Rabelais - The Fourth Book

BOOK IV.

THE FOURTH BOOK

The Translator’s Preface.

Reader,--I don’t know what kind of a preface I must write to find thee

courteous, an epithet too often bestowed without a cause.  The author of

this work has been as sparing of what we call good nature, as most readers

are nowadays.  So I am afraid his translator and commentator is not to

expect much more than has been showed them.  What’s worse, there are but

two sorts of taking prefaces, as there are but two kinds of prologues to

plays; for Mr. Bays was doubtless in the right when he said that if thunder

and lightning could not fright an audience into complaisance, the sight of

the poet with a rope about his neck might work them into pity.  Some,

indeed, have bullied many of you into applause, and railed at your faults

that you might think them without any; and others, more safely, have spoken

kindly of you, that you might think, or at least speak, as favourably of

them, and be flattered into patience.  Now, I fancy, there’s nothing less

difficult to attempt than the first method; for, in this blessed age, ‘tis

as easy to find a bully without courage, as a whore without beauty, or a

writer without wit; though those qualifications are so necessary in their

respective professions.  The mischief is, that you seldom allow any to rail

besides yourselves, and cannot bear a pride which shocks your own.  As for

wheedling you into a liking of a work, I must confess it seems the safest

way; but though flattery pleases you well when it is particular, you hate

it, as little concerning you, when it is general.  Then we knights of the

quill are a stiff-necked generation, who as seldom care to seem to doubt

the worth of our writings, and their being liked, as we love to flatter

more than one at a time; and had rather draw our pens, and stand up for the

beauty of our works (as some arrant fools use to do for that of their

mistresses) to the last drop of our ink.  And truly this submission, which

sometimes wheedles you into pity, as seldom decoys you into love, as the

awkward cringing of an antiquated fop, as moneyless as he is ugly, affects

an experienced fair one.  Now we as little value your pity as a lover his

mistress’s, well satisfied that it is only a less uncivil way of dismissing

us.  But what if neither of these two ways will work upon you, of which

doleful truth some of our playwrights stand so many living monuments?  Why,

then, truly I think on no other way at present but blending the two into

one; and, from this marriage of huffing and cringing, there will result a

new kind of careless medley, which, perhaps, will work upon both sorts of

readers, those who are to be hectored, and those whom we must creep to.  At

least, it is like to please by its novelty; and it will not be the first

monster that has pleased you when regular nature could not do it.

If uncommon worth, lively wit, and deep learning, wove into wholesome

satire, a bold, good, and vast design admirably pursued, truth set out in

its true light, and a method how to arrive to its oracle, can recommend a

work, I am sure this has enough to please any reasonable man.  The three

books published some time since, which are in a manner an entire work, were

kindly received; yet, in the French, they come far short of these two,

which are also entire pieces; for the satire is all general here, much more

obvious, and consequently more entertaining.  Even my long explanatory

preface was not thought improper.  Though I was so far from being allowed

time to make it methodical, that at first only a few pages were intended;

yet as fast as they were printed I wrote on, till it proved at last like

one of those towns built little at first, then enlarged, where you see

promiscuously an odd variety of all sorts of irregular buildings.  I hope

the remarks I give now will not please less; for, as I have translated the

work which they explain, I had more time to make them, though as little to

write them.  It would be needless to give here a large account of my

performance; for, after all, you readers care no more for this or that

apology, or pretence of Mr. Translator, if the version does not please you,

than we do for a blundering cook’s excuse after he has spoiled a good dish

in the dressing.  Nor can the first pretend to much praise, besides that of

giving his author’s sense in its full extent, and copying his style, if it

is to be copied; since he has no share in the invention or disposition of

what he translates.  Yet there was no small difficulty in doing Rabelais

justice in that double respect; the obsolete words and turns of phrase, and

dark subjects, often as darkly treated, make the sense hard to be

understood even by a Frenchman, and it cannot be easy to give it the free

easy air of an original; for even what seems most common talk in one

language, is what is often the most difficult to be made so in another; and

Horace’s thoughts of comedy may be well applied to this:

  Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere

  Sudoris minimum; sed habet commoedia tantum

  Plus oneris, quanto veniae minus.

Far be it from me, for all this, to value myself upon hitting the words of

cant in which my drolling author is so luxuriant; for though such words

have stood me in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself unhappy

in having insensibly hoarded up so much gibberish and Billingsgate trash in

my memory; nor could I forbear asking of myself, as an Italian cardinal

said on another account, D’onde hai tu pigliato tante coglionerie?  Where

the devil didst thou rake up all these fripperies?

It was not less difficult to come up to the author’s sublime expressions.

Nor would I have attempted such a task, but that I was ambitious of giving

a view of the most valuable work of the greatest genius of his age, to the

Mecaenas and best genius of this.  For I am not overfond of so ungrateful a

task as translating, and would rejoice to see less versions and more

originals; so the latter were not as bad as many of the first are, through

want of encouragement.  Some indeed have deservedly gained esteem by

translating; yet not many condescend to translate, but such as cannot

invent; though to do the first well requires often as much genius as to do

the latter.

I wish, reader, thou mayest be as willing to do my author justice, as I

have strove to do him right.  Yet, if thou art a brother of the quill, it

is ten to one thou art too much in love with thy own dear productions to

admire those of one of thy trade.  However, I know three or four who have

not such a mighty opinion of themselves; but I’ll not name them, lest I

should be obliged to place myself among them.  If thou art one of those

who, though they never write, criticise everyone that does; avaunt!--Thou

art a professed enemy of mankind and of thyself, who wilt never be pleased

nor let anybody be so, and knowest no better way to fame than by striving

to lessen that of others; though wouldst thou write thou mightst be soon

known, even by the butterwomen, and fly through the world in bandboxes.  If

thou art of the dissembling tribe, it is thy office to rail at those books

which thou huggest in a corner.  If thou art one of those eavesdroppers,

who would have their moroseness be counted gravity, thou wilt condemn a

mirth which thou art past relishing; and I know no other way to quit the

score than by writing (as like enough I may) something as dull, or duller

than thyself, if possible.  If thou art one of those critics in dressing,

those extempores of fortune, who, having lost a relation and got an estate,

in an instant set up for wit and every extravagance, thou’lt either praise

or discommend this book, according to the dictates of some less foolish

than thyself, perhaps of one of those who, being lodged at the sign of the

box and dice, will know better things than to recommend to thee a work

which bids thee beware of his tricks.  This book might teach thee to leave

thy follies; but some will say it does not signify much to some fools

whether they are so or not; for when was there a fool that thought himself

one?  If thou art one of those who would put themselves upon us for learned

men in Greek and Hebrew, yet are mere blockheads in English, and patch

together old pieces of the ancients to get themselves clothes out of them,

thou art too severely mauled in this work to like it.  Who then will? some

will cry.  Nay, besides these, many societies that make a great figure in

the world are reflected on in this book; which caused Rabelais to study to

be dark, and even bedaub it with many loose expressions, that he might not

be thought to have any other design than to droll; in a manner bewraying

his book that his enemies might not bite it.  Truly, though now the riddle

is expounded, I would advise those who read it not to reflect on the

author, lest he be thought to have been beforehand with them, and they be

ranked among those who have nothing to show for their honesty but their

money, nothing for their religion but their dissembling, or a fat benefice,

nothing for their wit but their dressing, for their nobility but their

title, for their gentility but their sword, for their courage but their

huffing, for their preferment but their assurance, for their learning but

their degrees, or for their gravity but their wrinkles or dulness.  They

had better laugh at one another here, as it is the custom of the world.

Laughing is of all professions; the miser may hoard, the spendthrift

squander, the politician plot, the lawyer wrangle, and the gamester cheat;

still their main design is to be able to laugh at one another; and here

they may do it at a cheap and easy rate.  After all, should this work fail

to please the greater number of readers, I am sure it cannot miss being

liked by those who are for witty mirth and a chirping bottle; though not by

those solid sots who seem to have drudged all their youth long only that

they might enjoy the sweet blessing of getting drunk every night in their

old age.  But those men of sense and honour who love truth and the good of

mankind in general above all other things will undoubtedly countenance this

work.  I will not gravely insist upon its usefulness, having said enough of

it in the preface (Motteux’ Preface to vol. I of Rabelais, ed. 1694.) to

the first part.  I will only add, that as Homer in his Odyssey makes his

hero wander ten years through most parts of the then known world, so

Rabelais, in a three months’ voyage, makes Pantagruel take a view of almost

all sorts of people and professions; with this difference, however, between

the ancient mythologist and the modern, that while the Odyssey has been

compared to a setting sun in respect to the Iliads, Rabelais’ last work,

which is this Voyage to the Oracle of the Bottle (by which he means truth)

is justly thought his masterpiece, being wrote with more spirit, salt, and

flame, than the first part of his works.  At near seventy years of age, his

genius, far from being drained, seemed to have acquired fresh vigour and

new graces the more it exerted itself; like those rivers which grow more

deep, large, majestic, and useful by their course.  Those who accuse the

French of being as sparing of their wit as lavish of their words will find

an Englishman in our author.  I must confess indeed that my countrymen and

other southern nations temper the one with the other in a manner as they do

their wine with water, often just dashing the latter with a little of the

first.  Now here men love to drink their wine pure; nay, sometimes it will

not satisfy unless in its very quintessence, as in brandies; though an

excess of this betrays want of sobriety, as much as an excess of wit

betrays a want of judgment.  But I must conclude, lest I be justly taxed

with wanting both.  I will only add, that as every language has its

peculiar graces, seldom or never to be acquired by a foreigner, I cannot

think I have given my author those of the English in every place; but as

none compelled me to write, I fear to ask a pardon which yet the generous

temper of this nation makes me hope to obtain.  Albinus, a Roman, who had

written in Greek, desired in his preface to be forgiven his faults of

language; but Cato asked him in derision whether any had forced him to

write in a tongue of which he was not an absolute master.  Lucullus wrote a

history in the same tongue, and said he had scattered some false Greek in

it to let the world know it was the work of a Roman.  I will not say as

much of my writings, in which I study to be as little incorrect as the

hurry of business and shortness of time will permit; but I may better say,

as Tully did of the history of his consulship, which he also had written in

Greek, that what errors may be found in the diction are crept in against my

intent.  Indeed, Livius Andronicus and Terence, the one a Greek, the other

a Carthaginian, wrote successfully in Latin, and the latter is perhaps the

most perfect model of the purity and urbanity of that tongue; but I ought

not to hope for the success of those great men.  Yet am I ambitious of

being as subservient to the useful diversion of the ingenious of this

nation as I can, which I have endeavoured in this work, with hopes to

attempt some greater tasks if ever I am happy enough to have more leisure.

In the meantime it will not displease me, if it is known that this is given

by one who, though born and educated in France, has the love and veneration

of a loyal subject for this nation, one who, by a fatality, which with many

more made him say,

  Nos patriam fugimus et dulcia linquimus arva,

is obliged to make the language of these happy regions as natural to him as

he can, and thankfully say with the rest, under this Protestant government,

  Deus nobis haec otia fecit.

The Author’s Epistle Dedicatory.

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

Chastillon.

You know, most illustrious prince, how often I have been, and am daily

pressed and required by great numbers of eminent persons, to proceed in the

Pantagruelian fables; they tell me that many languishing, sick, and

disconsolate persons, perusing them, have deceived their grief, passed

their time merrily, and been inspired with new joy and comfort.  I commonly

answer that I aimed not at glory and applause when I diverted myself with

writing, but only designed to give by my pen, to the absent who labour

under affliction, that little help which at all times I willingly strive to

give to the present that stand in need of my art and service.  Sometimes I

at large relate to them how Hippocrates in several places, and particularly

in lib. 6. Epidem., describing the institution of the physician his

disciple, and also Soranus of Ephesus, Oribasius, Galen, Hali Abbas, and

other authors, have descended to particulars, in the prescription of his

motions, deportment, looks, countenance, gracefulness, civility,

cleanliness of face, clothes, beard, hair, hands, mouth, even his very

nails; as if he were to play the part of a lover in some comedy, or enter

the lists to fight some enemy.  And indeed the practice of physic is

properly enough compared by Hippocrates to a fight, and also to a farce

acted between three persons, the patient, the physician, and the disease.

Which passage has sometimes put me in mind of Julia’s saying to Augustus

her father.  One day she came before him in a very gorgeous, loose,

lascivious dress, which very much displeased him, though he did not much

discover his discontent.  The next day she put on another, and in a modest

garb, such as the chaste Roman ladies wore, came into his presence.  The

kind father could not then forbear expressing the pleasure which he took to

see her so much altered, and said to her:  Oh! how much more this garb

becomes and is commendable in the daughter of Augustus.  But she, having

her excuse ready, answered:  This day, sir, I dressed myself to please my

father’s eye; yesterday, to gratify that of my husband.  Thus disguised in

looks and garb, nay even, as formerly was the fashion, with a rich and

pleasant gown with four sleeves, which was called philonium according to

Petrus Alexandrinus in 6. Epidem., a physician might answer to such as

might find the metamorphosis indecent:  Thus have I accoutred myself, not

that I am proud of appearing in such a dress, but for the sake of my

patient, whom alone I wholly design to please, and no wise offend or

dissatisfy.  There is also a passage in our father Hippocrates, in the book

I have named, which causes some to sweat, dispute, and labour; not indeed

to know whether the physician’s frowning, discontented, and morose Catonian

look render the patient sad, and his joyful, serene, and pleasing

countenance rejoice him; for experience teaches us that this is most

certain; but whether such sensations of grief or pleasure are produced by

the apprehension of the patient observing his motions and qualities in his

physician, and drawing from thence conjectures of the end and catastrophe

of his disease; as, by his pleasing look, joyful and desirable events, and

by his sorrowful and unpleasing air, sad and dismal consequences; or

whether those sensations be produced by a transfusion of the serene or

gloomy, aerial or terrestrial, joyful or melancholic spirits of the

physician into the person of the patient, as is the opinion of Plato,

Averroes, and others.

Above all things, the forecited authors have given particular directions to

physicians about the words, discourse, and converse which they ought to

have with their patients; everyone aiming at one point, that is, to rejoice

them without offending God, and in no wise whatsoever to vex or displease

them.  Which causes Herophilus much to blame the physician Callianax, who,

being asked by a patient of his, Shall I die? impudently made him this

answer:

  Patroclus died, whom all allow

  By much a better man than you.

Another, who had a mind to know the state of his distemper, asking him,

after our merry Patelin’s way:  Well, doctor, does not my water tell you I

shall die?  He foolishly answered, No; if Latona, the mother of those

lovely twins, Phoebus and Diana, begot thee.  Galen, lib. 4, Comment. 6.

Epidem., blames much also Quintus his tutor, who, a certain nobleman of

Rome, his patient, saying to him, You have been at breakfast, my master,

your breath smells of wine; answered arrogantly, Yours smells of fever;

which is the better smell of the two, wine or a putrid fever?  But the

calumny of certain cannibals, misanthropes, perpetual eavesdroppers, has

been so foul and excessive against me, that it had conquered my patience,

and I had resolved not to write one jot more.  For the least of their

detractions were that my books are all stuffed with various heresies, of

which, nevertheless, they could not show one single instance; much, indeed,

of comical and facetious fooleries, neither offending God nor the king (and

truly I own they are the only subject and only theme of these books), but

of heresy not a word, unless they interpreted wrong, and against all use of

reason and common language, what I had rather suffer a thousand deaths, if

it were possible, than have thought; as who should make bread to be stone,

a fish to be a serpent, and an egg to be a scorpion.  This, my lord,

emboldened me once to tell you, as I was complaining of it in your

presence, that if I did not esteem myself a better Christian than they show

themselves towards me, and if my life, writings, words, nay thoughts,

betrayed to me one single spark of heresy, or I should in a detestable

manner fall into the snares of the spirit of detraction, Diabolos, who, by

their means, raises such crimes against me; I would then, like the phoenix,

gather dry wood, kindle a fire, and burn myself in the midst of it.  You

were then pleased to say to me that King Francis, of eternal memory, had

been made sensible of those false accusations; and that having caused my

books (mine, I say, because several, false and infamous, have been wickedly

laid to me) to be carefully and distinctly read to him by the most learned

and faithful anagnost in this kingdom, he had not found any passage

suspicious; and that he abhorred a certain envious, ignorant, hypocritical

informer, who grounded a mortal heresy on an n put instead of an m by the

carelessness of the printers.

As much was done by his son, our most gracious, virtuous, and blessed

sovereign, Henry, whom Heaven long preserve! so that he granted you his

royal privilege and particular protection for me against my slandering

adversaries.

You kindly condescended since to confirm me these happy news at Paris; and

also lately, when you visited my Lord Cardinal du Bellay, who, for the

benefit of his health, after a lingering distemper, was retired to St.

Maur, that place (or rather paradise) of salubrity, serenity, conveniency,

and all desirable country pleasures.

Thus, my lord, under so glorious a patronage, I am emboldened once more to

draw my pen, undaunted now and secure; with hopes that you will still prove

to me, against the power of detraction, a second Gallic Hercules in

learning, prudence, and eloquence; an Alexicacos in virtue, power, and

authority; you, of whom I may truly say what the wise monarch Solomon saith

of Moses, that great prophet and captain of Israel, Ecclesiast. 45:  A man

fearing and loving God, who found favour in the sight of all flesh,

well-beloved both of God and man; whose memorial is blessed.  God made him

like to the glorious saints, and magnified him so, that his enemies stood in

fear of him; and for him made wonders; made him glorious in the sight of

kings, gave him a commandment for his people, and by him showed his light;

he sanctified him in his faithfulness and meekness, and chose him out of all

men.  By him he made us to hear his voice, and caused by him the law of life

and knowledge to be given.

Accordingly, if I shall be so happy as to hear anyone commend those merry

composures, they shall be adjured by me to be obliged and pay their thanks

to you alone, as also to offer their prayers to Heaven for the continuance

and increase of your greatness; and to attribute no more to me than my

humble and ready obedience to your commands; for by your most honourable

encouragement you at once have inspired me with spirit and with invention;

and without you my heart had failed me, and the fountain-head of my animal

spirits had been dry.  May the Lord keep you in his blessed mercy!

               My Lord,

  Your most humble, and most devoted Servant,

                   Francis Rabelais, Physician.

  Paris, this 28th of January, MDLII.

The Author’s Prologue.

Good people, God save and keep you!  Where are you?  I can’t see you:

stay--I’ll saddle my nose with spectacles--oh, oh! ‘twill be fair anon:  I

see you.  Well, you have had a good vintage, they say:  this is no bad news

to Frank, you may swear.  You have got an infallible cure against thirst:

rarely performed of you, my friends!  You, your wives, children, friends,

and families are in as good case as hearts can wish; it is well, it is as I

would have it:  God be praised for it, and if such be his will, may you

long be so.  For my part, I am thereabouts, thanks to his blessed goodness;

and by the means of a little Pantagruelism (which you know is a certain

jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune), you see me now hale and

cheery, as sound as a bell, and ready to drink, if you will.  Would you

know why I’m thus, good people?  I will even give you a positive answer

--Such is the Lord’s will, which I obey and revere; it being said in his

word, in great derision to the physician neglectful of his own health,

Physician, heal thyself.

Galen had some knowledge of the Bible, and had conversed with the

Christians of his time, as appears lib. 11. De Usu Partium; lib. 2. De

Differentiis Pulsuum, cap. 3, and ibid. lib. 3. cap. 2. and lib. De Rerum

Affectibus (if it be Galen’s).  Yet ‘twas not for any such veneration of

holy writ that he took care of his own health.  No, it was for fear of

being twitted with the saying so well known among physicians:

  Iatros allon autos elkesi bruon.

  He boasts of healing poor and rich,

  Yet is himself all over itch.

This made him boldly say, that he did not desire to be esteemed a

physician, if from his twenty-eighth year to his old age he had not lived

in perfect health, except some ephemerous fevers, of which he soon rid

himself; yet he was not naturally of the soundest temper, his stomach being

evidently bad.  Indeed, as he saith, lib. 5, De Sanitate tuenda, that

physician will hardly be thought very careful of the health of others who

neglects his own.  Asclepiades boasted yet more than this; for he said that

he had articled with fortune not to be reputed a physician if he could be

said to have been sick since he began to practise physic to his latter age,

which he reached, lusty in all his members and victorious over fortune;

till at last the old gentleman unluckily tumbled down from the top of a

certain ill-propped and rotten staircase, and so there was an end of him.

If by some disaster health is fled from your worships to the right or to

the left, above or below, before or behind, within or without, far or near,

on this side or the other side, wheresoever it be, may you presently, with

the help of the Lord, meet with it.  Having found it, may you immediately

claim it, seize it, and secure it.  The law allows it; the king would have

it so; nay, you have my advice for it.  Neither more nor less than the

law-makers of old did fully empower a master to claim and seize his runaway

servant wherever he might be found.  Odds-bodikins, is it not written and

warranted by the ancient customs of this noble, so rich, so flourishing

realm of France, that the dead seizes the quick?  See what has been

declared very lately in that point by that learned, wise, courteous, humane

and just civilian, Andrew Tiraqueau, one of the judges in the most

honourable court of Parliament at Paris.  Health is our life, as Ariphron

the Sicyonian wisely has it; without health life is not life, it is not

living life: abios bios, bios abiotos.  Without health life is only a

languishment and an image of death.  Therefore, you that want your health,

that is to say, that are dead, seize the quick; secure life to yourselves,

that is to say, health.

I have this hope in the Lord, that he will hear our supplications,

considering with what faith and zeal we pray, and that he will grant this

our wish because it is moderate and mean.  Mediocrity was held by the

ancient sages to be golden, that is to say, precious, praised by all men,

and pleasing in all places.  Read the sacred Bible, you will find the

prayers of those who asked moderately were never unanswered.  For example,

little dapper Zaccheus, whose body and relics the monks of St. Garlick,

near Orleans, boast of having, and nickname him St. Sylvanus; he only

wished to see our blessed Saviour near Jerusalem.  It was but a small

request, and no more than anybody then might pretend to.  But alas! he was

but low-built; and one of so diminutive a size, among the crowd, could not

so much as get a glimpse of him.  Well then he struts, stands on tiptoes,

bustles, and bestirs his stumps, shoves and makes way, and with much ado

clambers up a sycamore.  Upon this, the Lord, who knew his sincere

affection, presented himself to his sight, and was not only seen by him,

but heard also; nay, what is more, he came to his house and blessed his

family.

