, prongs, trout-staves, spears, half-pikes, and hunting-staves.  As

they sprouted up and chanced to touch the tree, straight they met with

their heads, points, and blades, each suitable to its kind, made ready for

them by the trees over them, as soon as every individual wood was grown up,

fit for its steel; even like the children’s coats, that are made for them

as soon as they can wear them and you wean them of their swaddling clothes.

Nor do you mutter, I pray you, at what Plato, Anaxagoras, and Democritus

have said.  Ods-fish! they were none of your lower-form gimcracks, were

they?

Those trees seemed to us terrestrial animals, in no wise so different from

brute beasts as not to have skin, fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments,

nerves, cartilages, kernels, bones, marrow, humours, matrices, brains, and

articulations; for they certainly have some, since Theophrastus will have

it so.  But in this point they differed from other animals, that their

heads, that is, the part of their trunks next to the root, are downwards;

their hair, that is, their roots, in the earth; and their feet, that is,

their branches, upside down; as if a man should stand on his head with

outstretched legs.  And as you, battered sinners, on whom Venus has

bestowed something to remember her, feel the approach of rains, winds,

cold, and every change of weather, at your ischiatic legs and your

omoplates, by means of the perpetual almanack which she has fixed there; so

these trees have notice given them, by certain sensations which they have

at their roots, stocks, gums, paps, or marrow, of the growth of the staves

under them, and accordingly they prepare suitable points and blades for

them beforehand.  Yet as all things, except God, are sometimes subject to

error, nature itself not free from it when it produceth monstrous things,

likewise I observed something amiss in these trees.  For a half-pike that

grew up high enough to reach the branches of one of these instrumentiferous

trees, happened no sooner to touch them but, instead of being joined to an

iron head, it impaled a stubbed broom at the fundament.  Well, no matter,

‘twill serve to sweep the chimney.  Thus a partizan met with a pair of

garden shears.  Come, all’s good for something; ‘twill serve to nip off

little twigs and destroy caterpillars.  The staff of a halberd got the

blade of a scythe, which made it look like a hermaphrodite.

Happy-be-lucky, ‘tis all a case; ‘twill serve for some mower.  Oh, ‘tis a

great blessing to put our trust in the Lord!  As we went back to our ships I

spied behind I don’t know what bush, I don’t know what folks, doing I don’t

know what business, in I don’t know what posture, scouring I don’t know what

tools, in I don’t know what manner, and I don’t know what place.

Chapter 5.X.

How Pantagruel arrived at the island of Sharping.

We left the island of Tools to pursue our voyage, and the next day stood in

for the island of Sharping, the true image of Fontainebleau, for the land

is so very lean that the bones, that is, the rocks, shoot through its skin.

Besides, ‘tis sandy, barren, unhealthy, and unpleasant.  Our pilot showed

us there two little square rocks which had eight equal points in the shape

of a cube.  They were so white that I might have mistaken them for

alabaster or snow, had he not assured us they were made of bone.

He told us that twenty chance devils very much feared in our country dwelt

there in six different storeys, and that the biggest twins or braces of

them were called sixes, and the smallest ambs-ace; the rest cinques,

quatres, treys, and deuces.  When they were conjured up, otherwise coupled,

they were called either sice cinque, sice quatre, sice trey, sice deuce,

and sice ace; or cinque quatre, cinque trey, and so forth.  I made there a

shrewd observation.  Would you know what ‘tis, gamesters?  ‘Tis that there

are very few of you in the world but what call upon and invoke the devils.

For the dice are no sooner thrown on the board, and the greedy gazing

sparks have hardly said, Two sixes, Frank; but Six devils damn it! cry as

many of them.  If ambs-ace; then, A brace of devils broil me! will they

say.  Quatre-deuce, Tom; The deuce take it! cries another.  And so on to

the end of the chapter.  Nay, they don’t forget sometimes to call the black

cloven-footed gentlemen by their Christian names and surnames; and what is

stranger yet, they use them as their greatest cronies, and make them so

often the executors of their wills, not only giving themselves, but

everybody and everything, to the devil, that there’s no doubt but he takes

care to seize, soon or late, what’s so zealously bequeathed him.  Indeed,

‘tis true Lucifer does not always immediately appear by his lawful

attorneys; but, alas! ‘tis not for want of goodwill; he is really to be

excused for his delay; for what the devil would you have a devil do?  He

and his black guards are then at some other places, according to the

priority of the persons that call on them; therefore, pray let none be so

venturesome as to think that the devils are deaf and blind.

He then told us that more wrecks had happened about those square rocks, and

a greater loss of body and goods, than about all the Syrtes, Scyllas and

Charybdes, Sirens, Strophades, and gulfs in the universe.  I had not much

ado to believe it, remembering that formerly, among the wise Egyptians,

Neptune was described in hieroglyphics for the first cube, Apollo by an

ace, Diana by a deuce, Minerva by seven, and so forth.

He also told us that there was a phial of sanc-greal, a most divine thing,

and known to a few.  Panurge did so sweeten up the syndics of the place

that they blessed us with the sight of ‘t; but it was with three times more

pother and ado, with more formalities and antic tricks, than they show the

pandects of Justinian at Florence, or the holy Veronica at Rome.  I never

saw such a sight of flambeaux, torches, and hagios, sanctified tapers,

rush-lights, and farthing candles in my whole life.  After all, that which

was shown us was only the ill-faced countenance of a roasted coney.

All that we saw there worth speaking of was a good face set upon an ill

game, and the shells of the two eggs formerly laid up and hatched by Leda,

out of which came Castor and Pollux, fair Helen’s brothers.  These same

syndics sold us a piece of ‘em for a song, I mean, for a morsel of bread.

Before we went we bought a parcel of hats and caps of the manufacture of

the place, which, I fear, will turn to no very good account; nor are those

who shall take ‘em off our hands more likely to commend their wearing.

Chapter 5.XI.

How we passed through the wicket inhabited by Gripe-men-all, Archduke of

the Furred Law-cats.

From thence Condemnation was passed by us.  ‘Tis another damned barren

island, whereat none for the world cared to touch.  Then we went through

the wicket; but Pantagruel had no mind to bear us company, and ‘twas well

he did not, for we were nabbed there, and clapped into lob’s-pound by order

of Gripe-men-all, Archduke of the Furred Law-cats, because one of our

company would ha’ put upon a sergeant some hats of the Sharping Island.

The Furred Law-cats are most terrible and dreadful monsters, they devour

little children, and trample over marble stones.  Pray tell me, noble

topers, do they not deserve to have their snouts slit?  The hair of their

hides doesn’t lie outward, but inwards, and every mother’s son of ‘em for

his device wears a gaping pouch, but not all in the same manner; for some

wear it tied to their neck scarfwise, others upon the breech, some on the

paunch, others on the side, and all for a cause, with reason and mystery.

They have claws so very strong, long, and sharp that nothing can get from

‘em that is once fast between their clutches.  Sometimes they cover their

heads with mortar-like caps, at other times with mortified caparisons.

As we entered their den, said a common mumper, to whom we had given half a

teston, Worshipful culprits, God send you a good deliverance!  Examine

well, said he, the countenance of these stout props and pillars of this

catch-coin law and iniquity; and pray observe, that if you still live but

six olympiads, and the age of two dogs more, you’ll see these Furred

Law-cats lords of all Europe, and in peaceful possession of all the estates

and dominions belonging to it; unless, by divine providence, what’s got over

the devil’s back is spent under his belly, or the goods which they unjustly

get perish with their prodigal heirs.  Take this from an honest beggar.

Among ‘em reigns the sixth essence; by the means of which they gripe all,

devour all, conskite all, burn all, draw all, hang all, quarter all, behead

all, murder all, imprison all, waste all, and ruin all, without the least

notice of right or wrong; for among them vice is called virtue; wickedness,

piety; treason, loyalty; robbery, justice.  Plunder is their motto, and

when acted by them is approved by all men, except the heretics; and all

this they do because they dare; their authority is sovereign and

irrefragable.  For a sign of the truth of what I tell you, you’ll find that

there the mangers are above the racks.  Remember hereafter that a fool told

you this; and if ever plague, famine, war, fire, earthquakes, inundations,

or other judgments befall the world, do not attribute ‘em to the aspects

and conjunctions of the malevolent planets; to the abuses of the court of

Romania, or the tyranny of secular kings and princes; to the impostures of

the false zealots of the cowl, heretical bigots, false prophets, and

broachers of sects; to the villainy of griping usurers, clippers, and

coiners; or to the ignorance, impudence, and imprudence of physicians,

surgeons, and apothecaries; nor to the lewdness of adulteresses and

destroyers of by-blows; but charge them all, wholly and solely, to the

inexpressible, incredible, and inestimable wickedness and ruin which is

continually hatched, brewed, and practised in the den or shop of those

Furred Law-cats.  Yet ‘tis no more known in the world than the cabala of

the Jews, the more’s the pity; and therefore ‘tis not detested, chastised,

and punished as ‘tis fit it should be.  But should all their villainy be

once displayed in its true colours and exposed to the people, there never

was, is, nor will be any spokesman so sweet-mouthed, whose fine colloguing

tongue could save ‘em; nor any law so rigorous and draconic that could

punish ‘em as they deserve; nor yet any magistrate so powerful as to hinder

their being burnt alive in their coneyburrows without mercy.  Even their

own furred kittlings, friends, and relations would abominate ‘em.

For this reason, as Hannibal was solemnly sworn by his father Amilcar to

pursue the Romans with the utmost hatred as long as ever he lived, so my

late father has enjoined me to remain here without, till God Almighty’s

thunder reduce them there within to ashes, like other presumptuous Titans,

profane wretches, and opposers of God; since mankind is so inured to their

oppressions that they either do not remember, foresee, or have a sense of

the woes and miseries which they have caused; or, if they have, either will

not, dare not, or cannot root ‘em out.

How, said Panurge, say you so?  Catch me there and hang me!  Damme, let’s

march off!  This noble beggar has scared me worse than thunder in autumn

(Motteux gives ‘than the thunder would do them.’).  Upon this we were

filing off; but, alas! we found ourselves trapped--the door was

double-locked and barricadoed.  Some messengers of ill news told us it was

full as easy to get in there as into hell, and no less hard to get out.  Ay,

there indeed lay the difficulty, for there is no getting loose without a

pass and discharge in due course from the bench.  This for no other reason

than because folks go easier out of a church than out of a sponging-house,

and because they could not have our company when they would.  The worst on’t

was when we got through the wicket; for we were carried, to get out our pass

or discharge, before a more dreadful monster than ever was read of in the

legends of knight-errantry.  They called him Gripe-men-all.  I can’t tell

what to compare it to better than to a Chimaera, a Sphinx, a Cerberus; or to

the image of Osiris, as the Egyptians represented him, with three heads, one

of a roaring lion, t’other of a fawning cur, and the last of a howling,

prowling wolf, twisted about with a dragon biting his tail, surrounded with

fiery rays.  His hands were full of gore, his talons like those of the

harpies, his snout like a hawk’s bill, his fangs or tusks like those of an

overgrown brindled wild boar; his eyes were flaming like the jaws of hell,

all covered with mortars interlaced with pestles, and nothing of his arms

was to be seen but his clutches.  His hutch, and that of the warren-cats his

collaterals, was a long, spick-and-span new rack, a-top of which (as the

mumper told us) some large stately mangers were fixed in the reverse.  Over

the chief seat was the picture of an old woman holding the case or scabbard

of a sickle in her right hand, a pair of scales in her left, with spectacles

on her nose; the cups or scales of the balance were a pair of velvet

pouches, the one full of bullion, which overpoised t’other, empty and long,

hoisted higher than the middle of the beam.  I’m of opinion it was the true

effigies of Justice Gripe-men-all; far different from the institution of the

ancient Thebans, who set up the statues of their dicasts without hands, in

marble, silver, or gold, according to their merit, even after their death.

When we made our personal appearance before him, a sort of I don’t know

what men, all clothed with I don’t know what bags and pouches, with long

scrolls in their clutches, made us sit down upon a cricket (such as

criminals sit on when tried in France).  Quoth Panurge to ‘em, Good my

lords, I’m very well as I am; I’d as lief stand, an’t please you.  Besides,

this same stool is somewhat of the lowest for a man that has new breeches

and a short doublet.  Sit you down, said Gripe-men-all again, and look that

you don’t make the court bid you twice.  Now, continued he, the earth shall

immediately open its jaws and swallow you up to quick damnation if you

don’t answer as you should.

Chapter 5.XII.

How Gripe-men-all propounded a riddle to us.

When we were sat, Gripe-men-all, in the middle of his furred cats, called

to us in a hoarse dreadful voice, Well, come on, give me presently--an

answer.  Well, come on, muttered Panurge between his teeth, give, give me

presently--a comforting dram.  Hearken to the court, continued

Gripe-men-all.

                An Enigma.

  A young tight thing, as fair as may be,

  Without a dad conceived a baby,

  And brought him forth without the pother

  In labour made by teeming mother.

  Yet the cursed brat feared not to gripe her,

  But gnawed, for haste, her sides like viper.

  Then the black upstart boldly sallies,

  And walks and flies o’er hills and valleys.

  Many fantastic sons of wisdom,

  Amazed, foresaw their own in his doom;

  And thought like an old Grecian noddy,

  A human spirit moved his body.

Give, give me out of hand--an answer to this riddle, quoth Gripe-men-all.

Give, give me--leave to tell you, good, good my lord, answered Panurge,

that if I had but a sphinx at home, as Verres one of your precursors had, I

might then solve your enigma presently.  But verily, good my lord, I was

not there; and, as I hope to be saved, am as innocent in the matter as the

child unborn.  Foh, give me--a better answer, cried Gripe-men-all; or, by

gold, this shall not serve your turn.  I’ll not be paid in such coin; if

you have nothing better to offer, I’ll let your rascalship know that it had

been better for you to have fallen into Lucifer’s own clutches than into

ours.  Dost thou see ‘em here, sirrah? hah? and dost thou prate here of thy

being innocent, as if thou couldst be delivered from our racks and tortures

for being so?  Give me--Patience! thou widgeon.  Our laws are like cobwebs;

your silly little flies are stopped, caught, and destroyed therein, but

your stronger ones break them, and force and carry them which way they

please.  Likewise, don’t think we are so mad as to set up our nets to snap

up your great robbers and tyrants.  No, they are somewhat too hard for us,

there’s no meddling with them; for they would make no more of us than we

make of the little ones.  But you paltry, silly, innocent wretches must

make us amends; and, by gold, we will innocentize your fopship with a

wannion, you never were so innocentized in your days; the devil shall sing

mass among ye.

Friar John, hearing him run on at that mad rate, had no longer the power to

remain silent, but cried to him, Heigh-day!  Prithee, Mr. Devil in a coif,

wouldst thou have a man tell thee more than he knows?  Hasn’t the fellow

told you he does not know a word of the business?  His name is Twyford.

A plague rot you! won’t truth serve your turns?  Why, how now,

Mr. Prate-apace, cried Gripe-men-all, taking him short, marry come up, who

made you so saucy as to open your lips before you were spoken to?  Give me

--Patience!  By gold! this is the first time since I have reigned that

anyone has had the impudence to speak before he was bidden.  How came this

mad fellow to break loose?  (Villain, thou liest, said Friar John, without

stirring his lips.)  Sirrah, sirrah, continued Gripe-men-all, I doubt thou

wilt have business enough on thy hands when it comes to thy turn to answer.

(Damme, thou liest, said Friar John, silently.)  Dost thou think, continued

my lord, thou art in the wilderness of your foolish university, wrangling

and bawling among the idle, wandering searchers and hunters after truth? By

gold, we have here other fish to fry; we go another gate’s-way to work, that

we do.  By gold, people here must give categorical answers to what they

don’t know.  By gold, they must confess they have done those things which

they have not nor ought to have done.  By gold, they must protest that they

know what they never knew in their lives; and, after all, patience perforce

must be their only remedy, as well as a mad dog’s.  Here silly geese are

plucked, yet cackle not.  Sirrah, give me--an account whether you had a

letter of attorney, or whether you were feed or no, that you offered to bawl

in another man’s cause?  I see you had no authority to speak, and I may

chance to have you wed to something you won’t like.  Oh, you devils, cried

Friar John, proto-devils, panto-devils, you would wed a monk, would you?  Ho

hu! ho hu!  A heretic! a heretic!  I’ll give thee out for a rank heretic.

Chapter 5.XIII.

How Panurge solved Gripe-men-all’s riddle.

Gripe-men-all, as if he had not heard what Friar John said, directed his

discourse to Panurge, saying to him, Well, what have you to say for

yourself, Mr. Rogue-enough, hah?  Give, give me out of hand--an answer.

Say? quoth Panurge; why, what would you have me say?  I say that we are

damnably beshit, since you give no heed at all to the equity of the plea,

and the devil sings among you.  Let this answer serve for all, I beseech

you, and let us go out about our business; I am no longer able to hold out,

as gad shall judge me.

Go to, go to, cried Gripe-men-all; when did you ever hear that for these

three hundred years last past anybody ever got out of this weel without

leaving something of his behind him?  No, no, get out of the trap if you

can without losing leather, life, or at least some hair, and you will have

done more than ever was done yet.  For why, this would bring the wisdom of

the court into question, as if we had took you up for nothing, and dealt

wrongfully by you.  Well, by hook or by crook, we must have something out

of you.  Look ye, it is a folly to make a rout for a fart and ado; one word

is as good as twenty.  I have no more to say to thee, but that, as thou

likest thy former entertainment, thou wilt tell me more of the next; for it

will go ten times worse with thee unless, by gold, you give me--a solution

to the riddle I propounded.  Give, give--it, without any more ado.

By gold, quoth Panurge, ‘tis a black mite or weevil which is born of a

white bean, and sallies out at the hole which he makes gnawing it; the mite

being turned into a kind of fly, sometimes walks and sometimes flies over

hills and dales.  Now Pythagoras, the philosopher, and his sect, besides

many others, wondering at its birth in such a place (which makes some argue

for equivocal generation), thought that by a metempsychosis the body of

that insect was the lodging of a human soul.  Now, were you men here, after

your welcomed death, according to his opinion, your souls would most

certainly enter into the body of mites or weevils; for in your present

state of life you are good for nothing in the world but to gnaw, bite, eat,

and devour all things, so in the next you’ll e’en gnaw and devour your

mother’s very sides, as the vipers do.  Now, by gold, I think I have fairly

solved and resolved your riddle.

May my bauble be turned into a nutcracker, quoth Friar John, if I could not

almost find in my heart to wish that what comes out at my bunghole were

beans, that these evil weevils might feed as they deserve.

Panurge then, without any more ado, threw a large leathern purse stuffed

with gold crowns (ecus au soleil) among them.

The Furred Law-cats no sooner heard the jingling of the chink but they all

began to bestir their claws, like a parcel of fiddlers running a division;

and then fell to’t, squimble, squamble, catch that catch can.  They all

said aloud, These are the fees, these are the gloves; now, this is somewhat

like a tansy.  Oh! ‘twas a pretty trial, a sweet trial, a dainty trial.  O’

my word, they did not starve the cause.  These are none of your snivelling

forma pauperis’s; no, they are noble clients, gentlemen every inch of them.

By gold, it is gold, quoth Panurge, good old gold, I’ll assure you.

Saith Gripe-men-all, The court, upon a full hearing (of the gold, quoth

Panurge), and weighty reasons given, finds the prisoners not guilty, and

accordingly orders them to be discharged out of custody, paying their fees.

Now, gentlemen, proceed, go forwards, said he to us; we have not so much of

the devil in us as we have of his hue; though we are stout, we are

merciful.

As we came out at the wicket, we were conducted to the port by a detachment

of certain highland griffins, scribere cum dashoes, who advised us before

we came to our ships not to offer to leave the place until we had made the

usual presents, first to the Lady Gripe-men-all, then to all the Furred

Law-pusses; otherwise we must return to the place from whence we came.

Well, well, said Friar John, we’ll fumble in our fobs, examine every one of

us his concern, and e’en give the women their due; we’ll ne’er boggle or

stick out on that account; as we tickled the men in the palm, we’ll tickle

the women in the right place.  Pray, gentlemen, added they, don’t forget to

leave somewhat behind you for us poor devils to drink your healths.  O

lawd! never fear, answered Friar John, I don’t remember that I ever went

anywhere yet where the poor devils are not remembered and encouraged.

Chapter 5.XIV.

How the Furred Law-cats live on corruption.

Friar John had hardly said those words ere he perceived seventy-eight

galleys and frigates just arriving at the port.  So he hied him thither to

learn some news; and as he asked what goods they had o’ board, he soon

found that their whole cargo was venison, hares, capons, turkeys, pigs,

swine, bacon, kids, calves, hens, ducks, teals, geese, and other poultry

and wildfowl.

He also spied among these some pieces of velvet, satin, and damask.  This

made him ask the new-comers whither and to whom they were going to carry

those dainty goods.  They answered that they were for Gripe-men-all and the

Furred Law-cats.

Pray, asked he, what is the true name of all these things in your country

language?  Corruption, they replied.  If they live on corruption, said the

friar, they will perish with their generation.  May the devil be damned, I

have it now:  their fathers devoured the good gentlemen who, according to

their state of life, used to go much a-hunting and hawking, to be the

better inured to toil in time of war; for hunting is an image of a martial

life, and Xenophon was much in the right of it when he affirmed that

hunting had yielded a great number of excellent warriors, as well as the

Trojan horse.  For my part, I am no scholar; I have it but by hearsay, yet

I believe it.  Now the souls of those brave fellows, according to

Gripe-men-all’s riddle, after their decease enter into wild boars, stags,

roebucks, herns, and such other creatures which they loved, and in quest of

which they went while they were men; and these Furred Law-cats, having

first destroyed and devoured their castles, lands, demesnes, possessions,

rents, and revenues, are still seeking to have their blood and soul in

another life.  What an honest fellow was that same mumper who had

forewarned us of all these things, and bid us take notice of the mangers

above the racks!

But, said Panurge to the new-comers, how do you come by all this venison?

Methinks the great king has issued out a proclamation strictly inhibiting

the destroying of stags, does, wild boars, roebucks, or other royal game,

on pain of death.  All this is true enough, answered one for the rest, but

the great king is so good and gracious, you must know, and these Furred

Law-cats so curst and cruel, so mad, and thirsting after Christian blood,

that we have less cause to fear in trespassing against that mighty

sovereign’s commands than reason to hope to live if we do not continually

stop the mouths of these Furred Law-cats with such bribes and corruption.

Besides, added he, to-morrow Gripe-men-all marries a furred law-puss of his

to a high and mighty double-furred law-tybert.  Formerly we used to call

them chop-hay; but alas! they are not such neat creatures now as to eat

any, or chew the cud.  We call them chop-hares, chop-partridges,

chop-woodcocks, chop-pheasants, chop-pullets, chop-venison, chop-coneys,

chop-pigs, for they scorn to feed on coarser meat.  A t--d for their chops,

cried Friar John, next year we’ll have ‘em called chop-dung, chop-stront,

chop-filth.

Would you take my advice? added he to the company.  What is it? answered

we.  Let’s do two things, returned he.  First, let us secure all this

venison and wild fowl--I mean, paying well for them; for my part, I am but

too much tired already with our salt meat, it heats my flanks so horribly.

In the next place, let’s go back to the wicket, and destroy all these

devilish Furred Law-cats.  For my part, quoth Panurge, I know better

things; catch me there, and hang me.  No, I am somewhat more inclined to be

fearful than bold; I love to sleep in a whole skin.