One of the sons of the prophets in Israel felling would near the river

Jordan, his hatchet forsook the helve and fell to the bottom of the river;

so he prayed to have it again [‘twas but a small request, mark ye me), and

having a strong faith, he did not throw the hatchet after the helve, as

some spirits of contradiction say by way of scandalous blunder, but the

helve after the hatchet, as you all properly have it.  Presently two great

miracles were seen:  up springs the hatchet from the bottom of the water,

and fixes itself to its old acquaintance the helve.  Now had he wished to

coach it to heaven in a fiery chariot like Elias, to multiply in seed like

Abraham, be as rich as Job, strong as Samson, and beautiful as Absalom,

would he have obtained it, d’ye think?  I’ troth, my friends, I question it

very much.

Now I talk of moderate wishes in point of hatchet (but harkee me, be sure

you don’t forget when we ought to drink), I will tell you what is written

among the apologues of wise Aesop the Frenchman.  I mean the Phrygian and

Trojan, as Max. Planudes makes him; from which people, according to the

most faithful chroniclers, the noble French are descended.  Aelian writes

that he was of Thrace and Agathias, after Herodotus, that he was of Samos;

‘tis all one to Frank.

In his time lived a poor honest country fellow of Gravot, Tom Wellhung by

name, a wood-cleaver by trade, who in that low drudgery made shift so to

pick up a sorry livelihood.  It happened that he lost his hatchet.  Now

tell me who ever had more cause to be vexed than poor Tom?  Alas, his whole

estate and life depended on his hatchet; by his hatchet he earned many a

fair penny of the best woodmongers or log-merchants among whom he went

a-jobbing; for want of his hatchet he was like to starve; and had death but

met with him six days after without a hatchet, the grim fiend would have

mowed him down in the twinkling of a bedstaff.  In this sad case he began

to be in a heavy taking, and called upon Jupiter with the most eloquent

prayers--for you know necessity was the mother of eloquence.  With the

whites of his eyes turned up towards heaven, down on his marrow-bones, his

arms reared high, his fingers stretched wide, and his head bare, the poor

wretch without ceasing was roaring out, by way of litany, at every

repetition of his supplications, My hatchet, Lord Jupiter, my hatchet! my

hatchet! only my hatchet, O Jupiter, or money to buy another, and nothing

else! alas, my poor hatchet!

Jupiter happened then to be holding a grand council about certain urgent

affairs, and old gammer Cybele was just giving her opinion, or, if you

would rather have it so, it was young Phoebus the beau; but, in short,

Tom’s outcries and lamentations were so loud that they were heard with no

small amazement at the council-board, by the whole consistory of the gods.

What a devil have we below, quoth Jupiter, that howls so horridly?  By the

mud of Styx, have not we had all along, and have not we here still enough

to do, to set to rights a world of damned puzzling businesses of

consequence?  We made an end of the fray between Presthan, King of Persia,

and Soliman the Turkish emperor, we have stopped up the passages between

the Tartars and the Muscovites; answered the Xeriff’s petition; done the

same to that of Golgots Rays; the state of Parma’s despatched; so is that

of Maidenburg, that of Mirandola, and that of Africa, that town on the

Mediterranean which we call Aphrodisium; Tripoli by carelessness has got a

new master; her hour was come.

Here are the Gascons cursing and damning, demanding the restitution of

their bells.

In yonder corner are the Saxons, Easterlings, Ostrogoths, and Germans,

nations formerly invincible, but now aberkeids, bridled, curbed, and

brought under a paltry diminutive crippled fellow; they ask us revenge,

relief, restitution of their former good sense and ancient liberty.

But what shall we do with this same Ramus and this Galland, with a pox to

them, who, surrounded with a swarm of their scullions, blackguard

ragamuffins, sizars, vouchers, and stipulators, set together by the ears

the whole university of Paris?  I am in a sad quandary about it, and for

the heart’s blood of me cannot tell yet with whom of the two to side.

Both seem to me notable fellows, and as true cods as ever pissed.  The one

has rose-nobles, I say fine and weighty ones; the other would gladly have

some too.  The one knows something; the other’s no dunce.  The one loves

the better sort of men; the other’s beloved by ‘em.  The one is an old

cunning fox; the other with tongue and pen, tooth and nail, falls foul on

the ancient orators and philosophers, and barks at them like a cur.

What thinkest thou of it, say, thou bawdy Priapus?  I have found thy

counsel just before now, et habet tua mentula mentem.

King Jupiter, answered Priapus, standing up and taking off his cowl, his

snout uncased and reared up, fiery and stiffly propped, since you compare

the one to a yelping snarling cur and the other to sly Reynard the fox, my

advice is, with submission, that without fretting or puzzling your brains

any further about ‘em, without any more ado, even serve ‘em both as, in the

days of yore, you did the dog and the fox.  How? asked Jupiter; when? who

were they? where was it?  You have a rare memory, for aught I see! returned

Priapus.  This right worshipful father Bacchus, whom we have here nodding

with his crimson phiz, to be revenged on the Thebans had got a fairy fox,

who, whatever mischief he did, was never to be caught or wronged by any

beast that wore a head.

The noble Vulcan here present had framed a dog of Monesian brass, and with

long puffing and blowing put the spirit of life into him; he gave it to

you, you gave it your Miss Europa, Miss Europa gave it Minos, Minos gave it

Procris, Procris gave it Cephalus.  He was also of the fairy kind; so that,

like the lawyers of our age, he was too hard for all other sorts of

creatures; nothing could scape the dog.  Now who should happen to meet but

these two?  What do you think they did?  Dog by his destiny was to take

fox, and fox by his fate was not to be taken.

The case was brought before your council:  you protested that you would not

act against the fates; and the fates were contradictory.  In short, the end

and result of the matter was, that to reconcile two contradictions was an

impossibility in nature.  The very pang put you into a sweat; some drops of

which happening to light on the earth, produced what the mortals call

cauliflowers.  All our noble consistory, for want of a categorical

resolution, were seized with such a horrid thirst, that above seventy-eight

hogsheads of nectar were swilled down at that sitting.  At last you took my

advice, and transmogrified them into stones; and immediately got rid of

your perplexity, and a truce with thirst was proclaimed through this vast

Olympus.  This was the year of flabby cods, near Teumessus, between Thebes

and Chalcis.

After this manner, it is my opinion that you should petrify this dog and

this fox.  The metamorphosis will not be incongruous; for they both bear

the name of Peter.  And because, according to the Limosin proverb, to make

an oven’s mouth there must be three stones, you may associate them with

Master Peter du Coignet, whom you formerly petrified for the same cause.

Then those three dead pieces shall be put in an equilateral trigone

somewhere in the great temple at Paris--in the middle of the porch, if you

will--there to perform the office of extinguishers, and with their noses

put out the lighted candles, torches, tapers, and flambeaux; since, while

they lived, they still lighted, ballock-like, the fire of faction,

division, ballock sects, and wrangling among those idle bearded boys, the

students.  And this will be an everlasting monument to show that those puny

self-conceited pedants, ballock-framers, were rather contemned than

condemned by you.  Dixi, I have said my say.

You deal too kindly by them, said Jupiter, for aught I see, Monsieur

Priapus.  You do not use to be so kind to everybody, let me tell you; for

as they seek to eternize their names, it would be much better for them to

be thus changed into hard stones than to return to earth and putrefaction.

But now to other matters.  Yonder behind us, towards the Tuscan sea and the

neighbourhood of Mount Apennine, do you see what tragedies are stirred up

by certain topping ecclesiastical bullies?  This hot fit will last its

time, like the Limosins’ ovens, and then will be cooled, but not so fast.

We shall have sport enough with it; but I foresee one inconveniency; for

methinks we have but little store of thunder ammunition since the time that

you, my fellow gods, for your pastime lavished them away to bombard new

Antioch, by my particular permission; as since, after your example, the

stout champions who had undertaken to hold the fortress of Dindenarois

against all comers fairly wasted their powder with shooting at sparrows,

and then, not having wherewith to defend themselves in time of need,

valiantly surrendered to the enemy, who were already packing up their awls,

full of madness and despair, and thought on nothing but a shameful retreat.

Take care this be remedied, son Vulcan; rouse up your drowsy Cyclopes,

Asteropes, Brontes, Arges, Polyphemus, Steropes, Pyracmon, and so forth,

set them at work, and make them drink as they ought.

Never spare liquor to such as are at hot work.  Now let us despatch this

bawling fellow below.  You, Mercury, go see who it is, and know what he

wants.  Mercury looked out at heaven’s trapdoor, through which, as I am

told, they hear what is said here below.  By the way, one might well enough

mistake it for the scuttle of a ship; though Icaromenippus said it was like

the mouth of a well.  The light-heeled deity saw that it was honest Tom,

who asked for his lost hatchet; and accordingly he made his report to the

synod.  Marry, said Jupiter, we are finely helped up, as if we had now

nothing else to do here but to restore lost hatchets.  Well, he must have

it then for all this, for so ‘tis written in the Book of Fate (do you

hear?), as well as if it was worth the whole duchy of Milan.  The truth is,

the fellow’s hatchet is as much to him as a kingdom to a king.  Come, come,

let no more words be scattered about it; let him have his hatchet again.

Now, let us make an end of the difference betwixt the Levites and

mole-catchers of Landerousse.  Whereabouts were we?  Priapus was standing in

the chimney-corner, and having heard what Mercury had reported, said in a

most courteous and jovial manner:  King Jupiter, while by your order and

particular favour I was garden-keeper-general on earth, I observed that this

word hatchet is equivocal to many things; for it signifies a certain

instrument by the means of which men fell and cleave timber.  It also

signifies (at least I am sure it did formerly) a female soundly and

frequently thumpthumpriggletickletwiddletobyed.  Thus I perceived that every

cock of the game used to call his doxy his hatchet; for with that same tool

(this he said lugging out and exhibiting his nine-inch knocker) they so

strongly and resolutely shove and drive in their helves, that the females

remain free from a fear epidemical amongst their sex, viz., that from the

bottom of the male’s belly the instrument should dangle at his heel for want

of such feminine props.  And I remember, for I have a member, and a memory

too, ay, and a fine memory, large enough to fill a butter-firkin; I

remember, I say, that one day of tubilustre (horn-fair) at the festivals of

goodman Vulcan in May, I heard Josquin Des Prez, Olkegan, Hobrecht,

Agricola, Brumel, Camelin, Vigoris, De la Fage, Bruyer, Prioris, Seguin, De

la Rue, Midy, Moulu, Mouton, Gascogne, Loyset, Compere, Penet, Fevin,

Rousee, Richard Fort, Rousseau, Consilion, Constantio Festi, Jacquet Bercan,

melodiously singing the following catch on a pleasant green:

  Long John to bed went to his bride,

  And laid a mallet by his side:

  What means this mallet, John? saith she.

  Why! ‘tis to wedge thee home, quoth he.

  Alas! cried she, the man’s a fool:

  What need you use a wooden tool?

  When lusty John does to me come,

  He never shoves but with his bum.

Nine Olympiads, and an intercalary year after (I have a rare member, I

would say memory; but I often make blunders in the symbolization and

colligance of those two words), I heard Adrian Villart, Gombert, Janequin,

Arcadet, Claudin, Certon, Manchicourt, Auxerre, Villiers, Sandrin, Sohier,

Hesdin, Morales, Passereau, Maille, Maillart, Jacotin, Heurteur, Verdelot,

Carpentras, L’Heritier, Cadeac, Doublet, Vermont, Bouteiller, Lupi,

Pagnier, Millet, Du Moulin, Alaire, Maraut, Morpain, Gendre, and other

merry lovers of music, in a private garden, under some fine shady trees,

round about a bulwark of flagons, gammons, pasties, with several coated

quails, and laced mutton, waggishly singing:

  Since tools without their hafts are useless lumber,

  And hatchets without helves are of that number;

  That one may go in t’other, and may match it,

  I’ll be the helve, and thou shalt be the hatchet.

Now would I know what kind of hatchet this bawling Tom wants?  This threw

all the venerable gods and goddesses into a fit of laughter, like any

microcosm of flies; and even set limping Vulcan a-hopping and jumping

smoothly three or four times for the sake of his dear.  Come, come, said

Jupiter to Mercury, run down immediately, and cast at the poor fellow’s

feet three hatchets:  his own, another of gold, and a third of massy

silver, all of one size; then having left it to his will to take his

choice, if he take his own, and be satisfied with it, give him the other

two; if he take another, chop his head off with his own; and henceforth

serve me all those losers of hatchets after that manner.  Having said this,

Jupiter, with an awkward turn of his head, like a jackanapes swallowing of

pills, made so dreadful a phiz that all the vast Olympus quaked again.

Heaven’s foot messenger, thanks to his low-crowned narrow-brimmed hat, his

plume of feathers, heel-pieces, and running stick with pigeon wings, flings

himself out at heaven’s wicket, through the idle deserts of the air, and in

a trice nimbly alights upon the earth, and throws at friend Tom’s feet the

three hatchets, saying unto him:  Thou hast bawled long enough to be a-dry;

thy prayers and request are granted by Jupiter:  see which of these three

is thy hatchet, and take it away with thee.  Wellhung lifts up the golden

hatchet, peeps upon it, and finds it very heavy; then staring on Mercury,

cries, Codszouks, this is none of mine; I won’t ha’t:  the same he did with

the silver one, and said, ‘Tis not this neither, you may e’en take them

again.  At last he takes up his own hatchet, examines the end of the helve,

and finds his mark there; then, ravished with joy, like a fox that meets

some straggling poultry, and sneering from the tip of the nose, he cried,

By the mass, this is my hatchet, master god; if you will leave it me, I

will sacrifice to you a very good and huge pot of milk brimful, covered

with fine strawberries, next ides of May.

Honest fellow, said Mercury, I leave it thee; take it; and because thou

hast wished and chosen moderately in point of hatchet, by Jupiter’s command

I give thee these two others; thou hast now wherewith to make thyself rich:

be honest.  Honest Tom gave Mercury a whole cartload of thanks, and revered

the most great Jupiter.  His old hatchet he fastens close to his leathern

girdle, and girds it above his breech like Martin of Cambray; the two

others, being more heavy, he lays on his shoulder.  Thus he plods on,

trudging over the fields, keeping a good countenance amongst his neighbours

and fellow-parishioners, with one merry saying or other after Patelin’s

way.  The next day, having put on a clean white jacket, he takes on his

back the two precious hatchets and comes to Chinon, the famous city, noble

city, ancient city, yea, the first city in the world, according to the

judgment and assertion of the most learned Massorets.  At Chinon he turned

his silver hatchet into fine testons, crown-pieces, and other white cash;

his golden hatchet into fine angels, curious ducats, substantial ridders,

spankers, and rose-nobles; then with them purchases a good number of farms,

barns, houses, out-houses, thatched houses, stables, meadows, orchards,

fields, vineyards, woods, arable lands, pastures, ponds, mills, gardens,

nurseries, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, swine, hogs, asses, horses, hens,

cocks, capons, chickens, geese, ganders, ducks, drakes, and a world of all

other necessaries, and in a short time became the richest man in the

country, nay, even richer than that limping scrape-good Maulevrier.  His

brother bumpkins, and the other yeomen and country-puts thereabouts,

perceiving his good fortune, were not a little amazed, insomuch that their

former pity of poor Tom was soon changed into an envy of his so great and

unexpected rise; and as they could not for their souls devise how this came

about, they made it their business to pry up and down, and lay their heads

together, to inquire, seek, and inform themselves by what means, in what

place, on what day, what hour, how, why, and wherefore, he had come by this

great treasure.

At last, hearing it was by losing his hatchet, Ha, ha! said they, was there

no more to do but to lose a hatchet to make us rich?  Mum for that; ‘tis as

easy as pissing a bed, and will cost but little.  Are then at this time the

revolutions of the heavens, the constellations of the firmament, and

aspects of the planets such, that whosoever shall lose a hatchet shall

immediately grow rich?  Ha, ha, ha! by Jove, you shall e’en be lost, an’t

please you, my dear hatchet.  With this they all fairly lost their hatchets

out of hand.  The devil of one that had a hatchet left; he was not his

mother’s son that did not lose his hatchet.  No more was wood felled or

cleaved in that country through want of hatchets.  Nay, the Aesopian

apologue even saith that certain petty country gents of the lower class,

who had sold Wellhung their little mill and little field to have

wherewithal to make a figure at the next muster, having been told that his

treasure was come to him by that only means, sold the only badge of their

gentility, their swords, to purchase hatchets to go lose them, as the silly

clodpates did, in hopes to gain store of chink by that loss.

You would have truly sworn they had been a parcel of your petty spiritual

usurers, Rome-bound, selling their all, and borrowing of others, to buy

store of mandates, a pennyworth of a new-made pope.

Now they cried out and brayed, and prayed and bawled, and lamented, and

invoked Jupiter:  My hatchet! my hatchet!  Jupiter, my hatchet! on this

side, My hatchet! on that side, My hatchet!  Ho, ho, ho, ho, Jupiter, my

hatchet!  The air round about rung again with the cries and howlings of

these rascally losers of hatchets.

Mercury was nimble in bringing them hatchets; to each offering that which

he had lost, as also another of gold, and a third of silver.

Every he still was for that of gold, giving thanks in abundance to the

great giver, Jupiter; but in the very nick of time that they bowed and

stooped to take it from the ground, whip, in a trice, Mercury lopped off

their heads, as Jupiter had commanded; and of heads thus cut off the number

was just equal to that of the lost hatchets.

You see how it is now; you see how it goes with those who in the simplicity

of their hearts wish and desire with moderation.  Take warning by this, all

you greedy, fresh-water sharks, who scorn to wish for anything under ten

thousand pounds; and do not for the future run on impudently, as I have

sometimes heard you wishing, Would to God I had now one hundred

seventy-eight millions of gold!  Oh! how I should tickle it off.  The deuce

on you, what more might a king, an emperor, or a pope wish for?  For that

reason, indeed, you see that after you have made such hopeful wishes, all

the good that comes to you of it is the itch or the scab, and not a cross in

your breeches to scare the devil that tempts you to make these wishes:  no

more than those two mumpers, wishers after the custom of Paris; one of whom

only wished to have in good old gold as much as hath been spent, bought, and

sold in Paris, since its first foundations were laid, to this hour; all of

it valued at the price, sale, and rate of the dearest year in all that space

of time.  Do you think the fellow was bashful?  Had he eaten sour plums

unpeeled?  Were his teeth on edge, I pray you?  The other wished Our Lady’s

Church brimful of steel needles, from the floor to the top of the roof, and

to have as many ducats as might be crammed into as many bags as might be

sewed with each and everyone of those needles, till they were all either

broke at the point or eye.  This is to wish with a vengeance!  What think

you of it?  What did they get by’t, in your opinion?  Why at night both my

gentlemen had kibed heels, a tetter in the chin, a churchyard cough in the

lungs, a catarrh in the throat, a swingeing boil at the rump, and the devil

of one musty crust of a brown george the poor dogs had to scour their

grinders with.  Wish therefore for mediocrity, and it shall be given unto

you, and over and above yet; that is to say, provided you bestir yourself

manfully, and do your best in the meantime.

Ay, but say you, God might as soon have given me seventy-eight thousand as

the thirteenth part of one half; for he is omnipotent, and a million of

gold is no more to him than one farthing.  Oh, ho! pray tell me who taught

you to talk at this rate of the power and predestination of God, poor silly

people?  Peace, tush, st, st, st! fall down before his sacred face and own

the nothingness of your nothing.

Upon this, O ye that labour under the affliction of the gout, I ground my

hopes; firmly believing, that if so it pleases the divine goodness, you

shall obtain health; since you wish and ask for nothing else, at least for

the present.  Well, stay yet a little longer with half an ounce of

patience.

The Genoese do not use, like you, to be satisfied with wishing health

alone, when after they have all the livelong morning been in a brown study,

talked, pondered, ruminated, and resolved in the counting-houses of whom

and how they may squeeze the ready, and who by their craft must be hooked

in, wheedled,  bubbled, sharped, overreached, and choused; they go to the

exchange, and greet one another with a Sanita e guadagno, Messer! health

and gain to you, sir!  Health alone will not go down with the greedy

curmudgeons; they over and above must wish for gain, with a pox to ‘em; ay,

and for the fine crowns, or scudi di Guadaigne; whence, heaven be praised!

it happens many a time that the silly wishers and woulders are baulked, and

get neither.

Now, my lads, as you hope for good health, cough once aloud with lungs of

leather; take me off three swingeing bumpers; prick up your ears; and you

shall hear me tell wonders of the noble and good Pantagruel.

THE FOURTH BOOK.

Chapter 4.I.

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

Bottle.

In the month of June, on Vesta’s holiday, the very numerical day on which

Brutus, conquering Spain, taught its strutting dons to truckle under him,

and that niggardly miser Crassus was routed and knocked on the head by the

Parthians, Pantagruel took his leave of the good Gargantua, his royal

father.  The old gentleman, according to the laudable custom of the

primitive Christians, devoutly prayed for the happy voyage of his son and

his whole company, and then they took shipping at the port of Thalassa.

Pantagruel had with him Panurge, Friar John des Entomeures, alias of the

Funnels, Epistemon, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, Carpalin, cum multis

aliis, his ancient servants and domestics; also Xenomanes, the great

traveller, who had crossed so many dangerous roads, dikes, ponds, seas, and

so forth, and was come some time before, having been sent for by Panurge.

For certain good causes and considerations him thereunto moving, he had

left with Gargantua, and marked out, in his great and universal

hydrographical chart, the course which they were to steer to visit the

Oracle of the Holy Bottle Bacbuc.  The number of ships were such as I

described in the third book, convoyed by a like number of triremes, men of

war, galleons, and feluccas, well-rigged, caulked, and stored with a good

quantity of Pantagruelion.

All the officers, droggermen, pilots, captains, mates, boatswains,

midshipmen, quartermasters, and sailors, met in the Thalamege, Pantagruel’s

principal flag-ship, which had in her stern for her ensign a huge large

bottle, half silver well polished, the other half gold enamelled with

carnation; whereby it was easy to guess that white and red were the colours

of the noble travellers, and that they went for the word of the Bottle.

On the stern of the second was a lantern like those of the ancients,

industriously made with diaphanous stone, implying that they were to pass

by Lanternland.  The third ship had for her device a fine deep china ewer.