Chapter 5.XV.

How Friar John talks of rooting out the Furred Law-cats.

Virtue of the frock, quoth Friar John, what kind of voyage are we making?

A shitten one, o’ my word; the devil of anything we do but fizzling,

farting, funking, squattering, dozing, raving, and doing nothing.

Ods-belly, ‘tisn’t in my nature to lie idle; I mortally hate it.  Unless I

am doing some heroic feat every foot, I can’t sleep one wink o’ nights.

Damn it, did you then take me along with you for your chaplain, to sing mass

and shrive you?  By Maundy Thursday, the first of ye all that comes to me on

such an account shall be fitted; for the only penance I’ll enjoin shall be,

that he immediately throw himself headlong overboard into the sea like a

base cowhearted son of ten fathers.  This in deduction of the pains of

purgatory.

What made Hercules such a famous fellow, d’ye think?  Nothing but that

while he travelled he still made it his business to rid the world of

tyrannies, errors, dangers, and drudgeries; he still put to death all

robbers, all monsters, all venomous serpents and hurtful creatures.  Why

then do we not follow his example, doing as he did in the countries through

which we pass?  He destroyed the Stymphalides, the Lernaean hydra, Cacus,

Antheus, the Centaurs, and what not; I am no clericus, those that are such

tell me so.

In imitation of that noble by-blow, let’s destroy and root out these wicked

Furred Law-cats, that are a kind of ravenous devils; thus we shall remove

all manner of tyranny out of the land.  Mawmet’s tutor swallow me body and

soul, tripes and guts, if I would stay to ask your help or advice in the

matter were I but as strong as he was.  Come, he that would be thought a

gentleman, let him storm a town; well, then, shall we go?  I dare swear

we’ll do their business for them with a wet finger; they’ll bear it, never

fear; since they could swallow down more foul language that came from us

than ten sows and their babies could swill hogwash.  Damn ‘em, they don’t

value all the ill words or dishonour in the world at a rush, so they but

get the coin into their purses, though they were to have it in a shitten

clout.  Come, we may chance to kill ‘em all, as Hercules would have done

had they lived in his time.  We only want to be set to work by another

Eurystheus, and nothing else for the present, unless it be what I heartily

wish them, that Jupiter may give ‘em a short visit, only some two or three

hours long, and walk among their lordships in the same equipage that

attended him when he came last to his Miss Semele, jolly Bacchus’s mother.

‘Tis a very great mercy, quoth Panurge, that you have got out of their

clutches.  For my part, I have no stomach to go there again; I’m hardly

come to myself yet, so scared and appalled I was.  My hair still stands up

an end when I think on’t; and most damnably troubled I was there, for three

very weighty reasons.  First, because I was troubled.  Secondly, because I

was troubled.  Thirdly and lastly, because I was troubled.  Hearken to me a

little on thy right side, Friar John, my left cod, since thou’lt not hear

at the other.  Whenever the maggot bites thee to take a trip down to hell

and visit the tribunal of Minos, Aeacus, Rhadamanthus, (and Dis,) do but

tell me, and I’ll be sure to bear thee company, and never leave thee as

long as my name’s Panurge, but will wade over Acheron, Styx, and Cocytus,

drink whole bumpers of Lethe’s water--though I mortally hate that element

--and even pay thy passage to that bawling, cross-grained ferryman, Charon.

But as for the damned wicket, if thou art so weary of thy life as to go

thither again, thou mayst e’en look for somebody else to bear thee company,

for I’ll not move one step that way; e’en rest satisfied with this positive

answer.  By my good will I’ll not stir a foot to go thither as long as I

live, any more than Calpe will come over to Abyla (Here Motteux adds the

following note:  ‘Calpe is a mountain in Spain that faces another, called

Abyla, in Mauritania, both said to have been severed by Hercules.’).  Was

Ulysses so mad as to go back into the Cyclop’s cave to fetch his sword?

No, marry was he not.  Now I have left nothing behind me at the wicket

through forgetfulness; why then should I think of going thither?

Well, quoth Friar John, as good sit still as rise up and fall; what cannot

be cured must be endured.  But, prithee, let’s hear one another speak.

Come, wert thou not a wise doctor to fling away a whole purse of gold on

those mangy scoundrels?  Ha!  A squinsy choke thee! we were too rich, were

we?  Had it not been enough to have thrown the hell-hounds a few cropped

pieces of white cash?

How could I help it? returned Panurge.  Did you not see how Gripe-men-all

held his gaping velvet pouch, and every moment roared and bellowed, By

gold, give me out of hand; by gold, give, give, give me presently?  Now,

thought I to myself, we shall never come off scot-free.  I’ll e’en stop

their mouths with gold, that the wicket may be opened, and we may get out;

the sooner the better.  And I judged that lousy silver would not do the

business; for, d’ye see, velvet pouches do not use to gape for little

paltry clipt silver and small cash; no, they are made for gold, my friend

John; that they are, my dainty cod.  Ah! when thou hast been larded,

basted, and roasted, as I was, thou wilt hardly talk at this rate, I doubt.

But now what is to be done?  We are enjoined by them to go forwards.

The scabby slabberdegullions still waited for us at the port, expecting to

be greased in the fist as well as their masters.  Now when they perceived

that we were ready to put to sea, they came to Friar John and begged that

we would not forget to gratify the apparitors before we went off, according

to the assessment for the fees at our discharge.  Hell and damnation! cried

Friar John; are ye here still, ye bloodhounds, ye citing, scribbling imps

of Satan?  Rot you, am I not vexed enough already, but you must have the

impudence to come and plague me, ye scurvy fly-catchers you?  By

cob’s-body, I’ll gratify your ruffianships as you deserve; I’ll apparitorize

you presently with a wannion, that I will.  With this, he lugged out his

slashing cutlass, and in a mighty heat came out of the ship to cut the

cozening varlets into steaks, but they scampered away and got out of sight

in a trice.

However, there was somewhat more to do, for some of our sailors, having got

leave of Pantagruel to go ashore while we were had before Gripe-men-all,

had been at a tavern near the haven to make much of themselves, and roar

it, as seamen will do when they come into some port.  Now I don’t know

whether they had paid their reckoning to the full or no, but, however it

was, an old fat hostess, meeting Friar John on the quay, was making a

woeful complaint before a sergeant, son-in-law to one of the furred

law-cats, and a brace of bums, his assistants.

The friar, who did not much care to be tired with their impertinent

prating, said to them, Harkee me, ye lubberly gnat-snappers! do ye presume

to say that our seamen are not honest men?  I’ll maintain they are, ye

dotterels, and will prove it to your brazen faces, by justice--I mean, this

trusty piece of cold iron by my side.  With this he lugged it out and

flourished with it.  The forlorn lobcocks soon showed him their backs,

betaking themselves to their heels; but the old fusty landlady kept her

ground, swearing like any butter-whore that the tarpaulins were very honest

cods, but that they only forgot to pay for the bed on which they had lain

after dinner, and she asked fivepence, French money, for the said bed.  May

I never sup, said the friar, if it be not dog-cheap; they are sorry guests

and unkind customers, that they are; they do not know when they have a

pennyworth, and will not always meet with such bargains.  Come, I myself

will pay you the money, but I would willingly see it first.

The hostess immediately took him home with her, and showed him the bed, and

having praised it for all its good qualifications, said that she thought as

times went she was not out of the way in asking fivepence for it.  Friar

John then gave her the fivepence; and she no sooner turned her back but he

presently began to rip up the ticking of the feather-bed and bolster, and

threw all the feathers out at the window.  In the meantime the old hag came

down and roared out for help, crying out murder to set all the

neighbourhood in an uproar.  Yet she also fell to gathering the feathers

that flew up and down in the air, being scattered by the wind.  Friar John

let her bawl on, and, without any further ado, marched off with the

blanket, quilt, and both the sheets, which he brought aboard undiscovered,

for the air was darkened with the feathers, as it uses sometimes to be with

snow.  He gave them away to the sailors; then said to Pantagruel that beds

were much cheaper at that place than in Chinnonois, though we have there

the famous geese of Pautile; for the old beldam had asked him but fivepence

for a bed which in Chinnonois had been worth about twelve francs.  (As soon

as Friar John and the rest of the company were embarked, Pantagruel set

sail.  But there arose a south-east wind, which blew so vehemently they

lost their way, and in a manner going back to the country of the Furred

Law-cats, they entered into a huge gulf, where the sea ran so high and

terrible that the shipboy on the top of the mast cried out he again saw the

habitation of Gripe-men-all; upon which Panurge, frightened almost out of

his wits, roared out, Dear master, in spite of the wind and waves, change

your course, and turn the ship’s head about.  O my friend, let us come no

more into that cursed country where I left my purse.  So the wind carried

them near an island, where however they did not dare at first to land, but

entered about a mile off.  (Motteux omitted this passage altogether in the

edition of 1694.  It was restored by Ozell in the edition of 1738.))

Chapter 5.XVI.

How Pantagruel came to the island of the Apedefers, or Ignoramuses, with

long claws and crooked paws, and of terrible adventures and monsters there.

As soon as we had cast anchor and had moored the ship, the pinnace was put

over the ship’s side and manned by the coxswain’s crew.  When the good

Pantagruel had prayed publicly, and given thanks to the Lord that had

delivered him from so great a danger, he stepped into it with his whole

company to go on shore, which was no ways difficult to do, for, as the sea

was calm and the winds laid, they soon got to the cliffs.  When they were

set on shore, Epistemon, who was admiring the situation of the place and

the strange shape of the rocks, discovered some of the natives.  The first

he met had on a short purple gown, a doublet cut in panes, like a Spanish

leather jerkin, half sleeves of satin, and the upper part of them leather,

a coif like a black pot tipped with tin.  He was a good likely sort of a

body, and his name, as we heard afterwards, was Double-fee.  Epistemon

asked him how they called those strange craggy rocks and deep valleys.  He

told them it was a colony brought out of Attorneyland, and called Process,

and that if we forded the river somewhat further beyond the rocks we should

come into the island of the Apedefers.  By the memory of the decretals,

said Friar John, tell us, I pray you, what you honest men here live on?

Could not a man take a chirping bottle with you to taste your wine?  I can

see nothing among you but parchment, ink-horns, and pens.  We live on

nothing else, returned Double-fee; and all who live in this place must come

through my hands.  How, quoth Panurge, are you a shaver, then?  Do you

fleece ‘em?  Ay, ay, their purse, answered Double-fee; nothing else.  By

the foot of Pharaoh, cried Panurge, the devil a sou will you get of me.

However, sweet sir, be so kind as to show an honest man the way to those

Apedefers, or ignorant people, for I come from the land of the learned,

where I did not learn over much.

Still talking on, they got to the island of the Apedefers, for they were

soon got over the ford.  Pantagruel was not a little taken up with admiring

the structure and habitation of the people of the place.  For they live in

a swingeing wine-press, fifty steps up to it.  You must know there are some

of all sorts, little, great, private, middle-sized, and so forth.  You go

through a large peristyle, alias a long entry set about with pillars, in

which you see, in a kind of landscape, the ruins of almost the whole world,

besides so many great robbers’ gibbets, so many gallows and racks, that

‘tis enough to fright you out of your seven senses.  Double-fee perceiving

that Pantagruel was taken up with contemplating those things, Let us go

further, sir, said he to him; all this is nothing yet.  Nothing, quotha,

cried Friar John; by the soul of my overheated codpiece, friend Panurge and

I here shake and quiver for mere hunger.  I had rather be drinking than

staring at these ruins.  Pray come along, sir, said Double-fee.  He then

led us into a little wine-press that lay backwards in a blind corner, and

was called Pithies in the language of the country.  You need not ask

whether Master John and Panurge made much of their sweet selves there; it

is enough that I tell you there was no want of Bolognia sausages, turkey

poots, capons, bustards, malmsey, and all other sorts of good belly-timber,

very well dressed.

A pimping son of ten fathers, who, for want of a better, did the office of

a butler, seeing that Friar John had cast a sheep’s eye at a choice bottle

that stood near a cupboard by itself, at some distance from the rest of the

bottellic magazine, like a jack-in-an-office said to Pantagruel, Sir, I

perceive that one of your men here is making love to this bottle.  He ogles

it, and would fain caress it; but I beg that none offer to meddle with it;

for it is reserved for their worships.  How, cried Panurge, there are some

grandees here then, I see.  It is vintage time with you, I perceive.

Then Double-fee led us up to a private staircase, and showed us into a

room, whence, without being seen, out at a loophole we could see their

worships in the great wine-press, where none could be admitted without

their leave.  Their worships, as he called them, were about a score of

fusty crack-ropes and gallow-clappers, or rather more, all posted before a

bar, and staring at each other like so many dead pigs.  Their paws were as

long as a crane’s foot, and their claws four-and-twenty inches long at

least; for you must know they are enjoined never to pare off the least chip

of them, so that they grow as crooked as a Welsh hook or a hedging-bill.

We saw a swingeing bunch of grapes that are gathered and squeezed in that

country, brought in by them.  As soon as it was laid down, they clapped it

into the press, and there was not a bit of it out of which each of them did

not squeeze some oil of gold; insomuch that the poor grape was tried with a

witness, and brought off so drained and picked, and so dry, that there was

not the least moisture, juice, or substance left in it; for they had

pressed out its very quintessence.

Double-fee told us they had not often such huge bunches; but, let the worst

come to the worst, they were sure never to be without others in their

press.  But hark you me, master of mine, asked Panurge, have they not some

of different growth?  Ay, marry have they, quoth Double-fee.  Do you see

here this little bunch, to which they are going to give t’other wrench?  It

is of tithe-growth, you must know; they crushed, wrung, squeezed and

strained out the very heart’s blood of it but the other day; but it did not

bleed freely; the oil came hard, and smelt of the priest’s chest; so that

they found there was not much good to be got out of it.  Why then, said

Pantagruel, do they put it again into the press?  Only, answered

Double-fee, for fear there should still lurk some juice among the husks and

hullings in the mother of the grape.  The devil be damned! cried Friar

John; do you call these same folks illiterate lobcocks and duncical

doddipolls?  May I be broiled like a red herring if I do not think they are

wise enough to skin a flint and draw oil out of a brick wall.  So they are,

said Double-fee; for they sometimes put castles, parks, and forests into

the press, and out of them all extract aurum potabile.  You mean portabile,

I suppose, cried Epistemon, such as may be borne.  I mean as I said,

replied Double-fee, potabile, such as may be drunk; for it makes them drink

many a good bottle more than otherwise they should.

But I cannot better satisfy you as to the growth of the vine-tree sirup

that is here squeezed out of grapes, than in desiring you to look yonder in

that back-yard, where you will see above a thousand different growths that

lie waiting to be squeezed every moment.  Here are some of the public and

some of the private growth; some of the builders’ fortifications, loans,

gifts, and gratuities, escheats, forfeitures, fines, and recoveries, penal

statutes, crown lands, and demesne, privy purse, post-offices, offerings,

lordships of manors, and a world of other growths, for which we want names.

Pray, quoth Epistemon, tell me of what growth is that great one, with all

those little grapelings about it.  Oh, oh! returned Double-fee, that plump

one is of the treasury, the very best growth in the whole country.

Whenever anyone of that growth is squeezed, there is not one of their

worships but gets juice enough of it to soak his nose six months together.

When their worships were up, Pantagruel desired Double-fee to take us into

that great wine-press, which he readily did.  As soon as we were in,

Epistemon, who understood all sorts of tongues, began to show us many

devices on the press, which was large and fine, and made of the wood of the

cross--at least Double-fee told us so.  On each part of it were names of

everything in the language of the country.  The spindle of the press was

called receipt; the trough, cost and damages; the hole for the vice-pin,

state; the side-boards, money paid into the office; the great beam, respite

of homage; the branches, radietur; the side-beams, recuperetur; the fats,

ignoramus; the two-handled basket, the rolls; the treading-place,

acquittance; the dossers, validation; the panniers, authentic decrees; the

pailes, potentials; the funnels, quietus est.

By the Queen of the Chitterlings, quoth Panurge, all the hieroglyphics of

Egypt are mine a-- to this jargon.  Why! here are a parcel of words full as

analogous as chalk and cheese, or a cat and a cart-wheel!  But why,

prithee, dear Double-fee, do they call these worshipful dons of yours

ignorant fellows?  Only, said Double-fee, because they neither are, nor

ought to be, clerks, and all must be ignorant as to what they transact

here; nor is there to be any other reason given, but, The court hath said

it; The court will have it so; The court has decreed it.  Cop’s body, quoth

Pantagruel, they might full as well have called ‘em necessity; for

necessity has no law.

From thence, as he was leading us to see a thousand little puny presses, we

spied another paltry bar, about which sat four are five ignorant waspish

churls, of so testy, fuming a temper, (like an ass with squibs and crackers

tied to its tail,) and so ready to take pepper in the nose for yea and nay,

that a dog would not have lived with ‘em.  They were hard at it with the

lees and dregs of the grapes, which they gripped over and over again, might

and main, with their clenched fists.  They were called contractors in the

language of the country.  These are the ugliest, misshapen, grim-looking

scrubs, said Friar John, that ever were beheld, with or without spectacles.

Then we passed by an infinite number of little pimping wine-presses all

full of vintage-mongers, who were picking, examining, and raking the grapes

with some instruments called bills-of-charge.

Finally we came into a hall downstairs, where we saw an overgrown cursed

mangy cur with a pair of heads, a wolf’s belly, and claws like the devil of

hell.  The son of a bitch was fed with costs, for he lived on a

multiplicity of fine amonds and amerciaments by order of their worships, to

each of whom the monster was worth more than the best farm in the land.  In

their tongue of ignorance they called him Twofold.  His dam lay by him, and

her hair and shape was like her whelp’s, only she had four heads, two male

and two female, and her name was Fourfold.  She was certainly the most

cursed and dangerous creature of the place, except her grandam, which we

saw, and had been kept locked up in a dungeon time out of mind, and her

name was Refusing-of-fees.

Friar John, who had always twenty yards of gut ready empty to swallow a

gallimaufry of lawyers, began to be somewhat out of humour, and desired

Pantagruel to remember he had not dined, and bring Double-fee along with

him.  So away we went, and as we marched out at the back-gate whom should

we meet but an old piece of mortality in chains.  He was half ignorant and

half learned, like an hermaphrodite of Satan.  The fellow was all

caparisoned with spectacles as a tortoise is with shells, and lived on

nothing but a sort of food which, in their gibberish, was called appeals.

Pantagruel asked Double-fee of what breed was that prothonotary, and what

name they gave him.  Double-fee told us that time out of mind he had been

kept there in chains, to the great grief of their worships, who starved

him, and his name was Review.  By the pope’s sanctified two-pounders, cried

Friar John, I do not much wonder at the meagre cheer which this old chuff

finds among their worships.  Do but look a little on the weather-beaten

scratch-toby, friend Panurge; by the sacred tip of my cowl, I’ll lay five

pounds to a hazel-nut the foul thief has the very looks of Gripe-me-now.

These same fellows here, ignorant as they be, are as sharp and knowing as

other folk.  But were it my case, I would send him packing with a squib in

his breech like a rogue as he is.  By my oriental barnacles, quoth Panurge,

honest friar, thou art in the right; for if we but examine that treacherous

Review’s ill-favoured phiz, we find that the filthy snudge is yet more

mischievous and ignorant than these ignorant wretches here, since they

(honest dunces) grapple and glean with as little harm and pother as they

can, without any long fiddle-cum-farts or tantalizing in the case; nor do

they dally and demur in your suit, but in two or three words, whip-stitch,

in a trice, they finish the vintage of the close, bating you all these

damned tedious interlocutories, examinations, and appointments which fret

to the heart’s blood your furred law-cats.

Chapter 5.XVII.

How we went forwards, and how Panurge had like to have been killed.

We put to sea that very moment, steering our course forwards, and gave

Pantagruel a full account of our adventures, which so deeply struck him

with compassion that he wrote some elegies on that subject to divert

himself during the voyage.  When we were safe in the port we took some

refreshment, and took in fresh water and wood.  The people of the place,

who had the countenance of jolly fellows and boon companions, were all of

them forward folks, bloated and puffed up with fat.  And we saw some who

slashed and pinked their skins to open a passage to the fat, that it might

swell out at the slits and gashes which they made; neither more nor less

than the shit-breech fellows in our country bepink and cut open their

breeches that the taffety on the inside may stand out and be puffed up.

They said that what they did was not out of pride or ostentation, but

because otherwise their skins would not hold them without much pain.

Having thus slashed their skin, they used to grow much bigger, like the

young trees on whose barks the gardeners make incisions that they may grow

the better.

Near the haven there was a tavern, which forwards seemed very fine and

stately.  We repaired thither, and found it filled with people of the

forward nation, of all ages, sexes, and conditions; so that we thought some

notable feast or other was getting ready, but we were told that all that

throng were invited to the bursting of mine host, which caused all his

friends and relations to hasten thither.

We did not understand that jargon, and therefore thought in that country by

that bursting they meant some merry meeting or other, as we do in ours by

betrothing, wedding, groaning, christening, churching (of women), shearing

(of sheep), reaping (of corn, or harvest-home), and many other junketting

bouts that end in -ing.  But we soon heard that there was no such matter in

hand.

The master of the house, you must know, had been a good fellow in his time,

loved heartily to wind up his bottom, to bang the pitcher, and lick his

dish.  He used to be a very fair swallower of gravy soup, a notable

accountant in matter of hours, and his whole life was one continual dinner,

like mine host at Rouillac (in Perigord).  But now, having farted out much

fat for ten years together, according to the custom of the country, he was

drawing towards his bursting hour; for neither the inner thin kell

wherewith the entrails are covered, nor his skin that had been jagged and

mangled so many years, were able to hold and enclose his guts any longer,

or hinder them from forcing their way out.  Pray, quoth Panurge, is there

no remedy, no help for the poor man, good people?  Why don’t you swaddle

him round with good tight girths, or secure his natural tub with a strong

sorb-apple-tree hoop?  Nay, why don’t you iron-bind him, if needs be?  This

would keep the man from flying out and bursting.  The word was not yet out

of his mouth when we heard something give a loud report, as if a huge

sturdy oak had been split in two.  Then some of the neighbours told us that

the bursting was over, and that the clap or crack which we heard was the

last fart, and so there was an end of mine host.

This made me call to mind a saying of the venerable abbot of Castilliers,

the very same who never cared to hump his chambermaids but when he was in

pontificalibus.  That pious person, being much dunned, teased, and

importuned by his relations to resign his abbey in his old age, said and

professed that he would not strip till he was ready to go to bed, and that

the last fart which his reverend paternity was to utter should be the fart

of an abbot.

Chapter 5.XVIII.

How our ships were stranded, and we were relieved by some people that were

subject to Queen Whims (qui tenoient de la Quinte).

We weighed and set sail with a merry westerly gale.  When about seven

leagues off (twenty-two miles) some gusts or scuds of wind suddenly arose,

and the wind veering and shifting from point to point, was, as they say,

like an old woman’s breech, at no certainty; so we first got our starboard

tacks aboard, and hauled off our lee-sheets.  Then the gusts increased, and

by fits blowed all at once from several quarters, yet we neither settled

nor braided up close our sails, but only let fly the sheets, not to go

against the master of the ship’s direction; and thus having let go amain,

lest we should spend our topsails, or the ship’s quick-side should lie in

the water and she be overset, we lay by and run adrift; that is, in a

landloper’s phrase, we temporized it.  For he assured us that, as these

gusts and whirlwinds would not do us much good, so they could not do us

much harm, considering their easiness and pleasant strife, as also the

clearness of the sky and calmness of the current.  So that we were to

observe the philosopher’s rule, bear and forbear; that is, trim, or go

according to the time.

However, these whirlwinds and gusts lasted so long that we persuaded the

master to let us go and lie at trie with our main course; that is, to haul

the tack aboard, the sheet close aft, the bowline set up, and the helm tied

close aboard; so, after a stormy gale of wind, we broke through the

whirlwind.  But it was like falling into Scylla to avoid Charybdis (out of

the frying-pan into the fire).  For we had not sailed a league ere our

ships were stranded upon some sands such as are the flats of St. Maixent.

All our company seemed mightily disturbed except Friar John, who was not a

jot daunted, and with sweet sugar-plum words comforted now one and then

another, giving them hopes of speedy assistance from above, and telling

them that he had seen Castor at the main-yardarm.  Oh! that I were but now

ashore, cried Panurge, that is all I wish for myself at present, and that

you who like the sea so well had each man of you two hundred thousand

crowns.  I would fairly let you set up shop on these sands, and would get a

fat calf dressed and a hundred of faggots (i.e. bottles of wine) cooled for

you against you come ashore.  I freely consent never to mount a wife, so

you but set me ashore and mount me on a horse, that I may go home.  No

matter for a servant, I will be contented to serve myself; I am never

better treated than when I am without a man.  Faith, old Plautus was in the

right on’t when he said the more servants the more crosses; for such they

are, even supposing they could want what they all have but too much of, a

tongue, that most busy, dangerous, and pernicious member of servants.

Accordingly, ‘twas for their sakes alone that the racks and tortures for

confession were invented, though some foreign civilians in our time have

drawn alogical and unreasonable consequences from it.

That very moment we spied a sail that made towards us.  When it was close

by us, we soon knew what was the lading of the ship and who was aboard of

her.  She was full freighted with drums.  I was acquainted with many of the

passengers that came in her, who were most of ‘em of good families; among

the rest Harry Cotiral, an old toast, who had got a swinging ass’s

touch-tripe (penis) fastened to his waist, as the good women’s beads are to their

girdle.  In his left hand he held an old overgrown greasy foul cap, such as

your scald-pated fellows wear, and in the right a huge cabbage-stump.

As soon as he saw me he was overjoyed, and bawled out to me, What cheer,

ho?  How dost like me now?  Behold the true Algamana (this he said showing

me the ass’s tickle-gizzard).  This doctor’s cap is my true elixir; and

this (continued he, shaking the cabbage-stump in his fist) is lunaria

major, you old noddy.  I have ‘em, old boy, I have ‘em; we’ll make ‘em when

thou’rt come back.  But pray, father, said I, whence come you?  Whither are

you bound?  What’s your lading?  Have you smelt the salt deep?  To these

four questions he answered, From Queen Whims; for Touraine; alchemy; to the

very bottom.

Whom have you got o’ board? said I.  Said he, Astrologers, fortune-tellers,

alchemists, rhymers, poets, painters, projectors, mathematicians,

watchmakers, sing-songs, musicianers, and the devil and all of others that

are subject to Queen Whims (Motteux gives the following footnote:--‘La

Quinte, This means a fantastic Humour, Maggots, or a foolish Giddiness of

Brains; and also, a fifth, or the Proportion of Five in music, &c.’).  They

have very fair legible patents to show for’t, as anybody may see.  Panurge

had no sooner heard this but he was upon the high-rope, and began to rail

at them like mad.  What o’ devil d’ye mean, cried he, to sit idly here like

a pack of loitering sneaksbies, and see us stranded, while you may help us,

and tow us off into the current?  A plague o’ your whims! you can make all

things whatsoever, they say, so much as good weather and little children;

yet won’t make haste to fasten some hawsers and cables, and get us off.  I

was just coming to set you afloat, quoth Harry Cotiral; by Trismegistus,

I’ll clear you in a trice.  With this he caused 7,532,810 huge drums to be

unheaded on one side, and set that open side so that it faced the end of

the streamers and pendants; and having fastened them to good tacklings and

our ship’s head to the stern of theirs, with cables fastened to the bits

abaft the manger in the ship’s loof, they towed us off ground at one pull

so easily and pleasantly that you’d have wondered at it had you been there.

For the dub-a-dub rattling of the drums, with the soft noise of the gravel

which murmuring disputed us our way, and the merry cheers and huzzas of the

sailors, made an harmony almost as good as that of the heavenly bodies when

they roll and are whirled round their spheres, which rattling of the

celestial wheels Plato said he heard some nights in his sleep.

We scorned to be behindhand with ‘em in civility, and gratefully gave ‘em

store of our sausages and chitterlings, with which we filled their drums;

and we were just a-hoisting two-and-sixty hogsheads of wine out of the

hold, when two huge whirlpools with great fury made towards their ship,

spouting more water than is in the river Vienne (Vigenne) from Chinon to

Saumur; to make short, all their drums, all their sails, their concerns,

and themselves were soused, and their very hose were watered by the collar.

Panurge was so overjoyed, seeing this, and laughed so heartily, that he was

forced to hold his sides, and it set him into a fit of the colic for two

hours and more.  I had a mind, quoth he, to make the dogs drink, and those

honest whirlpools, egad, have saved me that labour and that cost.  There’s

sauce for them; ariston men udor.  Water is good, saith a poet; let ‘em

Pindarize upon’t.  They never cared for fresh water but to wash their hands

or their glasses.  This good salt water will stand ‘em in good stead for

want of sal ammoniac and nitre in Geber’s kitchen.

We could not hold any further discourse with ‘em; for the former whirlwind

hindered our ship from feeling the helm.  The pilot advised us

henceforwards to let her run adrift and follow the stream, not busying

ourselves with anything, but making much of our carcasses.  For our only

way to arrive safe at the queendom of Whims was to trust to the whirlwind

and be led by the current.

Chapter 5.XIX.

How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy.

We did as he directed us for about twelve hours, and on the third day the

sky seemed to us somewhat clearer, and we happily arrived at the port of

Mateotechny, not far distant from Queen Whims, alias the Quintessence.

We met full butt on the quay a great number of guards and other military

men that garrisoned the arsenal, and we were somewhat frighted at first

because they made us all lay down our arms, and in a haughty manner asked

us whence we came.

Cousin, quoth Panurge to him that asked the question, we are of Touraine,

and come from France, being ambitious of paying our respects to the Lady

Quintessence and visit this famous realm of Entelechy.

What do you say? cried they; do you call it Entelechy or Endelechy?  Truly,

truly, sweet cousins, quoth Panurge, we are a silly sort of grout-headed

lobcocks, an’t please you; be so kind as to forgive us if we chance to

knock words out of joint.  As for anything else, we are downright honest

fellows and true hearts.

We have not asked you this question without a cause, said they; for a great

number of others who have passed this way from your country of Touraine

seemed as mere jolt-headed doddipolls as ever were scored o’er the coxcomb,

yet spoke as correct as other folks.  But there has been here from other

countries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as

moody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing would

serve these, forsooth, but they must wilfully wrangle and stand out against

us at their coming; and much they got by it after all.  Troth, we e’en

fitted them and clawed ‘em off with a vengeance, for all they looked so big

and so grum.

Pray tell me, does your time lie so heavy upon you in your world that you

do not know how to bestow it better than in thus impudently talking,

disputing, and writing of our sovereign lady?  There was much need that

your Tully, the consul, should go and leave the care of his commonwealth to

busy himself idly about her; and after him your Diogenes Laertius, the

biographer, and your Theodorus Gaza, the philosopher, and your Argiropilus,

the emperor, and your Bessario, the cardinal, and your Politian, the

pedant, and your Budaeus, the judge, and your Lascaris, the ambassador, and

the devil and all of those you call lovers of wisdom; whose number, it

seems, was not thought great enough already, but lately your Scaliger,

Bigot, Chambrier, Francis Fleury, and I cannot tell how many such other

junior sneaking fly-blows must take upon ‘em to increase it.

A squinsy gripe the cod’s-headed changelings at the swallow and eke at the

cover-weasel; we shall make ‘em--But the deuce take ‘em!  (They flatter the

devil here, and smoothify his name, quoth Panurge, between his teeth.)  You

don’t come here, continued the captain, to uphold ‘em in their folly; you

have no commission from ‘em to this effect; well then, we will talk no more

on’t.

Aristotle, that first of men and peerless pattern of all philosophy, was

our sovereign lady’s godfather, and wisely and properly gave her the name

of Entelechy.  Her true name then is Entelechy, and may he be in tail

beshit, and entail a shit-a-bed faculty and nothing else on his family, who

dares call her by any other name; for whoever he is, he does her wrong, and

is a very impudent person.  You are heartily welcome, gentlemen.  With

this they colled and clipped us about the neck, which was no small comfort

to us, I’ll assure you.

Panurge then whispered me, Fellow-traveller, quoth he, hast thou not been

somewhat afraid this bout?  A little, said I.  To tell you the truth of it,

quoth he, never were the Ephraimites in a greater fear and quandary when

the Gileadites killed and drowned them for saying sibboleth instead of

shibboleth; and among friends, let me tell you that perhaps there is not a

man in the whole country of Beauce but might easily have stopped my

bunghole with a cartload of hay.

The captain afterwards took us to the queen’s palace, leading us silently

with great formality.  Pantagruel would have said something to him, but the

other, not being able to come up to his height, wished for a ladder or a

very long pair of stilts; then said, Patience, if it were our sovereign

lady’s will, we would be as tall as you; well, we shall when she pleases.

In the first galleries we saw great numbers of sick persons, differently

placed according to their maladies.  The leprous were apart; those that

were poisoned on one side; those that had got the plague on another; those

that had the pox in the first rank, and the rest accordingly.

Chapter 5.XX.

How the Quintessence cured the sick with a song.

The captain showed us the queen, attended with her ladies and gentlemen, in

the second gallery.  She looked young, though she was at least eighteen

hundred years old, and was handsome, slender, and as fine as a queen, that

is, as hands could make her.  He then said to us:  It is not yet a fit time

to speak to the queen; be you but mindful of her doings in the meanwhile.

You have kings in your world that fantastically pretend to cure some

certain diseases, as, for example, scrofula or wens, swelled throats,

nicknamed the king’s evil, and quartan agues, only with a touch; now our

queen cures all manner of diseases without so much as touching the sick,

but barely with a song, according to the nature of the distemper.  He then

showed us a set of organs, and said that when it was touched by her those

miraculous cures were performed.  The organ was indeed the strangest that

ever eyes beheld; for the pipes were of cassia fistula in the cod; the top

and cornice of guiacum; the bellows of rhubarb; the pedas of turbith, and

the clavier or keys of scammony.

While we were examining this wonderful new make of an organ, the leprous

were brought in by her abstractors, spodizators, masticators, pregustics,

tabachins, chachanins, neemanins, rabrebans, nercins, rozuins, nebidins,

tearins, segamions, perarons, chasinins, sarins, soteins, aboth, enilins,

archasdarpenins, mebins, chabourins, and other officers, for whom I want

names; so she played ‘em I don’t know what sort of a tune or song, and they

were all immediately cured.

Then those who were poisoned were had in, and she had no sooner given them

a song but they began to find a use for their legs, and up they got.  Then

came on the deaf, the blind, and the dumb, and they too were restored to

their lost faculties and senses with the same remedy; which did so

strangely amaze us (and not without reason, I think) that down we fell on

our faces, remaining prostrate, like men ravished in ecstasy, and were not

able to utter one word through the excess of our admiration, till she came,

and having touched Pantagruel with a fine fragrant nosegay of white roses

which she held in her hand, thus made us recover our senses and get up.

Then she made us the following speech in byssin words, such as Parisatis

desired should be spoken to her son Cyrus, or at least of crimson alamode:

The probity that scintillizes in the superfices of your persons informs my

ratiocinating faculty, in a most stupendous manner, of the radiant virtues

latent within the precious caskets and ventricles of your minds.  For,

contemplating the mellifluous suavity of your thrice discreet reverences,

it is impossible not to be persuaded with facility that neither your

affections nor your intellects are vitiated with any defect or privation of

liberal and exalted sciences.  Far from it, all must judge that in you are

lodged a cornucopia and encyclopaedia, an unmeasurable profundity of

knowledge in the most peregrine and sublime disciplines, so frequently the

admiration, and so rarely the concomitants of the imperite vulgar.  This

gently compels me, who in preceding times indefatigably kept my private

affections absolutely subjugated, to condescend to make my application to

you in the trivial phrase of the plebeian world, and assure you that you

are well, more than most heartily welcome.

I have no hand at making of speeches, quoth Panurge to me privately;

prithee, man, make answer to her for us, if thou canst.  This would not

work with me, however; neither did Pantagruel return a word.  So that Queen

Whims, or Queen Quintessence (which you please), perceiving that we stood

as mute as fishes, said:  Your taciturnity speaks you not only disciples of

Pythagoras, from whom the venerable antiquity of my progenitors in

successive propagation was emaned and derives its original, but also

discovers, that through the revolution of many retrograde moons, you have

in Egypt pressed the extremities of your fingers with the hard tenants of

your mouths, and scalptized your heads with frequent applications of your

unguicules.  In the school of Pythagoras, taciturnity was the symbol of

abstracted and superlative knowledge, and the silence of the Egyptians was

agnited as an expressive manner of divine adoration; this caused the

pontiffs of Hierapolis to sacrifice to the great deity in silence,

impercussively, without any vociferous or obstreperous sound.  My design is

not to enter into a privation of gratitude towards you, but by a vivacious

formality, though matter were to abstract itself from me, excentricate to

you my cogitations.

Having spoken this, she only said to her officers, Tabachins, a panacea;

and straight they desired us not to take it amiss if the queen did not

invite us to dine with her; for she never ate anything at dinner but some

categories, jecabots, emnins, dimions, abstractions, harborins, chelemins,

second intentions, carradoths, antitheses, metempsychoses, transcendent

prolepsies, and such other light food.

Then they took us into a little closet lined through with alarums, where we

were treated God knows how.  It is said that Jupiter writes whatever is

transacted in the world on the dipthera or skin of the Amalthaean goat that

suckled him in Crete, which pelt served him instead of a shield against the

Titans, whence he was nicknamed Aegiochos.  Now, as I hate to drink water,

brother topers, I protest it would be impossible to make eighteen goatskins

hold the description of all the good meat they brought before us, though it

were written in characters as small as those in which were penned Homer’s

Iliads, which Tully tells us he saw enclosed in a nutshell.

For my part, had I one hundred mouths, as many tongues, a voice of iron, a

heart of oak, and lungs of leather, together with the mellifluous abundance

of Plato, yet I never could give you a full account of a third part of a

second of the whole.

Pantagruel was telling me that he believed the queen had given the symbolic

word used among her subjects to denote sovereign good cheer, when she said

to her tabachins, A panacea; just as Lucullus used to say, In Apollo, when

he designed to give his friends a singular treat; though sometimes they

took him at unawares, as, among the rest, Cicero and Hortensius sometimes

used to do.

Chapter 5.XXI.

How the Queen passed her time after dinner.

When we had dined, a chachanin led us into the queen’s hall, and there we

saw how, after dinner, with the ladies and the princes of her court, she

used to sift, searce, bolt, range, and pass away time with a fine large

white and blue silk sieve.  We also perceived how they revived ancient

sports, diverting themselves together at--

1.  Cordax.      6.  Phrygia.        11.  Monogas.

2.  Emmelia.     7.  Thracia.        12.  Terminalia.

3.  Sicinnia.    8.  Calabrisme.     13.  Floralia.

4.  Jambics.     9.  Molossia.       14.  Pyrrhice.

5.  Persica.    10.  Cernophorum.    15.  (Nicatism.)

            And a thousand other dances.

(Motteux has the following footnote:--‘1. A sort of country-dance.  2. A

still tragic dance.  3. Dancing and singing used at funerals.  4. Cutting

sarcasms and lampoons.  5. The Persian dance.  6. Tunes, whose measure

inspired men with a kind of divine fury.  7. The Thracian movement.  8.

Smutty verses.  9. A measure to which the Molossi of Epirus danced a

certain morrice.  10. A dance with bowls or pots in their hands.  11. A

song where one sings alone.  12. Sports at the holidays of the god of

bounds.  13. Dancing naked at Flora’s holidays.  14. The Trojan dance in

armour.’)

Afterwards she gave orders that they should show us the apartments and

curiosities in her palace.  Accordingly we saw there such new, strange, and

wonderful things, that I am still ravished in admiration every time I think

of’t.  However, nothing surprised us more than what was done by the

gentlemen of her household, abstractors, parazons, nebidins, spodizators,

and others, who freely and without the least dissembling told us that the

queen their mistress did all impossible things, and cured men of incurable

diseases; and they, her officers, used to do the rest.

I saw there a young parazon cure many of the new consumption, I mean the

pox, though they were never so peppered.  Had it been the rankest Roan ague

(Anglice, the Covent-garden gout), ‘twas all one to him; touching only

their dentiform vertebrae thrice with a piece of a wooden shoe, he made

them as wholesome as so many sucking-pigs.

Another did thoroughly cure folks of dropsies, tympanies, ascites, and

hyposarcides, striking them on the belly nine times with a Tenedian

hatchet, without any solution of the continuum.

Another cured all manner of fevers and agues on the spot, only with hanging

a fox-tail on the left side of the patient’s girdle.

One removed the toothache only with washing thrice the root of the aching

tooth with elder-vinegar, and letting it dry half-an-hour in the sun.

Another the gout, whether hot or cold, natural or accidental, by barely

making the gouty person shut his mouth and open his eyes.

I saw another ease nine gentlemen of St. Francis’s distemper [‘A

consumption in the pocket, or want of money; those of St. Francis’s order

must carry none about ‘em.’--Motteux.) in a very short space of time,

having clapped a rope about their necks, at the end of which hung a box

with ten thousand gold crowns in’t.

One with a wonderful engine threw the houses out at the windows, by which

means they were purged of all pestilential air.

Another cured all the three kinds of hectics, the tabid, atrophes, and

emaciated, without bathing, Tabian milk, dropax, alias depilatory, or other

such medicaments, only turning the consumptive for three months into monks;

and he assured me that if they did not grow fat and plump in a monastic way

of living, they never would be fattened in this world, either by nature or

by art.

I saw another surrounded with a crowd of two sorts of women.  Some were

young, quaint, clever, neat, pretty, juicy, tight, brisk, buxom, proper,

kind-hearted, and as right as my leg, to any man’s thinking.  The rest were

old, weather-beaten, over-ridden, toothless, blear-eyed, tough, wrinkled,

shrivelled, tawny, mouldy, phthisicky, decrepit hags, beldams, and walking

carcasses.  We were told that his office was to cast anew those she-pieces

of antiquity, and make them such as the pretty creatures whom we saw, who

had been made young again that day, recovering at once the beauty, shape,

size, and disposition which they enjoyed at sixteen; except their heels,

that were now much shorter than in their former youth.

This made them yet more apt to fall backwards whenever any man happened to

touch ‘em, than they had been before.  As for their counterparts, the old

mother-scratch-tobies, they most devoutly waited for the blessed hour when

the batch that was in the oven was to be drawn, that they might have their

turns, and in a mighty haste they were pulling and hauling the man like

mad, telling him that ‘tis the most grievous and intolerable thing in

nature for the tail to be on fire and the head to scare away those who

should quench it.

The officer had his hands full, never wanting patients; neither did his

place bring him in little, you may swear.  Pantagruel asked him whether he

could also make old men young again.  He said he could not.  But the way to

make them new men was to get ‘em to cohabit with a new-cast female; for

this they caught that fifth kind of crinckams, which some call pellade, in

Greek, ophiasis, that makes them cast off their old hair and skin, just as

the serpents do, and thus their youth is renewed like the Arabian

phoenix’s.  This is the true fountain of youth, for there the old and

decrepit become young, active, and lusty.

Just so, as Euripides tells us, Iolaus was transmogrified; and thus Phaon,

for whom kind-hearted Sappho run wild, grew young again, for Venus’s use;

so Tithon by Aurora’s means; so Aeson by Medea, and Jason also, who, if

you’ll believe Pherecides and Simonides, was new-vamped and dyed by that

witch; and so were the nurses of jolly Bacchus, and their husbands, as

Aeschylus relates.

Chapter 5.XXII.

How Queen Whims’ officers were employed; and how the said lady retained us

among her abstractors.

I then saw a great number of the queen’s officers, who made blackamoors

white as fast as hops, just rubbing their bellies with the bottom of a

pannier.

Others, with three couples of foxes in one yoke, ploughed a sandy shore,

and did not lose their seed.

Others washed burnt tiles, and made them lose their colour.

Others extracted water out of pumice-stones, braying them a good while in a

mortar, and changed their substance.

Others sheared asses, and thus got long fleece wool.

Others gathered barberries and figs off of thistles.

Others stroked he-goats by the dugs, and saved their milk in a sieve; and

much they got by it.

(Others washed asses’ heads without losing their soap.)

Others taught cows to dance, and did not lose their fiddling.

Others pitched nets to catch the wind, and took cock-lobsters in them.

I saw a spodizator, who very artificially got farts out of a dead ass, and

sold ‘em for fivepence an ell.

Another did putrefy beetles.  O the dainty food!

Poor Panurge fairly cast up his accounts, and gave up his halfpenny (i.e.

vomited), seeing an archasdarpenin who laid a huge plenty of chamber lye to

putrefy in horsedung, mishmashed with abundance of Christian sir-reverence.

Pugh, fie upon him, nasty dog!  However, he told us that with this sacred

distillation he watered kings and princes, and made their sweet lives a

fathom or two the longer.

Others built churches to jump over the steeples.

Others set carts before the horses, and began to flay eels at the tail;

neither did the eels cry before they were hurt, like those of Melun.

Others out of nothing made great things, and made great things return to

nothing.

Others cut fire into steaks with a knife, and drew water with a fish-net.

Others made chalk of cheese, and honey of a dog’s t--d.

We saw a knot of others, about a baker’s dozen in number, tippling under an

arbour.  They toped out of jolly bottomless cups four sorts of cool,

sparkling, pure, delicious, vine-tree sirup, which went down like mother’s

milk; and healths and bumpers flew about like lightning.  We were told that

these true philosophers were fairly multiplying the stars by drinking till

the seven were fourteen, as brawny Hercules did with Atlas.

Others made a virtue of necessity, and the best of a bad market, which

seemed to me a very good piece of work.

Others made alchemy (i.e. sir-reverence) with their teeth, and clapping

their hind retort to the recipient, made scurvy faces, and then squeezed.

Others, in a large grass plot, exactly measured how far the fleas could go

at a hop, a step, and jump; and told us that this was exceedingly useful

for the ruling of kingdoms, the conduct of armies, and the administration

of commonwealths; and that Socrates, who first got philosophy out of

heaven, and from idling and trifling made it profitable and of moment, used

to spend half his philosophizing time in measuring the leaps of fleas, as

Aristophanes the quintessential affirms.

I saw two gibroins by themselves keeping watch on the top of a tower, and

we were told they guarded the moon from the wolves.

In a blind corner I met four more very hot at it, and ready to go to

loggerheads.  I asked what was the cause of the stir and ado, the mighty

coil and pother they made.  And I heard that for four livelong days those

overwise roisters had been at it ding-dong, disputing on three high, more

than metaphysical propositions, promising themselves mountains of gold by

solving them.  The first was concerning a he-ass’s shadow; the second, of

the smoke of a lantern; and the third of goat’s hair, whether it were wool

or no.  We heard that they did not think it a bit strange that two

contradictions in mode, form, figure, and time should be true; though I

will warrant the sophists of Paris had rather be unchristened than own so

much.