The fourth, a double-handed jar of gold, much like an ancient urn.  The

fifth, a famous can made of sperm of emerald.  The sixth, a monk’s mumping

bottle made of the four metals together.  The seventh, an ebony funnel, all

embossed and wrought with gold after the Tauchic manner.  The eighth, an

ivy goblet, very precious, inlaid with gold.  The ninth, a cup of fine

Obriz gold.  The tenth, a tumbler of aromatic agoloch (you call it lignum

aloes) edged with Cyprian gold, after the Azemine make.  The eleventh, a

golden vine-tub of mosaic work.  The twelfth, a runlet of unpolished gold,

covered with a small vine of large Indian pearl of Topiarian work.

Insomuch that there was not a man, however in the dumps, musty,

sour-looked, or melancholic he were, not even excepting that blubbering

whiner Heraclitus, had he been there, but seeing this noble convoy of ships

and their devices, must have been seized with present gladness of heart,

and, smiling at the conceit, have said that the travellers were all honest

topers, true pitcher-men, and have judged by a most sure prognostication

that their voyage, both outward and homeward-bound, would be performed in

mirth and perfect health.

In the Thalamege, where was the general meeting, Pantagruel made a short

but sweet exhortation, wholly backed with authorities from Scripture upon

navigation; which being ended, with an audible voice prayers were said in

the presence and hearing of all the burghers of Thalassa, who had flocked

to the mole to see them take shipping.  After the prayers was melodiously

sung a psalm of the holy King David, which begins, When Israel went out of

Egypt; and that being ended, tables were placed upon deck, and a feast

speedily served up. The Thalassians, who had also borne a chorus in the

psalm, caused store of belly-timber to be brought out of their houses.  All

drank to them; they drank to all; which was the cause that none of the

whole company gave up what they had eaten, nor were sea-sick, with a pain

at the head and stomach; which inconveniency they could not so easily have

prevented by drinking, for some time before, salt water, either alone or

mixed with wine; using quinces, citron peel, juice of pomegranates, sourish

sweetmeats, fasting a long time, covering their stomachs with paper, or

following such other idle remedies as foolish physicians prescribe to those

that go to sea.

Having often renewed their tipplings, each mother’s son retired on board

his own ship, and set sail all so fast with a merry gale at south-east; to

which point of the compass the chief pilot, James Brayer by name, had

shaped his course, and fixed all things accordingly.  For seeing that the

Oracle of the Holy Bottle lay near Cathay, in the Upper India, his advice,

and that of Xenomanes also, was not to steer the course which the

Portuguese use, while sailing through the torrid zone, and Cape Bona

Speranza, at the south point of Africa, beyond the equinoctial line, and

losing sight of the northern pole, their guide, they make a prodigious long

voyage; but rather to keep as near the parallel of the said India as

possible, and to tack to the westward of the said pole, so that winding

under the north, they might find themselves in the latitude of the port of

Olone, without coming nearer it for fear of being shut up in the frozen

sea; whereas, following this canonical turn, by the said parallel, they

must have that on the right to the eastward, which at their departure was

on their left.

This proved a much shorter cut; for without shipwreck, danger, or loss of

men, with uninterrupted good weather, except one day near the island of the

Macreons, they performed in less than four months the voyage of Upper

India, which the Portuguese, with a thousand inconveniences and innumerable

dangers, can hardly complete in three years.  And it is my opinion, with

submission to better judgments, that this course was perhaps steered by

those Indians who sailed to Germany, and were honourably received by the

King of the Swedes, while Quintus Metellus Celer was proconsul of the

Gauls; as Cornelius Nepos, Pomponius Mela, and Pliny after them tell us.

Chapter 4.II.

How Pantagruel bought many rarities in the island of Medamothy.

That day and the two following they neither discovered land nor anything

new; for they had formerly sailed that way:  but on the fourth they made an

island called Medamothy, of a fine and delightful prospect, by reason of

the vast number of lighthouses and high marble towers in its circuit, which

is not less than that of Canada (sic).  Pantagruel, inquiring who governed

there, heard that it was King Philophanes, absent at that time upon account

of the marriage of his brother Philotheamon with the infanta of the kingdom

of Engys.

Hearing this, he went ashore in the harbour, and while every ship’s crew

watered, passed his time in viewing divers pictures, pieces of tapestry,

animals, fishes, birds, and other exotic and foreign merchandises, which

were along the walks of the mole and in the markets of the port.  For it

was the third day of the great and famous fair of the place, to which the

chief merchants of Africa and Asia resorted.  Out of these Friar John

bought him two rare pictures; in one of which the face of a man that brings

in an appeal was drawn to the life; and in the other a servant that wants a

master, with every needful particular, action, countenance, look, gait,

feature, and deportment, being an original by Master Charles Charmois,

principal painter to King Megistus; and he paid for them in the court

fashion, with conge and grimace.  Panurge bought a large picture, copied

and done from the needle-work formerly wrought by Philomela, showing to her

sister Progne how her brother-in-law Tereus had by force handselled her

copyhold, and then cut out her tongue that she might not (as women will)

tell tales.  I vow and swear by the handle of my paper lantern that it was

a gallant, a mirific, nay, a most admirable piece.  Nor do you think, I

pray you, that in it was the picture of a man playing the beast with two

backs with a female; this had been too silly and gross:  no, no; it was

another-guise thing, and much plainer.  You may, if you please, see it at

Theleme, on the left hand as you go into the high gallery.  Epistemon

bought another, wherein were painted to the life the ideas of Plato and the

atoms of Epicurus.  Rhizotome purchased another, wherein Echo was drawn to

the life.  Pantagruel caused to be bought, by Gymnast, the life and deeds

of Achilles, in seventy-eight pieces of tapestry, four fathom long, and

three fathom broad, all of Phrygian silk, embossed with gold and silver;

the work beginning at the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, continuing to the

birth of Achilles; his youth, described by Statius Papinius; his warlike

achievements, celebrated by Homer; his death and obsequies, written by Ovid

and Quintus Calaber; and ending at the appearance of his ghost, and

Polyxena’s sacrifice, rehearsed by Euripides.

He also caused to be bought three fine young unicorns; one of them a male

of a chestnut colour, and two grey dappled females; also a tarand, whom he

bought of a Scythian of the Gelones’ country.

A tarand is an animal as big as a bullock, having a head like a stag, or a

little bigger, two stately horns with large branches, cloven feet, hair

long like that of a furred Muscovite, I mean a bear, and a skin almost as

hard as steel armour.  The Scythian said that there are but few tarands to

be found in Scythia, because it varieth its colour according to the

diversity of the places where it grazes and abides, and represents the

colour of the grass, plants, trees, shrubs, flowers, meadows, rocks, and

generally of all things near which it comes.  It hath this common with the

sea-pulp, or polypus, with the thoes, with the wolves of India, and with

the chameleon, which is a kind of a lizard so wonderful that Democritus

hath written a whole book of its figure and anatomy, as also of its virtue

and propriety in magic.  This I can affirm, that I have seen it change its

colour, not only at the approach of things that have a colour, but by its

own voluntary impulse, according to its fear or other affections; as, for

example, upon a green carpet I have certainly seen it become green; but

having remained there some time, it turned yellow, blue, tanned, and purple

in course, in the same manner as you see a turkey-cock’s comb change colour

according to its passions.  But what we find most surprising in this tarand

is, that not only its face and skin, but also its hair could take whatever

colour was about it.  Near Panurge, with his kersey coat, its hair used to

turn grey; near Pantagruel, with his scarlet mantle, its hair and skin grew

red; near the pilot, dressed after the fashion of the Isiacs of Anubis in

Egypt, its hair seemed all white, which two last colours the chameleons

cannot borrow.

When the creature was free from any fear or affection, the colour of its

hair was just such as you see that of the asses of Meung.

Chapter 4.III.

How Pantagruel received a letter from his father Gargantua, and of the

strange way to have speedy news from far distant places.

While Pantagruel was taken up with the purchase of those foreign animals,

the noise of ten guns and culverins, together with a loud and joyful cheer

of all the fleet, was heard from the mole.  Pantagruel looked towards the

haven, and perceived that this was occasioned by the arrival of one of his

father Gargantua’s celoces, or advice-boats, named the Chelidonia; because

on the stern of it was carved in Corinthian brass a sea-swallow, which is a

fish as large as a dare-fish of Loire, all flesh, without scale, with

cartilaginous wings (like a bat’s) very long and broad, by the means of

which I have seen them fly about three fathom above water, about a

bow-shot.  At Marseilles ‘tis called lendole.  And indeed that ship was as

light as a swallow, so that it rather seemed to fly on the sea than to

sail.  Malicorne, Gargantua’s esquire carver, was come in her, being sent

expressly by his master to have an account of his son’s health and

circumstances, and to bring him credentials.  When Malicorne had saluted

Pantagruel, before the prince opened the letters, the first thing he said

to him was, Have you here the Gozal, the heavenly messenger?  Yes, sir,

said he; here it is swaddled up in this basket.  It was a grey pigeon,

taken out of Gargantua’s dove-house, whose young ones were just hatched

when the advice-boat was going off.

If any ill fortune had befallen Pantagruel, he would have fastened some

black ribbon to his feet; but because all things had succeeded happily

hitherto, having caused it to be undressed, he tied to its feet a white

ribbon, and without any further delay let it loose.  The pigeon presently

flew away, cutting the air with an incredible speed, as you know that there

is no flight like a pigeon’s, especially when it hath eggs or young ones,

through the extreme care which nature hath fixed in it to relieve and be

with its young; insomuch that in less than two hours it compassed in the

air the long tract which the advice-boat, with all her diligence, with oars

and sails, and a fair wind, could not go through in less than three days

and three nights; and was seen as it went into the dove-house in its nest.

Whereupon Gargantua, hearing that it had the white ribbon on, was joyful

and secure of his son’s welfare.  This was the custom of the noble

Gargantua and Pantagruel when they would have speedy news of something of

great concern; as the event of some battle, either by sea or land; the

surrendering or holding out of some strong place; the determination of some

difference of moment; the safe or unhappy delivery of some queen or great

lady; the death or recovery of their sick friends or allies, and so forth.

They used to take the gozal, and had it carried from one to another by the

post, to the places whence they desired to have news.  The gozal, bearing

either a black or white ribbon, according to the occurrences and accidents,

used to remove their doubts at its return, making in the space of one hour

more way through the air than thirty postboys could have done in one

natural day.  May not this be said to redeem and gain time with a

vengeance, think you?  For the like service, therefore, you may believe as

a most true thing that in the dove-houses of their farms there were to be

found all the year long store of pigeons hatching eggs or rearing their

young.  Which may be easily done in aviaries and voleries by the help of

saltpetre and the sacred herb vervain.

The gozal being let fly, Pantagruel perused his father Gargantua’s letter,

the contents of which were as followeth:

My dearest Son,--The affection that naturally a father bears a beloved son

is so much increased in me by reflecting on the particular gifts which by

the divine goodness have been heaped on thee, that since thy departure it

hath often banished all other thoughts out of my mind, leaving my heart

wholly possessed with fear lest some misfortune has attended thy voyage;

for thou knowest that fear was ever the attendant of true and sincere love.

Now because, as Hesiod saith, A good beginning of anything is the half of

it; or, Well begun’s half done, according to the old saying; to free my

mind from this anxiety I have expressly despatched Malicorne, that he may

give me a true account of thy health at the beginning of thy voyage.  For

if it be good, and such as I wish it, I shall easily foresee the rest.

I have met with some diverting books, which the bearer will deliver thee;

thou mayest read them when thou wantest to unbend and ease thy mind from

thy better studies.  He will also give thee at large the news at court.

The peace of the Lord be with thee.  Remember me to Panurge, Friar John,

Epistemon, Xenomanes, Gymnast, and thy other principal domestics.  Dated at

our paternal seat, this 13th day of June.

            Thy father and friend, Gargantua.

Chapter 4.IV.

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

curiosities.

Pantagruel, having perused the letter, had a long conference with the

esquire Malicorne; insomuch that Panurge, at last interrupting them, asked

him, Pray, sir, when do you design to drink?  When shall we drink?  When

shall the worshipful esquire drink?  What a devil! have you not talked long

enough to drink?  It is a good motion, answered Pantagruel:  go, get us

something ready at the next inn; I think ‘tis the Centaur.  In the meantime

he writ to Gargantua as followeth, to be sent by the aforesaid esquire:

Most gracious Father,--As our senses and animal faculties are more

discomposed at the news of events unexpected, though desired (even to an

immediate dissolution of the soul from the body), than if those accidents

had been foreseen, so the coming of Malicorne hath much surprised and

disordered me.  For I had no hopes to see any of your servants, or to hear

from you, before I had finished our voyage; and contented myself with the

dear remembrance of your august majesty, deeply impressed in the hindmost

ventricle of my brain, often representing you to my mind.

But since you have made me happy beyond expectation by the perusal of your

gracious letter, and the faith I have in your esquire hath revived my

spirits by the news of your welfare, I am as it were compelled to do what

formerly I did freely, that is, first to praise the blessed Redeemer, who

by his divine goodness preserves you in this long enjoyment of perfect

health; then to return you eternal thanks for the fervent affection which

you have for me your most humble son and unprofitable servant.

Formerly a Roman, named Furnius, said to Augustus, who had received his

father into favour, and pardoned him after he had sided with Antony, that

by that action the emperor had reduced him to this extremity, that for want

of power to be grateful, both while he lived and after it, he should be

obliged to be taxed with ingratitude.  So I may say, that the excess of

your fatherly affection drives me into such a strait, that I shall be

forced to live and die ungrateful; unless that crime be redressed by the

sentence of the Stoics, who say that there are three parts in a benefit,

the one of the giver, the other of the receiver, the third of the

remunerator; and that the receiver rewards the giver when he freely

receives the benefit and always remembers it; as, on the contrary, that man

is most ungrateful who despises and forgets a benefit.  Therefore, being

overwhelmed with infinite favours, all proceeding from your extreme

goodness, and on the other side wholly incapable of making the smallest

return, I hope at least to free myself from the imputation of ingratitude,

since they can never be blotted out of my mind; and my tongue shall never

cease to own that to thank you as I ought transcends my capacity.

As for us, I have this assurance in the Lord’s mercy and help, that the end

of our voyage will be answerable to its beginning, and so it will be

entirely performed in health and mirth.  I will not fail to set down in a

journal a full account of our navigation, that at our return you may have

an exact relation of the whole.

I have found here a Scythian tarand, an animal strange and wonderful for

the variations of colour on its skin and hair, according to the distinction

of neighbouring things; it is as tractable and easily kept as a lamb.  Be

pleased to accept of it.

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

I have conferred with the esquire, and taught him how they must be fed.

These cannot graze on the ground by reason of the long horn on their

forehead, but are forced to browse on fruit trees, or on proper racks, or

to be fed by hand, with herbs, sheaves, apples, pears, barley, rye, and

other fruits and roots, being placed before them.

I am amazed that ancient writers should report them to be so wild, furious,

and dangerous, and never seen alive; far from it, you will find that they

are the mildest things in the world, provided they are not maliciously

offended.  Likewise I send you the life and deeds of Achilles in curious

tapestry; assuring you whatever rarities of animals, plants, birds, or

precious stones, and others, I shall be able to find and purchase in our

travels, shall be brought to you, God willing, whom I beseech, by his

blessed grace, to preserve you.

From Medamothy, this 15th of June.  Panurge, Friar John, Epistemon,

Zenomanes, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, and Carpalin, having most humbly

kissed your hand, return your salute a thousand times.

       Your most dutiful son and servant, Pantagruel.

While Pantagruel was writing this letter, Malicorne was made welcome by all

with a thousand goodly good-morrows and how-d’ye’s; they clung about him so

that I cannot tell you how much they made of him, how many humble services,

how many from my love and to my love were sent with him.  Pantagruel,

having writ his letters, sat down at table with him, and afterwards

presented him with a large chain of gold, weighing eight hundred crowns,

between whose septenary links some large diamonds, rubies, emeralds,

turquoise stones, and unions were alternately set in.  To each of his

bark’s crew he ordered to be given five hundred crowns.  To Gargantua, his

father, he sent the tarand covered with a cloth of satin, brocaded with

gold, and the tapestry containing the life and deeds of Achilles, with the

three unicorns in friezed cloth of gold trappings; and so they left

Medamothy--Malicorne to return to Gargantua, Pantagruel to proceed in his

voyage, during which Epistemon read to him the books which the esquire had

brought, and because he found them jovial and pleasant, I shall give you an

account of them, if you earnestly desire it.

Chapter 4.V.

How Pantagruel met a ship with passengers returning from Lanternland.

On the fifth day we began already to wind by little and little about the

pole; going still farther from the equinoctial line, we discovered a

merchant-man to the windward of us.  The joy for this was not small on both

sides; we in hopes to hear news from sea, and those in the merchant-man

from land.  So we bore upon ‘em, and coming up with them we hailed them;

and finding them to be Frenchmen of Xaintonge, backed our sails and lay by

to talk to them.  Pantagruel heard that they came from Lanternland; which

added to his joy, and that of the whole fleet.  We inquired about the state

of that country, and the way of living of the Lanterns; and were told that

about the latter end of the following July was the time prefixed for the

meeting of the general chapter of the Lanterns; and that if we arrived

there at that time, as we might easily, we should see a handsome,

honourable, and jolly company of Lanterns; and that great preparations were

making, as if they intended to lanternize there to the purpose.  We were

told also that if we touched at the great kingdom of Gebarim, we should be

honourably received and treated by the sovereign of that country, King

Ohabe, who, as well as all his subjects, speaks Touraine French.

While we were listening to these news, Panurge fell out with one Dingdong,

a drover or sheep-merchant of Taillebourg.  The occasion of the fray was

thus:

This same Dingdong, seeing Panurge without a codpiece, with his spectacles

fastened to his cap, said to one of his comrades, Prithee, look, is there

not a fine medal of a cuckold?  Panurge, by reason of his spectacles, as

you may well think, heard more plainly by half with his ears than usually;

which caused him (hearing this) to say to the saucy dealer in mutton, in a

kind of a pet:

How the devil should I be one of the hornified fraternity, since I am not

yet a brother of the marriage-noose, as thou art; as I guess by thy

ill-favoured phiz?

Yea, verily, quoth the grazier, I am married, and would not be otherwise

for all the pairs of spectacles in Europe; nay, not for all the magnifying

gimcracks in Africa; for I have got me the cleverest, prettiest,

handsomest, properest, neatest, tightest, honestest, and soberest piece of

woman’s flesh for my wife that is in all the whole country of Xaintonge;

I’ll say that for her, and a fart for all the rest.  I bring her home a

fine eleven-inch-long branch of red coral for her Christmas-box.  What hast

thou to do with it? what’s that to thee? who art thou? whence comest thou,

O dark lantern of Antichrist?  Answer, if thou art of God.  I ask thee, by

the way of question, said Panurge to him very seriously, if with the

consent and countenance of all the elements, I had gingumbobbed, codpieced,

and thumpthumpriggledtickledtwiddled thy so clever, so pretty, so handsome,

so proper, so neat, so tight, so honest, and so sober female importance,

insomuch that the stiff deity that has no forecast, Priapus (who dwells

here at liberty, all subjection of fastened codpieces, or bolts, bars, and

locks, abdicated), remained sticking in her natural Christmas-box in such a

lamentable manner that it were never to come out, but eternally should

stick there unless thou didst pull it out with thy teeth; what wouldst thou

do?  Wouldst thou everlastingly leave it there, or wouldst thou pluck it

out with thy grinders?  Answer me, O thou ram of Mahomet, since thou art

one of the devil’s gang.  I would, replied the sheepmonger, take thee such

a woundy cut on this spectacle-bearing lug of thine with my trusty bilbo as

would smite thee dead as a herring.  Thus, having taken pepper in the nose,

he was lugging out his sword, but, alas!--cursed cows have short horns,--it

stuck in the scabbard; as you know that at sea cold iron will easily take

rust by reason of the excessive and nitrous moisture.  Panurge, so smitten

with terror that his heart sunk down to his midriff, scoured off to

Pantagruel for help; but Friar John laid hand on his flashing scimitar that

was new ground, and would certainly have despatched Dingdong to rights, had

not the skipper and some of his passengers beseeched Pantagruel not to

suffer such an outrage to be committed on board his ship.  So the matter

was made up, and Panurge and his antagonist shaked fists, and drank in

course to one another in token of a perfect reconciliation.

Chapter 4.VI.

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

This quarrel being hushed, Panurge tipped the wink upon Epistemon and Friar

John, and taking them aside, Stand at some distance out of the way, said

he, and take your share of the following scene of mirth.  You shall have

rare sport anon, if my cake be not dough, and my plot do but take.  Then

addressing himself to the drover, he took off to him a bumper of good

lantern wine.  The other pledged him briskly and courteously.  This done,

Panurge earnestly entreated him to sell him one of his sheep.

But the other answered him, Is it come to that, friend and neighbour?

Would you put tricks upon travellers?  Alas, how finely you love to play

upon poor folk!  Nay, you seem a rare chapman, that’s the truth on’t.  Oh,

what a mighty sheep-merchant you are!  In good faith, you look liker one of

the diving trade than a buyer of sheep.  Adzookers, what a blessing it

would be to have one’s purse well lined with chink near your worship at a

tripe-house when it begins to thaw!  Humph, humph, did not we know you

well, you might serve one a slippery trick!  Pray do but see, good people,

what a mighty conjuror the fellow would be reckoned.  Patience, said

Panurge; but waiving that, be so kind as to sell me one of your sheep.

Come, how much?  What do you mean, master of mine? answered the other.

They are long-wool sheep; from these did Jason take his golden fleece.  The

gold of the house of Burgundy was drawn from them.  Zwoons, man, they are

oriental sheep, topping sheep, fatted sheep, sheep of quality.  Be it so,

said Panurge; but sell me one of them, I beseech you; and that for a cause,

paying you ready money upon the nail, in good and lawful occidental current

cash.  Wilt say how much?  Friend, neighbour, answered the seller of

mutton, hark ye me a little, on the ear.

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

  Dingdong.  You are going to Lanternland, they say.

  Panurge.  Yea, verily.

  Dingdong.  To see fashions?

  Panurge.  Even so.

  Dingdong.  And be merry?

  Panurge.  And be merry.

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

  Panurge.  As you please for that, sweet sir.

  Dingdong.  Nay, without offence.

  Panurge.  So I would have it.

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

  Panurge.  Ay, ay, anything.

  Dingdong.  Give me your hand--humph, humph, you go to see fashions, you

are the king’s jester, your name is Robin Mutton!  Do you see this same

ram?  His name, too, is Robin.  Here, Robin, Robin, Robin!  Baea, baea,

baea.  Hath he not a rare voice?

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

  Dingdong.  Well, this bargain shall be made between you and me, friend

and neighbour; we will get a pair of scales, then you Robin Mutton shall be

put into one of them, and Tup Robin into the other.  Now I will hold you a

peck of Busch oysters that in weight, value, and price he shall outdo you,

and you shall be found light in the very numerical manner as when you shall

be hanged and suspended.

Patience, said Panurge; but you would do much for me and your whole

posterity if you would chaffer with me for him, or some other of his

inferiors.  I beg it of you; good your worship, be so kind.  Hark ye,

friend of mine, answered the other; with the fleece of these your fine

Rouen cloth is to be made; your Leominster superfine wool is mine arse to

it; mere flock in comparison.  Of their skins the best cordovan will be

made, which shall be sold for Turkey and Montelimart, or for Spanish

leather at least.  Of the guts shall be made fiddle and harp strings that

will sell as dear as if they came from Munican or Aquileia.  What do you

think on’t, hah?  If you please, sell me one of them, said Panurge, and I

will be yours for ever.  Look, here’s ready cash.  What’s the price?  This

he said exhibiting his purse stuffed with new Henricuses.

Chapter 4.VII.

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

Neighbour, my friend, answered Dingdong, they are meat for none but kings

and princes; their flesh is so delicate, so savoury, and so dainty that one

would swear it melted in the mouth.  I bring them out of a country where

the very hogs, God be with us, live on nothing but myrobolans.  The sows in

the styes when they lie-in (saving the honour of this good company) are fed

only with orange-flowers.  But, said Panurge, drive a bargain with me for

one of them, and I will pay you for’t like a king, upon the honest word of

a true Trojan; come, come, what do you ask?  Not so fast, Robin, answered

the trader; these sheep are lineally descended from the very family of the

ram that wafted Phryxus and Helle over the sea since called the Hellespont.

A pox on’t, said Panurge, you are clericus vel addiscens!  Ita is a

cabbage, and vere a leek, answered the merchant.  But, rr, rrr, rrrr,

rrrrr, hoh Robin, rr, rrrrrrr, you don’t understand that gibberish, do you?

Now I think on’t, over all the fields where they piss, corn grows as fast

as if the Lord had pissed there; they need neither be tilled nor dunged.

Besides, man, your chemists extract the best saltpetre in the world out of

their urine.  Nay, with their very dung (with reverence be it spoken) the

doctors in our country make pills that cure seventy-eight kinds of

diseases, the least of which is the evil of St. Eutropius of Xaintes, from

which, good Lord, deliver us!  Now what do you think on’t, neighbour, my

friend?  The truth is, they cost me money, that they do.  Cost what they

will, cried Panurge, trade with me for one of them, paying you well.  Our

friend, quoth the quacklike sheepman, do but mind the wonders of nature

that are found in those animals, even in a member which one would think

were of no use.  Take me but these horns, and bray them a little with an

iron pestle, or with an andiron, which you please, it is all one to me;

then bury them wherever you will, provided it be where the sun may shine,

and water them frequently; in a few months I’ll engage you will have the

best asparagus in the world, not even excepting those of Ravenna.  Now,

come and tell me whether the horns of your other knights of the bull’s

feather have such a virtue and wonderful propriety?

Patience, said Panurge.  I don’t know whether you be a scholar or no,

pursued Dingdong; I have seen a world of scholars, I say great scholars,

that were cuckolds, I’ll assure you.  But hark you me, if you were a

scholar, you should know that in the most inferior members of those

animals, which are the feet, there is a bone, which is the heel, the

astragalus, if you will have it so, wherewith, and with that of no other

creature breathing, except the Indian ass and the dorcades of Libya, they

used in old times to play at the royal game of dice, whereat Augustus the

emperor won above fifty thousand crowns one evening.  Now such cuckolds as

you will be hanged ere you get half so much at it.  Patience, said Panurge;

but let us despatch.  And when, my friend and neighbour, continued the

canting sheepseller, shall I have duly praised the inward members, the

shoulders, the legs, the knuckles, the neck, the breast, the liver, the

spleen, the tripes, the kidneys, the bladder, wherewith they make

footballs; the ribs, which serve in Pigmyland to make little crossbows to

pelt the cranes with cherry-stones; the head, which with a little brimstone

serves to make a miraculous decoction to loosen and ease the belly of

costive dogs?  A turd on’t, said the skipper to his preaching passenger,

what a fiddle-faddle have we here?  There is too long a lecture by half:

sell him if thou wilt; if thou won’t, don’t let the man lose more time.  I

hate a gibble-gabble and a rimble-ramble talk.  I am for a man of brevity.

I will, for your sake, replied the holder-forth; but then he shall give me

three livres, French money, for each pick and choose.  It is a woundy

price, cried Panurge; in our country I could have five, nay six, for the

money; see that you do not overreach me, master.  You are not the first man

whom I have known to have fallen, even sometimes to the endangering, if not

breaking, of his own neck, for endeavouring to rise all at once.  A murrain

seize thee for a blockheaded booby, cried the angry seller of sheep; by the

worthy vow of Our Lady of Charroux, the worst in this flock is four times

better than those which the Coraxians in Tuditania, a country of Spain,

used to sell for a gold talent each; and how much dost thou think, thou

Hibernian fool, that a talent of gold was worth?  Sweet sir, you fall into

a passion, I see, returned Panurge; well, hold, here is your money.

Panurge, having paid his money, chose him out of all the flock a fine

topping ram; and as he was hauling it along, crying out and bleating, all

the rest, hearing and bleating in concert, stared to see whither their

brother-ram should be carried.  In the meanwhile the drover was saying to

his shepherds:  Ah! how well the knave could choose him out a ram; the

whoreson has skill in cattle.  On my honest word, I reserved that very

piece of flesh for the Lord of Cancale, well knowing his disposition; for

the good man is naturally overjoyed when he holds a good-sized handsome

shoulder of mutton, instead of a left-handed racket, in one hand, with a

good sharp carver in the other.  God wot, how he belabours himself then.

Chapter 4.VIII.

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

On a sudden, you would wonder how the thing was so soon done--for my part I

cannot tell you, for I had not leisure to mind it--our friend Panurge,

without any further tittle-tattle, throws you his ram overboard into the

middle of the sea, bleating and making a sad noise.  Upon this all the

other sheep in the ship, crying and bleating in the same tone, made all the

haste they could to leap nimbly into the sea, one after another; and great

was the throng who should leap in first after their leader.  It was

impossible to hinder them; for you know that it is the nature of sheep

always to follow the first wheresoever it goes; which makes Aristotle, lib.

9. De. Hist. Animal., mark them for the most silly and foolish animals in

the world.  Dingdong, at his wits’ end, and stark staring mad, as a man who

saw his sheep destroy and drown themselves before his face, strove to

hinder and keep them back with might and main; but all in vain:  they all

one after t’other frisked and jumped into the sea, and were lost.  At last

he laid hold on a huge sturdy one by the fleece, upon the deck of the ship,

hoping to keep it back, and so save that and the rest; but the ram was so

strong that it proved too hard for him, and carried its master into the

herring pond in spite of his teeth--where it is supposed he drank somewhat

more than his fill, so that he was drowned--in the same manner as one-eyed

Polyphemus’ sheep carried out of the den Ulysses and his companions.  The

like happened to the shepherds and all their gang, some laying hold on

their beloved tup, this by the horns, t’other by the legs, a third by the

rump, and others by the fleece; till in fine they were all of them forced

to sea, and drowned like so many rats.  Panurge, on the gunnel of the ship,

with an oar in his hand, not to help them you may swear, but to keep them

from swimming to the ship and saving themselves from drowning, preached and

canted to them all the while like any little Friar (Oliver) Maillard, or

another Friar John Burgess; laying before them rhetorical commonplaces

concerning the miseries of this life and the blessings and felicity of the

next; assuring them that the dead were much happier than the living in this

vale of misery, and promised to erect a stately cenotaph and honorary tomb

to every one of them on the highest summit of Mount Cenis at his return

from Lanternland; wishing them, nevertheless, in case they were not yet

disposed to shake hands with this life, and did not like their salt liquor,

they might have the good luck to meet with some kind whale which might set

them ashore safe and sound on some blessed land of Gotham, after a famous

example.

The ship being cleared of Dingdong and his tups:  Is there ever another

sheepish soul left lurking on board? cried Panurge.  Where are those of

Toby Lamb and Robin Ram that sleep while the rest are a-feeding?  Faith, I

can’t tell myself.  This was an old coaster’s trick.  What think’st of it,

Friar John, hah?  Rarely performed, answered Friar John; only methinks that

as formerly in war, on the day of battle, a double pay was commonly

promised the soldiers for that day; for if they overcame, there was enough

to pay them; and if they lost, it would have been shameful for them to

demand it, as the cowardly foresters did after the battle of Cerizoles;

likewise, my friend, you ought not to have paid your man, and the money had

been saved.  A fart for the money, said Panurge; have I not had above fifty

thousand pounds’ worth of sport?  Come now, let’s be gone; the wind is

fair.  Hark you me, my friend John; never did man do me a good turn, but I

returned, or at least acknowledged it; no, I scorn to be ungrateful; I

never was, nor ever will be.  Never did man do me an ill one without rueing

the day that he did it, either in this world or the next.  I am not yet so

much a fool neither.  Thou damn’st thyself like any old devil, quoth Friar

John; it is written, Mihi vindictam, &c.  Matter of breviary, mark ye me

(Motteux adds unnecessarily (by way of explanation), ‘that’s holy stuff.’).

Chapter 4.IX.

How Pantagruel arrived at the island of Ennasin, and of the strange ways of

being akin in that country.

We had still the wind at south-south-west, and had been a whole day without

making land.  On the third day, at the flies’ uprising (which, you know, is

some two or three hours after the sun’s), we got sight of a triangular

island, very much like Sicily for its form and situation.  It was called

the Island of Alliances.

The people there are much like your carrot-pated Poitevins, save only that

all of them, men, women, and children, have their noses shaped like an ace

of clubs.  For that reason the ancient name of the country was Ennasin.

They were all akin, as the mayor of the place told us; at least they

boasted so.

You people of the other world esteem it a wonderful thing that, out of the

family of the Fabii at Rome, on a certain day, which was the 13th of

February, at a certain gate, which was the Porta Carmentalis, since named

Scelerata, formerly situated at the foot of the Capitol, between the

Tarpeian rock and the Tiber, marched out against the Veientes of Etruria

three hundred and six men bearing arms, all related to each other, with

five thousand other soldiers, every one of them their vassals, who were all

slain near the river Cremera, that comes out of the lake of Beccano.  Now

from this same country of Ennasin, in case of need, above three hundred

thousand, all relations and of one family, might march out.  Their degrees

of consanguinity and alliance are very strange; for being thus akin and

allied to one another, we found that none was either father or mother,

brother or sister, uncle or aunt, nephew or niece, son-in-law or

daughter-in-law, godfather or godmother, to the other; unless, truly, a tall

flat-nosed old fellow, who, as I perceived, called a little shitten-arsed

girl of three or four years old, father, and the child called him daughter.

Their distinction of degrees of kindred was thus:  a man used to call a

woman, my lean bit; the woman called him, my porpoise.  Those, said Friar

John, must needs stink damnably of fish when they have rubbed their bacon

one with the other.  One, smiling on a young buxom baggage, said, Good

morrow, dear currycomb.  She, to return him his civility, said, The like to

you, my steed.  Ha! ha! ha! said Panurge, that is pretty well, in faith;

for indeed it stands her in good stead to currycomb this steed.  Another

greeted his buttock with a Farewell, my case.  She replied, Adieu, trial.

By St. Winifred’s placket, cried Gymnast, this case has been often tried.

Another asked a she-friend of his, How is it, hatchet?  She answered him,

At your service, dear helve.  Odds belly, saith Carpalin, this helve and

this hatchet are well matched.  As we went on, I saw one who, calling his

she-relation, styled her my crumb, and she called him, my crust.

Quoth one to a brisk, plump, juicy female, I am glad to see you, dear tap.

So am I to find you so merry, sweet spiggot, replied she.  One called a

wench, his shovel; she called him, her peal:  one named his, my slipper;

and she, my foot:  another, my boot; she, my shasoon.

In the same degree of kindred, one called his, my butter; she called him,

my eggs; and they were akin just like a dish of buttered eggs.  I heard one

call his, my tripe, and she him, my faggot.  Now I could not, for the

heart’s blood of me, pick out or discover what parentage, alliance,

affinity, or consanguinity was between them, with reference to our custom;

only they told us that she was faggot’s tripe.  (Tripe de fagot means the

smallest sticks in a faggot.)  Another, complimenting his convenient, said,

Yours, my shell; she replied, I was yours before, sweet oyster.  I reckon,

said Carpalin, she hath gutted his oyster.  Another long-shanked ugly

rogue, mounted on a pair of high-heeled wooden slippers, meeting a

strapping, fusty, squabbed dowdy, says he to her, How is’t my top?  She was

short upon him, and arrogantly replied, Never the better for you, my whip.

By St. Antony’s hog, said Xenomanes, I believe so; for how can this whip be

sufficient to lash this top?

A college professor, well provided with cod, and powdered and prinked up,

having a while discoursed with a great lady, taking his leave with these

words, Thank you, sweetmeat; she cried, There needs no thanks, sour-sauce.

Saith Pantagruel, This is not altogether incongruous, for sweet meat must

have sour sauce.  A wooden loggerhead said to a young wench, It is long

since I saw you, bag; All the better, cried she, pipe.  Set them together,

said Panurge, then blow in their arses, it will be a bagpipe.  We saw,

after that, a diminutive humpbacked gallant, pretty near us, taking leave

of a she-relation of his, thus:  Fare thee well, friend hole; she

reparteed, Save thee, friend peg.  Quoth Friar John, What could they say

more, were he all peg and she all hole?  But now would I give something to

know if every cranny of the hole can be stopped up with that same peg.

A bawdy bachelor, talking with an old trout, was saying, Remember, rusty

gun.  I will not fail, said she, scourer.  Do you reckon these two to be

akin? said Pantagruel to the mayor.  I rather take them to be foes.  In our

country a woman would take this as a mortal affront.  Good people of

t’other world, replied the mayor, you have few such and so near relations

as this gun and scourer are to one another; for they both come out of one

shop.  What, was the shop their mother? quoth Panurge.  What mother, said

the mayor, does the man mean?  That must be some of your world’s affinity;

we have here neither father nor mother.  Your little paltry fellows that

live on t’other side the water, poor rogues, booted with wisps of hay, may

indeed have such; but we scorn it.  The good Pantagruel stood gazing and

listening; but at those words he had like to have lost all patience. (Here

Motteux adds an aside--‘os kai nun o Ermeneutes.  P.M.’).

Having very exactly viewed the situation of the island and the way of

living of the Enassed nation, we went to take a cup of the creature at a

tavern, where there happened to be a wedding after the manner of the

country.  Bating that shocking custom, there was special good cheer.

While we were there, a pleasant match was struck up betwixt a female called

Pear (a tight thing, as we thought, but by some, who knew better things,

said to be quaggy and flabby), and a young soft male, called Cheese,

somewhat sandy.  (Many such matches have been, and they were formerly much

commended.)  In our country we say, Il ne fut onques tel mariage, qu’est de

la poire et du fromage; there is no match like that made between the pear

and the cheese; and in many other places good store of such bargains have

been driven.  Besides, when the women are at their last prayers, it is to

this day a noted saying, that after cheese comes nothing.

In another room I saw them marrying an old greasy boot to a young pliable

buskin.  Pantagruel was told that young buskin took old boot to have and to

hold because she was of special leather, in good case, and waxed, seared,

liquored, and greased to the purpose, even though it had been for the

fisherman that went to bed with his boots on.  In another room below, I saw

a young brogue taking a young slipper for better for worse; which, they

told us, was neither for the sake of her piety, parts, or person, but for

the fourth comprehensive p, portion; the spankers, spur-royals,

rose-nobles, and other coriander seed with which she was quilted all over.

Chapter 4.X.

How Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Chely, where he saw King St.

Panigon.

We sailed right before the wind, which we had at west, leaving those odd

alliancers with their ace-of-clubs snouts, and having taken height by the

sun, stood in for Chely, a large, fruitful, wealthy, and well-peopled

island.  King St. Panigon, first of the name, reigned there, and, attended

by the princes his sons and the nobles of his court, came as far as the

port to receive Pantagruel, and conducted him to his palace; near the gate

of which the queen, attended by the princesses her daughters and the court

ladies, received us.  Panigon directed her and all her retinue to salute

Pantagruel and his men with a kiss; for such was the civil custom of the

country; and they were all fairly bussed accordingly, except Friar John,

who stepped aside and sneaked off among the king’s officers.  Panigon used

all the entreaties imaginable to persuade Pantagruel to tarry there that

day and the next; but he would needs be gone, and excused himself upon the

opportunity of wind and weather, which, being oftener desired than enjoyed,

ought not to be neglected when it comes.  Panigon, having heard these

reasons, let us go, but first made us take off some five-and-twenty or

thirty bumpers each.

Pantagruel, returning to the port, missed Friar John, and asked why he was

not with the rest of the company.  Panurge could not tell how to excuse

him, and would have gone back to the palace to call him, when Friar John

overtook them, and merrily cried, Long live the noble Panigon!  As I love

my belly, he minds good eating, and keeps a noble house and a dainty

kitchen.  I have been there, boys.  Everything goes about by dozens.  I was

in good hopes to have stuffed my puddings there like a monk.  What! always

in a kitchen, friend? said Pantagruel.  By the belly of St. Cramcapon,

quoth the friar, I understand the customs and ceremonies which are used

there much better than all the formal stuff, antique postures, and

nonsensical fiddle-faddle that must be used with those women, magni magna,

shittencumshita, cringes, grimaces, scrapes, bows, and congees; double

honours this way, triple salutes that way, the embrace, the grasp, the

squeeze, the hug, the leer, the smack, baso las manos de vostra merce, de

vostra maesta.  You are most tarabin, tarabas, Stront; that’s downright

Dutch.  Why all this ado?  I don’t say but a man might be for a bit by the

bye and away, to be doing as well as his neighbours; but this little nasty

cringing and courtesying made me as mad as any March devil.  You talk of

kissing ladies; by the worthy and sacred frock I wear, I seldom venture

upon it, lest I be served as was the Lord of Guyercharois.  What was it?

said Pantagruel; I know him.  He is one of the best friends I have.

He was invited to a sumptuous feast, said Friar John, by a relation and

neighbour of his, together with all the gentlemen and ladies in the

neighbourhood.  Now some of the latter expecting his coming, dressed the

pages in women’s clothes, and finified them like any babies; then ordered

them to meet my lord at his coming near the drawbridge.  So the

complimenting monsieur came, and there kissed the petticoated lads with

great formality.  At last the ladies, who minded passages in the gallery,

burst out with laughing, and made signs to the pages to take off their

dress; which the good lord having observed, the devil a bit he durst make

up to the true ladies to kiss them, but said, that since they had disguised

the pages, by his great grandfather’s helmet, these were certainly the very

footmen and grooms still more cunningly disguised.  Odds fish, da jurandi,

why do not we rather remove our humanities into some good warm kitchen of

God, that noble laboratory, and there admire the turning of the spits, the

harmonious rattling of the jacks and fenders, criticise on the position of

the lard, the temperature of the pottages, the preparation for the dessert,

and the order of the wine service?  Beati immaculati in via.  Matter of

breviary, my masters.

Chapter 4.XI.

Why monks love to be in kitchens.

This, said Epistemon, is spoke like a true monk; I mean like a right

monking monk, not a bemonked monastical monkling.  Truly you put me in mind

of some passages that happened at Florence, some twenty years ago, in a

company of studious travellers, fond of visiting the learned, and seeing

the antiquities of Italy, among whom I was.  As we viewed the situation and

beauty of Florence, the structure of the dome, the magnificence of the

churches and palaces, we strove to outdo one another in giving them their

due; when a certain monk of Amiens, Bernard Lardon by name, quite angry,

scandalized, and out of all patience, told us, I don’t know what the devil

you can find in this same town, that is so much cried up; for my part I

have looked and pored and stared as well as the best of you; I think my

eyesight is as clear as another body’s, and what can one see after all?

There are fine houses, indeed and that’s all.  But the cage does not feed

the birds.  God and Monsieur St. Bernard, our good patron, be with us! in

all this same town I have not seen one poor lane of roasting cooks; and yet

I have not a little looked about and sought for so necessary a part of a

commonwealth:  ay, and I dare assure you that I have pried up and down with

the exactness of an informer; as ready to number, both to the right and

left, how many, and on what side, we might find most roasting cooks, as a

spy would be to reckon the bastions of a town.  Now at Amiens, in four,

nay, five times less ground than we have trod in our contemplations, I

could have shown you above fourteen streets of roasting cooks, most

ancient, savoury, and aromatic.  I cannot imagine what kind of pleasure you

can have taken in gazing on the lions and Africans (so methinks you call

their tigers) near the belfry, or in ogling the porcupines and estridges in

the Lord Philip Strozzi’s palace.  Faith and truth I had rather see a good

fat goose at the spit.  This porphyry, those marbles are fine; I say

nothing to the contrary; but our cheesecakes at Amiens are far better in my

mind.  These ancient statues are well made; I am willing to believe it;

but, by St. Ferreol of Abbeville, we have young wenches in our country

which please me better a thousand times.

What is the reason, asked Friar John, that monks are always to be found in

kitchens, and kings, emperors, and popes are never there?  Is there not,

said Rhizotome, some latent virtue and specific propriety hid in the

kettles and pans, which, as the loadstone attracts iron, draws the monks

there, and cannot attract emperors, popes, or kings?  Or is it a natural

induction and inclination, fixed in the frocks and cowls, which of itself

leads and forceth those good religious men into kitchens, whether they will

or no?  He would speak of forms following matter, as Averroes calls them,

answered Epistemon.  Right, said Friar John.

I will not offer to solve this problem, said Pantagruel; for it is somewhat

ticklish, and you can hardly handle it without coming off scurvily; but I

will tell you what I have heard.

Antigonus, King of Macedon, one day coming into one of the tents, where his

cooks used to dress his meat, and finding there poet Antagoras frying a

conger, and holding the pan himself, merrily asked him, Pray, Mr. Poet, was

Homer frying congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?  Antagoras

readily answered:  But do you think, sir, that when Agamemnon did them he

made it his business to know if any in his camp were frying congers?  The

king thought it an indecency that a poet should be thus a-frying in a

kitchen; and the poet let the king know that it was a more indecent thing

for a king to be found in such a place.  I’ll clap another story upon the

neck of this, quoth Panurge, and will tell you what Breton Villandry

answered one day to the Duke of Guise.