While we were admiring all those men’s wonderful doings, the evening star

already twinkling, the queen (God bless her!) appeared, attended with her

court, and again amazed and dazzled us.  She perceived it, and said to us:

What occasions the aberrations of human cogitations through the perplexing

labyrinths and abysses of admiration, is not the source of the effects,

which sagacious mortals visibly experience to be the consequential result

of natural causes.  ‘Tis the novelty of the experiment which makes

impressions on their conceptive, cogitative faculties; that do not previse

the facility of the operation adequately, with a subact and sedate

intellection, associated with diligent and congruous study.  Consequently

let all manner of perturbation abdicate the ventricles of your brains, if

anyone has invaded them while they were contemplating what is transacted by

my domestic ministers.  Be spectators and auditors of every particular

phenomenon and every individual proposition within the extent of my

mansion; satiate yourselves with all that can fall here under the

consideration of your visual or auscultating powers, and thus emancipate

yourselves from the servitude of crassous ignorance.  And that you may be

induced to apprehend how sincerely I desire this in consideration of the

studious cupidity that so demonstratively emicates at your external organs,

from this present particle of time I retain you as my abstractors.  Geber,

my principal Tabachin, shall register and initiate you at your departing.

We humbly thanked her queenship without saying a word, accepting of the

noble office she conferred on us.

Chapter 5.XXIII.

How the Queen was served at dinner, and of her way of eating.

Queen Whims after this said to her gentlemen:  The orifice of the

ventricle, that ordinary embassador for the alimentation of all members,

whether superior or inferior, importunes us to restore, by the apposition

of idoneous sustenance, what was dissipated by the internal calidity’s

action on the radical humidity.  Therefore spodizators, gesinins, memains,

and parazons, be not culpable of dilatory protractions in the apposition of

every re-roborating species, but rather let them pullulate and superabound

on the tables.  As for you, nobilissim praegustators, and my gentilissim

masticators, your frequently experimented industry, internected with

perdiligent sedulity and sedulous perdiligence, continually adjuvates you

to perficiate all things in so expeditious a manner that there is no

necessity of exciting in you a cupidity to consummate them.  Therefore I

can only suggest to you still to operate as you are assuefacted

indefatigably to operate.

Having made this fine speech, she retired for a while with part of her

women, and we were told that ‘twas to bathe, as the ancients did more

commonly than we use nowadays to wash our hands before we eat.  The tables

were soon placed, the cloth spread, and then the queen sat down.  She ate

nothing but celestial ambrosia, and drank nothing but divine nectar.  As

for the lords and ladies that were there, they, as well as we, fared on as

rare, costly, and dainty dishes as ever Apicius wot or dreamed of in his

life.

When we were as round as hoops, and as full as eggs, with stuffing the gut,

an olla podrida [‘Some call it an Olio.  Rabelais Pot-pourry.’--Motteux.)

was set before us to force hunger to come to terms with us, in case it had

not granted us a truce; and such a huge vast thing it was that the plate

which Pythius Althius gave King Darius would hardly have covered it.  The

olla consisted of several sorts of pottages, salads, fricassees,

saugrenees, cabirotadoes, roast and boiled meat, carbonadoes, swingeing

pieces of powdered beef, good old hams, dainty somates, cakes, tarts, a

world of curds after the Moorish way, fresh cheese, jellies, and fruit of

all sorts.  All this seemed to me good and dainty; however, the sight of it

made me sigh; for alas! I could not taste a bit on’t, so full I had filled

my puddings before, and a bellyful is a bellyful you know.  Yet I must tell

you what I saw that seemed to me odd enough o’ conscience; ‘twas some

pasties in paste; and what should those pasties in paste be, d’ye think,

but pasties in pots?  At the bottom I perceived store of dice, cards,

tarots [‘Great cards on which many different things are figured.’

--Motteux.), luettes [‘Pieces of ivory to play withal.’--Motteux.),

chessmen, and chequers, besides full bowls of gold crowns, for those who had

a mind to have a game or two and try their chance.  Under this I saw a jolly

company of mules in stately trappings, with velvet footcloths, and a troop

of ambling nags, some for men and some for women; besides I don’t know how

many litters all lined with velvet, and some coaches of Ferrara make; all

this for those who had a mind to take the air.

This did not seem strange to me; but if anything did ‘twas certainly the

queen’s way of eating, and truly ‘twas very new, and very odd; for she

chewed nothing, the good lady; not but that she had good sound teeth, and

her meat required to be masticated, but such was her highness’s custom.

When her praegustators had tasted the meat, her masticators took it and

chewed it most nobly; for their dainty chops and gullets were lined through

with crimson satin, with little welts and gold purls, and their teeth were

of delicate white ivory.  Thus, when they had chewed the meat ready for her

highness’s maw, they poured it down her throat through a funnel of fine

gold, and so on to her craw.  For that reason they told us she never

visited a close-stool but by proxy.

Chapter 5.XXIV.

How there was a ball in the manner of a tournament, at which Queen Whims

was present.

After supper there was a ball in the form of a tilt or a tournament, not

only worth seeing, but also never to be forgotten.  First, the floor of the

hall was covered with a large piece of velveted white and yellow chequered

tapestry, each chequer exactly square, and three full spans in breadth.

Then thirty-two young persons came into the hall; sixteen of them arrayed

in cloth of gold, and of these eight were young nymphs such as the ancients

described Diana’s attendants; the other eight were a king, a queen, two

wardens of the castle, two knights, and two archers.  Those of the other

band were clad in cloth of silver.

They posted themselves on the tapestry in the following manner:  the kings

on the last line on the fourth square; so that the golden king was on a

white square, and the silvered king on a yellow square, and each queen by

her king; the golden queen on a yellow square, and the silvered queen on a

white one:  and on each side stood the archers to guide their kings and

queens; by the archers the knights, and the wardens by them.  In the next

row before ‘em stood the eight nymphs; and between the two bands of nymphs

four rows of squares stood empty.

Each band had its musicians, eight on each side, dressed in its livery; the

one with orange-coloured damask, the other with white; and all played on

different instruments most melodiously and harmoniously, still varying in

time and measure as the figure of the dance required.  This seemed to me an

admirable thing, considering the numerous diversity of steps, back-steps,

bounds, rebounds, jerks, paces, leaps, skips, turns, coupes, hops,

leadings, risings, meetings, flights, ambuscadoes, moves, and removes.

I was also at a loss when I strove to comprehend how the dancers could so

suddenly know what every different note meant; for they no sooner heard

this or that sound but they placed themselves in the place which was

denoted by the music, though their motions were all different.  For the

nymphs that stood in the first file, as if they designed to begin the

fight, marched straight forwards to their enemies from square to square,

unless it were the first step, at which they were free to move over two

steps at once.  They alone never fall back (which is not very natural to

other nymphs), and if any of them is so lucky as to advance to the opposite

king’s row, she is immediately crowned queen of her king, and after that

moves with the same state and in the same manner as the queen; but till

that happens they never strike their enemies but forwards, and obliquely in

a diagonal line.  However, they make it not their chief business to take

their foes; for, if they did, they would leave their queen exposed to the

adverse parties, who then might take her.

The kings move and take their enemies on all sides square-ways, and only

step from a white square into a yellow one, and vice versa, except at their

first step the rank should want other officers than the wardens; for then

they can set ‘em in their place, and retire by him.

The queens take a greater liberty than any of the rest; for they move

backwards and forwards all manner of ways, in a straight line as far as

they please, provided the place be not filled with one of her own party,

and diagonally also, keeping to the colour on which she stands.

The archers move backwards or forwards, far and near, never changing the

colour on which they stand.  The knights move and take in a lineal manner,

stepping over one square, though a friend or foe stand upon it, posting

themselves on the second square to the right or left, from one colour to

another, which is very unwelcome to the adverse party, and ought to be

carefully observed, for they take at unawares.

The wardens move and take to the right or left, before or behind them, like

the kings, and can advance as far as they find places empty; which liberty

the kings take not.

The law which both sides observe is, at the end of the fight, to besiege

and enclose the king of either party, so that he may not be able to move;

and being reduced to that extremity, the battle is over, and he loses the

day.

Now, to avoid this, there is none of either sex of each party but is

willing to sacrifice his or her life, and they begin to take one another on

all sides in time, as soon as the music strikes up.  When anyone takes a

prisoner, he makes his honours, and striking him gently in the hand, puts

him out of the field and combat, and encamps where he stood.

If one of the kings chance to stand where he might be taken, it is not

lawful for any of his adversaries that had discovered him to lay hold on

him; far from it, they are strictly enjoined humbly to pay him their

respects, and give him notice, saying, God preserve you, sir! that his

officers may relieve and cover him, or he may remove, if unhappily he could

not be relieved.  However, he is not to be taken, but greeted with a

Good-morrow, the others bending the knee; and thus the tournament uses

to end.

Chapter 5.XXV.

How the thirty-two persons at the ball fought.

The two companies having taken their stations, the music struck up, and

with a martial sound, which had something of horrid in it, like a point of

war, roused and alarmed both parties, who now began to shiver, and then

soon were warmed with warlike rage; and having got in readiness to fight

desperately, impatient of delay stood waiting for the charge.

Then the music of the silvered band ceased playing, and the instruments of

the golden side alone were heard, which denoted that the golden party

attacked.  Accordingly, a new movement was played for the onset, and we saw

the nymph who stood before the queen turn to the left towards her king, as

it were to ask leave to fight; and thus saluting her company at the same

time, she moved two squares forwards, and saluted the adverse party.

Now the music of the golden brigade ceased playing, and their antagonists

began again.  I ought to have told you that the nymph who began by saluting

her company, had by that formality also given them to understand that they

were to fall on.  She was saluted by them in the same manner, with a full

turn to the left, except the queen, who went aside towards her king to the

right; and the same manner of salutation was observed on both sides during

the whole ball.

The silvered nymph that stood before her queen likewise moved as soon as

the music of her party sounded a charge; her salutations, and those of her

side, were to the right, and her queen’s to the left.  She moved in the

second square forwards, and saluted her antagonists, facing the first

golden nymph; so that there was not any distance between them, and you

would have thought they two had been going to fight; but they only strike

sideways.

Their comrades, whether silvered or golden, followed ‘em in an intercalary

figure, and seemed to skirmish a while, till the golden nymph who had first

entered the lists, striking a silvered nymph in the hand on the right, put

her out of the field, and set herself in her place.  But soon the music

playing a new measure, she was struck by a silvered archer, who after that

was obliged himself to retire.  A silvered knight then sallied out, and the

golden queen posted herself before her king.

Then the silvered king, dreading the golden queen’s fury, removed to the

right, to the place where his warden stood, which seemed to him strong and

well guarded.

The two knights on the left, whether golden or silvered, marched up, and on

either side took up many nymphs who could not retreat; principally the

golden knight, who made this his whole business; but the silvered knight

had greater designs, dissembling all along, and even sometimes not taking a

nymph when he could have done it, still moving on till he was come up to

the main body of the enemies in such a manner that he saluted their king

with a God save you, sir!

The whole golden brigade quaked for fear and anger, those words giving

notice of their king’s danger; not but that they could soon relieve him,

but because their king being thus saluted they were to lose their warden on

the right wing without any hopes of a recovery.  Then the golden king

retired to the left, and the silvered knight took the golden warden, which

was a mighty loss to that party.  However, they resolved to be revenged,

and surrounded the knight that he might not escape.  He tried to get off,

behaving himself with a great deal of gallantry, and his friends did what

they could to save him; but at last he fell into the golden queen’s hands,

and was carried off.

Her forces, not yet satisfied, having lost one of her best men, with more

fury than conduct moved about, and did much mischief among their enemies.

The silvered party warily dissembled, watching their opportunity to be even

with them, and presented one of their nymphs to the golden queen, having

laid an ambuscado; so that the nymph being taken, a golden archer had like

to have seized the silvered queen.  Then the golden knight undertakes to

take the silvered king and queen, and says, Good-morrow!  Then the silvered

archer salutes them, and was taken by a golden nymph, and she herself by a

silvered one.

The fight was obstinate and sharp.  The wardens left their posts, and

advanced to relieve their friends.  The battle was doubtful, and victory

hovered over both armies.  Now the silvered host charge and break through

their enemy’s ranks as far as the golden king’s tent, and now they are

beaten back.  The golden queen distinguishes herself from the rest by her

mighty achievements still more than by her garb and dignity; for at once

she takes an archer, and, going sideways, seizes a silvered warden.  Which

thing the silvered queen perceiving, she came forwards, and, rushing on

with equal bravery, takes the last golden warden and some nymphs.  The two

queens fought a long while hand to hand; now striving to take each other by

surprise, then to save themselves, and sometimes to guard their kings.

Finally, the golden queen took the silvered queen; but presently after she

herself was taken by the silvered archer.

Then the silvered king had only three nymphs, an archer, and a warden left,

and the golden only three nymphs and the right knight, which made them

fight more slowly and warily than before.  The two kings seemed to mourn

for the loss of their loving queens, and only studied and endeavoured to

get new ones out of all their nymphs to be raised to that dignity, and thus

be married to them.  This made them excite those brave nymphs to strive to

reach the farthest rank, where stood the king of the contrary party,

promising them certainly to have them crowned if they could do this.  The

golden nymphs were beforehand with the others, and out of their number was

created a queen, who was dressed in royal robes, and had a crown set on her

head.  You need not doubt the silvered nymphs made also what haste they

could to be queens.  One of them was within a step of the coronation place,

but there the golden knight lay ready to intercept her, so that she could

go no further.

The new golden queen, resolved to show herself valiant and worthy of her

advancement to the crown, achieved great feats of arms.  But in the

meantime the silvered knight takes the golden warden who guarded the camp;

and thus there was a new silvered queen, who, like the other, strove to

excel in heroic deeds at the beginning of her reign.  Thus the fight grew

hotter than before.  A thousand stratagems, charges, rallyings, retreats,

and attacks were tried on both sides; till at last the silvered queen,

having by stealth advanced as far as the golden king’s tent, cried, God

save you, sir!  Now none but his new queen could relieve him; so she

bravely came and exposed herself to the utmost extremity to deliver him out

of it.  Then the silvered warden with his queen reduced the golden king to

such a stress that, to save himself, he was forced to lose his queen; but

the golden king took him at last.  However, the rest of the golden party

were soon taken; and that king being left alone, the silvered party made

him a low bow, crying, Good morrow, sir! which denoted that the silvered

king had got the day.

This being heard, the music of both parties loudly proclaimed the victory.

And thus the first battle ended to the unspeakable joy of all the

spectators.

After this the two brigades took their former stations, and began to tilt a

second time, much as they had done before, only the music played somewhat

faster than at the first battle, and the motions were altogether different.

I saw the golden queen sally out one of the first, with an archer and a

knight, as it were angry at the former defeat, and she had like to have

fallen upon the silvered king in his tent among his officers; but having

been baulked in her attempt, she skirmished briskly, and overthrew so many

silvered nymphs and officers that it was a most amazing sight.  You would

have sworn she had been another Penthesilea; for she behaved herself with

as much bravery as that Amazonian queen did at Troy.

But this havoc did not last long; for the silvered party, exasperated by

their loss, resolved to perish or stop her progress; and having posted an

archer in ambuscado on a distant angle, together with a knight-errant, her

highness fell into their hands and was carried out of the field.  The rest

were soon routed after the taking of their queen, who, without doubt, from

that time resolved to be more wary and keep near her king, without

venturing so far amidst her enemies unless with more force to defend her.

Thus the silvered brigade once more got the victory.

This did not dishearten or deject the golden party; far from it.  They soon

appeared again in the field to face their enemies; and being posted as

before, both the armies seemed more resolute and cheerful than ever.  Now

the martial concert began, and the music was above a hemiole the quicker,

according to the warlike Phrygian mode, such as was invented by Marsyas.

Then our combatants began to wheel about, and charge with such a swiftness

that in an instant they made four moves, besides the usual salutations.  So

that they were continually in action, flying, hovering, jumping, vaulting,

curvetting, with petauristical turns and motions, and often intermingled.

Seeing them then turn about on one foot after they had made their honours,

we compared them to your tops or gigs, such as boys use to whip about,

making them turn round so swiftly that they sleep, as they call it, and

motion cannot be perceived, but resembles rest, its contrary; so that if

you make a point or mark on some part of one of those gigs, ‘twill be

perceived not as a point, but a continual line, in a most divine manner, as

Cusanus has wisely observed.

While they were thus warmly engaged, we heard continually the claps and

episemapsies which those of the two bands reiterated at the taking of their

enemies; and this, joined to the variety of their motions and music, would

have forced smiles out of the most severe Cato, the never-laughing Crassus,

the Athenian man-hater, Timon; nay, even whining Heraclitus, though he

abhorred laughing, the action that is most peculiar to man.  For who could

have forborne? seeing those young warriors, with their nymphs and queens,

so briskly and gracefully advance, retire, jump, leap, skip, spring, fly,

vault, caper, move to the right, to the left, every way still in time, so

swiftly, and yet so dexterously, that they never touched one another but

methodically.

As the number of the combatants lessened, the pleasure of the spectators

increased; for the stratagems and motions of the remaining forces were more

singular.  I shall only add that this pleasing entertainment charmed us to

such a degree that our minds were ravished with admiration and delight, and

the martial harmony moved our souls so powerfully that we easily believed

what is said of Ismenias’s having excited Alexander to rise from table and

run to his arms, with such a warlike melody.  At last the golden king

remained master of the field; and while we were minding those dances, Queen

Whims vanished, so that we saw her no more from that day to this.

Then Geber’s michelots conducted us, and we were set down among her

abstractors, as her queenship had commanded.  After that we returned to the

port of Mateotechny, and thence straight aboard our ships; for the wind was

fair, and had we not hoisted out of hand, we could hardly have got off in

three quarters of a moon in the wane.

Chapter 5.XXVI.

How we came to the island of Odes, where the ways go up and down.

We sailed before the wind, between a pair of courses, and in two days made

the island of Odes, at which place we saw a very strange thing.  The ways

there are animals; so true is Aristotle’s saying, that all self-moving

things are animals.  Now the ways walk there.  Ergo, they are then animals.

Some of them are strange unknown ways, like those of the planets; others

are highways, crossways, and byways.  I perceived that the travellers and

inhabitants of that country asked, Whither does this way go?  Whither does

that way go?  Some answered, Between Midy and Fevrolles, to the parish

church, to the city, to the river, and so forth.  Being thus in their right

way, they used to reach their journey’s end without any further trouble,

just like those who go by water from Lyons to Avignon or Arles.

Now, as you know that nothing is perfect here below, we heard there was a

sort of people whom they called highwaymen, waybeaters, and makers of

inroads in roads; and that the poor ways were sadly afraid of them, and

shunned them as you do robbers.  For these used to waylay them, as people

lay trains for wolves, and set gins for woodcocks.  I saw one who was taken

up with a lord chief justice’s warrant for having unjustly, and in spite of

Pallas, taken the schoolway, which is the longest.  Another boasted that he

had fairly taken his shortest, and that doing so he first compassed his

design.  Thus, Carpalin, meeting once Epistemon looking upon a wall with

his fiddle-diddle, or live urinal, in his hand, to make a little maid’s

water, cried that he did not wonder now how the other came to be still the

first at Pantagruel’s levee, since he held his shortest and least used.

I found Bourges highway among these.  It went with the deliberation of an

abbot, but was made to scamper at the approach of some waggoners, who

threatened to have it trampled under their horses’ feet, and make their

waggons run over it, as Tullia’s chariot did over her father’s body.

I also espied there the old way between Peronne and St. Quentin, which

seemed to me a very good, honest, plain way, as smooth as a carpet, and as

good as ever was trod upon by shoe of leather.

Among the rocks I knew again the good old way to La Ferrare, mounted on a

huge bear.  This at a distance would have put me in mind of St. Jerome’s

picture, had but the bear been a lion; for the poor way was all mortified,

and wore a long hoary beard uncombed and entangled, which looked like the

picture of winter, or at least like a white-frosted bush.

On that way were store of beads or rosaries, coarsely made of wild

pine-tree; and it seemed kneeling, not standing, nor lying flat; but its

sides and middle were beaten with huge stones, insomuch that it proved to us

at once an object of fear and pity.

While we were examining it, a runner, bachelor of the place, took us aside,

and showing us a white smooth way, somewhat filled with straw, said,

Henceforth, gentlemen, do not reject the opinion of Thales the Milesian,

who said that water is the beginning of all things, nor that of Homer, who

tells us that all things derive their original from the ocean; for this

same way which you see here had its beginning from water, and is to return

whence she came before two months come to an end; now carts are driven here

where boats used to be rowed.

Truly, said Pantagruel, you tell us no news; we see five hundred such

changes, and more, every year, in our world.  Then reflecting on the

different manner of going of those moving ways, he told us he believed that

Philolaus and Aristarchus had philosophized in this island, and that

Seleucus (Motteux reads--‘that some, indeed, were of opinion.’), indeed,

was of opinion the earth turns round about its poles, and not the heavens,

whatever we may think to the contrary; as, when we are on the river Loire,

we think the trees and the shore moves, though this is only an effect of

our boat’s motion.

As we went back to our ships, we saw three waylayers, who, having been

taken in ambuscado, were going to be broken on the wheel; and a huge

fornicator was burned with a lingering fire for beating a way and breaking

one of its sides; we were told it was the way of the banks of the Nile in

Egypt.

Chapter 5.XXVII.

How we came to the island of Sandals; and of the order of Semiquaver

Friars.

Thence we went to the island of Sandals, whose inhabitants live on nothing

but ling-broth.  However, we were very kindly received and entertained by

Benius the Third, king of the island, who, after he had made us drink, took

us with him to show us a spick-and-span new monastery which he had

contrived for the Semiquaver Friars; so he called the religious men whom he

had there.  For he said that on t’other side the water lived friars who

styled themselves her sweet ladyship’s most humble servants.  Item, the

goodly Friar-minors, who are semibreves of bulls; the smoked-herring tribe

of Minim Friars; then the Crotchet Friars.  So that these diminutives could

be no more than Semiquavers.  By the statutes, bulls, and patents of Queen

Whims, they were all dressed like so many house-burners, except that, as in

Anjou your bricklayers use to quilt their knees when they tile houses, so

these holy friars had usually quilted bellies, and thick quilted paunches

were among them in much repute.  Their codpieces were cut slipper-fashion,

and every monk among them wore two--one sewed before and another behind

--reporting that some certain dreadful mysteries were duly represented by

this duplicity of codpieces.

They wore shoes as round as basins, in imitation of those who inhabit the

sandy sea.  Their chins were close-shaved, and their feet iron-shod; and to

show they did not value fortune, Benius made them shave and poll the hind

part of their polls as bare as a bird’s arse, from the crown to the

shoulder-blades; but they had leave to let their hair grow before, from the

two triangular bones in the upper part of the skull.

Thus did they not value fortune a button, and cared no more for the goods

of this world than you or I do for hanging.  And to show how much they

defied that blind jilt, all of them wore, not in their hands like her, but

at their waist, instead of beads, sharp razors, which they used to

new-grind twice a day and set thrice a night.

Each of them had a round ball on their feet, because Fortune is said to

have one under hers.