They were saying that at a certain battle of King Francis against Charles

the Fifth, Breton, armed cap-a-pie to the teeth, and mounted like St.

George, yet sneaked off, and played least in sight during the engagement.

Blood and oons, answered Breton, I was there, and can prove it easily; nay,

even where you, my lord, dared not have been.  The duke began to resent

this as too rash and saucy; but Breton easily appeased him, and set them

all a-laughing.  Egad, my lord, quoth he, I kept out of harm’s way; I was

all the while with your page Jack, skulking in a certain place where you

had not dared hide your head as I did.  Thus discoursing, they got to their

ships, and left the island of Chely.

Chapter 4.XII.

How Pantagruel passed by the land of Pettifogging, and of the strange way

of living among the Catchpoles.

Steering our course forwards the next day, we passed through Pettifogging,

a country all blurred and blotted, so that I could hardly tell what to make

on’t.  There we saw some pettifoggers and catchpoles, rogues that will hang

their father for a groat.  They neither invited us to eat or drink; but,

with a multiplied train of scrapes and cringes, said they were all at our

service for the Legem pone.

One of our droggermen related to Pantagruel their strange way of living,

diametrically opposed to that of our modern Romans; for at Rome a world of

folks get an honest livelihood by poisoning, drubbing, lambasting,

stabbing, and murthering; but the catchpoles earn theirs by being thrashed;

so that if they were long without a tight lambasting, the poor dogs with

their wives and children would be starved.  This is just, quoth Panurge,

like those who, as Galen tells us, cannot erect the cavernous nerve towards

the equinoctial circle unless they are soundly flogged.  By St. Patrick’s

slipper, whoever should jerk me so, would soon, instead of setting me

right, throw me off the saddle, in the devil’s name.

The way is this, said the interpreter.  When a monk, levite, close-fisted

usurer, or lawyer owes a grudge to some neighbouring gentleman, he sends to

him one of those catchpoles or apparitors, who nabs, or at least cites him,

serves a writ or warrant upon him, thumps, abuses, and affronts him

impudently by natural instinct, and according to his pious instructions;

insomuch, that if the gentleman hath but any guts in his brains, and is not

more stupid than a gyrin frog, he will find himself obliged either to apply

a faggot-stick or his sword to the rascal’s jobbernowl, give him the gentle

lash, or make him cut a caper out at the window, by way of correction.

This done, Catchpole is rich for four months at least, as if bastinadoes

were his real harvest; for the monk, levite, usurer, or lawyer will reward

him roundly; and my gentleman must pay him such swingeing damages that his

acres must bleed for it, and he be in danger of miserably rotting within a

stone doublet, as if he had struck the king.

Quoth Panurge, I know an excellent remedy against this used by the Lord of

Basche.  What is it? said Pantagruel.  The Lord of Basche, said Panurge,

was a brave, honest, noble-spirited gentleman, who, at his return from the

long war in which the Duke of Ferrara, with the help of the French, bravely

defended himself against the fury of Pope Julius the Second, was every day

cited, warned, and prosecuted at the suit and for the sport and fancy of

the fat prior of St. Louant.

One morning, as he was at breakfast with some of his domestics (for he

loved to be sometimes among them) he sent for one Loire, his baker, and his

spouse, and for one Oudart, the vicar of his parish, who was also his

butler, as the custom was then in France; then said to them before his

gentlemen and other servants:  You all see how I am daily plagued with

these rascally catchpoles.  Truly, if you do not lend me your helping hand,

I am finally resolved to leave the country, and go fight for the sultan, or

the devil, rather than be thus eternally teased.  Therefore, to be rid of

their damned visits, hereafter, when any of them come here, be ready, you

baker and your wife, to make your personal appearance in my great hall, in

your wedding clothes, as if you were going to be affianced.  Here, take

these ducats, which I give you to keep you in a fitting garb.  As for you,

Sir Oudart, be sure you make your personal appearance there in your fine

surplice and stole, not forgetting your holy water, as if you were to wed

them.  Be you there also, Trudon, said he to his drummer, with your pipe

and tabor.  The form of matrimony must be read, and the bride kissed; then

all of you, as the witnesses used to do in this country, shall give one

another the remembrance of the wedding, which you know is to be a blow with

your fist, bidding the party struck remember the nuptials by that token.

This will but make you have the better stomach to your supper; but when you

come to the catchpole’s turn, thrash him thrice and threefold, as you would

a sheaf of green corn; do not spare him; maul him, drub him, lambast him,

swinge him off, I pray you.  Here, take these steel gauntlets, covered with

kid.  Head, back, belly, and sides, give him blows innumerable; he that

gives him most shall be my best friend.  Fear not to be called to an

account about it; I will stand by you; for the blows must seem to be given

in jest, as it is customary among us at all weddings.

Ay, but how shall we know the catchpole? said the man of God.  All sorts of

people daily resort to this castle.  I have taken care of that, replied the

lord.  When some fellow, either on foot, or on a scurvy jade, with a large

broad silver ring on his thumb, comes to the door, he is certainly a

catchpole; the porter having civilly let him in, shall ring the bell; then

be all ready, and come into the hall, to act the tragi-comedy whose plot I

have now laid for you.

That numerical day, as chance would have it, came an old fat ruddy

catchpole.  Having knocked at the gate, and then pissed, as most men will

do, the porter soon found him out, by his large greasy spatterdashes, his

jaded hollow-flanked mare, his bagful of writs and informations dangling at

his girdle, but, above all, by the large silver hoop on his left thumb.

The porter was civil to him, admitted him in kindly, and rung the bell

briskly. As soon as the baker and his wife heard it, they clapped on their

best clothes, and made their personal appearance in the hall, keeping their

gravities like a new-made judge.  The dominie put on his surplice and

stole, and as he came out of his office, met the catchpole, had him in

there, and made him suck his face a good while, while the gauntlets were

drawing on all hands; and then told him, You are come just in pudding-time;

my lord is in his right cue.  We shall feast like kings anon; here is to be

swingeing doings; we have a wedding in the house; here, drink and cheer up;

pull away.

While these two were at it hand-to-fist, Basche, seeing all his people in

the hall in their proper equipage, sends for the vicar.  Oudart comes with

the holy-water pot, followed by the catchpole, who, as he came into the

hall, did not forget to make good store of awkward cringes, and then served

Basche with a writ.  Basche gave him grimace for grimace, slipped an angel

into his mutton-fist, and prayed him to assist at the contract and

ceremony; which he did.  When it was ended, thumps and fisticuffs began to

fly about among the assistants; but when it came to the catchpole’s turn,

they all laid on him so unmercifully with their gauntlets that they at last

settled him, all stunned and battered, bruised and mortified, with one of

his eyes black and blue, eight ribs bruised, his brisket sunk in, his

omoplates in four quarters, his under jawbone in three pieces; and all this

in jest, and no harm done.  God wot how the levite belaboured him, hiding

within the long sleeve of his canonical shirt his huge steel gauntlet lined

with ermine; for he was a strong-built ball, and an old dog at fisticuffs.

The catchpole, all of a bloody tiger-like stripe, with much ado crawled

home to L’Isle Bouchart, well pleased and edified, however, with Basche’s

kind reception; and, with the help of the good surgeons of the place, lived

as long as you would have him.  From that time to this, not a word of the

business; the memory of it was lost with the sound of the bells that rung

with joy at his funeral.

Chapter 4.XIII.

How, like Master Francis Villon, the Lord of Basche commended his servants.

The catchpole being packed off on blind Sorrel--so he called his one-eyed

mare--Basche sent for his lady, her women, and all his servants, into the

arbour of his garden; had wine brought, attended with good store of

pasties, hams, fruit, and other table-ammunition, for a nunchion; drank

with them joyfully, and then told them this story:

Master Francis Villon in his old age retired to St. Maxent in Poitou, under

the patronage of a good honest abbot of the place.  There to make sport for

the mob, he undertook to get the Passion acted, after the way, and in the

dialect of the country.  The parts being distributed, the play having been

rehearsed, and the stage prepared, he told the mayor and aldermen that the

mystery might be ready after Niort fair, and that there only wanted

properties and necessaries, but chiefly clothes fit for the parts; so the

mayor and his brethren took care to get them.

Villon, to dress an old clownish father greybeard, who was to represent God

the father, begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan

friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole.  Tickletoby refused

him, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously forbidden

to give or lend anything to players.  Villon replied that the statute

reached no farther than farces, drolls, antics, loose and dissolute games,

and that he asked no more than what he had seen allowed at Brussels and

other places.  Tickletoby notwithstanding peremptorily bid him provide

himself elsewhere if he would, and not to hope for anything out of his

monastical wardrobe.  Villon gave an account of this to the players, as of

a most abominable action; adding, that God would shortly revenge himself,

and make an example of Tickletoby.

The Saturday following he had notice given him that Tickletoby, upon the

filly of the convent--so they call a young mare that was never leaped yet

--was gone a-mumping to St. Ligarius, and would be back about two in the

afternoon.  Knowing this, he made a cavalcade of his devils of the Passion

through the town.  They were all rigged with wolves’, calves’, and rams’

skins, laced and trimmed with sheep’s heads, bull’s feathers, and large

kitchen tenterhooks, girt with broad leathern girdles, whereat hanged

dangling huge cow-bells and horse-bells, which made a horrid din.  Some

held in their claws black sticks full of squibs and crackers; others had

long lighted pieces of wood, upon which, at the corner of every street,

they flung whole handfuls of rosin-dust, that made a terrible fire and

smoke.  Having thus led them about, to the great diversion of the mob and

the dreadful fear of little children, he finally carried them to an

entertainment at a summer-house without the gate that leads to St.

Ligarius.

As they came near to the place, he espied Tickletoby afar off, coming home

from mumping, and told them in macaronic verse:

  Hic est de patria, natus, de gente belistra,

  Qui solet antiqua bribas portare bisacco. (Motteux reads:

  ‘Hic est mumpator natus de gente Cucowli,

  Qui solet antiquo Scrappas portare bisacco.’)

A plague on his friarship, said the devils then; the lousy beggar would not

lend a poor cope to the fatherly father; let us fright him.  Well said,

cried Villon; but let us hide ourselves till he comes by, and then charge

him home briskly with your squibs and burning sticks.  Tickletoby being

come to the place, they all rushed on a sudden into the road to meet him,

and in a frightful manner threw fire from all sides upon him and his filly

foal, ringing and tingling their bells, and howling like so many real

devils, Hho, hho, hho, hho, brrou, rrou, rrourrs, rrrourrs, hoo, hou, hou

hho, hho, hhoi.  Friar Stephen, don’t we play the devils rarely?  The filly

was soon scared out of her seven senses, and began to start, to funk it, to

squirt it, to trot it, to fart it, to bound it, to gallop it, to kick it,

to spurn it, to calcitrate it, to wince it, to frisk it, to leap it, to

curvet it, with double jerks, and bum-motions; insomuch that she threw down

Tickletoby, though he held fast by the tree of the pack-saddle with might

and main.  Now his straps and stirrups were of cord; and on the right side

his sandals were so entangled and twisted that he could not for the heart’s

blood of him get out his foot.  Thus he was dragged about by the filly

through the road, scratching his bare breech all the way; she still

multiplying her kicks against him, and straying for fear over hedge and

ditch, insomuch that she trepanned his thick skull so that his cockle

brains were dashed out near the Osanna or high-cross.  Then his arms fell

to pieces, one this way and the other that way; and even so were his legs

served at the same time.  Then she made a bloody havoc with his puddings;

and being got to the convent, brought back only his right foot and twisted

sandal, leaving them to guess what was become of the rest.

Villon, seeing that things had succeeded as he intended, said to his

devils, You will act rarely, gentlemen devils, you will act rarely; I dare

engage you’ll top your parts.  I defy the devils of Saumur, Douay,

Montmorillon, Langez, St. Espain, Angers; nay, by gad, even those of

Poictiers, for all their bragging and vapouring, to match you.

Thus, friends, said Basche, I foresee that hereafter you will act rarely

this tragical farce, since the very first time you have so skilfully

hampered, bethwacked, belammed, and bebumped the catchpole.  From this day

I double your wages.  As for you, my dear, said he to his lady, make your

gratifications as you please; you are my treasurer, you know.  For my part,

first and foremost, I drink to you all.  Come on, box it about; it is good

and cool.  In the second place, you, Mr. Steward, take this silver basin; I

give it you freely.  Then you, my gentlemen of the horse, take these two

silver-gilt cups, and let not the pages be horsewhipped these three months.

My dear, let them have my best white plumes of feathers, with the gold

buckles to them.  Sir Oudart, this silver flagon falls to your share; this

other I give to the cooks.  To the valets de chambre I give this silver

basket; to the grooms, this silver-gilt boat; to the porter, these two

plates; to the hostlers, these ten porringers.  Trudon, take you these

silver spoons and this sugar-box.  You, footman, take this large salt.

Serve me well, and I will remember you.  For, on the word of a gentleman, I

had rather bear in war one hundred blows on my helmet in the service of my

country than be once cited by these knavish catchpoles merely to humour

this same gorbellied prior.

Chapter 4.XIV.

A further account of catchpoles who were drubbed at Basche’s house.

Four days after another young, long-shanked, raw-boned catchpole coming to

serve Basche with a writ at the fat prior’s request, was no sooner at the

gate but the porter smelt him out and rung the bell; at whose second pull

all the family understood the mystery.  Loire was kneading his dough; his

wife was sifting meal; Oudart was toping in his office; the gentlemen were

playing at tennis; the Lord Basche at in-and-out with my lady; the

waiting-men and gentle-women at push-pin; the officers at lanterloo, and the

pages at hot-cockles, giving one another smart bangs.  They were all

immediately informed that a catchpole was housed.

Upon this Oudart put on his sacerdotal, and Loire and his wife their

nuptial badges; Trudon piped it, and then tabored it like mad; all made

haste to get ready, not forgetting the gauntlets.  Basche went into the

outward yard; there the catchpole meeting him fell on his marrow-bones,

begged of him not to take it ill if he served him with a writ at the suit

of the fat prior; and in a pathetic speech let him know that he was a

public person, a servant to the monking tribe, apparitor to the abbatial

mitre, ready to do as much for him, nay, for the least of his servants,

whensoever he would employ and use him.

Nay, truly, said the lord, you shall not serve your writ till you have

tasted some of my good Quinquenays wine, and been a witness to a wedding

which we are to have this very minute.  Let him drink and refresh himself,

added he, turning towards the levitical butler, and then bring him into the

hall.  After which, Catchpole, well stuffed and moistened, came with Oudart

to the place where all the actors in the farce stood ready to begin.  The

sight of their game set them a-laughing, and the messenger of mischief

grinned also for company’s sake.  Then the mysterious words were muttered

to and by the couple, their hands joined, the bride bussed, and all

besprinkled with holy water.  While they were bringing wine and kickshaws,

thumps began to trot about by dozens.  The catchpole gave the levite

several blows.  Oudart, who had his gauntlet hid under his canonical shirt,

draws it on like a mitten, and then, with his clenched fist, souse he fell

on the catchpole and mauled him like a devil; the junior gauntlets dropped

on him likewise like so many battering rams.  Remember the wedding by this,

by that, by these blows, said they.  In short, they stroked him so to the

purpose that he pissed blood out at mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, and was

bruised, thwacked, battered, bebumped, and crippled at the back, neck,

breast, arms, and so forth.  Never did the bachelors at Avignon in carnival

time play more melodiously at raphe than was then played on the catchpole’s

microcosm.  At last down he fell.

They threw a great deal of wine on his snout, tied round the sleeve of his

doublet a fine yellow and green favour, and got him upon his snotty beast,

and God knows how he got to L’Isle Bouchart; where I cannot truly tell you

whether he was dressed and looked after or no, both by his spouse and the

able doctors of the country; for the thing never came to my ears.

The next day they had a third part to the same tune, because it did not

appear by the lean catchpole’s bag that he had served his writ.  So the fat

prior sent a new catchpole, at the head of a brace of bums for his garde du

corps, to summon my lord.  The porter ringing the bell, the whole family

was overjoyed, knowing that it was another rogue.  Basche was at dinner

with his lady and the gentlemen; so he sent for the catchpole, made him sit

by him, and the bums by the women, and made them eat till their bellies

cracked with their breeches unbuttoned.  The fruit being served, the

catchpole arose from table, and before the bums cited Basche.  Basche

kindly asked him for a copy of the warrant, which the other had got ready;

he then takes witness and a copy of the summons.  To the catchpole and his

bums he ordered four ducats for civility money.  In the meantime all were

withdrawn for the farce.  So Trudon gave the alarm with his tabor.  Basche

desired the catchpole to stay and see one of his servants married, and

witness the contract of marriage, paying him his fee.  The catchpole

slapdash was ready, took out his inkhorn, got paper immediately, and his

bums by him.

Then Loire came into the hall at one door, and his wife with the

gentlewomen at another, in nuptial accoutrements.  Oudart, in

pontificalibus, takes them both by their hands, asketh them their will,

giveth them the matrimonial blessing, and was very liberal of holy water.

The contract written, signed, and registered, on one side was brought wine

and comfits; on the other, white and orange-tawny-coloured favours were

distributed; on another, gauntlets privately handed about.

Chapter 4.XV.

How the ancient custom at nuptials is renewed by the catchpole.

The catchpole, having made shift to get down a swingeing sneaker of Breton

wine, said to Basche, Pray, sir, what do you mean?  You do not give one

another the memento of the wedding.  By St. Joseph’s wooden shoe, all good

customs are forgot.  We find the form, but the hare is scampered; and the

nest, but the birds are flown.  There are no true friends nowadays.  You

see how, in several churches, the ancient laudable custom of tippling on

account of the blessed saints O O, at Christmas, is come to nothing.  The

world is in its dotage, and doomsday is certainly coming all so fast.  Now

come on; the wedding, the wedding, the wedding; remember it by this.  This

he said, striking Basche and his lady; then her women and the levite.  Then

the tabor beat a point of war, and the gauntlets began to do their duty;

insomuch that the catchpole had his crown cracked in no less than nine

places.  One of the bums had his right arm put out of joint, and the other

his upper jaw-bone or mandibule dislocated so that it hid half his chin,

with a denudation of the uvula, and sad loss of the molar, masticatory, and

canine teeth.  Then the tabor beat a retreat; the gauntlets were carefully

hid in a trice, and sweetmeats afresh distributed to renew the mirth of the

company.  So they all drank to one another, and especially to the catchpole

and his bums.  But Oudart cursed and damned the wedding to the pit of hell,

complaining that one of the bums had utterly disincornifistibulated his

nether shoulder-blade.  Nevertheless, he scorned to be thought a flincher,

and made shift to tope to him on the square.

The jawless bum shrugged up his shoulders, joined his hands, and by signs

begged his pardon; for speak he could not.  The sham bridegroom made his

moan, that the crippled bum had struck him such a horrid thump with his

shoulder-of-mutton fist on the nether elbow that he was grown quite

esperruquanchuzelubelouzerireliced down to his very heel, to the no small

loss of mistress bride.

But what harm had poor I done? cried Trudon, hiding his left eye with his

kerchief, and showing his tabor cracked on one side; they were not

satisfied with thus poaching, black and bluing, and

morrambouzevezengouzequoquemorgasacbaquevezinemaffreliding my poor eyes,

but they have also broke my harmless drum.  Drums indeed are commonly

beaten at weddings, and it is fit they should; but drummers are well

entertained and never beaten.  Now let Beelzebub e’en take the drum, to

make his devilship a nightcap.  Brother, said the lame catchpole, never

fret thyself; I will make thee a present of a fine, large, old patent,

which I have here in my bag, to patch up thy drum, and for Madame St.

Ann’s sake I pray thee forgive us.  By Our Lady of Riviere, the blessed

dame, I meant no more harm than the child unborn.  One of the equerries,

who, hopping and halting like a mumping cripple, mimicked the good limping

Lord de la Roche Posay, directed his discourse to the bum with the pouting

jaw, and told him:  What, Mr. Manhound, was it not enough thus to have

morcrocastebezasteverestegrigeligoscopapopondrillated us all in our upper

members with your botched mittens, but you must also apply such

morderegripippiatabirofreluchamburelurecaquelurintimpaniments on our

shinbones with the hard tops and extremities of your cobbled shoes.  Do

you call this children’s play?  By the mass, ‘tis no jest.  The bum,

wringing his hands, seemed to beg his pardon, muttering with his tongue,

Mon, mon, mon, vrelon, von, von, like a dumb man.  The bride crying

laughed, and laughing cried, because the catchpole was not satisfied with

drubbing her without choice or distinction of members, but had also rudely

roused and toused her, pulled off her topping, and not having the fear of

her husband before his eyes, treacherously

trepignemanpenillorifrizonoufresterfumbled tumbled and squeezed her lower

parts.  The devil go with it, said Basche; there was much need indeed that

this same Master King (this was the catchpole’s name) should thus break my

wife’s back; however, I forgive him now; these are little nuptial

caresses. But this I plainly perceive, that he cited me like an angel, and

drubbed me like a devil.  He had something in him of Friar Thumpwell.

Come, for all this, I must drink to him, and to you likewise, his trusty

esquires.  But, said his lady, why hath he been so very liberal of his

manual kindness to me, without the least provocation?  I assure you, I by

no means like it; but this I dare say for him, that he hath the hardest

knuckles that ever I felt on my shoulders.  The steward held his left arm

in a scarf, as if it had been rent and torn in twain.  I think it was the

devil, said he, that moved me to assist at these nuptials; shame on ill

luck; I must needs be meddling with a pox, and now see what I have got by

the bargain, both my arms are wretchedly engoulevezinemassed and bruised.

Do you call this a wedding?  By St. Bridget’s tooth, I had rather be at

that of a Tom T--d-man.  This is, o’ my word, even just such another feast

as was that of the Lapithae, described by the philosopher of Samosata.