The flap of their cowls hanged forward, and not backwards, like those of

others.  Thus none could see their noses, and they laughed without fear

both at fortune and the fortunate; neither more nor less than our ladies

laugh at barefaced trulls when they have those mufflers on which they call

masks, and which were formerly much more properly called charity, because

they cover a multitude of sins.

The hind part of their faces were always uncovered, as are our faces, which

made them either go with their belly or the arse foremost, which they

pleased.  When their hind face went forwards, you would have sworn this had

been their natural gait, as well on account of their round shoes as of the

double codpiece, and their face behind, which was as bare as the back of my

hand, and coarsely daubed over with two eyes and a mouth, such as you see

on some Indian nuts.  Now, if they offered to waddle along with their

bellies forwards, you would have thought they were then playing at

blindman’s buff.  May I never be hanged if ‘twas not a comical sight.

Their way of living was thus:  about owl-light they charitably began to

boot and spur one another.  This being done, the least thing they did was

to sleep and snore; and thus sleeping, they had barnacles on the handles of

their faces, or spectacles at most.

You may swear we did not a little wonder at this odd fancy; but they

satisfied us presently, telling us that the day of judgment is to take

mankind napping; therefore, to show they did not refuse to make their

personal appearance as fortune’s darlings use to do, they were always thus

booted and spurred, ready to mount whenever the trumpet should sound.

At noon, as soon as the clock struck, they used to awake.  You must know

that their clock-bell, church-bells, and refectory-bells were all made

according to the pontial device, that is, quilted with the finest down, and

their clappers of fox-tails.

Having then made shift to get up at noon, they pulled off their boots, and

those that wanted to speak with a maid, alias piss, pissed; those that

wanted to scumber, scumbered; and those that wanted to sneeze, sneezed.

But all, whether they would or no (poor gentlemen!), were obliged largely

and plentifully to yawn; and this was their first breakfast (O rigorous

statute!).  Methought ‘twas very comical to observe their transactions;

for, having laid their boots and spurs on a rack, they went into the

cloisters.  There they curiously washed their hands and mouths; then sat

them down on a long bench, and picked their teeth till the provost gave the

signal, whistling through his fingers; then every he stretched out his jaws

as much as he could, and they gaped and yawned for about half-an-hour,

sometimes more, sometimes less, according as the prior judged the breakfast

to be suitable to the day.

After that they went in procession, two banners being carried before them,

in one of which was the picture of Virtue, and that of Fortune in the

other.  The last went before, carried by a semi-quavering friar, at whose

heels was another, with the shadow or image of Virtue in one hand and an

holy-water sprinkle in the other--I mean of that holy mercurial water which

Ovid describes in his Fasti.  And as the preceding Semiquaver rang a

handbell, this shaked the sprinkle with his fist.  With that says

Pantagruel, This order contradicts the rule which Tully and the academics

prescribed, that Virtue ought to go before, and Fortune follow.  But they

told us they did as they ought, seeing their design was to breech, lash,

and bethwack Fortune.

During the processions they trilled and quavered most melodiously betwixt

their teeth I do not know what antiphones, or chantings, by turns.  For my

part, ‘twas all Hebrew-Greek to me, the devil a word I could pick out on’t;

at last, pricking up my ears, and intensely listening, I perceived they

only sang with the tip of theirs.  Oh, what a rare harmony it was!  How

well ‘twas tuned to the sound of their bells!  You’ll never find these to

jar, that you won’t.  Pantagruel made a notable observation upon the

processions; for says he, Have you seen and observed the policy of these

Semiquavers?  To make an end of their procession they went out at one of

their church doors and came in at the other; they took a deal of care not

to come in at the place whereat they went out.  On my honour, these are a

subtle sort of people, quoth Panurge; they have as much wit as three folks,

two fools and a madman; they are as wise as the calf that ran nine miles to

suck a bull, and when he came there ‘twas a steer.  This subtlety and

wisdom of theirs, cried Friar John, is borrowed from the occult philosophy.

May I be gutted like an oyster if I can tell what to make on’t.  Then the

more ‘tis to be feared, said Pantagruel; for subtlety suspected, subtlety

foreseen, subtlety found out, loses the essence and very name of subtlety,

and only gains that of blockishness.  They are not such fools as you take

them to be; they have more tricks than are good, I doubt.

After the procession they went sluggingly into the fratery-room, by the way

of walk and healthful exercise, and there kneeled under the tables, leaning

their breasts on lanterns.  While they were in that posture, in came a huge

Sandal, with a pitchfork in his hand, who used to baste, rib-roast,

swaddle, and swinge them well-favouredly, as they said, and in truth

treated them after a fashion.  They began their meal as you end yours, with

cheese, and ended it with mustard and lettuce, as Martial tells us the

ancients did.  Afterwards a platterful of mustard was brought before every

one of them, and thus they made good the proverb, After meat comes mustard.

      Their diet was this:

O’ Sundays they stuffed their puddings with puddings, chitterlings, links,

Bologna sausages, forced-meats, liverings, hogs’ haslets, young quails, and

teals.  You must also always add cheese for the first course, and mustard

for the last.

O’ Mondays they were crammed with peas and pork, cum commento, and

interlineary glosses.

O’ Tuesdays they used to twist store of holy-bread, cakes, buns, puffs,

lenten loaves, jumbles, and biscuits.

O’ Wednesdays my gentlemen had fine sheep’s heads, calves’ heads, and

brocks’ heads, of which there’s no want in that country.

O’ Thursdays they guzzled down seven sorts of porridge, not forgetting

mustard.

O’ Fridays they munched nothing but services or sorb-apples; neither were

these full ripe, as I guessed by their complexion.

O’ Saturdays they gnawed bones; not that they were poor or needy, for every

mother’s son of them had a very good fat belly-benefice.

As for their drink, ‘twas an antifortunal; thus they called I don’t know

what sort of a liquor of the place.

When they wanted to eat or drink, they turned down the back-points or flaps

of their cowls forwards below their chins, and that served ‘em instead of

gorgets or slabbering-bibs.

When they had well dined, they prayed rarely all in quavers and shakes; and

the rest of the day, expecting the day of judgment, they were taken up with

acts of charity, and particularly--

O’ Sundays, rubbers at cuffs.

O’ Mondays, lending each other flirts and fillips on the nose.

O’ Tuesdays, clapperclawing one another.

O’ Wednesdays, sniting and fly-flapping.

O’ Thursdays, worming and pumping.

O’ Fridays, tickling.

O’ Saturdays, jerking and firking one another.

Such was their diet when they resided in the convent, and if the prior of

the monk-house sent any of them abroad, then they were strictly enjoined

neither to touch nor eat any manner of fish as long as they were on sea or

rivers, and to abstain from all manner of flesh whenever they were at land,

that everyone might be convinced that, while they enjoyed the object, they

denied themselves the power, and even the desire, and were no more moved

with it than the Marpesian rock.

All this was done with proper antiphones, still sung and chanted by ear, as

we have already observed.

When the sun went to bed, they fairly booted and spurred each other as

before, and having clapped on their barnacles e’en jogged to bed too.  At

midnight the Sandal came to them, and up they got, and having well whetted

and set their razors, and been a-processioning, they clapped the tables

over themselves, and like wire-drawers under their work fell to it as

aforesaid.

Friar John des Entoumeures, having shrewdly observed these jolly Semiquaver

Friars, and had a full account of their statutes, lost all patience, and

cried out aloud:  Bounce tail, and God ha’ mercy guts; if every fool should

wear a bauble, fuel would be dear.  A plague rot it, we must know how many

farts go to an ounce.  Would Priapus were here, as he used to be at the

nocturnal festivals in Crete, that I might see him play backwards, and

wriggle and shake to the purpose.  Ay, ay, this is the world, and t’other

is the country; may I never piss if this be not an antichthonian land, and

our very antipodes.  In Germany they pull down monasteries and unfrockify

the monks; here they go quite kam, and act clean contrary to others,

setting new ones up, against the hair.

Chapter 5.XXVIII.

How Panurge asked a Semiquaver Friar many questions, and was only answered

in monosyllables.

Panurge, who had since been wholly taken up with staring at these royal

Semiquavers, at last pulled one of them by the sleeve, who was as lean as a

rake, and asked him,--

Hearkee me, Friar Quaver, Semiquaver, Demisemiquavering quaver, where is

the punk?

The Friar, pointing downwards, answered, There.

Pan.  Pray, have you many?  Fri.  Few.

Pan.  How many scores have you?  Fri.  One.

Pan.  How many would you have?  Fri.  Five.

Pan.  Where do you hide ‘em?  Fri.  Here.

Pan.  I suppose they are not all of one age; but, pray, how is their shape?

Fri.  Straight.

Pan.  Their complexion?  Fri.  Clear.

Pan.  Their hair?  Fri.  Fair.

Pan.  Their eyes?  Fri.  Black.

Pan.  Their features?  Fri.  Good.

Pan.  Their brows?  Fri.  Small.

Pan.  Their graces?  Fri.  Ripe.

Pan.  Their looks?  Fri.  Free.

Pan.  Their feet?  Fri.  Flat.

Pan.  Their heels?  Fri.  Short.

Pan.  Their lower parts?  Fri.  Rare.

Pan.  And their arms?  Fri.  Long.

Pan.  What do they wear on their hands?  Fri.  Gloves.

Pan.  What sort of rings on their fingers?  Fri.  Gold.

Pan.  What rigging do you keep ‘em in?  Fri.  Cloth.

Pan.  What sort of cloth is it?  Fri.  New.

Pan.  What colour?  Fri.  Sky.

Pan.  What kind of cloth is it?  Fri.  Fine.

Pan.  What caps do they wear?  Fri.  Blue.

Pan.  What’s the colour of their stockings?  Fri.  Red.

Pan.  What wear they on their feet?  Fri.  Pumps.

Pan.  How do they use to be?  Fri.  Foul.

Pan.  How do they use to walk?  Fri.  Fast.

Pan.  Now let us talk of the kitchen, I mean that of the harlots, and

without going hand over head let’s a little examine things by particulars.

What is in their kitchens?  Fri.  Fire.

Pan.  What fuel feeds it?  Fri.  Wood.

Pan.  What sort of wood is’t?  Fri.  Dry.

Pan.  And of what kind of trees?  Fri.  Yews.

Pan.  What are the faggots and brushes of?  Fri.  Holm.

Pan.  What wood d’ye burn in your chambers?  Fri.  Pine.

Pan.  And of what other trees?  Fri.  Lime.

Pan.  Hearkee me; as for the buttocks, I’ll go your halves.  Pray, how do

you feed ‘em?  Fri.  Well.

Pan.  First, what do they eat?  Fri.  Bread.

Pan.  Of what complexion?  Fri.  White.

Pan.  And what else?  Fri.  Meat.

Pan.  How do they love it dressed?  Fri.  Roast.

Pan.  What sort of porridge?  Fri.  None.

Pan.  Are they for pies and tarts?  Fri.  Much.

Pan.  Then I’m their man.  Will fish go down with them?  Fri.  Well.

Pan.  And what else?  Fri.  Eggs.

Pan.  How do they like ‘em?  Fri.  Boiled.

Pan.  How must they be done?  Fri.  Hard.

Pan.  Is this all they have?  Fri.  No.

Pan.  What have they besides, then?  Fri.  Beef.

Pan.  And what else?  Fri.  Pork.

Pan.  And what more?  Fri.  Geese.

Pan.  What then?  Fri.  Ducks.

Pan.  And what besides?  Fri.  Cocks.

Pan.  What do they season their meat with?  Fri.  Salt.

Pan.  What sauce are they most dainty for?  Fri.  Must.

Pan.  What’s their last course?  Fri.  Rice.

Pan.  And what else?  Fri.  Milk.

Pan.  What besides?  Fri.  Peas.

Pan.  What sort?  Fri.  Green.

Pan.  What do they boil with ‘em?  Fri.  Pork.

Pan.  What fruit do they eat?  Fri.  Good.

Pan.  How?  Fri.  Raw.

Pan.  What do they end with?  Fri.  Nuts.

Pan.  How do they drink?  Fri.  Neat.

Pan.  What liquor?  Fri.  Wine.

Pan.  What sort?  Fri.  White.

Pan.  In winter?  Fri.  Strong.

Pan.  In the spring.  Fri.  Brisk.

Pan.  In summer?  Fri.  Cool.

Pan.  In autumn?  Fri.  New.

Buttock of a monk! cried Friar John; how plump these plaguy trulls, these

arch Semiquavering strumpets, must be!  That damned cattle are so high fed

that they must needs be high-mettled, and ready to wince and give two ups

for one go-down when anyone offers to ride them below the crupper.

Prithee, Friar John, quoth Panurge, hold thy prating tongue; stay till I

have done.

Till what time do the doxies sit up?  Fri.  Night.

Pan.  When do they get up?  Fri.  Late.

Pan.  May I ride on a horse that was foaled of an acorn, if this be not as

honest a cod as ever the ground went upon, and as grave as an old gate-post

into the bargain.  Would to the blessed St. Semiquaver, and the blessed

worthy virgin St. Semiquavera, he were lord chief president (justice) of

Paris!  Ods-bodikins, how he’d despatch!  With what expedition would he

bring disputes to an upshot!  What an abbreviator and clawer off of

lawsuits, reconciler of differences, examiner and fumbler of bags, peruser

of bills, scribbler of rough drafts, and engrosser of deeds would he not

make!  Well, friar, spare your breath to cool your porridge.  Come, let’s

now talk with deliberation, fairly and softly, as lawyers go to heaven.

Let’s know how you victual the venereal camp.  How is the snatchblatch?

Fri.  Rough.

Pan.  How is the gateway?  Fri.  Free.

Pan.  And how is it within?  Fri.  Deep.

Pan.  I mean, what weather is it there?  Fri.  Hot.

Pan.  What shadows the brooks?  Fri.  Groves.

Pan.  Of what’s the colour of the twigs?  Fri.  Red.

Pan.  And that of the old?  Fri.  Grey.

Pan.  How are you when you shake?  Fri.  Brisk.

Pan.  How is their motion?  Fri.  Quick.

Pan.  Would you have them vault or wriggle more?  Fri.  Less.

Pan.  What kind of tools are yours?  Fri.  Big.

Pan.  And in their helves?  Fri.  Round.

Pan.  Of what colour is the tip?  Fri.  Red.

Pan.  When they’ve even used, how are they?  Fri.  Shrunk.

Pan.  How much weighs each bag of tools?  Fri.  Pounds.

Pan.  How hang your pouches?  Fri.  Tight.

Pan.  How are they when you’ve done?  Fri.  Lank.

Pan.  Now, by the oath you have taken, tell me, when you have a mind to

cohabit, how you throw ‘em?  Fri.  Down.

Pan.  And what do they say then?  Fri.  Fie.

Pan.  However, like maids, they say nay, and take it; and speak the less,

but think the more, minding the work in hand; do they not?  Fri.  True.

Pan.  Do they get you bairns?  Fri.  None.

Pan.  How do you pig together?  Fri.  Bare.

Pan.  Remember you’re upon your oath, and tell me justly and bona fide how

many times a day you monk it?  Fri.  Six.

Pan.  How many bouts a-nights?  Fri.  Ten.

Catso, quoth Friar John, the poor fornicating brother is bashful, and

sticks at sixteen, as if that were his stint.  Right, quoth Panurge, but

couldst thou keep pace with him, Friar John, my dainty cod?  May the

devil’s dam suck my teat if he does not look as if he had got a blow over

the nose with a Naples cowl-staff.

Pan.  Pray, Friar Shakewell, does your whole fraternity quaver and shake at

that rate?  Fri.  All.

Pan.  Who of them is the best cock o’ the game?  Fri.  I.

Pan.  Do you never commit dry-bobs or flashes in the pan?  Fri.  None.

Pan.  I blush like any black dog, and could be as testy as an old cook when

I think on all this; it passes my understanding.  But, pray, when you have

been pumped dry one day, what have you got the next?  Fri.  More.

Pan.  By Priapus, they have the Indian herb of which Theophrastus spoke, or

I’m much out.  But, hearkee me, thou man of brevity, should some

impediment, honestly or otherwise, impair your talents and cause your

benevolence to lessen, how would it fare with you, then?  Fri.  Ill.

Pan.  What would the wenches do?  Fri.  Rail.

Pan.  What if you skipped, and let ‘em fast a whole day?  Fri.  Worse.

Pan.  What do you give ‘em then?  Fri.  Thwacks.

Pan.  What do they say to this?  Fri.  Bawl.

Pan.  And what else?  Fri.  Curse.

Pan.  How do you correct ‘em?  Fri.  Hard.

Pan.  What do you get out of ‘em then?  Fri.  Blood.

Pan.  How’s their complexion then?  Fri.  Odd.

Pan.  What do they mend it with?  Fri.  Paint.

Pan.  Then what do they do?  Fri.  Fawn.

Pan.  By the oath you have taken, tell me truly what time of the year do

you do it least in?  Fri.  Now (August.).

Pan.  What season do you do it best in?  Fri.  March.

Pan.  How is your performance the rest of the year?  Fri.  Brisk.

Then quoth Panurge, sneering, Of all, and of all, commend me to Ball; this

is the friar of the world for my money.  You’ve heard how short, concise,

and compendious he is in his answers.  Nothing is to be got out of him but

monosyllables.  By jingo, I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.

Damn him, cried Friar John, that’s as true as I am his uncle.  The dog

yelps at another gate’s rate when he is among his bitches; there he is

polysyllable enough, my life for yours.  You talk of making three bites of

a cherry!  God send fools more wit and us more money!  May I be doomed to

fast a whole day if I don’t verily believe he would not make above two

bites of a shoulder of mutton and one swoop of a whole pottle of wine.

Zoons, do but see how down o’ the mouth the cur looks!  He’s nothing but

skin and bones; he has pissed his tallow.

Truly, truly, quoth Epistemon, this rascally monastical vermin all over the

world mind nothing but their gut, and are as ravenous as any kites, and

then, forsooth, they tell us they’ve nothing but food and raiment in this

world.  ‘Sdeath, what more have kings and princes?

Chapter 5.XXIX.

How Epistemon disliked the institution of Lent.

Pray did you observe, continued Epistemon, how this damned ill-favoured

Semiquaver mentioned March as the best month for caterwauling?  True, said

Pantagruel; yet Lent and March always go together, and the first was

instituted to macerate and bring down our pampered flesh, to weaken and

subdue its lusts, to curb and assuage the venereal rage.

By this, said Epistemon, you may guess what kind of a pope it was who first

enjoined it to be kept, since this filthy wooden-shoed Semiquaver owns that

his spoon is never oftener nor deeper in the porringer of lechery than in

Lent.  Add to this the evident reasons given by all good and learned

physicians, affirming that throughout the whole year no food is eaten that

can prompt mankind to lascivious acts more than at that time.

As, for example, beans, peas, phasels, or long-peason, ciches, onions,

nuts, oysters, herrings, salt-meats, garum (a kind of anchovy), and salads

wholly made up of venereous herbs and fruits, as--

Rocket,         Parsley,        Hop-buds,

Nose-smart,     Rampions,       Figs,

Taragon,        Poppy,          Rice,

Cresses,        Celery,         Raisins, and others.

It would not a little surprise you, said Pantagruel, should a man tell you

that the good pope who first ordered the keeping of Lent, perceiving that

at that time o’ year the natural heat (from the centre of the body, whither

it was retired during the winter’s cold) diffuses itself, as the sap does

in trees, through the circumference of the members, did therefore in a

manner prescribe that sort of diet to forward the propagation of mankind.

What makes me think so, is that by the registers of christenings at Touars

it appears that more children are born in October and November than in the

other ten months of the year, and reckoning backwards ‘twill be easily

found that they were all made, conceived, and begotten in Lent.

I listen to you with both my ears, quoth Friar John, and that with no small

pleasure, I’ll assure you.  But I must tell you that the vicar of Jambert

ascribed this copious prolification of the women, not to that sort of food

that we chiefly eat in Lent, but to the little licensed stooping mumpers,

your little booted Lent-preachers, your little draggle-tailed father

confessors, who during all that time of their reign damn all husbands that

run astray three fathom and a half below the very lowest pit of hell.  So

the silly cod’s-headed brothers of the noose dare not then stumble any more

at the truckle-bed, to the no small discomfort of their maids, and are even

forced, poor souls, to take up with their own bodily wives.  Dixi; I have

done.

You may descant on the institution of Lent as much as you please, cried

Epistemon; so many men so many minds; but certainly all the physicians will

be against its being suppressed, though I think that time is at hand.  I

know they will, and have heard ‘em say were it not for Lent their art would

soon fall into contempt, and they’d get nothing, for hardly anybody would

be sick.

All distempers are sowed in lent; ‘tis the true seminary and native bed of

all diseases; nor does it only weaken and putrefy bodies, but it also makes

souls mad and uneasy.  For then the devils do their best, and drive a

subtle trade, and the tribe of canting dissemblers come out of their holes.

‘Tis then term-time with your cucullated pieces of formality that have one

face to God and another to the devil; and a wretched clutter they make with

their sessions, stations, pardons, syntereses, confessions, whippings,

anathematizations, and much prayer with as little devotion.  However, I’ll

not offer to infer from this that the Arimaspians are better than we are in

that point; yet I speak to the purpose.

Well, quoth Panurge to the Semiquaver friar, who happened to be by, dear

bumbasting, shaking, trilling, quavering cod, what thinkest thou of this

fellow?  Is he a rank heretic?  Fri.  Much.

Pan.  Ought he not to be singed?  Fri.  Well.

Pan.  As soon as may be?  Fri.  Right.

Pan.  Should not he be scalded first?  Fri.  No.

Pan.  How then, should he be roasted?  Fri.  Quick.

Pan.  Till at last he be?  Fri.  Dead.

Pan.  What has he made you?  Fri.  Mad.

Pan.  What d’ye take him to be?  Fri.  Damned.

Pan.  What place is he to go to?  Fri.  Hell.

Pan.  But, first, how would you have ‘em served here?  Fri.  Burnt.

Pan.  Some have been served so?  Fri.  Store.

Pan.  That were heretics?  Fri.  Less.

Pan.  And the number of those that are to be warmed thus hereafter is?

Fri.  Great.

Pan.  How many of ‘em do you intend to save?  Fri.  None.

Pan.  So you’d have them burned?  Fri.  All.

I wonder, said Epistemon to Panurge, what pleasure you can find in talking

thus with this lousy tatterdemalion of a monk.  I vow, did I not know you

well, I might be ready to think you had no more wit in your head than he

has in both his shoulders.  Come, come, scatter no words, returned Panurge;

everyone as they like, as the woman said when she kissed her cow.  I wish I

might carry him to Gargantua; when I’m married he might be my wife’s fool.

And make you one, cried Epistemon.  Well said, quoth Friar John.  Now, poor

Panurge, take that along with thee, thou’rt e’en fitted; ‘tis a plain case

thou’lt never escape wearing the bull’s feather; thy wife will be as common

as the highway, that’s certain.

Chapter 5.XXX.

How we came to the land of Satin.

Having pleased ourselves with observing that new order of Semiquaver

Friars, we set sail, and in three days our skipper made the finest and most

delightful island that ever was seen.  He called it the island of Frieze,

for all the ways were of frieze.

In that island is the land of Satin, so celebrated by our court pages.  Its

trees and herbage never lose their leaves or flowers, and are all damask

and flowered velvet.  As for the beasts and birds, they are all of tapestry

work.  There we saw many beasts, birds on trees, of the same colour,

bigness, and shape of those in our country; with this difference, however,

that these did eat nothing, and never sung or bit like ours; and we also

saw there many sorts of creatures which we never had seen before.