One of the bums had lost his tongue.  The other two, tho’ they had more

need to complain, made their excuse as well as they could, protesting that

they had no ill design in this dumbfounding; begging that, for goodness

sake, they would forgive them; and so, tho’ they could hardly budge a

foot, or wag along, away they crawled.  About a mile from Basche’s seat,

the catchpole found himself somewhat out of sorts.  The bums got to L’Isle

Bouchart, publicly saying that since they were born they had never seen an

honester gentleman than the Lord of Basche, or civiller people than his,

and that they had never been at the like wedding (which I verily believe);

but that it was their own faults if they had been tickled off, and tossed

about from post to pillar, since themselves had began the beating.  So

they lived I cannot exactly tell you how many days after this.  But from

that time to this it was held for a certain truth that Basche’s money was

more pestilential, mortal, and pernicious to the catchpoles and bums than

were formerly the aurum Tholosanum and the Sejan horse to those that

possessed them.  Ever since this he lived quietly, and Basche’s wedding

grew into a common proverb.

Chapter 4.XVI.

How Friar John made trial of the nature of the catchpoles.

This story would seem pleasant enough, said Pantagruel, were we not to have

always the fear of God before our eyes.  It had been better, said

Epistemon, if those gauntlets had fallen upon the fat prior.  Since he took

a pleasure in spending his money partly to vex Basche, partly to see those

catchpoles banged, good lusty thumps would have done well on his shaved

crown, considering the horrid concussions nowadays among those puny judges.

What harm had done those poor devils the catchpoles?  This puts me in mind,

said Pantagruel, of an ancient Roman named L. Neratius.  He was of noble

blood, and for some time was rich; but had this tyrannical inclination,

that whenever he went out of doors he caused his servants to fill their

pockets with gold and silver, and meeting in the street your spruce

gallants and better sort of beaux, without the least provocation, for his

fancy, he used to strike them hard on the face with his fist; and

immediately after that, to appease them and hinder them from complaining to

the magistrates, he would give them as much money as satisfied them

according to the law of the twelve tables.  Thus he used to spend his

revenue, beating people for the price of his money.  By St. Bennet’s sacred

boot, quoth Friar John, I will know the truth of it presently.

This said, he went on shore, put his hand in his fob, and took out twenty

ducats; then said with a loud voice, in the hearing of a shoal of the

nation of catchpoles, Who will earn twenty ducats for being beaten like the

devil?  Io, Io, Io, said they all; you will cripple us for ever, sir, that

is most certain; but the money is tempting.  With this they were all

thronging who should be first to be thus preciously beaten.  Friar John

singled him out of the whole knot of these rogues in grain, a red-snouted

catchpole, who upon his right thumb wore a thick broad silver hoop, wherein

was set a good large toadstone.  He had no sooner picked him out from the

rest, but I perceived that they all muttered and grumbled; and I heard a

young thin-jawed catchpole, a notable scholar, a pretty fellow at his pen,

and, according to public report, much cried up for his honesty at Doctors’

Commons, making his complaint and muttering because this same crimson phiz

carried away all the practice, and that if there were but a score and a

half of bastinadoes to be got, he would certainly run away with eight and

twenty of them.  But all this was looked upon to be nothing but mere envy.

Friar John so unmercifully thrashed, thumped, and belaboured Red-snout,

back and belly, sides, legs, and arms, head, feet, and so forth, with the

home and frequently repeated application of one of the best members of a

faggot, that I took him to be a dead man; then he gave him the twenty

ducats, which made the dog get on his legs, pleased like a little king or

two.  The rest were saying to Friar John, Sir, sir, brother devil, if it

please you to do us the favour to beat some of us for less money, we are

all at your devilship’s command, bags, papers, pens, and all.  Red-snout

cried out against them, saying, with a loud voice, Body of me, you little

prigs, will you offer to take the bread out of my mouth? will you take my

bargain over my head? would you draw and inveigle from me my clients and

customers?  Take notice, I summon you before the official this day

sevennight; I will law and claw you like any old devil of Vauverd, that I

will--Then turning himself towards Friar John, with a smiling and joyful

look, he said to him, Reverend father in the devil, if you have found me a

good hide, and have a mind to divert yourself once more by beating your

humble servant, I will bate you half in half this time rather than lose

your custom; do not spare me, I beseech you; I am all, and more than all,

yours, good Mr. Devil; head, lungs, tripes, guts, and garbage; and that at

a pennyworth, I’ll assure you.  Friar John never heeded his proffers, but

even left them.  The other catchpoles were making addresses to Panurge,

Epistemon, Gymnast, and others, entreating them charitably to bestow upon

their carcasses a small beating, for otherwise they were in danger of

keeping a long fast; but none of them had a stomach to it.  Some time

after, seeking fresh water for the ship’s company, we met a couple of old

female catchpoles of the place, miserably howling and weeping in concert.

Pantagruel had kept on board, and already had caused a retreat to be

sounded.  Thinking that they might be related to the catchpole that was

bastinadoed, we asked them the occasion of their grief.  They replied that

they had too much cause to weep; for that very hour, from an exalted triple

tree, two of the honestest gentlemen in Catchpole-land had been made to cut

a caper on nothing.  Cut a caper on nothing, said Gymnast; my pages use to

cut capers on the ground; to cut a caper on nothing should be hanging and

choking, or I am out.  Ay, ay, said Friar John; you speak of it like St.

John de la Palisse.

We asked them why they treated these worthy persons with such a choking

hempen salad.  They told us they had only borrowed, alias stolen, the tools

of the mass and hid them under the handle of the parish.  This is a very

allegorical way of speaking, said Epistemon.

Chapter 4.XVII.

How Pantagruel came to the islands of Tohu and Bohu; and of the strange

death of Wide-nostrils, the swallower of windmills.

That day Pantagruel came to the two islands of Tohu and Bohu, where the

devil a bit we could find anything to fry with.  For one Wide-nostrils,

a huge giant, had swallowed every individual pan, skillet, kettle,

frying-pan, dripping-pan, and brass and iron pot in the land, for want of

windmills, which were his daily food.  Whence it happened that somewhat

before day, about the hour of his digestion, the greedy churl was taken

very ill with a kind of a surfeit, or crudity of stomach, occasioned, as

the physicians said, by the weakness of the concocting faculty of his

stomach, naturally disposed to digest whole windmills at a gust, yet unable

to consume perfectly the pans and skillets; though it had indeed pretty

well digested the kettles and pots, as they said they knew by the

hypostases and eneoremes of four tubs of second-hand drink which he had

evacuated at two different times that morning.  They made use of divers

remedies, according to art, to give him ease; but all would not do; the

distemper prevailed over the remedies; insomuch that the famous

Wide-nostrils died that morning of so strange a death that I think you ought

no longer to wonder at that of the poet Aeschylus.  It had been foretold him

by the soothsayers that he would die on a certain day by the ruin of

something that should fall on him.  The fatal day being come in its turn, he

removed himself out of town, far from all houses, trees, (rocks,) or any

other things that can fall and endanger by their ruin; and strayed in a

large field, trusting himself to the open sky; there very secure, as he

thought, unless indeed the sky should happen to fall, which he held to be

impossible.  Yet they say that the larks are much afraid of it; for if it

should fall, they must all be taken.

The Celts that once lived near the Rhine--they are our noble valiant

French--in ancient times were also afraid of the sky’s falling; for being

asked by Alexander the Great what they feared most in this world, hoping

well they would say that they feared none but him, considering his great

achievements, they made answer that they feared nothing but the sky’s

falling; however, not refusing to enter into a confederacy with so brave a

king, if you believe Strabo, lib. 7, and Arrian, lib. I.

Plutarch also, in his book of the face that appears on the body of the

moon, speaks of one Phenaces, who very much feared the moon should fall on

the earth, and pitied those that live under that planet, as the Aethiopians

and Taprobanians, if so heavy a mass ever happened to fall on them, and

would have feared the like of heaven and earth had they not been duly

propped up and borne by the Atlantic pillars, as the ancients believed,

according to Aristotle’s testimony, lib. 5, Metaphys.  Notwithstanding all

this, poor Aeschylus was killed by the fall of the shell of a tortoise,

which falling from betwixt the claws of an eagle high in the air, just on

his head, dashed out his brains.

Neither ought you to wonder at the death of another poet, I mean old jolly

Anacreon, who was choked with a grape-stone.  Nor at that of Fabius the

Roman praetor, who was choked with a single goat’s hair as he was supping

up a porringer of milk.  Nor at the death of that bashful fool, who by

holding in his wind, and for want of letting out a bum-gunshot, died

suddenly in the presence of the Emperor Claudius.  Nor at that of the

Italian buried on the Via Flaminia at Rome, who in his epitaph complains

that the bite of a she-puss on his little finger was the cause of his

death.  Nor of that of Q. Lecanius Bassus, who died suddenly of so small a

prick with a needle on his left thumb that it could hardly be discerned.

Nor of Quenelault, a Norman physician, who died suddenly at Montpellier,

merely for having sideways took a worm out of his hand with a penknife.

Nor of Philomenes, whose servant having got him some new figs for the first

course of his dinner, whilst he went to fetch wine, a straggling well-hung

ass got into the house, and seeing the figs on the table, without further

invitation soberly fell to.  Philomenes coming into the room and nicely

observing with what gravity the ass ate its dinner, said to the man, who

was come back, Since thou hast set figs here for this reverend guest of

ours to eat, methinks it is but reason thou also give him some of this wine

to drink.  He had no sooner said this, but he was so excessively pleased,

and fell into so exorbitant a fit of laughter, that the use of his spleen

took that of his breath utterly away, and he immediately died.  Nor of

Spurius Saufeius, who died supping up a soft-boiled egg as he came out of a

bath.  Nor of him who, as Boccaccio tells us, died suddenly by picking his

grinders with a sage-stalk.  Nor of Phillipot Placut, who being brisk and

hale, fell dead as he was paying an old debt; which causes, perhaps, many

not to pay theirs, for fear of the like accident.  Nor of the painter

Zeuxis, who killed himself with laughing at the sight of the antique

jobbernowl of an old hag drawn by him.  Nor, in short, of a thousand more

of which authors write, as Varrius, Pliny, Valerius, J. Baptista Fulgosus,

and Bacabery the elder.  In short, Gaffer Wide-nostrils choked himself with

eating a huge lump of fresh butter at the mouth of a hot oven by the advice

of physicians.

They likewise told us there that the King of Cullan in Bohu had routed the

grandees of King Mecloth, and made sad work with the fortresses of Belima.

After this, we sailed by the islands of Nargues and Zargues; also by the

islands of Teleniabin and Geleniabin, very fine and fruitful in ingredients

for clysters; and then by the islands of Enig and Evig, on whose account

formerly the Landgrave of Hesse was swinged off with a vengeance.

Chapter 4.XVIII.

How Pantagruel met with a great storm at sea.

The next day we espied nine sail that came spooning before the wind; they

were full of Dominicans, Jesuits, Capuchins, Hermits, Austins, Bernardins,

Egnatins, Celestins, Theatins, Amadeans, Cordeliers, Carmelites, Minims,

and the devil and all of other holy monks and friars, who were going to the

Council of Chesil, to sift and garble some new articles of faith against

the new heretics.  Panurge was overjoyed to see them, being most certain of

good luck for that day and a long train of others.  So having courteously

saluted the blessed fathers, and recommended the salvation of his precious

soul to their devout prayers and private ejaculations, he caused

seventy-eight dozen of Westphalia hams, units of pots of caviare, tens of

Bolonia sausages, hundreds of botargoes, and thousands of fine angels, for

the souls of the dead, to be thrown on board their ships.  Pantagruel seemed

metagrabolized, dozing, out of sorts, and as melancholic as a cat.  Friar

John, who soon perceived it, was inquiring of him whence should come this

unusual sadness; when the master, whose watch it was, observing the

fluttering of the ancient above the poop, and seeing that it began to

overcast, judged that we should have wind; therefore he bid the boatswain

call all hands upon deck, officers, sailors, foremast-men, swabbers, and

cabin-boys, and even the passengers; made them first settle their topsails,

take in their spritsail; then he cried, In with your topsails, lower the

foresail, tallow under parrels, braid up close all them sails, strike your

topmasts to the cap, make all sure with your sheeps-feet, lash your guns

fast.  All this was nimbly done.  Immediately it blowed a storm; the sea

began to roar and swell mountain-high; the rut of the sea was great, the

waves breaking upon our ship’s quarter; the north-west wind blustered and

overblowed; boisterous gusts, dreadful clashing, and deadly scuds of wind

whistled through our yards and made our shrouds rattle again.  The thunder

grumbled so horridly that you would have thought heaven had been tumbling

about our ears; at the same time it lightened, rained, hailed; the sky lost

its transparent hue, grew dusky, thick, and gloomy, so that we had no other

light than that of the flashes of lightning and rending of the clouds.  The

hurricanes, flaws, and sudden whirlwinds began to make a flame about us by

the lightnings, fiery vapours, and other aerial ejaculations.  Oh, how our

looks were full of amazement and trouble, while the saucy winds did rudely

lift up above us the mountainous waves of the main!  Believe me, it seemed

to us a lively image of the chaos, where fire, air, sea, land, and all the

elements were in a refractory confusion.  Poor Panurge having with the full

contents of the inside of his doublet plentifully fed the fish, greedy

enough of such odious fare, sat on the deck all in a heap, with his nose and

arse together, most sadly cast down, moping and half dead; invoked and

called to his assistance all the blessed he- and she-saints he could muster

up; swore and vowed to confess in time and place convenient, and then bawled

out frightfully, Steward, maitre d’hotel, see ho! my friend, my father, my

uncle, prithee let us have a piece of powdered beef or pork; we shall drink

but too much anon, for aught I see.  Eat little and drink the more will

hereafter be my motto, I fear.  Would to our dear Lord, and to our blessed,

worthy, and sacred Lady, I were now, I say, this very minute of an hour,

well on shore, on terra firma, hale and easy.  O twice and thrice happy

those that plant cabbages!  O destinies, why did you not spin me for a

cabbage-planter?  O how few are there to whom Jupiter hath been so

favourable as to predestinate them to plant cabbages!  They have always one

foot on the ground, and the other not far from it.  Dispute who will of

felicity and summum bonum, for my part whosoever plants cabbages is now, by

my decree, proclaimed most happy; for as good a reason as the philosopher

Pyrrho, being in the same danger, and seeing a hog near the shore eating

some scattered oats, declared it happy in two respects; first, because it

had plenty of oats, and besides that, was on shore.  Ha, for a divine and

princely habitation, commend me to the cows’ floor.

Murder!  This wave will sweep us away, blessed Saviour!  O my friends! a

little vinegar.  I sweat again with mere agony.  Alas! the mizen-sail’s

split, the gallery’s washed away, the masts are sprung, the

maintop-masthead dives into the sea; the keel is up to the sun; our shrouds

are almost all broke, and blown away.  Alas! alas! where is our main course?

Al is verlooren, by Godt! our topmast is run adrift.  Alas! who shall have

this wreck?  Friend, lend me here behind you one of these whales.  Your

lantern is fallen, my lads.  Alas! do not let go the main-tack nor the

bowline.  I hear the block crack; is it broke?  For the Lord’s sake, let us

have the hull, and let all the rigging be damned.  Be, be, be, bous, bous,

bous.  Look to the needle of your compass, I beseech you, good Sir

Astrophil, and tell us, if you can, whence comes this storm.  My heart’s

sunk down below my midriff.  By my troth, I am in a sad fright, bou, bou,

bou, bous, bous, I am lost for ever.  I conskite myself for mere madness and

fear.  Bou, bou, bou, bou, Otto to to to to ti.  Bou, bou, bou, ou, ou, ou,

bou, bou, bous.  I sink, I’m drowned, I’m gone, good people, I’m drowned.

Chapter 4.XIX.

What countenances Panurge and Friar John kept during the storm.

Pantagruel, having first implored the help of the great and Almighty

Deliverer, and prayed publicly with fervent devotion, by the pilot’s advice

held tightly the mast of the ship.  Friar John had stripped himself to his

waistcoat, to help the seamen.  Epistemon, Ponocrates, and the rest did as

much.  Panurge alone sat on his breech upon deck, weeping and howling.

Friar John espied him going on the quarter-deck, and said to him, Odzoons!

Panurge the calf, Panurge the whiner, Panurge the brayer, would it not

become thee much better to lend us here a helping hand than to lie lowing

like a cow, as thou dost, sitting on thy stones like a bald-breeched

baboon?  Be, be, be, bous, bous, bous, returned Panurge; Friar John, my

friend, my good father, I am drowning, my dear friend!  I drown!  I am a

dead man, my dear father in God; I am a dead man, my friend; your cutting

hanger cannot save me from this; alas! alas! we are above ela.  Above the

pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.  Be, be, be, bou, bous.  Alas! we

are now above g sol re ut.  I sink, I sink, ha, my father, my uncle, my

all.  The water is got into my shoes by the collar; bous, bous, bous,

paish, hu, hu, hu, he, he, he, ha, ha, I drown.  Alas! alas!  Hu, hu, hu,

hu, hu, hu, hu, be, be, bous, bous, bobous, bobous, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho,

alas! alas!  Now I am like your tumblers, my feet stand higher than my

head.  Would to heaven I were now with those good holy fathers bound for

the council whom we met this morning, so godly, so fat, so merry, so plump

and comely.  Holos, bolos, holas, holas, alas!  This devilish wave (mea

culpa Deus), I mean this wave of God, will sink our vessel.  Alas!  Friar

John, my father, my friend, confession.  Here I am down on my knees;

confiteor; your holy blessing.  Come hither and be damned, thou pitiful

devil, and help us, said Friar John (who fell a-swearing and cursing like a

tinker), in the name of thirty legions of black devils, come; will you

come?  Do not let us swear at this time, said Panurge; holy father, my

friend, do not swear, I beseech you; to-morrow as much as you please.

Holos, holos, alas! our ship leaks.  I drown, alas, alas!  I will give

eighteen hundred thousand crowns to anyone that will set me on shore, all

berayed and bedaubed as I am now.  If ever there was a man in my country in

the like pickle.  Confiteor, alas! a word or two of testament or codicil at

least.  A thousand devils seize the cuckoldy cow-hearted mongrel, cried

Friar John.  Ods-belly, art thou talking here of making thy will now we are

in danger, and it behoveth us to bestir our stumps lustily, or never?  Wilt

thou come, ho devil?  Midshipman, my friend; O the rare lieutenant; here

Gymnast, here on the poop.  We are, by the mass, all beshit now; our light

is out.  This is hastening to the devil as fast as it can.  Alas, bou, bou,

bou, bou, bou, alas, alas, alas, alas! said Panurge; was it here we were

born to perish?  Oh! ho! good people, I drown, I die.  Consummatum est.  I

am sped--Magna, gna, gna, said Friar John.  Fie upon him, how ugly the

shitten howler looks.  Boy, younker, see hoyh.  Mind the pumps or the devil

choke thee.  Hast thou hurt thyself?  Zoons, here fasten it to one of these

blocks.  On this side, in the devil’s name, hay--so, my boy.  Ah, Friar

John, said Panurge, good ghostly father, dear friend, don’t let us swear,

you sin.  Oh, ho, oh, ho, be be be bous, bous, bhous, I sink, I die, my

friends.  I die in charity with all the world.  Farewell, in manus.  Bohus

bohous, bhousowauswaus.  St. Michael of Aure!  St. Nicholas! now, now or

never, I here make you a solemn vow, and to our Saviour, that if you stand

by me this time, I mean if you set me ashore out of this danger, I will

build you a fine large little chapel or two, between Quande and Montsoreau,

where neither cow nor calf shall feed.  Oh ho, oh ho.  Above eighteen

pailfuls or two of it are got down my gullet; bous, bhous, bhous, bhous,

how damned bitter and salt it is!  By the virtue, said Friar John, of the

blood, the flesh, the belly, the head, if I hear thee again howling, thou

cuckoldy cur, I’ll maul thee worse than any sea-wolf.  Ods-fish, why don’t

we take him up by the lugs and throw him overboard to the bottom of the

sea?  Hear, sailor; ho, honest fellow.  Thus, thus, my friend, hold fast

above.  In truth, here is a sad lightning and thundering; I think that all

the devils are got loose; it is holiday with them; or else Madame

Proserpine is in child’s labour:  all the devils dance a morrice.

Chapter 4.XX.

How the pilots were forsaking their ships in the greatest stress of

weather.

Oh, said Panurge, you sin, Friar John, my former crony! former, I say, for

at this time I am no more, you are no more.  It goes against my heart to

tell it you; for I believe this swearing doth your spleen a great deal of

good; as it is a great ease to a wood-cleaver to cry hem at every blow, and

as one who plays at ninepins is wonderfully helped if, when he hath not

thrown his bowl right, and is like to make a bad cast, some ingenious

stander-by leans and screws his body halfway about on that side which the

bowl should have took to hit the pins.  Nevertheless, you offend, my sweet

friend.  But what do you think of eating some kind of cabirotadoes?

Wouldn’t this secure us from this storm?  I have read that the ministers of

the gods Cabiri, so much celebrated by Orpheus, Apollonius, Pherecydes,

Strabo, Pausanias, and Herodotus were always secure in time of storm.  He

dotes, he raves, the poor devil!  A thousand, a million, nay, a hundred

million of devils seize the hornified doddipole.  Lend’s a hand here, hoh,

tiger, wouldst thou?  Here, on the starboard side.  Ods-me, thou buffalo’s

head stuffed with relics, what ape’s paternoster art thou muttering and

chattering here between thy teeth?  That devil of a sea-calf is the cause

of all this storm, and is the only man who doth not lend a helping hand.

By G--, if I come near thee, I’ll fetch thee out by the head and ears with

a vengeance, and chastise thee like any tempestative devil.  Here, mate, my

lad, hold fast, till I have made a double knot.  O brave boy!  Would to

heaven thou wert abbot of Talemouze, and that he that is were guardian of

Croullay.  Hold, brother Ponocrates, you will hurt yourself, man.

Epistemon, prithee stand off out of the hatchway.  Methinks I saw the

thunder fall there but just now.  Con the ship, so ho--Mind your steerage.

Well said, thus, thus, steady, keep her thus, get the longboat clear

--steady.  Ods-fish, the beak-head is staved to pieces.  Grumble, devils,

fart, belch, shite, a t--d o’ the wave.  If this be weather, the devil’s a

ram.  Nay, by G--, a little more would have washed me clear away into the

current.  I think all the legions of devils hold here their provincial

chapter, or are polling, canvassing, and wrangling for the election of a

new rector.  Starboard; well said.  Take heed; have a care of your noddle,

lad, in the devil’s name.  So ho, starboard, starboard.  Be, be, be, bous,

bous, bous, cried Panurge; bous, bous, be, be, be, bous, bous, I am lost.