Among the rest, several elephants in various postures; twelve of which were

the six males and six females that were brought to Rome by their governor

in the time of Germanicus, Tiberius’s nephew.  Some of them were learned

elephants, some musicians, others philosophers, dancers, and showers of

tricks; and all sat down at table in good order, silently eating and

drinking like so many fathers in a fratery-room.

With their snouts or proboscises, some two cubits long, they draw up water

for their own drinking, and take hold of palm leaves, plums, and all manner

of edibles, using them offensively or defensively as we do our fists; with

them tossing men high into the air in fight, and making them burst with

laughing when they come to the ground.

They have joints (in their legs), whatever some men, who doubtless never

saw any but painted, may have written to the contrary.  Between their teeth

they have two huge horns; thus Juba called ‘em, and Pausanias tells us they

are not teeth, but horns; however, Philostratus will have ‘em to be teeth,

and not horns.  ‘Tis all one to me, provided you will be pleased to own

them to be true ivory.  These are some three or four cubits long, and are

fixed in the upper jawbone, and consequently not in the lowermost.  If you

hearken to those who will tell you to the contrary, you will find yourself

damnably mistaken, for that’s a lie with a latchet; though ‘twere Aelian,

that long-bow man, that told you so, never believe him, for he lies as fast

as a dog can trot.  ‘Twas in this very island that Pliny, his brother

tell-truth, had seen some elephants dance on the rope with bells, and whip

over the tables, presto, begone, while people were at feasts, without so

much as touching the toping topers or the topers toping.

I saw a rhinoceros there, just such a one as Harry Clerberg had formerly

showed me.  Methought it was not much unlike a certain boar which I had

formerly seen at Limoges, except the sharp horn on its snout, that was

about a cubit long; by the means of which that animal dares encounter with

an elephant, that is sometimes killed with its point thrust into its belly,

which is its most tender and defenceless part.

I saw there two and thirty unicorns.  They are a curst sort of creatures,

much resembling a fine horse, unless it be that their heads are like a

stag’s, their feet like an elephant’s, their tails like a wild boar’s, and

out of each of their foreheads sprouts out a sharp black horn, some six or

seven feet long; commonly it dangles down like a turkey-cock’s comb.  When

a unicorn has a mind to fight, or put it to any other use, what does it do

but make it stand, and then ‘tis as straight as an arrow.

I saw one of them, which was attended with a throng of other wild beasts,

purify a fountain with its horn.  With that Panurge told me that his

prancer, alias his nimble-wimble, was like the unicorn, not altogether in

length indeed, but in virtue and propriety; for as the unicorn purified

pools and fountains from filth and venom, so that other animals came and

drank securely there afterwards, in the like manner others might water

their nags, and dabble after him without fear of shankers, carnosities,

gonorrhoeas, buboes, crinkams, and such other plagues caught by those who

venture to quench their amorous thirst in a common puddle; for with his

nervous horn he removed all the infection that might be lurking in some

blind cranny of the mephitic sweet-scented hole.

Well, quoth Friar John, when you are sped, that is, when you are married,

we will make a trial of this on thy spouse, merely for charity sake, since

you are pleased to give us so beneficial an instruction.

Ay, ay, returned Panurge, and then immediately I’ll give you a pretty

gentle aggregative pill of God, made up of two and twenty kind stabs with a

dagger, after the Caesarian way.  Catso, cried Friar John, I had rather

take off a bumper of good cool wine.

I saw there the golden fleece formerly conquered by Jason, and can assure

you, on the word of an honest man, that those who have said it was not a

fleece but a golden pippin, because melon signifies both an apple and a

sheep, were utterly mistaken.

I saw also a chameleon, such as Aristotle describes it, and like that which

had been formerly shown me by Charles Maris, a famous physician of the

noble city of Lyons on the Rhone; and the said chameleon lived on air just

as the other did.

I saw three hydras, like those I had formerly seen.  They are a kind of

serpent, with seven different heads.

I saw also fourteen phoenixes.  I had read in many authors that there was

but one in the whole world in every century; but, if I may presume to speak

my mind, I declare that those who said this had never seen any, unless it

were in the land of Tapestry; though ‘twere vouched by Claudian or

Lactantius Firmianus.

I saw the skin of Apuleius’s golden ass.

I saw three hundred and nine pelicans.

Item, six thousand and sixteen Seleucid birds marching in battalia, and

picking up straggling grasshoppers in cornfields.

Item, some cynamologi, argatiles, caprimulgi, thynnunculs, onocrotals, or

bitterns, with their wide swallows, stymphalides, harpies, panthers,

dorcasses, or bucks, cemades, cynocephalises, satyrs, cartasans, tarands,

uri, monopses, or bonasi, neades, steras, marmosets, or monkeys, bugles,

musimons, byturoses, ophyri, screech-owls, goblins, fairies, and griffins.

I saw Mid-Lent o’ horseback, with Mid-August and Mid-March holding its

stirrups.

I saw some mankind wolves, centaurs, tigers, leopards, hyenas,

camelopardals, and orixes, or huge wild goats with sharp horns.

I saw a remora, a little fish called echineis by the Greeks, and near it a

tall ship that did not get ahead an inch, though she was in the offing with

top and top-gallants spread before the wind.  I am somewhat inclined to

believe that ‘twas the very numerical ship in which Periander the tyrant

happened to be when it was stopped by such a little fish in spite of wind

and tide.  It was in this land of Satin, and in no other, that Mutianus had

seen one of them.

Friar John told us that in the days of yore two sorts of fishes used to

abound in our courts of judicature, and rotted the bodies and tormented the

souls of those who were at law, whether noble or of mean descent, high or

low, rich or poor:  the first were your April fish or mackerel (pimps,

panders, and bawds); the others your beneficial remoras, that is, the

eternity of lawsuits, the needless lets that keep ‘em undecided.

I saw some sphynges, some raphes, some ounces, and some cepphi, whose

fore-feet are like hands and their hind-feet like man’s.

Also some crocutas and some eali as big as sea-horses, with elephants’

tails, boars’ jaws and tusks, and horns as pliant as an ass’s ears.

The crocutas, most fleet animals, as big as our asses of Mirebalais, have

necks, tails, and breasts like a lion’s, legs like a stag’s, have mouths up

to the ears, and but two teeth, one above and one below; they speak with

human voices, but when they do they say nothing.

Some people say that none e’er saw an eyrie, or nest of sakers; if you’ll

believe me, I saw no less than eleven, and I’m sure I reckoned right.

I saw some left-handed halberds, which were the first that I had ever seen.

I saw some manticores, a most strange sort of creatures, which have the

body of a lion, red hair, a face and ears like a man’s, three rows of teeth

which close together as if you joined your hands with your fingers between

each other; they have a sting in their tails like a scorpion’s, and a very

melodious voice.

I saw some catablepases, a sort of serpents, whose bodies are small, but

their heads large, without any proportion, so that they’ve much ado to lift

them up; and their eyes are so infectious that whoever sees ‘em dies upon

the spot, as if he had seen a basilisk.

I saw some beasts with two backs, and those seemed to me the merriest

creatures in the world.  They were most nimble at wriggling the buttocks,

and more diligent in tail-wagging than any water-wagtails, perpetually

jogging and shaking their double rumps.

I saw there some milched crawfish, creatures that I never had heard of

before in my life.  These moved in very good order, and ‘twould have done

your heart good to have seen ‘em.

Chapter 5.XXXI.

How in the land of Satin we saw Hearsay, who kept a school of vouching.

We went a little higher up into the country of Tapestry, and saw the

Mediterranean Sea open to the right and left down to the very bottom; just

as the Red Sea very fairly left its bed at the Arabian Gulf to make a lane

for the Jews when they left Egypt.

There I found Triton winding his silver shell instead of a horn, and also

Glaucus, Proteus, Nereus, and a thousand other godlings and sea monsters.

I also saw an infinite number of fish of all kinds, dancing, flying,

vaulting, fighting, eating, breathing, billing, shoving, milting, spawning,

hunting, fishing, skirmishing, lying in ambuscado, making truces,

cheapening, bargaining, swearing, and sporting.

In a blind corner we saw Aristotle holding a lantern in the posture in

which the hermit uses to be drawn near St. Christopher, watching, prying,

thinking, and setting everything down.

Behind him stood a pack of other philosophers, like so many bums by a

head-bailiff, as Appian, Heliodorus, Athenaeus, Porphyrius, Pancrates,

Arcadian, Numenius, Possidonius, Ovidius, Oppianus, Olympius, Seleucus,

Leonides, Agathocles, Theophrastus, Damostratus, Mutianus, Nymphodorus,

Aelian, and five hundred other such plodding dons, who were full of

business, yet had little to do; like Chrysippus or Aristarchus of Soli, who

for eight-and-fifty years together did nothing in the world but examine the

state and concerns of bees.

I spied Peter Gilles among these, with a urinal in his hand, narrowly

watching the water of those goodly fishes.

When we had long beheld everything in this land of Satin, Pantagruel said,

I have sufficiently fed my eyes, but my belly is empty all this while, and

chimes to let me know ‘tis time to go to dinner.  Let’s take care of the

body lest the soul abdicate it; and to this effect let’s taste some of

these anacampserotes [‘An herb, the touching of which is said to reconcile

lovers.’--Motteux.) that hang over our heads.  Psha, cried one, they are

mere trash, stark naught, o’ my word; they’re good for nothing.

I then went to pluck some mirobolans off of a piece of tapestry whereon

they hung, but the devil a bit I could chew or swallow ‘em; and had you had

them betwixt your teeth you would have sworn they had been thrown silk;

there was no manner of savour in ‘em.

One might be apt to think Heliogabalus had taken a hint from thence, to

feast those whom he had caused to fast a long time, promising them a

sumptuous, plentiful, and imperial feast after it; for all the treat used

to amount to no more than several sorts of meat in wax, marble,

earthenware, painted and figured tablecloths.

While we were looking up and down to find some more substantial food, we

heard a loud various noise, like that of paper-mills (or women bucking of

linen); so with all speed we went to the place whence the noise came, where

we found a diminutive, monstrous, misshapen old fellow, called Hearsay.

His mouth was slit up to his ears, and in it were seven tongues, each of

them cleft into seven parts.  However, he chattered, tattled, and prated

with all the seven at once, of different matters, and in divers languages.

He had as many ears all over his head and the rest of his body as Argus

formerly had eyes, and was as blind as a beetle, and had the palsy in his

legs.

About him stood an innumerable number of men and women, gaping, listening,

and hearing very intensely.  Among ‘em I observed some who strutted like

crows in a gutter, and principally a very handsome bodied man in the face,

who held then a map of the world, and with little aphorisms compendiously

explained everything to ‘em; so that those men of happy memories grew

learned in a trice, and would most fluently talk with you of a world of

prodigious things, the hundredth part of which would take up a man’s whole

life to be fully known.

Among the rest they descanted with great prolixity on the pyramids and

hieroglyphics of Egypt, of the Nile, of Babylon, of the Troglodytes, the

Hymantopodes, or crump-footed nation, the Blemiae, people that wear their

heads in the middle of their breasts, the Pigmies, the Cannibals, the

Hyperborei and their mountains, the Egypanes with their goat’s feet, and

the devil and all of others; every individual word of it by hearsay.

I am much mistaken if I did not see among them Herodotus, Pliny, Solinus,

Berosus, Philostratus, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and God knows how many other

antiquaries.

Then Albert, the great Jacobin friar, Peter Tesmoin, alias Witness, Pope

Pius the Second, Volaterranus, Paulus Jovius the valiant, Jemmy Cartier,

Chaton the Armenian, Marco Polo the Venetian, Ludovico Romano, Pedro

Aliares, and forty cartloads of other modern historians, lurking behind a

piece of tapestry, where they were at it ding-dong, privately scribbling

the Lord knows what, and making rare work of it; and all by hearsay.

Behind another piece of tapestry (on which Naboth and Susanna’s accusers

were fairly represented), I saw close by Hearsay, good store of men of the

country of Perce and Maine, notable students, and young enough.

I asked what sort of study they applied themselves to; and was told that

from their youth they learned to be evidences, affidavit-men, and vouchers,

and were instructed in the art of swearing; in which they soon became such

proficients, that when they left that country, and went back into their

own, they set up for themselves and very honestly lived by their trade of

evidencing, positively giving their testimony of all things whatsoever to

those who feed them most roundly to do a job of journey-work for them; and

all this by hearsay.

You may think what you will of it; but I can assure you they gave some of

us corners of their cakes, and we merrily helped to empty their hogsheads.

Then, in a friendly manner, they advised us to be as sparing of truth as

possibly we could if ever we had a mind to get court preferment.

Chapter 5.XXXII.

How we came in sight of Lantern-land.

Having been but scurvily entertained in the land of Satin, we went o’

board, and having set sail, in four days came near the coast of

Lantern-land.  We then saw certain little hovering fires on the sea.

For my part, I did not take them to be lanterns, but rather thought they

were fishes which lolled their flaming tongues on the surface of the sea,

or lampyrides, which some call cicindelas, or glowworms, shining there as

ripe barley does o’ nights in my country.

But the skipper satisfied us that they were the lanterns of the watch, or,

more properly, lighthouses, set up in many places round the precinct of the

place to discover the land, and for the safe piloting in of some outlandish

lanterns, which, like good Franciscan and Jacobin friars, were coming to

make their personal appearance at the provincial chapter.

However, some of us were somewhat suspicious that these fires were the

forerunners of some storm, but the skipper assured us again they were not.

Chapter 5.XXXIII.

How we landed at the port of the Lychnobii, and came to Lantern-land.

Soon after we arrived at the port of Lantern-land, where Pantagruel

discovered on a high tower the lantern of Rochelle, that stood us in good

stead, for it cast a great light.  We also saw the lantern of Pharos, that

of Nauplion, and that of Acropolis at Athens, sacred to Pallas.

Near the port there’s a little hamlet inhabited by the Lychnobii, that live

by lanterns, as the gulligutted friars in our country live by nuns; they

are studious people, and as honest men as ever shit in a trumpet.

Demosthenes had formerly lanternized there.

We were conducted from that place to the palace by three obeliscolichnys

[‘A kind of beacons.’--Motteux.), military guards of the port, with

high-crowned hats, whom we acquainted with the cause of our voyage, and our

design, which was to desire the queen of the country to grant us a lantern

to light and conduct us during our voyage to the Oracle of the Holy Bottle.

They promised to assist us in this, and added that we could never have come

in a better time, for then the lanterns held their provincial chapter.

When we came to the royal palace we had audience of her highness the Queen

of Lantern-land, being introduced by two lanterns of honour, that of

Aristophanes and that of Cleanthes (Motteux adds here--‘Mistresses of the

ceremonies.’).  Panurge in a few words acquainted her with the causes of

our voyage, and she received us with great demonstrations of friendship,

desiring us to come to her at supper-time that we might more easily make

choice of one to be our guide; which pleased us extremely.  We did not fail

to observe intensely everything we could see, as the garbs, motions, and

deportment of the queen’s subjects, principally the manner after which she

was served.

The bright queen was dressed in virgin crystal of Tutia wrought damaskwise,

and beset with large diamonds.

The lanterns of the royal blood were clad partly with bastard-diamonds,

partly with diaphanous stones; the rest with horn, paper, and oiled cloth.

The cresset-lights took place according to the antiquity and lustre of

their families.

An earthen dark-lantern, shaped like a pot, notwithstanding this took place

of some of the first quality; at which I wondered much, till I was told it

was that of Epictetus, for which three thousand drachmas had been formerly

refused.

Martial’s polymix lantern (Motteux gives a footnote:--‘A lamp with many

wicks, or a branch’d candlestick with many springs coming out of it, that

supply all the branches with oil.’) made a very good figure there.  I took

particular notice of its dress, and more yet of the lychnosimity formerly

consecrated by Canopa, the daughter of Tisias.

I saw the lantern pensile formerly taken out of the temple of Apollo

Palatinus at Thebes, and afterwards by Alexander the Great (carried to the

town of Cymos).  (The words in brackets have been omitted by Motteux.)

I saw another that distinguished itself from the rest by a bushy tuft of

crimson silk on its head.  I was told ‘twas that of Bartolus, the lantern

of the civilians.

Two others were very remarkable for glister-pouches that dangled at their

waist.  We were told that one was the greater light and the other the

lesser light of the apothecaries.

When ‘twas supper-time, the queen’s highness first sat down, and then the

lady lanterns, according to their rank and dignity.  For the first course

they were all served with large Christmas candles, except the queen, who

was served with a hugeous, thick, stiff, flaming taper of white wax,

somewhat red towards the tip; and the royal family, as also the provincial

lantern of Mirebalais, who were served with nutlights; and the provincial

of Lower Poitou, with an armed candle.

After that, God wot, what a glorious light they gave with their wicks!  I

do not say all, for you must except a parcel of junior lanterns, under the

government of a high and mighty one.  These did not cast a light like the

rest, but seemed to me dimmer than any long-snuff farthing candle whose

tallow has been half melted away in a hothouse.

After supper we withdrew to take some rest, and the next day the queen made

us choose one of the most illustrious lanterns to guide us; after which we

took our leave.

Chapter 5.XXXIV.

How we arrived at the Oracle of the Bottle.

Our glorious lantern lighting and directing us to heart’s content, we at

last arrived at the desired island where was the Oracle of the Bottle.  As

soon as friend Panurge landed, he nimbly cut a caper with one leg for joy,

and cried to Pantagruel, Now we are where we have wished ourselves long

ago.  This is the place we’ve been seeking with such toil and labour.  He

then made a compliment to our lantern, who desired us to be of good cheer,

and not be daunted or dismayed whatever we might chance to see.

To come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle we were to go through a large

vineyard, in which were all sorts of vines, as the Falernian, Malvoisian,

the Muscadine, those of Taige, Beaune, Mirevaux, Orleans, Picardent,

Arbois, Coussi, Anjou, Grave, Corsica, Vierron, Nerac, and others.  This

vineyard was formerly planted by the good Bacchus, with so great a blessing

that it yields leaves, flowers, and fruit all the year round, like the

orange trees at Suraine.

Our magnificent lantern ordered every one of us to eat three grapes, to put

some vine-leaves in his shoes, and take a vine-branch in his left hand.

At the end of the close we went under an arch built after the manner of

those of the ancients.  The trophies of a toper were curiously carved on

it.

First, on one side was to be seen a long train of flagons, leathern

bottles, flasks, cans, glass bottles, barrels, nipperkins, pint pots, quart

pots, pottles, gallons, and old-fashioned semaises (swingeing wooden pots,

such as those out of which the Germans fill their glasses); these hung on a

shady arbour.

On another side was store of garlic, onions, shallots, hams, botargos,

caviare, biscuits, neat’s tongues, old cheese, and such like comfits, very

artificially interwoven, and packed together with vine-stocks.

On another were a hundred sorts of drinking glasses, cups, cisterns, ewers,

false cups, tumblers, bowls, mazers, mugs, jugs, goblets, talboys, and such

other Bacchic artillery.

On the frontispiece of the triumphal arch, under the zoophore, was the

following couplet:

  You who presume to move this way,

  Get a good lantern, lest you stray.

We took special care of that, cried Pantagruel when he had read them; for

there is not a better or a more divine lantern than ours in all

Lantern-land.

This arch ended at a fine large round alley covered over with the interlaid

branches of vines, loaded and adorned with clusters of five hundred

different colours, and of as many various shapes, not natural, but due to

the skill of agriculture; some were golden, others bluish, tawny, azure,

white, black, green, purple, streaked with many colours, long, round,

triangular, cod-like, hairy, great-headed, and grassy.  That pleasant alley

ended at three old ivy-trees, verdant, and all loaden with rings.  Our

enlightened lantern directed us to make ourselves hats with some of their

leaves, and cover our heads wholly with them, which was immediately done.

Jupiter’s priestess, said Pantagruel, in former days would not like us have

walked under this arbour.  There was a mystical reason, answered our most

perspicuous lantern, that would have hindered her; for had she gone under

it, the wine, or the grapes of which ‘tis made, that’s the same thing, had

been over her head, and then she would have seemed overtopped and mastered

by wine.  Which implies that priests, and all persons who devote themselves

to the contemplation of divine things, ought to keep their minds sedate and

calm, and avoid whatever might disturb and discompose their tranquillity,

which nothing is more apt to do than drunkenness.

You also, continued our lantern, could not come into the Holy Bottle’s

presence, after you have gone through this arch, did not that noble

priestess Bacbuc first see your shoes full of vine-leaves; which action is

diametrically opposite to the other, and signifies that you despise wine,

and having mastered it, as it were, tread it under foot.

I am no scholar, quoth Friar John, for which I’m heartily sorry, yet I find

by my breviary that in the Revelation a woman was seen with the moon under

her feet, which was a most wonderful sight.  Now, as Bigot explained it to

me, this was to signify that she was not of the nature of other women; for

they have all the moon at their heads, and consequently their brains are

always troubled with a lunacy.  This makes me willing to believe what you

said, dear Madam Lantern.

Chapter 5.XXXV.

How we went underground to come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle, and how

Chinon is the oldest city in the world.

We went underground through a plastered vault, on which was coarsely

painted a dance of women and satyrs waiting on old Silenus, who was

grinning o’ horseback on his ass.  This made me say to Pantagruel, that

this entry put me in mind of the painted cellar in the oldest city in the

world, where such paintings are to be seen, and in as cool a place.

Which is the oldest city in the world? asked Pantagruel.  ‘Tis Chinon, sir,

or Cainon in Touraine, said I.  I know, returned Pantagruel, where Chinon

lies, and the painted cellar also, having myself drunk there many a glass

of cool wine; neither do I doubt but that Chinon is an ancient town

--witness its blazon.  I own ‘tis said twice or thrice:

      Chinon,

    Little town,

    Great renown,

    On old stone

    Long has stood;

  There’s the Vienne, if you look down;

  If you look up, there’s the wood.

But how, continued he, can you make it out that ‘tis the oldest city in the

world?  Where did you find this written?  I have found it in the sacred

writ, said I, that Cain was the first that built a town; we may then

reasonably conjecture that from his name he gave it that of Cainon.  Thus,

after his example, most other founders of towns have given them their

names:  Athena, that’s Minerva in Greek, to Athens; Alexander to

Alexandria; Constantine to Constantinople; Pompey to Pompeiopolis in

Cilicia; Adrian to Adrianople; Canaan, to the Canaanites; Saba, to the

Sabaeans; Assur, to the Assyrians; and so Ptolemais, Caesarea, Tiberias,

and Herodium in Judaea got their names.

While we were thus talking, there came to us the great flask whom our

lantern called the philosopher, her holiness the Bottle’s governor.  He was

attended with a troop of the temple-guards, all French bottles in wicker

armour; and seeing us with our javelins wrapped with ivy, with our

illustrious lantern, whom he knew, he desired us to come in with all manner

of safety, and ordered we should be immediately conducted to the Princess

Bacbuc, the Bottle’s lady of honour, and priestess of all the mysteries;

which was done.

Chapter 5.XXXVI.

How we went down the tetradic steps, and of Panurge’s fear.

We went down one marble step under ground, where there was a resting, or,

as our workmen call it, a landing-place; then, turning to the left, we went

down two other steps, where there was another resting-place; after that we

came to three other steps, turning about, and met a third; and the like at

four steps which we met afterwards.  There quoth Panurge, Is it here?  How

many steps have you told? asked our magnificent lantern.  One, two, three,

four, answered Pantagruel.  How much is that? asked she.  Ten, returned he.