I see neither heaven nor earth; of the four elements we have here only fire

and water left.  Bou, bou, bou, bous, bous, bous.  Would it were the

pleasure of the worthy divine bounty that I were at this present hour in

the close at Seuille, or at Innocent’s the pastry-cook over against the

painted wine-vault at Chinon, though I were to strip to my doublet, and

bake the petti-pasties myself.

Honest man, could not you throw me ashore? you can do a world of good

things, they say.  I give you all Salmigondinois, and my large shore full

of whelks, cockles, and periwinkles, if, by your industry, I ever set foot

on firm ground.  Alas, alas!  I drown.  Harkee, my friends, since we cannot

get safe into port, let us come to an anchor in some road, no matter

whither.  Drop all your anchors; let us be out of danger, I beseech you.

Here, honest tar, get you into the chains, and heave the lead, an’t please

you.  Let us know how many fathom water we are in.  Sound, friend, in the

Lord Harry’s name.  Let us know whether a man might here drink easily

without stooping.  I am apt to believe one might.  Helm a-lee, hoh, cried

the pilot.  Helm a-lee; a hand or two at the helm; about ships with her;

helm a-lee, helm a-lee.  Stand off from the leech of the sail.  Hoh! belay,

here make fast below; hoh, helm a-lee, lash sure the helm a-lee, and let

her drive.  Is it come to that? said Pantagruel; our good Saviour then help

us.  Let her lie under the sea, cried James Brahier, our chief mate; let

her drive.  To prayers, to prayers; let all think on their souls, and fall

to prayers; nor hope to escape but by a miracle.  Let us, said Panurge,

make some good pious kind of vow; alas, alas, alas! bou, bou, be, be, be,

bous, bous, bous, oho, oho, oho, oho, let us make a pilgrim; come, come,

let every man club his penny towards it, come on.  Here, here, on this

side, said Friar John, in the devil’s name.  Let her drive, for the Lord’s

sake unhang the rudder; hoh, let her drive, let her drive, and let us

drink, I say, of the best and most cheering; d’ye hear, steward? produce,

exhibit; for, d’ye see this, and all the rest will as well go to the devil

out of hand.  A pox on that wind-broker Aeolus, with his fluster-blusters.

Sirrah, page, bring me here my drawer (for so he called his breviary); stay

a little here; haul, friend, thus.  Odzoons, here is a deal of hail and

thunder to no purpose.  Hold fast above, I pray you.  When have we

All-saints day?  I believe it is the unholy holiday of all the devil’s crew.

Alas! said Panurge, Friar John damns himself here as black as buttermilk

for the nonce.  Oh, what a good friend I lose in him.  Alas, alas! this is

another gats-bout than last year’s.  We are falling out of Scylla into

Charybdis.  Oho! I drown.  Confiteor; one poor word or two by way of

testament, Friar John, my ghostly father; good Mr. Abstractor, my crony,

my Achates, Xenomanes, my all.  Alas! I drown; two words of testament here

upon this ladder.

Chapter 4.XXI.

A continuation of the storm, with a short discourse on the subject of

making testaments at sea.

To make one’s last will, said Epistemon, at this time that we ought to

bestir ourselves and help our seamen, on the penalty of being drowned,

seems to me as idle and ridiculous a maggot as that of some of Caesar’s

men, who, at their coming into the Gauls, were mightily busied in making

wills and codicils; bemoaned their fortune and the absence of their spouses

and friends at Rome, when it was absolutely necessary for them to run to

their arms and use their utmost strength against Ariovistus their enemy.

This also is to be as silly as that jolt-headed loblolly of a carter, who,

having laid his waggon fast in a slough, down on his marrow-bones was

calling on the strong-backed deity, Hercules, might and main, to help him

at a dead lift, but all the while forgot to goad on his oxen and lay his

shoulder to the wheels, as it behoved him; as if a Lord have mercy upon us

alone would have got his cart out of the mire.

What will it signify to make your will now? for either we shall come off or

drown for it.  If we ‘scape, it will not signify a straw to us; for

testaments are of no value or authority but by the death of the testators.

If we are drowned, will it not be drowned too?  Prithee, who will transmit

it to the executors?  Some kind wave will throw it ashore, like Ulysses,

replied Panurge; and some king’s daughter, going to fetch a walk in the

fresco, on the evening will find it, and take care to have it proved and

fulfilled; nay, and have some stately cenotaph erected to my memory, as

Dido had to that of her goodman Sichaeus; Aeneas to Deiphobus, upon the

Trojan shore, near Rhoete; Andromache to Hector, in the city of Buthrot;

Aristotle to Hermias and Eubulus; the Athenians to the poet Euripides; the

Romans to Drusus in Germany, and to Alexander Severus, their emperor, in

the Gauls; Argentier to Callaischre; Xenocrates to Lysidices; Timares to

his son Teleutagoras; Eupolis and Aristodice to their son Theotimus;

Onestus to Timocles; Callimachus to Sopolis, the son of Dioclides; Catullus

to his brother; Statius to his father; Germain of Brie to Herve, the Breton

tarpaulin.  Art thou mad, said Friar John, to run on at this rate?  Help,

here, in the name of five hundred thousand millions of cartloads of devils,

help! may a shanker gnaw thy moustachios, and the three rows of pock-royals

and cauliflowers cover thy bum and turd-barrel instead of breeches and

codpiece.  Codsooks, our ship is almost overset.  Ods-death, how shall we

clear her? it is well if she do not founder.  What a devilish sea there

runs!  She’ll neither try nor hull; the sea will overtake her, so we shall

never ‘scape; the devil ‘scape me.  Then Pantagruel was heard to make a sad

exclamation, saying, with a loud voice, Lord save us, we perish; yet not as

we would have it, but thy holy will be done.  The Lord and the blessed

Virgin be with us, said Panurge.  Holos, alas, I drown; be be be bous, be

bous, bous; in manus.  Good heavens, send me some dolphin to carry me safe

on shore, like a pretty little Arion.  I shall make shift to sound the

harp, if it be not unstrung.  Let nineteen legions of black devils seize

me, said Friar John.  (The Lord be with us! whispered Panurge, between his

chattering teeth.)  If I come down to thee, I’ll show thee to some purpose

that the badge of thy humanity dangles at a calf’s breech, thou ragged,

horned, cuckoldy booby--mgna, mgnan, mgnan--come hither and help us, thou

great weeping calf, or may thirty millions of devils leap on thee.  Wilt

thou come, sea-calf?  Fie; how ugly the howling whelp looks.  What, always

the same ditty?  Come on now, my bonny drawer.  This he said, opening his

breviary.  Come forward, thou and I must be somewhat serious for a while;

let me peruse thee stiffly.  Beatus vir qui non abiit.  Pshaw, I know all

this by heart; let us see the legend of Mons. St. Nicholas.

  Horrida tempestas montem turbavit acutum.

Tempest was a mighty flogger of lads at Mountagu College.  If pedants be

damned for whipping poor little innocent wretches their scholars, he is,

upon my honour, by this time fixed within Ixion’s wheel, lashing the

crop-eared, bobtailed cur that gives it motion.  If they are saved for

having whipped innocent lads, he ought to be above the--

Chapter 4.XXII.

An end of the storm.

Shore, shore! cried Pantagruel.  Land to, my friends, I see land!  Pluck up

a good spirit, boys, ‘tis within a kenning.  So! we are not far from a

port.--I see the sky clearing up to the northwards.--Look to the

south-east!  Courage, my hearts, said the pilot; now she’ll bear the hullock

of a sail; the sea is much smoother; some hands aloft to the maintop.  Put

the helm a-weather.  Steady! steady!  Haul your after-mizen bowlines.  Haul,

haul, haul!  Thus, thus, and no near.  Mind your steerage; bring your

main-tack aboard.  Clear your sheets; clear your bowlines; port, port.  Helm

a-lee.  Now to the sheet on the starboard side, thou son of a whore.  Thou

art mightily pleased, honest fellow, quoth Friar John, with hearing make

mention of thy mother.  Luff, luff, cried the quartermaster that conned the

ship, keep her full, luff the helm.  Luff.  It is, answered the steersman.

Keep her thus.  Get the bonnets fixed.  Steady, steady.

That is well said, said Friar John now, this is something like a tansy.

Come, come, come, children, be nimble.  Good.  Luff, luff, thus.  Helm

a-weather.  That’s well said and thought on.  Methinks the storm is almost

over.  It was high time, faith; however, the Lord be thanked.  Our devils

begin to scamper.  Out with all your sails.  Hoist your sails.  Hoist.

That is spoke like a man, hoist, hoist.  Here, a God’s name, honest

Ponocrates; thou art a lusty fornicator; the whoreson will get none but

boys.  Eusthenes, thou art a notable fellow.  Run up to the fore-topsail.

Thus, thus.  Well said, i’ faith; thus, thus.  I dare not fear anything all

this while, for it is holiday.  Vea, vea, vea! huzza!  This shout of the

seaman is not amiss, and pleases me, for it is holiday.  Keep her full

thus.  Good.  Cheer up, my merry mates all, cried out Epistemon; I see

already Castor on the right.  Be, be, bous, bous, bous, said Panurge; I am

much afraid it is the bitch Helen.  It is truly Mixarchagenas, returned

Epistemon, if thou likest better that denomination, which the Argives give

him.  Ho, ho! I see land too; let her bear in with the harbour; I see a

good many people on the beach; I see a light on an obeliscolychny.  Shorten

your sails, said the pilot; fetch the sounding line; we must double that

point of land, and mind the sands.  We are clear of them, said the sailors.

Soon after, Away she goes, quoth the pilot, and so doth the rest of our

fleet; help came in good season.

By St. John, said Panurge, this is spoke somewhat like.  O the sweet word!

there is the soul of music in it.  Mgna, mgna, mgna, said Friar John; if

ever thou taste a drop of it, let the devil’s dam taste me, thou ballocky

devil.  Here, honest soul, here’s a full sneaker of the very best.  Bring

the flagons; dost hear, Gymnast: and that same large pasty jambic,

gammonic, as you will have it.  Take heed you pilot her in right.

Cheer up, cried out Pantagruel; cheer up, my boys; let us be ourselves

again.  Do you see yonder, close by our ship, two barks, three sloops, five

ships, eight pinks, four yawls, and six frigates making towards us, sent by

the good people of the neighbouring island to our relief?  But who is this

Ucalegon below, that cries and makes such a sad moan?  Were it not that I

hold the mast firmly with both my hands, and keep it straighter than two

hundred tacklings--I would--It is, said Friar John, that poor devil

Panurge, who is troubled with a calf’s ague; he quakes for fear when his

belly’s full.  If, said Pantagruel, he hath been afraid during this

dreadful hurricane and dangerous storm, provided (waiving that) he hath

done his part like a man, I do not value him a jot the less for it.  For as

to fear in all encounters is the mark of a heavy and cowardly heart, as

Agamemnon did, who for that reason is ignominiously taxed by Achilles with

having dog’s eyes and a stag’s heart; so, not to fear when the case is

evidently dreadful is a sign of want or smallness of judgment.  Now, if

anything ought to be feared in this life, next to offending God, I will not

say it is death.  I will not meddle with the disputes of Socrates and the

academics, that death of itself is neither bad nor to be feared, but I will

affirm that this kind of shipwreck is to be feared, or nothing is.  For, as

Homer saith, it is a grievous, dreadful, and unnatural thing to perish at

sea.  And indeed Aeneas, in the storm that took his fleet near Sicily, was

grieved that he had not died by the hand of the brave Diomedes, and said

that those were three, nay four times happy, who perished in the

conflagration at Troy.  No man here hath lost his life, the Lord our

Saviour be eternally praised for it! but in truth here is a ship sadly out

of order.  Well, we must take care to have the damage repaired.  Take heed

we do not run aground and bulge her.

Chapter 4.XXIII.

How Panurge played the good fellow when the storm was over.

What cheer, ho, fore and aft? quoth Panurge.  Oh ho! all is well, the storm

is over.  I beseech ye, be so kind as to let me be the first that is sent

on shore; for I would by all means a little untruss a point.  Shall I help

you still?  Here, let me see, I will coil this rope; I have plenty of

courage, and of fear as little as may be.  Give it me yonder, honest tar.

No, no, I have not a bit of fear.  Indeed, that same decumane wave that

took us fore and aft somewhat altered my pulse.  Down with your sails; well

said.  How now, Friar John? you do nothing.  Is it time for us to drink

now?  Who can tell but St. Martin’s running footman Belzebuth may still be

hatching us some further mischief?  Shall I come and help you again?  Pork

and peas choke me, if I do heartily repent, though too late, not having

followed the doctrine of the good philosopher who tells us that to walk by

the sea and to navigate by the shore are very safe and pleasant things;

just as ‘tis to go on foot when we hold our horse by the bridle.  Ha! ha!

ha! by G--, all goes well.  Shall I help you here too?  Let me see, I will

do this as it should be, or the devil’s in’t.

Epistemon, who had the inside of one of his hands all flayed and bloody,

having held a tackling with might and main, hearing what Pantagruel had

said, told him:  You may believe, my lord, I had my share of fear as well

as Panurge; yet I spared no pains in lending my helping hand.  I considered

that, since by fatal and unavoidable necessity we must all die, it is the

blessed will of God that we die this or that hour, and this or that kind of

death.  Nevertheless, we ought to implore, invoke, pray, beseech, and

supplicate him; but we must not stop there; it behoveth us also to use our

endeavours on our side, and, as the holy writ saith, to co-operate with

him.

You know what C. Flaminius, the consul, said when by Hannibal’s policy he

was penned up near the lake of Peruse, alias Thrasymene.  Friends, said he

to his soldiers, you must not hope to get out of this place barely by vows

or prayers to the gods; no, ‘tis by fortitude and strength we must escape

and cut ourselves a way with the edge of our swords through the midst of

our enemies.

Sallust likewise makes M. Portius Cato say this:  The help of the gods is

not obtained by idle vows and womanish complaints; ‘tis by vigilance,

labour, and repeated endeavours that all things succeed according to our

wishes and designs.  If a man in time of need and danger is negligent,

heartless, and lazy, in vain he implores the gods; they are then justly

angry and incensed against him.  The devil take me, said Friar John,--I’ll

go his halves, quoth Panurge,--if the close of Seville had not been all

gathered, vintaged, gleaned, and destroyed, if I had only sung contra

hostium insidias (matter of breviary) like all the rest of the monking

devils, and had not bestirred myself to save the vineyard as I did,

despatching the truant picaroons of Lerne with the staff of the cross.

Let her sink or swim a God’s name, said Panurge, all’s one to Friar John;

he doth nothing; his name is Friar John Do-little; for all he sees me here

a-sweating and puffing to help with all my might this honest tar, first of

the name.--Hark you me, dear soul, a word with you; but pray be not angry.

How thick do you judge the planks of our ship to be?  Some two good inches

and upwards, returned the pilot; don’t fear.  Ods-kilderkins, said Panurge,

it seems then we are within two fingers’ breadth of damnation.

Is this one of the nine comforts of matrimony?  Ah, dear soul, you do well

to measure the danger by the yard of fear.  For my part, I have none on’t;

my name is William Dreadnought.  As for heart, I have more than enough

on’t.  I mean none of your sheep’s heart; but of wolf’s heart--the courage

of a bravo.  By the pavilion of Mars, I fear nothing but danger.

Chapter 4.XXIV.

How Panurge was said to have been afraid without reason during the storm.

Good morrow, gentlemen, said Panurge; good morrow to you all; you are in

very good health, thanks to heaven and yourselves; you are all heartily

welcome, and in good time.  Let us go on shore.--Here, coxswain, get the

ladder over the gunnel; man the sides; man the pinnace, and get her by the

ship’s side.  Shall I lend you a hand here?  I am stark mad for want of

business, and would work like any two yokes of oxen.  Truly this is a fine

place, and these look like a very good people.  Children, do you want me

still in anything? do not spare the sweat of my body, for God’s sake.

Adam--that is, man--was made to labour and work, as the birds were made to

fly.  Our Lord’s will is that we get our bread with the sweat of our brows,

not idling and doing nothing, like this tatterdemalion of a monk here, this

Friar Jack, who is fain to drink to hearten himself up, and dies for fear.

--Rare weather.--I now find the answer of Anacharsis, the noble philosopher,

very proper.  Being asked what ship he reckoned the safest, he replied:

That which is in the harbour.  He made a yet better repartee, said

Pantagruel, when somebody inquiring which is greater, the number of the

living or that of the dead, he asked them amongst which of the two they

reckoned those that are at sea, ingeniously implying that they are

continually in danger of death, dying alive, and living die.  Portius Cato

also said that there were but three things of which he would repent:  if

ever he had trusted his wife with his secret, if he had idled away a day,

and if he had ever gone by sea to a place which he could visit by land.  By

this dignified frock of mine, said Friar John to Panurge, friend, thou hast

been afraid during the storm without cause or reason; for thou wert not

born to be drowned, but rather to be hanged and exalted in the air, or to

be roasted in the midst of a jolly bonfire.  My lord, would you have a good

cloak for the rain; leave me off your wolf and badger-skin mantle; let

Panurge but be flayed, and cover yourself with his hide.  But do not come

near the fire, nor near your blacksmith’s forges, a God’s name; for in a

moment you will see it in ashes.  Yet be as long as you please in the rain,

snow, hail, nay, by the devil’s maker, throw yourself or dive down to the

very bottom of the water, I’ll engage you’ll not be wet at all.  Have some

winter boots made of it, they’ll never take in a drop of water; make

bladders of it to lay under boys to teach them to swim, instead of corks,

and they will learn without the least danger.  His skin, then, said

Pantagruel, should be like the herb called true maiden’s hair, which never

takes wet nor moistness, but still keeps dry, though you lay it at the

bottom of the water as long as you please; and for that reason is called

Adiantos.

Friend Panurge, said Friar John, I pray thee never be afraid of water; thy

life for mine thou art threatened with a contrary element.  Ay, ay, replied

Panurge, but the devil’s cooks dote sometimes, and are apt to make horrid

blunders as well as others; often putting to boil in water what was

designed to be roasted on the fire; like the head-cooks of our kitchen, who

often lard partridges, queests, and stock-doves with intent to roast them,

one would think; but it happens sometimes that they e’en turn the

partridges into the pot to be boiled with cabbages, the queests with leek

pottage, and the stock-doves with turnips.  But hark you me, good friends,

I protest before this noble company, that as for the chapel which I vowed

to Mons. St. Nicholas between Quande and Montsoreau, I honestly mean that

it shall be a chapel of rose-water, which shall be where neither cow nor

calf shall be fed; for between you and I, I intend to throw it to the

bottom of the water.  Here is a rare rogue for you, said Eusthenes; here is

a pure rogue, a rogue in grain, a rogue enough, a rogue and a half.  He is

resolved to make good the Lombardic proverb, Passato el pericolo, gabbato

el santo.

  The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;

  The devil was well, the devil a monk was he.

Chapter 4.XXV.

How, after the storm, Pantagruel went on shore in the islands of the

Macreons.

Immediately after we went ashore at the port of an island which they called

the island of the Macreons.  The good people of the place received us very

honourably.  An old Macrobius (so they called their eldest elderman)

desired Pantagruel to come to the town-house to refresh himself and eat

something, but he would not budge a foot from the mole till all his men

were landed.  After he had seen them, he gave order that they should all

change clothes, and that some of all the stores in the fleet should be

brought on shore, that every ship’s crew might live well; which was

accordingly done, and God wot how well they all toped and caroused.  The

people of the place brought them provisions in abundance.  The

Pantagruelists returned them more; as the truth is, theirs were somewhat

damaged by the late storm.  When they had well stuffed the insides of their

doublets, Pantagruel desired everyone to lend their help to repair the

damage; which they readily did.  It was easy enough to refit there; for all

the inhabitants of the island were carpenters and all such handicrafts as

are seen in the arsenal at Venice.  None but the largest island was

inhabited, having three ports and ten parishes; the rest being overrun with

wood and desert, much like the forest of Arden.  We entreated the old

Macrobius to show us what was worth seeing in the island; which he did; and

in the desert and dark forest we discovered several old ruined temples,

obelisks, pyramids, monuments, and ancient tombs, with divers inscriptions

and epitaphs; some of them in hieroglyphic characters; others in the Ionic

dialect; some in the Arabic, Agarenian, Slavonian, and other tongues; of

which Epistemon took an exact account.  In the interim, Panurge said to

Friar John, Is this the island of the Macreons?  Macreon signifies in Greek

an old man, or one much stricken in years.  What is that to me? said Friar

John; how can I help it?  I was not in the country when they christened it.

Now I think on’t, quoth Panurge, I believe the name of mackerel (Motteux

adds, between brackets,--‘that’s a Bawd in French.’) was derived from it;

for procuring is the province of the old, as buttock-riggling is that of

the young.  Therefore I do not know but this may be the bawdy or Mackerel

Island, the original and prototype of the island of that name at Paris.

Let’s go and dredge for cock-oysters.  Old Macrobius asked, in the Ionic

tongue, How, and by what industry and labour, Pantagruel got to their port

that day, there having been such blustering weather and such a dreadful

storm at sea.  Pantagruel told him that the Almighty Preserver of mankind

had regarded the simplicity and sincere affection of his servants, who did

not travel for gain or sordid profit, the sole design of their voyage being

a studious desire to know, see, and visit the Oracle of Bacbuc, and take

the word of the Bottle upon some difficulties offered by one of the

company; nevertheless this had not been without great affliction and

evident danger of shipwreck.  After that, he asked him what he judged to be

the cause of that terrible tempest, and if the adjacent seas were thus

frequently subject to storms; as in the ocean are the Ratz of Sammaieu,

Maumusson, and in the Mediterranean sea the Gulf of Sataly, Montargentan,

Piombino, Capo Melio in Laconia, the Straits of Gibraltar, Faro di Messina,

and others.

Chapter 4.XXVI.

How the good Macrobius gave us an account of the mansion and decease of the

heroes.