Multiply that, said she, according to the same Pythagorical tetrad.  That

is, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, cried Pantagruel.  How much is the whole?

said she.  One hundred, answered Pantagruel.  Add, continued she, the first

cube--that’s eight.  At the end of that fatal number you’ll find the temple

gate; and pray observe, this is the true psychogony of Plato, so celebrated

by the Academics, yet so little understood; one moiety of which consists of

the unity of the two first numbers full of two square and two cubic

numbers.  We then went down those numerical stairs, all under ground, and I

can assure you, in the first place, that our legs stood us in good stead;

for had it not been for ‘em, we had rolled just like so many hogsheads into

a vault.  Secondly, our radiant lantern gave us just so much light as is in

St. Patrick’s hole in Ireland, or Trophonius’s pit in Boeotia; which caused

Panurge to say to her, after we had got down some seventy-eight steps:

Dear madam, with a sorrowful, aching heart, I most humbly beseech your

lanternship to lead us back.  May I be led to hell if I be not half dead

with fear; my heart is sunk down into my hose; I am afraid I shall make

buttered eggs in my breeches.  I freely consent never to marry.  You have

given yourself too much trouble on my account.  The Lord shall reward you

in his great rewarder; neither will I be ungrateful when I come out of this

cave of Troglodytes.  Let’s go back, I pray you.  I’m very much afraid this

is Taenarus, the low way to hell, and methinks I already hear Cerberus

bark.  Hark! I hear the cur, or my ears tingle.  I have no manner of

kindness for the dog, for there never is a greater toothache than when dogs

bite us by the shins.  And if this be only Trophonius’s pit, the lemures,

hobthrushes, and goblins will certainly swallow us alive, just as they

devoured formerly one of Demetrius’s halberdiers for want of bridles.  Art

thou here, Friar John?  Prithee, dear, dear cod, stay by me; I’m almost

dead with fear.  Hast thou got thy bilbo?  Alas! poor pilgarlic’s

defenceless.  I’m a naked man, thou knowest; let’s go back.  Zoons, fear

nothing, cried Friar John; I’m by thee, and have thee fast by the collar;

eighteen devils shan’t get thee out of my clutches, though I were unarmed.

Never did a man yet want weapons who had a good arm with as stout a heart.

Heaven would sooner send down a shower of them; even as in Provence, in the

fields of La Crau, near Mariannes, there rained stones (they are there to

this day) to help Hercules, who otherwise wanted wherewithal to fight

Neptune’s two bastards.  But whither are we bound?  Are we a-going to the

little children’s limbo?  By Pluto, they’ll bepaw and conskite us all.  Or

are we going to hell for orders?  By cob’s body, I’ll hamper, bethwack, and

belabour all the devils, now I have some vine-leaves in my shoes.  Thou

shalt see me lay about me like mad, old boy.  Which way? where the devil

are they?  I fear nothing but their damned horns; but cuckoldy Panurge’s

bull-feather will altogether secure me from ‘em.  Lo! in a prophetic spirit

I already see him, like another Actaeon, horned, horny, hornified.

Prithee, quoth Panurge, take heed thyself, dear frater, lest, till monks

have leave to marry, thou weddest something thou dostn’t like, as some

cat-o’-nine-tails or the quartan ague; if thou dost, may I never come safe

and sound out of this hypogeum, this subterranean cave, if I don’t tup and

ram that disease merely for the sake of making thee a cornuted, corniferous

property; otherwise I fancy the quartan ague is but an indifferent

bedfellow.  I remember Gripe-men-all threatened to wed thee to some such

thing; for which thou calledest him heretic.

Here our splendid lantern interrupted them, letting us know this was the

place where we were to have a taste of the creature, and be silent; bidding

us not despair of having the word of the Bottle before we went back, since

we had lined our shoes with vine-leaves.

Come on then, cried Panurge, let’s charge through and through all the

devils of hell; we can but perish, and that’s soon done.  However, I

thought to have reserved my life for some mighty battle.  Move, move, move

forwards; I am as stout as Hercules, my breeches are full of courage; my

heart trembles a little, I own, but that’s only an effect of the coldness

and dampness of this vault; ‘tis neither fear nor ague.  Come on, move on,

piss, pish, push on.  My name’s William Dreadnought.

Chapter 5.XXXVII.

How the temple gates in a wonderful manner opened of themselves.

After we were got down the steps, we came to a portal of fine jasper, of

Doric order, on whose front we read this sentence in the finest gold,

EN OINO ALETHEIA--that is, In wine truth.  The gates were of

Corinthian-like brass, massy, wrought with little vine-branches, finely

embossed and engraven, and were equally joined and closed together in their

mortise without padlock, key-chain, or tie whatsoever.  Where they joined,

there hanged an Indian loadstone as big as an Egyptian bean, set in gold,

having two points, hexagonal, in a right line; and on each side, towards the

wall, hung a handful of scordium (garlic germander).

There our noble lantern desired us not to take it amiss that she went no

farther with us, leaving us wholly to the conduct of the priestess Bacbuc;

for she herself was not allowed to go in, for certain causes rather to be

concealed than revealed to mortals.  However, she advised us to be resolute

and secure, and to trust to her for the return.  She then pulled the

loadstone that hung at the folding of the gates, and threw it into a silver

box fixed for that purpose; which done, from the threshold of each gate she

drew a twine of crimson silk about nine feet long, by which the scordium

hung, and having fastened it to two gold buckles that hung at the sides,

she withdrew.

Immediately the gates flew open without being touched; not with a creaking

or loud harsh noise like that made by heavy brazen gates, but with a soft

pleasing murmur that resounded through the arches of the temple.

Pantagruel soon knew the cause of it, having discovered a small cylinder or

roller that joined the gates over the threshold, and, turning like them

towards the wall on a hard well-polished ophites stone, with rubbing and

rolling caused that harmonious murmur.

I wondered how the gates thus opened of themselves to the right and left,

and after we were all got in, I cast my eye between the gates and the wall

to endeavour to know how this happened; for one would have thought our kind

lantern had put between the gates the herb aethiopis, which they say opens

some things that are shut.  But I perceived that the parts of the gates

that joined on the inside were covered with steel, and just where the said

gates touched when they were opened I saw two square Indian loadstones of a

bluish hue, well polished, and half a span broad, mortised in the temple

wall.  Now, by the hidden and admirable power of the loadstones, the steel

plates were put into motion, and consequently the gates were slowly drawn;

however, not always, but when the said loadstone on the outside was

removed, after which the steel was freed from its power, the two bunches of

scordium being at the same time put at some distance, because it deadens

the magnes and robs it of its attractive virtue.

On the loadstone that was placed on the right side the following iambic

verse was curiously engraven in ancient Roman characters:

  Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.

  Fate leads the willing, and th’ unwilling draws.

The following sentence was neatly cut in the loadstone that was on the

left:

    ALL THINGS TEND TO THEIR END.

Chapter 5.XXXVIII.

Of the Temple’s admirable pavement.

When I had read those inscriptions, I admired the beauty of the temple, and

particularly the disposition of its pavement, with which no work that is

now, or has been under the cope of heaven, can justly be compared; not that

of the Temple of Fortune at Praeneste in Sylla’s time, or the pavement of

the Greeks, called asarotum, laid by Sosistratus at Pergamus.  For this

here was wholly in compartments of precious stones, all in their natural

colours: one of red jasper, most charmingly spotted; another of ophites; a

third of porphyry; a fourth of lycophthalmy, a stone of four different

colours, powdered with sparks of gold as small as atoms; a fifth of agate,

streaked here and there with small milk-coloured waves; a sixth of costly

chalcedony or onyx-stone; and another of green jasper, with certain red and

yellowish veins.  And all these were disposed in a diagonal line.

At the portico some small stones were inlaid and evenly joined on the

floor, all in their native colours, to embellish the design of the figures;

and they were ordered in such a manner that you would have thought some

vine-leaves and branches had been carelessly strewed on the pavement; for

in some places they were thick, and thin in others.  That inlaying was very

wonderful everywhere.  Here were seen, as it were in the shade, some snails

crawling on the grapes; there, little lizards running on the branches.  On

this side were grapes that seemed yet greenish; on another, some clusters

that seemed full ripe, so like the true that they could as easily have

deceived starlings and other birds as those which Zeuxis drew.

Nay, we ourselves were deceived; for where the artist seemed to have

strewed the vine-branches thickest, we could not forbear walking with great

strides lest we should entangle our feet, just as people go over an unequal

stony place.

I then cast my eyes on the roof and walls of the temple, that were all

pargetted with porphyry and mosaic work, which from the left side at the

coming in most admirably represented the battle in which the good Bacchus

overthrew the Indians; as followeth.

Chapter 5.XXXIX.

How we saw Bacchus’s army drawn up in battalia in mosaic work.

At the beginning, divers towns, hamlets, castles, fortresses, and forests

were seen in flames; and several mad and loose women, who furiously ripped

up and tore live calves, sheep, and lambs limb from limb, and devoured

their flesh.  There we learned how Bacchus, at his coming into India,

destroyed all things with fire and sword.

Notwithstanding this, he was so despised by the Indians that they did not

think it worth their while to stop his progress, having been certainly

informed by their spies that his camp was destitute of warriors, and that

he had only with him a crew of drunken females, a low-built, old,

effeminate, sottish fellow, continually addled, and as drunk as a

wheelbarrow, with a pack of young clownish doddipolls, stark naked, always

skipping and frisking up and down, with tails and horns like those of young

kids.

For this reason the Indians had resolved to let them go through their

country without the least opposition, esteeming a victory over such enemies

more dishonourable than glorious.

In the meantime Bacchus marched on, burning everything; for, as you know,

fire and thunder are his paternal arms, Jupiter having saluted his mother

Semele with his thunder, so that his maternal house was ruined by fire.

Bacchus also caused a great deal of blood to be spilt; which, when he is

roused and angered, principally in war, is as natural to him as to make

some in time of peace.

Thus the plains of the island of Samos are called Panema, which signifies

bloody, because Bacchus there overtook the Amazons, who fled from the

country of Ephesus, and there let ‘em blood, so that they all died of

phlebotomy.  This may give you a better insight into the meaning of an

ancient proverb than Aristotle has done in his problems, viz., Why ‘twas

formerly said, Neither eat nor sow any mint in time of war.  The reason is,

that blows are given then without any distinction of parts or persons, and

if a man that’s wounded has that day handled or eaten any mint, ‘tis

impossible, or at least very hard, to stanch his blood.

After this, Bacchus was seen marching in battalia, riding in a stately

chariot drawn by six young leopards.  He looked as young as a child, to

show that all good topers never grow old.  He was as red as a cherry, or a

cherub, which you please, and had no more hair on his chin than there’s in

the inside of my hand.  His forehead was graced with pointed horns, above

which he wore a fine crown or garland of vine-leaves and grapes, and a

mitre of crimson velvet, having also gilt buskins on.

He had not one man with him that looked like a man; his guards and all his

forces consisted wholly of Bassarides, Evantes, Euhyades, Edonides,

Trietherides, Ogygiae, Mimallonides, Maenades, Thyades, and Bacchae,

frantic, raving, raging, furious, mad women, begirt with live snakes and

serpents instead of girdles, dishevelled, their hair flowing about their

shoulders, with garlands of vine-branches instead of forehead-cloths, clad

with stag’s or goat’s skins, and armed with torches, javelins, spears, and

halberds whose ends were like pineapples.  Besides, they had certain small

light bucklers that gave a loud sound if you touched ‘em never so little,

and these served them instead of drums.  They were just seventy-nine

thousand two hundred and twenty-seven.

Silenus, who led the van, was one on whom Bacchus relied very much, having

formerly had many proofs of his valour and conduct.  He was a diminutive,

stooping, palsied, plump, gorbellied old fellow, with a swingeing pair of

stiff-standing lugs of his own, a sharp Roman nose, large rough eyebrows,

mounted on a well-hung ass.  In his fist he held a staff to lean upon, and

also bravely to fight whenever he had occasion to alight; and he was

dressed in a woman’s yellow gown.  His followers were all young, wild,

clownish people, as hornified as so many kids and as fell as so many

tigers, naked, and perpetually singing and dancing country-dances.  They

were called tityri and satyrs, and were in all eighty-five thousand one

hundred and thirty-three.

Pan, who brought up the rear, was a monstrous sort of a thing; for his

lower parts were like a goat’s, his thighs hairy, and his horns bolt

upright; a crimson fiery phiz, and a beard that was none of the shortest.

He was a bold, stout, daring, desperate fellow, very apt to take pepper in

the nose for yea and nay.

In his left hand he held a pipe, and a crooked stick in his right.  His

forces consisted also wholly of satyrs, aegipanes, agripanes, sylvans,

fauns, lemures, lares, elves, and hobgoblins, and their number was

seventy-eight thousand one hundred and fourteen.  The signal or word

common to all the army was Evohe.

Chapter 5.XL.

How the battle in which the good Bacchus overthrew the Indians was

represented in mosaic work.

In the next place we saw the representation of the good Bacchus’s

engagement with the Indians.  Silenus, who led the van, was sweating,

puffing, and blowing, belabouring his ass most grievously.  The ass

dreadfully opened its wide jaws, drove away the flies that plagued it,

winced, flounced, went back, and bestirred itself in a most terrible

manner, as if some damned gad-bee had stung it at the breech.

The satyrs, captains, sergeants, and corporals of companies, sounding the

orgies with cornets, in a furious manner went round the army, skipping,

capering, bounding, jerking, farting, flying out at heels, kicking and

prancing like mad, encouraging their companions to fight bravely; and all

the delineated army cried out Evohe!

First, the Maenades charged the Indians with dreadful shouts, and a horrid

din of their brazen drums and bucklers; the air rung again all around, as

the mosaic work well expressed it.  And pray for the future don’t so much

admire Apelles, Aristides the Theban, and others who drew claps of thunder,

lightnings, winds, words, manners, and spirits.

We then saw the Indian army, who had at last taken the field to prevent the

devastation of the rest of their country.  In the front were the elephants,

with castles well garrisoned on their backs.  But the army and themselves

were put into disorder; the dreadful cries of the Bacchae having filled

them with consternation, and those huge animals turned tail and trampled on

the men of their party.

There you might have seen gaffer Silenus on his ass, putting on as hard as

he could, striking athwart and alongst, and laying about him lustily with

his staff after the old fashion of fencing.  His ass was prancing and

making after the elephants, gaping and martially braying, as it were to

sound a charge, as he did when formerly in the Bacchanalian feasts he waked

the nymph Lottis, when Priapus, full of priapism, had a mind to priapize

while the pretty creature was taking a nap.

There you might have seen Pan frisk it with his goatish shanks about the

Maenades, and with his rustic pipe excite them to behave themselves like

Maenades.

A little further you might have blessed your eyes with the sight of a young

satyr who led seventeen kings his prisoners; and a Bacchis, who with her

snakes hauled along no less than two and forty captains; a little faun, who

carried a whole dozen of standards taken from the enemy; and goodman

Bacchus on his chariot, riding to and fro fearless of danger, making much

of his dear carcass, and cheerfully toping to all his merry friends.

Finally, we saw the representation of his triumph, which was thus:  first,

his chariot was wholly lined with ivy gathered on the mountain Meros; this

for its scarcity, which you know raises the price of everything, and

principally of those leaves in India.  In this Alexander the Great followed

his example at his Indian triumph.  The chariot was drawn by elephants

joined together, wherein he was imitated by Pompey the Great at Rome in his

African triumph.  The good Bacchus was seen drinking out of a mighty urn,

which action Marius aped after his victory over the Cimbri near Aix in

Provence.  All his army were crowned with ivy; their javelins, bucklers,

and drums were also wholly covered with it; there was not so much as

Silenus’s ass but was betrapped with it.

The Indian kings were fastened with chains of gold close by the wheels of

the chariot.  All the company marched in pomp with unspeakable joy, loaded

with an infinite number of trophies, pageants, and spoils, playing and

singing merry epiniciums, songs of triumph, and also rural lays and

dithyrambs.

At the farthest end was a prospect of the land of Egypt; the Nile with its

crocodiles, marmosets, ibides, monkeys, trochiloses, or wrens, ichneumons,

or Pharoah’s mice, hippopotami, or sea-horses, and other creatures, its

guests and neighbours.  Bacchus was moving towards that country under the

conduct of a couple of horned beasts, on one of which was written in gold,

Apis, and Osiris on the other; because no ox or cow had been seen in Egypt

till Bacchus came thither.

Chapter 5.XLI.

How the temple was illuminated with a wonderful lamp.

Before I proceed to the description of the Bottle, I’ll give you that of an

admirable lamp that dispensed so large a light over all the temple that,

though it lay underground, we could distinguish every object as clearly as

above it at noonday.

In the middle of the roof was fixed a ring of massive gold, as thick as my

clenched fist.  Three chains somewhat less, most curiously wrought, hung

about two feet and a half below it, and in a triangle supported a round

plate of fine gold whose diameter or breadth did not exceed two cubits and

half a span.  There were four holes in it, in each of which an empty ball

was fastened, hollow within, and open o’ top, like a little lamp; its

circumference about two hands’ breadth.  Each ball was of precious stone;

one an amethyst, another an African carbuncle, the third an opal, and the

fourth an anthracites.  They were full of burning water five times

distilled in a serpentine limbec, and inconsumptible, like the oil formerly

put into Pallas’ golden lamp at Acropolis of Athens by Callimachus.  In

each of them was a flaming wick, partly of asbestine flax, as of old in the

temple of Jupiter Ammon, such as those which Cleombrotus, a most studious

philosopher, saw, and partly of Carpasian flax (Ozell’s correction.

Motteux reads, ‘which Cleombrotus, a most studious philosopher, and

Pandelinus of Carpasium had, which were,’ &c.), which were rather renewed

than consumed by the fire.

About two foot and a half below that gold plate, the three chains were

fastened to three handles that were fixed to a large round lamp of most

pure crystal, whose diameter was a cubit and a half, and opened about two

hands’ breadths o’ top; by which open place a vessel of the same crystal,

shaped somewhat like the lower part of a gourd-like limbec, or an urinal,

was put at the bottom of the great lamp, with such a quantity of the

afore-mentioned burning water, that the flame of the asbestine wick reached

the centre of the great lamp.  This made all its spherical body seem to burn

and be in a flame, because the fire was just at the centre and middle point,

so that it was not more easy to fix the eye on it than on the disc of the

sun, the matter being wonderfully bright and shining, and the work most

transparent and dazzling by the reflection of the various colours of the

precious stones whereof the four small lamps above the main lamp were made,

and their lustre was still variously glittering all over the temple. Then

this wandering light being darted on the polished marble and agate with

which all the inside of the temple was pargetted, our eyes were entertained

with a sight of all the admirable colours which the rainbow can boast when

the sun darts his fiery rays on some dropping clouds.

The design of the lamp was admirable in itself, but, in my opinion, what

added much to the beauty of the whole, was that round the body of the

crystal lamp there was carved in cataglyphic work a lively and pleasant

battle of naked boys, mounted on little hobby-horses, with little whirligig

lances and shields that seemed made of vine-branches with grapes on them;

their postures generally were very different, and their childish strife and

motions were so ingeniously expressed that art equalled nature in every

proportion and action.  Neither did this seem engraved, but rather hewed

out and embossed in relief, or at least like grotesque, which, by the

artist’s skill, has the appearance of the roundness of the object it

represents.  This was partly the effect of the various and most charming

light, which, flowing out of the lamp, filled the carved places with its

glorious rays.

Chapter 5.XLII [‘This and the next chapter make really but one, tho’ Mr.

Motteux has made two of them; the first of which contains but eight lines,

according to him, and ends at the words fantastic fountain.’--Ozell.).

How the Priestess Bacbuc showed us a fantastic fountain in the temple, and

how the fountain-water had the taste of wine, according to the imagination

of those who drank of it.

While we were admiring this incomparable lamp and the stupendous structure

of the temple, the venerable priestess Bacbuc and her attendants came to us

with jolly smiling looks, and seeing us duly accoutred, without the least

difficulty took us into the middle of the temple, where, just under the

aforesaid lamp, was the fine fantastic fountain.  She then ordered some

cups, goblets, and talboys of gold, silver, and crystal to be brought, and

kindly invited us to drink of the liquor that sprung there, which we

readily did; for, to say the truth, this fantastic fountain was very

inviting, and its materials and workmanship more precious, rare, and

admirable than anything Plato ever dreamt of in limbo.

Its basis or groundwork was of most pure and limpid alabaster, and its

height somewhat more than three spans, being a regular heptagon on the

outside, with its stylobates or footsteps, arulets, cymasults or blunt

tops, and Doric undulations about it.  It was exactly round within.  On the

middle point of each angle brink stood a pillar orbiculated in form of

ivory or alabaster solid rings.  These were seven in number, according to

the number of the angles (This sentence, restored by Ozell, is omitted by

Motteux.).

Each pillar’s length from the basis to the architraves was near seven

hands, taking an exact dimension of its diameter through the centre of its

circumference and inward roundness; and it was so disposed that, casting

our eyes behind one of them, whatever its cube might be, to view its

opposite, we found that the pyramidal cone of our visual line ended at the

said centre, and there, by the two opposites, formed an equilateral

triangle whose two lines divided the pillar into two equal parts.

That which we had a mind to measure, going from one side to another, two

pillars over, at the first third part of the distance between them, was met

by their lowermost and fundamental line, which, in a consult line drawn as

far as the universal centre, equally divided, gave, in a just partition,

the distance of the seven opposite pillars in a right line, beginning at

the obtuse angle on the brink, as you know that an angle is always found

placed between two others in all angular figures odd in number.

This tacitly gave us to understand that seven semidiameters are in

geometrical proportion, compass, and distance somewhat less than the

circumference of a circle, from the figure of which they are extracted;

that is to say, three whole parts, with an eighth and a half, a little

more, or a seventh and a half, a little less, according to the instructions

given us of old by Euclid, Aristotle, Archimedes, and others.

The first pillar, I mean that which faced the temple gate, was of azure,

sky-coloured sapphire.

The second, of hyacinth, a precious stone exactly of the colour of the

flower into which Ajax’s choleric blood was transformed; the Greek letters

A I being seen on it in many places.

The third, an anachite diamond, as bright and glittering as lightning.

The fourth, a masculine ruby balas (peach-coloured) amethystizing, its

flame and lustre ending in violet or purple like an amethyst.

The fifth, an emerald, above five hundred and fifty times more precious

than that of Serapis in the labyrinth of the Egyptians, and more verdant

and shining than those that were fixed, instead of eyes, in the marble

lion’s head near King Hermias’s tomb.

The sixth, of agate, more admirable and various in the distinctions of its

veins, clouds, and colours than that which Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, so

mightily esteemed.

The seventh, of syenites, transparent, of the colour of a beryl and the

clear hue of Hymetian honey; and within it the moon was seen, such as we

see it in the sky, silent, full, new, and in the wane.

These stones were assigned to the seven heavenly planets by the ancient

Chaldaeans; and that the meanest capacities might be informed of this, just

at the central perpendicular line, on the chapter of the first pillar,

which was of sapphire, stood the image of Saturn in elutian (Motteux reads

‘Eliacim.’) lead, with his scythe in his hand, and at his feet a crane of

gold, very artfully enamelled, according to the native hue of the saturnine

bird.

On the second, which was of hyacinth, towards the left, Jupiter was seen in

jovetian brass, and on his breast an eagle of gold enamelled to the life.

On the third was Phoebus of the purest gold, and a white cock in his right

hand.

On the fourth was Mars in Corinthian brass, and a lion at his feet.

On the fifth was Venus in copper, the metal of which Aristonides made

Athamas’s statue, that expressed in a blushing whiteness his confusion at

the sight of his son Learchus, who died at his feet of a fall.

On the sixth was Mercury in hydrargyre.  I would have said quicksilver, had

it not been fixed, malleable, and unmovable.  That nimble deity had a stork

at his feet.

On the seventh was the Moon in silver, with a greyhound at her feet.

The size of these statues was somewhat more than a third part of the

pillars on which they stood, and they were so admirably wrought according

to mathematical proportion that Polycletus’s canon could hardly have stood

in competition with them.

The bases of the pillars, the chapters, the architraves, zoophores, and

cornices were Phrygian work of massive gold, purer and finer than any that

is found in the rivers Leede near Montpellier, Ganges in India, Po in

Italy, Hebrus in Thrace, Tagus in Spain, and Pactolus in Lydia.

The small arches between the pillars were of the same precious stone of

which the pillars next to them were.  Thus, that arch was of sapphire which

ended at the hyacinth pillar, and that was of hyacinth which went towards

the diamond, and so on.

Above the arches and chapters of the pillars, on the inward front, a cupola

was raised to cover the fountain.  It was surrounded by the planetary

statues, heptagonal at the bottom, and spherical o’ top, and of crystal so

pure, transparent, well-polished, whole and uniform in all its parts,

without veins, clouds, flaws, or streaks, that Xenocrates never saw such a

one in his life.

Within it were seen the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve months of

the year, with their properties, the two equinoxes, the ecliptic line, with

some of the most remarkable fixed stars about the antartic pole and

elsewhere, so curiously engraven that I fancied them to be the workmanship

of King Necepsus, or Petosiris, the ancient mathematician.

On the top of the cupola, just over the centre of the fountain, were three

noble long pearls, all of one size, pear fashion, perfectly imitating a

tear, and so joined together as to represent a flower-de-luce or lily, each

of the flowers seeming above a hand’s breadth.  A carbuncle jetted out of

its calyx or cup as big as an ostrich’s egg, cut seven square (that number

so beloved of nature), and so prodigiously glorious that the sight of it

had like to have made us blind, for the fiery sun or the pointed lightning

are not more dazzling and unsufferably bright.

Now, were some judicious appraisers to judge of the value of this

incomparable fountain, and the lamp of which we have spoke, they would

undoubtedly affirm it exceeds that of all the treasures and curiosities in

Europe, Asia, and Africa put together.  For that carbuncle alone would have

darkened the pantarbe of Iarchus (Motteux reads ‘Joachas.’) the Indian

magician, with as much ease as the sun outshines and dims the stars with

his meridian rays.

Nor let Cleopatra, that Egyptian queen, boast of her pair of pendants,

those two pearls, one of which she caused to be dissolved in vinegar, in

the presence of Antony the Triumvir, her gallant.

Or let Pompeia Plautina be proud of her dress covered all over with

emeralds and pearls curiously intermixed, she who attracted the eyes of all

Rome, and was said to be the pit and magazine of the conquering robbers of

the universe.

The fountain had three tubes or channels of right pearl, seated in three

equilateral angles already mentioned, extended on the margin, and those

channels proceeded in a snail-like line, winding equally on both sides.

We looked on them a while, and had cast our eyes on another side, when

Bacbuc directed us to watch the water.  We then heard a most harmonious

sound, yet somewhat stopped by starts, far distant, and subterranean, by

which means it was still more pleasing than if it had been free,

uninterrupted, and near us, so that our minds were as agreeably entertained

through our ears with that charming melody as they were through the windows

of our eyes with those delightful objects.

Bacbuc then said, Your philosophers will not allow that motion is begot by

the power of figures; look here, and see the contrary.  By that single

snail-like motion, equally divided as you see, and a fivefold infoliature,

movable at every inward meeting, such as is the vena cava where it enters

into the right ventricle of the heart; just so is the flowing of this

fountain, and by it a harmony ascends as high as your world’s ocean.

She then ordered her attendants to make us drink; and, to tell you the

truth of the matter as near as possible, we are not, heaven be praised! of

the nature of a drove of calf-lollies, who (as your sparrows can’t feed

unless you bob them on the tail) must be rib-roasted with tough crabtree

and firked into a stomach, or at least into an humour to eat or drink.  No,

we know better things, and scorn to scorn any man’s civility who civilly

invites us to a drinking bout.  Bacbuc asked us then how we liked our tiff.

We answered that it seemed to us good harmless sober Adam’s liquor, fit to

keep a man in the right way, and, in a word, mere element; more cool and

clear than Argyrontes in Aetolia, Peneus in Thessaly, Axius in Mygdonia, or

Cydnus in Cilicia, a tempting sight of whose cool silver stream caused

Alexander to prefer the short-lived pleasure of bathing himself in it to

the inconveniences which he could not but foresee would attend so

ill-termed an action.

This, said Bacbuc, comes of not considering with ourselves, or

understanding the motions of the musculous tongue, when the drink glides on

it in its way to the stomach.  Tell me, noble strangers, are your throats

lined, paved, or enamelled, as formerly was that of Pithyllus, nicknamed

Theutes, that you can have missed the taste, relish, and flavour of this

divine liquor?  Here, said she, turning towards her gentlewomen, bring my

scrubbing-brushes, you know which, to scrape, rake, and clear their

palates.

They brought immediately some stately, swingeing, jolly hams, fine

substantial neat’s tongues, good hung-beef, pure and delicate botargos,

venison, sausages, and such other gullet-sweepers.  And, to comply with her

invitation, we crammed and twisted till we owned ourselves thoroughly cured

of thirst, which before did damnably plague us.

We are told, continued she, that formerly a learned and valiant Hebrew

chief, leading his people through the deserts, where they were in danger of

being famished, obtained of God some manna, whose taste was to them, by

imagination, such as that of meat was to them before in reality; thus,

drinking of this miraculous liquor, you’ll find it taste like any wine that

you shall fancy you drink.  Come, then, fancy and drink.  We did so, and

Panurge had no sooner whipped off his brimmer but he cried, By Noah’s open

shop, ‘tis vin de Beaune, better than ever was yet tipped over tongue, or

may ninety-six devils swallow me.  Oh! that to keep its taste the longer,

we gentlemen topers had but necks some three cubits long or so, as

Philoxenus desired to have, or, at least, like a crane’s, as Melanthius

wished his.

On the faith of true lanterners, quoth Friar John, ‘tis gallant, sparkling

Greek wine.  Now, for God’s sake, sweetheart, do but teach me how the devil

you make it.  It seems to me Mirevaux wine, said Pantagruel; for before I

drank I supposed it to be such.  Nothing can be misliked in it, but that

‘tis cold; colder, I say, than the very ice; colder than the Nonacrian and

Dercean (Motteux reads ‘Deraen.’) water, or the Conthoporian (Motteux,

‘Conthopian.’) spring at Corinth, that froze up the stomach and nutritive

parts of those that drank of it.

Drink once, twice, or thrice more, said Bacbuc, still changing your

imagination, and you shall find its taste and flavour to be exactly that on

which you shall have pitched.  Then never presume to say that anything is

impossible to God.  We never offered to say such a thing, said I; far from

it, we maintain he is omnipotent.

Chapter 5.XLIII.

How the Priestess Bacbuc equipped Panurge in order to have the word of the

Bottle.

When we had thus chatted and tippled, Bacbuc asked, Who of you here would

have the word of the Bottle?  I, your most humble little funnel, an’t

please you, quoth Panurge.  Friend, saith she, I have but one thing to tell

you, which is, that when you come to the Oracle, you take care to hearken

and hear the word only with one ear.  This, cried Friar John, is wine of

one ear, as Frenchmen call it.

She then wrapped him up in a gaberdine, bound his noddle with a goodly

clean biggin, clapped over it a felt such as those through which hippocras

is distilled, at the bottom of which, instead of a cowl, she put three

obelisks, made him draw on a pair of old-fashioned codpieces instead of

mittens, girded him about with three bagpipes bound together, bathed his

jobbernowl thrice in the fountain; then threw a handful of meal on his

phiz, fixed three cock’s feathers on the right side of the hippocratical

felt, made him take a jaunt nine times round the fountain, caused him to

take three little leaps and to bump his a-- seven times against the ground,

repeating I don’t know what kind of conjurations all the while in the

Tuscan tongue, and ever and anon reading in a ritual or book of ceremonies,

carried after her by one of her mystagogues.

For my part, may I never stir if I don’t really believe that neither Numa

Pompilius, the second King of the Romans, nor the Cerites of Tuscia, and

the old Hebrew captain ever instituted so many ceremonies as I then saw

performed; nor were ever half so many religious forms used by the

soothsayers of Memphis in Egypt to Apis, or by the Euboeans, at Rhamnus

(Motteux gives ‘or by the Embrians, or at Rhamnus.’), to Rhamnusia, or to

Jupiter Ammon, or to Feronia.

When she had thus accoutred my gentleman, she took him out of our company,

and led him out of the temple, through a golden gate on the right, into a

round chapel made of transparent speculary stones, by whose solid clearness

the sun’s light shined there through the precipice of the rock without any

windows or other entrance, and so easily and fully dispersed itself through

the greater temple that the light seemed rather to spring out of it than to

flow into it.

The workmanship was not less rare than that of the sacred temple at

Ravenna, or that in the island of Chemnis in Egypt.  Nor must I forget to

tell you that the work of that round chapel was contrived with such a

symmetry that its diameter was just the height of the vault.

In the middle of it was an heptagonal fountain of fine alabaster most

artfully wrought, full of water, which was so clear that it might have

passed for element in its purity and singleness.  The sacred Bottle was in

it to the middle, clad in pure fine crystal of an oval shape, except its

muzzle, which was somewhat wider than was consistent with that figure.

Chapter 5.XLIV.

How Bacbuc, the high-priestess, brought Panurge before the Holy Bottle.

There the noble priestess Bacbuc made Panurge stoop and kiss the brink of

the fountain; then bade him rise and dance three ithymbi [‘Dances in the

honour of Bacchus.’--Motteux.).  Which done, she ordered him to sit down

between two stools placed there for that purpose, his arse upon the ground.

Then she opened her ceremonial book, and, whispering in his left ear, made

him sing an epileny, inserted here in the figure of the bottle.

    Bottle, whose Mysterious Deep

  Do’s ten thousand Secrets keep,

  With attentive Ear I wait;

  Ease my Mind, and speak my Fate.

  Soul of Joy!  Like Bacchus, we

  More than India gain by thee.

  Truths unborn thy Juice reveals,

  Which Futurity conceals.

  Antidote to Frauds and Lies,

  Wine, that mounts us to the Skies,

  May thy Father Noah’s Brood

  Like him drown, but in thy Flood.

  Speak, so may the Liquid Mine

  Of Rubies, or of Diamonds shine.

    Bottle, whose Mysterious Deep

  Do’s ten thousand Secrets keep,

  With attentive Ear I wait;

  Ease my Mind, and speak my Fate.

When Panurge had sung, Bacbuc threw I don’t know what into the fountain,

and straight its water began to boil in good earnest, just for the world as

doth the great monastical pot at Bourgueil when ‘tis high holiday there.

Friend Panurge was listening with one ear, and Bacbuc kneeled by him, when

such a kind of humming was heard out of the Bottle as is made by a swarm of

bees bred in the flesh of a young bull killed and dressed according to

Aristaeus’s art, or such as is made when a bolt flies out of a crossbow, or

when a shower falls on a sudden in summer.  Immediately after this was

heard the word Trinc.  By cob’s body, cried Panurge, ‘tis broken, or

cracked at least, not to tell a lie for the matter; for even so do crystal

bottles speak in our country when they burst near the fire.

Bacbuc arose, and gently taking Panurge under the arms, said, Friend, offer

your thanks to indulgent heaven, as reason requires.  You have soon had the

word of the Goddess-Bottle; and the kindest, most favourable, and certain

word of answer that I ever yet heard her give since I officiated here at

her most sacred oracle.  Rise, let us go to the chapter, in whose gloss

that fine word is explained.  With all my heart, quoth Panurge; by jingo, I

am just as wise as I was last year.  Light, where’s the book?  Turn it

over, where’s the chapter?  Let’s see this merry gloss.

Chapter 5.XLV.

How Bacbuc explained the word of the Goddess-Bottle.

Bacbuc having thrown I don’t know what into the fountain, straight the

water ceased to boil; and then she took Panurge into the greater temple, in

the central place, where there was the enlivening fountain.

There she took out a hugeous silver book, in the shape of a half-tierce, or

hogshead, of sentences, and, having filled it at the fountain, said to him,

The philosophers, preachers, and doctors of your world feed you up with

fine words and cant at the ears; now, here we really incorporate our

precepts at the mouth.  Therefore I’ll not say to you, read this chapter,

see this gloss; no, I say to you, taste me this fine chapter, swallow me

this rare gloss.  Formerly an ancient prophet of the Jewish nation ate a

book and became a clerk even to the very teeth!  Now will I have you drink

one, that you may be a clerk to your very liver.  Here, open your

mandibules.

Panurge gaping as wide as his jaws would stretch, Bacbuc took the silver

book--at least we took it for a real book, for it looked just for the world

like a breviary--but in truth it was a breviary, a flask of right Falernian

wine as it came from the grape, which she made him swallow every drop.

By Bacchus, quoth Panurge, this was a notable chapter, a most authentic

gloss, o’ my word.  Is this all that the trismegistian Bottle’s word means?

I’ troth, I like it extremely; it went down like mother’s milk.  Nothing

more, returned Bacbuc; for Trinc is a panomphean word, that is, a word

understood, used and celebrated by all nations, and signifies drink.

Some say in your world that sack is a word used in all tongues, and justly

admitted in the same sense among all nations; for, as Aesop’s fable hath

it, all men are born with a sack at the neck, naturally needy and begging

of each other; neither can the most powerful king be without the help of

other men, or can anyone that’s poor subsist without the rich, though he be

never so proud and insolent; as, for example, Hippias the philosopher, who

boasted he could do everything.  Much less can anyone make shift without

drink than without a sack.  Therefore here we hold not that laughing, but

that drinking is the distinguishing character of man.  I don’t say

drinking, taking that word singly and absolutely in the strictest sense;

no, beasts then might put in for a share; I mean drinking cool delicious

wine.  For you must know, my beloved, that by wine we become divine;

neither can there be a surer argument or a less deceitful divination.  Your

[‘Varro.’--Motteux) academics assert the same when they make the etymology

of wine, which the Greeks call OINOS, to be from vis, strength, virtue,

and power; for ‘tis in its power to fill the soul with all truth, learning,

and philosophy.

If you observe what is written in Ionic letters on the temple gate, you may

have understood that truth is in wine.  The Goddess-Bottle therefore

directs you to that divine liquor; be yourself the expounder of your

undertaking.

It is impossible, said Pantagruel to Panurge, to speak more to the purpose

than does this true priestess; you may remember I told you as much when you

first spoke to me about it.

Trinc then:  what says your heart, elevated by Bacchic enthusiasm?

With this quoth Panurge:

  Trinc, trinc; by Bacchus, let us tope,

  And tope again; for, now I hope

  To see some brawny, juicy rump

  Well tickled with my carnal stump.

  Ere long, my friends, I shall be wedded,

  Sure as my trap-stick has a red-head;

  And my sweet wife shall hold the combat

  Long as my baws can on her bum beat.

  O what a battle of a-- fighting

  Will there be, which I much delight in!

  What pleasing pains then shall I take

  To keep myself and spouse awake!

  All heart and juice, I’ll up and ride,

  And make a duchess of my bride.

  Sing Io paean! loudly sing

  To Hymen, who all joys will bring.

  Well, Friar John, I’ll take my oath,

  This oracle is full of troth;

  Intelligible truth it bears,

  More certain than the sieve and shears.

Chapter 5.XLVI.

How Panurge and the rest rhymed with poetic fury.

What a pox ails the fellow? quoth Friar John.  Stark staring mad, or

bewitched, o’ my word!  Do but hear the chiming dotterel gabble in rhyme.

What o’ devil has he swallowed?  His eyes roll in his loggerhead just for

the world like a dying goat’s.  Will the addle-pated wight have the grace

to sheer off?  Will he rid us of his damned company, to go shite out his

nasty rhyming balderdash in some bog-house?  Will nobody be so kind as to

cram some dog’s-bur down the poor cur’s gullet? or will he, monk-like, run

his fist up to the elbow into his throat to his very maw, to scour and

clear his flanks?  Will he take a hair of the same dog?

Pantagruel chid Friar John, and said:

  Bold monk, forbear! this, I’ll assure ye,

  Proceeds all from poetic fury;

  Warmed by the god, inspired with wine,

  His human soul is made divine.

    For without jest,

    His hallowed breast,

    With wine possessed,

    Could have no rest

    Till he’d expressed

    Some thoughts at least

    Of his great guest.

    Then straight he flies

    Above the skies,

    And mortifies,

    With prophecies,

    Our miseries.

  And since divinely he’s inspired,

  Adore the soul by wine acquired,

  And let the tosspot be admired.

How, quoth the friar, the fit rhyming is upon you too?  Is’t come to that?

Then we are all peppered, or the devil pepper me.  What would I not give to

have Gargantua see us while we are in this maggotty crambo-vein!  Now may I

be cursed with living on that damned empty food, if I can tell whether I

shall scape the catching distemper.  The devil a bit do I understand which

way to go about it; however, the spirit of fustian possesses us all, I

find.  Well, by St. John, I’ll poetize, since everybody does; I find it

coming.  Stay, and pray pardon me if I don’t rhyme in crimson; ‘tis my

first essay.

  Thou, who canst water turn to wine,

  Transform my bum, by power divine,

  Into a lantern, that may light

  My neighbour in the darkest night.

Panurge then proceeds in his rapture, and says:

  From Pythian Tripos ne’er were heard

  More truths, nor more to be revered.

  I think from Delphos to this spring

  Some wizard brought that conjuring thing.

  Had honest Plutarch here been toping,

  He then so long had ne’er been groping

  To find, according to his wishes,

  Why oracles are mute as fishes

  At Delphos.  Now the reason’s clear;

  No more at Delphos they’re, but here.

  Here is the tripos, out of which

  Is spoke the doom of poor and rich.

  For Athenaeus does relate

  This Bottle is the Womb of Fate;

  Prolific of mysterious wine,

  And big with prescience divine,

  It brings the truth with pleasure forth;

  Besides you ha’t a pennyworth.

  So, Friar John, I must exhort you

  To wait a word that may import you,

  And to inquire, while here we tarry,

  If it shall be your luck to marry.

Friar John answers him in a rage, and says:

  How, marry!  By St. Bennet’s boot,

  And his gambadoes, I’ll never do’t.

  No man that knows me e’er shall judge

  I mean to make myself a drudge;

  Or that pilgarlic e’er will dote

  Upon a paltry petticoat.

  I’ll ne’er my liberty betray

  All for a little leapfrog play;

  And ever after wear a clog

  Like monkey or like mastiff-dog.

  No, I’d not have, upon my life,

  Great Alexander for my wife,

  Nor Pompey, nor his dad-in-law,

  Who did each other clapperclaw.

  Not the best he that wears a head

  Shall win me to his truckle-bed.

Panurge, pulling off his gaberdine and mystical accoutrements, replied:

  Wherefore thou shalt, thou filthy beast,

  Be damned twelve fathoms deep at least;

  While I shall reign in Paradise,

  Whence on thy loggerhead I’ll piss.

  Now when that dreadful hour is come,

  That thou in hell receiv’st thy doom,

  E’en there, I know, thou’lt play some trick,

  And Proserpine shan’t scape a prick

  Of the long pin within thy breeches.

  But when thou’rt using these capriches,

  And caterwauling in her cavern,

  Send Pluto to the farthest tavern

  For the best wine that’s to be had,

  Lest he should see, and run horn-mad.

  She’s kind, and ever did admire

  A well-fed monk or well-hung friar.

Go to, quoth Friar John, thou old noddy, thou doddipolled ninny, go to the

devil thou’rt prating of.  I’ve done with rhyming; the rheum gripes me at

the gullet.  Let’s talk of paying and going; come.

Chapter 5.XLVII.

How we took our leave of Bacbuc, and left the Oracle of the Holy Bottle.

Do not trouble yourself about anything here, said the priestess to the

friar; if you be but satisfied, we are.  Here below, in these circumcentral

regions, we place the sovereign good, not in taking and receiving, but in

bestowing and giving; so that we esteem ourselves happy, not if we take and

receive much of others, as perhaps the sects of teachers do in your world,

but rather if we impart and give much.  All I have to beg of you is that

you leave us here your names in writing, in this ritual.  She then opened a

fine large book, and as we gave our names one of her mystagogues with a

gold pin drew some lines on it, as if she had been writing; but we could

not see any characters.

This done, she filled three glasses with fantastic water, and giving them

into our hands, said, Now, my friends, you may depart, and may that

intellectual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere,

whom we call GOD, keep you in his almighty protection.  When you come into

your world, do not fail to affirm and witness that the greatest treasures

and most admirable things are hidden underground, and not without reason.

Ceres was worshipped because she taught mankind the art of husbandry, and

by the use of corn, which she invented, abolished that beastly way of

feeding on acorns; and she grievously lamented her daughter’s banishment

into our subterranean regions, certainly foreseeing that Proserpine would

meet with more excellent things, more desirable enjoyments, below, than she

her mother could be blessed with above.

What do you think is become of the art of forcing the thunder and celestial

fire down, which the wise Prometheus had formerly invented?  ‘Tis most

certain you have lost it; ‘tis no more on your hemisphere; but here below

we have it.  And without a cause you sometimes wonder to see whole towns

burned and destroyed by lightning and ethereal fire, and are at a loss

about knowing from whom, by whom, and to what end those dreadful mischiefs

were sent.  Now, they are familiar and useful to us; and your philosophers

who complain that the ancients have left them nothing to write of or to

invent, are very much mistaken.  Those phenomena which you see in the sky,

whatever the surface of the earth affords you, and the sea, and every river

contain, is not to be compared with what is hid within the bowels of the

earth.

For this reason the subterranean ruler has justly gained in almost every

language the epithet of rich.  Now when your sages shall wholly apply their

minds to a diligent and studious search after truth, humbly begging the

assistance of the sovereign God, whom formerly the Egyptians in their

language called The Hidden and the Concealed, and invoking him by that

name, beseech him to reveal and make himself known to them, that Almighty

Being will, out of his infinite goodness, not only make his creatures, but

even himself known to them.

Thus will they be guided by good lanterns.  For all the ancient

philosophers and sages have held two things necessary safely and pleasantly

to arrive at the knowledge of God and true wisdom; first, God’s gracious

guidance, then man’s assistance.

So, among the philosophers, Zoroaster took Arimaspes for the companion of

his travels; Aesculapius, Mercury; Orpheus, Musaeus; Pythagoras,

Aglaophemus; and, among princes and warriors, Hercules in his most

difficult achievements had his singular friend Theseus; Ulysses, Diomedes;

Aeneas, Achates.  You followed their examples, and came under the conduct

of an illustrious lantern.  Now, in God’s name depart, and may he go along

with you!

THE END OF THE FIFTH BOOK OF THE HEROIC DEEDS AND SAYINGS OF THE NOBLE

PANTAGRUEL.

Rabelais Index