The good Macrobius then answered, Friendly strangers, this island is one of

the Sporades; not of your Sporades that lie in the Carpathian sea, but one

of the Sporades of the ocean; in former times rich, frequented, wealthy,

populous, full of traffic, and in the dominions of the rulers of Britain,

but now, by course of time, and in these latter ages of the world, poor and

desolate, as you see.  In this dark forest, above seventy-eight thousand

Persian leagues in compass, is the dwelling-place of the demons and heroes

that are grown old, and we believe that some one of them died yesterday;

since the comet which we saw for three days before together, shines no

more; and now it is likely that at his death there arose this horrible

storm; for while they are alive all happiness attends both this and the

adjacent islands, and a settled calm and serenity.  At the death of every

one of them, we commonly hear in the forest loud and mournful groans, and

the whole land is infested with pestilence, earthquakes, inundations, and

other calamities; the air with fogs and obscurity, and the sea with storms

and hurricanes.  What you tell us seems to me likely enough, said

Pantagruel.  For as a torch or candle, as long as it hath life enough and

is lighted, shines round about, disperses its light, delights those that

are near it, yields them its service and clearness, and never causes any

pain or displeasure; but as soon as ‘tis extinguished, its smoke and

evaporation infects the air, offends the bystanders, and is noisome to all;

so, as long as those noble and renowned souls inhabit their bodies, peace,

profit, pleasure, and honour never leave the places where they abide; but

as soon as they leave them, both the continent and adjacent islands are

annoyed with great commotions; in the air fogs, darkness, thunder, hail;

tremblings, pulsations, agitations of the earth; storms and hurricanes at

sea; together with sad complaints amongst the people, broaching of

religions, changes in governments, and ruins of commonwealths.

We had a sad instance of this lately, said Epistemon, at the death of that

valiant and learned knight, William du Bellay; during whose life France

enjoyed so much happiness, that all the rest of the world looked upon it

with envy, sought friendship with it, and stood in awe of its power; but

soon after his decease it hath for a considerable time been the scorn of

the rest of the world.

Thus, said Pantagruel, Anchises being dead at Drepani in Sicily, Aeneas was

dreadfully tossed and endangered by a storm; and perhaps for the same

reason Herod, that tyrant and cruel King of Judaea, finding himself near

the pangs of a horrid kind of death--for he died of a phthiriasis, devoured

by vermin and lice; as before him died L. Sylla, Pherecydes the Syrian, the

preceptor of Pythagoras, the Greek poet Alcmaeon, and others--and

foreseeing that the Jews would make bonfires at his death, caused all the

nobles and magistrates to be summoned to his seraglio out of all the

cities, towns, and castles of Judaea, fraudulently pretending that he had

some things of moment to impart to them.  They made their personal

appearance; whereupon he caused them all to be shut up in the hippodrome of

the seraglio; then said to his sister Salome and Alexander her husband:  I

am certain that the Jews will rejoice at my death; but if you will observe

and perform what I tell you, my funeral shall be honourable, and there will

be a general mourning.  As soon as you see me dead, let my guards, to whom

I have already given strict commission to that purpose, kill all the

noblemen and magistrates that are secured in the hippodrome.  By these

means all Jewry shall, in spite of themselves, be obliged to mourn and

lament, and foreigners will imagine it to be for my death, as if some

heroic soul had left her body.  A desperate tyrant wished as much when he

said, When I die, let earth and fire be mixed together; which was as good

as to say, let the whole world perish.  Which saying the tyrant Nero

altered, saying, While I live, as Suetonius affirms it.  This detestable

saying, of which Cicero, lib. De Finib., and Seneca, lib. 2, De Clementia,

make mention, is ascribed to the Emperor Tiberius by Dion Nicaeus and

Suidas.

Chapter 4.XXVII.

Pantagruel’s discourse of the decease of heroic souls; and of the dreadful

prodigies that happened before the death of the late Lord de Langey.

I would not, continued Pantagruel, have missed the storm that hath thus

disordered us, were I also to have missed the relation of these things told

us by this good Macrobius.  Neither am I unwilling to believe what he said

of a comet that appears in the sky some days before such a decease.  For

some of those souls are so noble, so precious, and so heroic that heaven

gives us notice of their departing some days before it happens.  And as a

prudent physician, seeing by some symptoms that his patient draws towards

his end, some days before gives notice of it to his wife, children,

kindred, and friends, that, in that little time he hath yet to live, they

may admonish him to settle all things in his family, to tutor and instruct

his children as much as he can, recommend his relict to his friends in her

widowhood, and declare what he knows to be necessary about a provision for

the orphans; that he may not be surprised by death without making his will,

and may take care of his soul and family; in the same manner the heavens,

as it were joyful for the approaching reception of those blessed souls,

seem to make bonfires by those comets and blazing meteors, which they at

the same time kindly design should prognosticate to us here that in a few

days one of those venerable souls is to leave her body and this terrestrial

globe.  Not altogether unlike this was what was formerly done at Athens by

the judges of the Areopagus.  For when they gave their verdict to cast or

clear the culprits that were tried before them, they used certain notes

according to the substance of the sentences; by Theta signifying

condemnation to death; by T, absolution; by A, ampliation or a demur, when

the case was not sufficiently examined.  Thus having publicly set up those

letters, they eased the relations and friends of the prisoners, and such

others as desired to know their doom, of their doubts.  Likewise by these

comets, as in ethereal characters, the heavens silently say to us, Make

haste, mortals, if you would know or learn of the blessed souls anything

concerning the public good or your private interest; for their catastrophe

is near, which being past, you will vainly wish for them afterwards.

The good-natured heavens still do more; and that mankind may be declared

unworthy of the enjoyment of those renowned souls, they fright and astonish

us with prodigies, monsters, and other foreboding signs that thwart the

order of nature.

Of this we had an instance several days before the decease of the heroic

soul of the learned and valiant Chevalier de Langey, of whom you have

already spoken.  I remember it, said Epistemon; and my heart still trembles

within me when I think on the many dreadful prodigies that we saw five or

six days before he died.  For the Lords D’Assier, Chemant, one-eyed Mailly,

St. Ayl, Villeneufue-la-Guyart, Master Gabriel, physician of Savillan,

Rabelais, Cohuau, Massuau, Majorici, Bullou, Cercu, alias Bourgmaistre,

Francis Proust, Ferron, Charles Girard, Francis Bourre, and many other

friends and servants to the deceased, all dismayed, gazed on each other

without uttering one word; yet not without foreseeing that France would in

a short time be deprived of a knight so accomplished and necessary for its

glory and protection, and that heaven claimed him again as its due.  By the

tufted tip of my cowl, cried Friar John, I am e’en resolved to become a

scholar before I die.  I have a pretty good headpiece of my own, you must

own.  Now pray give me leave to ask you a civil question.  Can these same

heroes or demigods you talk of die?  May I never be damned if I was not so

much a lobcock as to believe they had been immortal, like so many fine

angels.  Heaven forgive me! but this most reverend father, Macroby, tells

us they die at last.  Not all, returned Pantagruel.

The Stoics held them all to be mortal, except one, who alone is immortal,

impassible, invisible.  Pindar plainly saith that there is no more thread,

that is to say, no more life, spun from the distaff and flax of the

hard-hearted Fates for the goddesses Hamadryades than there is for those

trees that are preserved by them, which are good, sturdy, downright oaks;

whence they derived their original, according to the opinion of Callimachus

and Pausanias in Phoci.  With whom concurs Martianus Capella.  As for the

demigods, fauns, satyrs, sylvans, hobgoblins, aegipanes, nymphs, heroes, and

demons, several men have, from the total sum, which is the result of the

divers ages calculated by Hesiod, reckoned their life to be 9720 years; that

sum consisting of four special numbers orderly arising from one, the same

added together and multiplied by four every way amounts to forty; these

forties, being reduced into triangles by five times, make up the total of

the aforesaid number.  See Plutarch, in his book about the Cessation of

Oracles.

This, said Friar John, is not matter of breviary; I may believe as little

or as much of it as you and I please.  I believe, said Pantagruel, that all

intellectual souls are exempted from Atropos’s scissors.  They are all

immortal, whether they be of angels, or demons, or human; yet I will tell

you a story concerning this that is very strange, but is written and

affirmed by several learned historians.

Chapter 4.XXVIII.

How Pantagruel related a very sad story of the death of the heroes.

Epitherses, the father of Aemilian the rhetorician, sailing from Greece to

Italy in a ship freighted with divers goods and passengers, at night the

wind failed ‘em near the Echinades, some islands that lie between the Morea

and Tunis, and the vessel was driven near Paxos.  When they were got

thither, some of the passengers being asleep, others awake, the rest eating

and drinking, a voice was heard that called aloud, Thamous! which cry

surprised them all.  This same Thamous was their pilot, an Egyptian by

birth, but known by name only to some few travellers.  The voice was heard

a second time calling Thamous, in a frightful tone; and none making answer,

but trembling and remaining silent, the voice was heard a third time, more

dreadful than before.

This caused Thamous to answer:  Here am I; what dost thou call me for?

What wilt thou have me do?  Then the voice, louder than before, bid him

publish when he should come to Palodes, that the great god Pan was dead.

Epitherses related that all the mariners and passengers, having heard this,

were extremely amazed and frighted; and that, consulting among themselves

whether they had best conceal or divulge what the voice had enjoined,

Thamous said his advice was that if they happened to have a fair wind they

should proceed without mentioning a word on’t, but if they chanced to be

becalmed he would publish what he had heard.  Now when they were near

Palodes they had no wind, neither were they in any current.  Thamous then

getting up on the top of the ship’s forecastle, and casting his eyes on the

shore, said that he had been commanded to proclaim that the great god Pan

was dead.  The words were hardly out of his mouth, when deep groans, great

lamentations, and doleful shrieks, not of one person, but of many together,

were heard from the land.

The news of this--many being present then--was soon spread at Rome;

insomuch that Tiberius, who was then emperor, sent for this Thamous, and

having heard him gave credit to his words.  And inquiring of the learned in

his court and at Rome who was that Pan, he found by their relation that he

was the son of Mercury and Penelope, as Herodotus and Cicero in his third

book of the Nature of the Gods had written before.

For my part, I understand it of that great Saviour of the faithful who was

shamefully put to death at Jerusalem by the envy and wickedness of the

doctors, priests, and monks of the Mosaic law.  And methinks my

interpretation is not improper; for he may lawfully be said in the Greek

tongue to be Pan, since he is our all.  For all that we are, all that we

live, all that we have, all that we hope, is him, by him, from him, and in

him.  He is the good Pan, the great shepherd, who, as the loving shepherd

Corydon affirms, hath not only a tender love and affection for his sheep,

but also for their shepherds.  At his death, complaints, sighs, fears, and

lamentations were spread through the whole fabric of the universe, whether

heavens, land, sea, or hell.

The time also concurs with this interpretation of mine; for this most good,

most mighty Pan, our only Saviour, died near Jerusalem during the reign of

Tiberius Caesar.

Pantagruel, having ended this discourse, remained silent and full of

contemplation.  A little while after we saw the tears flow out of his eyes

as big as ostrich’s eggs.  God take me presently if I tell you one single

syllable of a lie in the matter.

Chapter 4.XXIX.

How Pantagruel sailed by the Sneaking Island, where Shrovetide reigned.

The jovial fleet being refitted and repaired, new stores taken in, the

Macreons over and above satisfied and pleased with the money spent there by

Pantagruel, our men in better humour than they used to be, if possible, we

merrily put to sea the next day, near sunset, with a delicious fresh gale.

Xenomanes showed us afar off the Sneaking Island, where reigned Shrovetide,

of whom Pantagruel had heard much talk formerly; for that reason he would

gladly have seen him in person, had not Xenomanes advised him to the

contrary; first, because this would have been much out of our way, and then

for the lean cheer which he told us was to be found at that prince’s court,

and indeed all over the island.

You can see nothing there for your money, said he, but a huge greedy-guts,

a tall woundy swallower of hot wardens and mussels; a long-shanked

mole-catcher; an overgrown bottler of hay; a mossy-chinned demi-giant, with

a double shaven crown, of lantern breed; a very great loitering noddy-peaked

youngster, banner-bearer to the fish-eating tribe, dictator of mustard-land,

flogger of little children, calciner of ashes, father and foster-father to

physicians, swarming with pardons, indulgences, and stations; a very honest

man; a good catholic, and as brimful of devotion as ever he can hold.

He weeps the three-fourth parts of the day, and never assists at any

weddings; but, give the devil his due, he is the most industrious

larding-stick and skewer-maker in forty kingdoms.

About six years ago, as I passed by Sneaking-land, I brought home a large

skewer from thence, and made a present of it to the butchers of Quande, who

set a great value upon them, and that for a cause.  Some time or other, if

ever we live to come back to our own country, I will show you two of them

fastened on the great church porch.  His usual food is pickled coats of

mail, salt helmets and head-pieces, and salt sallets; which sometimes makes

him piss pins and needles.  As for his clothing, ‘tis comical enough o’

conscience, both for make and colour; for he wears grey and cold, nothing

before, and nought behind, with the sleeves of the same.

You will do me a kindness, said Pantagruel, if, as you have described his

clothes, food, actions, and pastimes, you will also give me an account of

his shape and disposition in all his parts.  Prithee do, dear cod, said

Friar John, for I have found him in my breviary, and then follow the

movable holy days.  With all my heart, answered Xenomanes; we may chance to

hear more of him as we touch at the Wild Island, the dominions of the squab

Chitterlings, his enemies, against whom he is eternally at odds; and were

it not for the help of the noble Carnival, their protector and good

neighbour, this meagre-looked lozelly Shrovetide would long before this

have made sad work among them, and rooted them out of their habitation.

Are these same Chitterlings, said Friar John, male or female, angels or

mortals, women or maids?  They are, replied Xenomanes, females in sex,

mortal in kind, some of them maids, others not.  The devil have me, said

Friar John, if I ben’t for them.  What a shameful disorder in nature, is it

not, to make war against women?  Let’s go back and hack the villain to

pieces.  What! meddle with Shrovetide? cried Panurge, in the name of

Beelzebub, I am not yet so weary of my life.  No, I’m not yet so mad as

that comes to.  Quid juris?  Suppose we should find ourselves pent up

between the Chitterlings and Shrovetide? between the anvil and the hammers?

Shankers and buboes! stand off! godzooks, let us make the best of our way.

I bid you good night, sweet Mr. Shrovetide; I recommend to you the

Chitterlings, and pray don’t forget the puddings.

Chapter 4.XXX.

How Shrovetide is anatomized and described by Xenomanes.

As for the inward parts of Shrovetide, said Xenomanes; his brain is (at

least, it was in my time) in bigness, colours, substance, and strength,

much like the left cod of a he hand-worm.

The ventricles of his said brain,     The stomach, like a belt.

  like an auger.                      The pylorus, like a pitchfork.

The worm-like excrescence, like       The windpipe, like an oyster-

  a Christmas-box.                      knife.

The membranes, like a monk’s          The throat, like a pincushion

  cowl.                                 stuffed with oakum.

The funnel, like a mason’s chisel.    The lungs, like a prebend’s

The fornix, like a casket.              fur-gown.

The glandula pinealis, like a bag-    The heart, like a cope.

  pipe.                               The mediastine, like an earthen

The rete mirabile, like a gutter.       cup.

The dug-like processus, like a        The pleura, like a crow’s bill.

  patch.                              The arteries, like a watch-coat.

The tympanums, like a whirli-         The midriff, like a montero-cap.

  gig.                                The liver, like a double-tongued

The rocky bones, like a goose-          mattock.

  wing.                               The veins, like a sash-window.

The nape of the neck, like a paper    The spleen, like a catcall.

  lantern.                            The guts, like a trammel.

The nerves, like a pipkin.            The gall, like a cooper’s adze.

The uvula, like a sackbut.            The entrails, like a gauntlet.

The palate, like a mitten.            The mesentery, like an abbot’s

The spittle, like a shuttle.            mitre.

The almonds, like a telescope.        The hungry gut, like a button.

The bridge of his nose, like a        The blind gut, like a breastplate.

  wheelbarrow.                        The colon, like a bridle.

The head of the larynx, like a        The arse-gut, like a monk’s

  vintage-basket.                       leathern bottle.

The kidneys, like a trowel.           The ligaments, like a tinker’s

The loins, like a padlock.              budget.

The ureters, like a pothook.          The bones, like three-cornered

The emulgent veins, like two            cheesecakes.

  gilliflowers.                       The marrow, like a wallet.

The spermatic vessels, like a         The cartilages, like a field-

  cully-mully-puff.                           tortoise, alias a mole.

The parastata, like an inkpot.        The glandules in the mouth, like

The bladder, like a stone-bow.          a pruning-knife.

The neck, like a mill-clapper.        The animal spirits, like swingeing

The mirach, or lower parts of the       fisticuffs.

  belly, like a high-crowned hat.     The blood-fermenting, like a

The siphach, or its inner rind,         multiplication of flirts on the

  like a wooden cuff.                   nose.

The muscles, like a pair of bellows.  The urine, like a figpecker.

The tendons, like a hawking-          The sperm, like a hundred

  glove.                                ten-penny nails.

And his nurse told me, that being married to Mid-lent, he only begot a good

number of local adverbs and certain double fasts.

His memory he had like a scarf.       His undertakings, like the ballast

His common sense, like a buzzing        of a galleon.

  of bees.                            His understanding, like a torn

His imagination, like the chime         breviary.

  of a set of bells.                  His notions, like snails crawling

His thoughts, like a flight of star-    out of strawberries.

  lings.                              His will, like three filberts in a

His conscience, like the unnest-        porringer.

  ling of a parcel of young           His desire, like six trusses of hay.

  herons.                             His judgment, like a shoeing-

His deliberations, like a set of        horn.

  organs.                             His discretion, like the truckle of

His repentance, like the carriage       a pulley.

  of a double cannon.                 His reason, like a cricket.

Chapter 4.XXXI.

Shrovetide’s outward parts anatomized.

Shrovetide, continued Xenomanes, is somewhat better proportioned in his

outward parts, excepting the seven ribs which he had over and above the

common shape of men.

His toes were like a virginal on     The peritoneum, or caul wherein

  an organ.                            his bowels were wrapped, like

His nails, like a gimlet.              a billiard-table.

His feet, like a guitar.             His back, like an overgrown rack-

His heels, like a club.                bent crossbow.

The soles of his feet, like a cru-   The vertebrae, or joints of his

  cible.                               backbone, like a bagpipe.

His legs, like a hawk’s lure.        His ribs, like a spinning-wheel.

His knees, like a joint-stool.       His brisket, like a canopy.

His thighs, like a steel cap.        His shoulder-blades, like a mortar.

His hips, like a wimble.             His breast, like a game at nine-

His belly as big as a tun, buttoned    pins.

  after the old fashion, with a      His paps, like a hornpipe.

  girdle riding over the middle      His armpits, like a chequer.

  of his bosom.                      His shoulders, like a hand-barrow.

His navel, like a cymbal.            His arms, like a riding-hood.

His groin, like a minced pie.        His fingers, like a brotherhood’s

His member, like a slipper.            andirons.

His purse, like an oil cruet.        The fibulae, or lesser bones of his

His genitals, like a joiner’s planer.  legs, like a pair of stilts.

Their erecting muscles, like a       His shin-bones, like sickles.

  racket.                            His elbows, like a mouse-trap.

The perineum, like a flageolet.      His hands, like a curry-comb.

His arse-hole, like a crystal look-  His neck, like a talboy.

  ing-glass.                         His throat, like a felt to distil hip-

His bum, like a harrow.                pocras.

The knob in his throat, like a       His loins, like a butter-pot.

  barrel, where hanged two           His jaws, like a caudle cup.

  brazen wens, very fine and         His teeth, like a hunter’s staff.

  harmonious, in the shape of an       Of such colt’s teeth as his,

  hourglass.                           you will find one at Colonges

His beard, like a lantern.             les Royaux in Poitou, and

His chin, like a mushroom.             two at La Brosse in Xaintonge,

His ears, like a pair of gloves.       on the cellar door.

His nose, like a buskin.             His tongue, like a jew’s-harp.

His nostrils, like a forehead cloth. His mouth, like a horse-cloth.

His eyebrows, like a dripping-pan.   His face embroidered like a mule’s

On his left brow was a mark of         pack-saddle.

  the shape and bigness of an        His head contrived like a still.

  urinal.                            His skull, like a pouch.

His eyelids, like a fiddle.          The suturae, or seams of his skull,

His eyes, like a comb-box.             like the annulus piscatoris, or

His optic nerves, like a tinder-       the fisher’s signet.

  box.                               His skin, like a gabardine.

His forehead, like a false cup.      His epidermis, or outward skin,

His temples, like the cock of a        like a bolting-cloth.

  cistern.                           His hair, like a scrubbing-brush.

His cheeks, like a pair of wooden    His fur, such as above said.

  shoes.

Chapter 4.XXXII.

A continuation of Shrovetide’s countenance.

‘Tis a wonderful thing, continued Xenomanes, to hear and see the state of

Shrovetide.

If he chanced to spit, it was whole  When he trembled, it was large

  basketsful of goldfinches.           venison pasties.

If he blowed his nose, it was        When he did sweat, it was old

  pickled grigs.                       ling with butter sauce.

When he wept, it was ducks with      When he belched, it was bushels

  onion sauce.                         of oysters.

When he sneezed, it was whole        When he muttered, it was lawyers’

  tubfuls of mustard.                  revels.

When he coughed, it was boxes        When he hopped about, it was

  of marmalade.                        letters of licence and protec-

When he sobbed, it was water-          tions.

  cresses.                           When he stepped back, it was

When he yawned, it was potfuls         sea cockle-shells.

  of pickled peas.                   When he slabbered, it was com-

When he sighed, it was dried           mon ovens.

  neats’ tongues.                    When he was hoarse, it was an

When he whistled, it was a whole       entry of morrice-dancers.

  scuttleful of green apes.          When he broke wind, it was dun

When he snored, it was a whole         cows’ leather spatterdashes.

  panful of fried beans.             When he funked, it was washed-

When he frowned, it was soused         leather boots.

  hogs’ feet.                        When he scratched himself, it

When he spoke, it was coarse           was new proclamations.

  brown russet cloth; so little      When he sung, it was peas in

  it was like crimson silk, with       cods.

  which Parisatis desired that       When he evacuated, it was mush-

  the words of such as spoke to        rooms and morilles.

  her son Cyrus, King of Persia,     When he puffed, it was cabbages

  should be interwoven.                with oil, alias caules amb’olif.

When he blowed, it was indulg-       When he talked, it was the last

  ence money-boxes.                    year’s snow.

When he winked, it was buttered      When he dreamt, it was of a

  buns.                                cock and a bull.

When he grumbled, it was March       When he gave nothing, so much

  cats.                                for the bearer.

When he nodded, it was iron-         If he thought to himself, it was

  bound waggons.                       whimsies and maggots.

When he made mouths, it was          If he dozed, it was leases of lands.

  broken staves.

What is yet more strange, he used to work doing nothing, and did nothing

though he worked; caroused sleeping, and slept carousing, with his eyes

open, like the hares in our country, for fear of being taken napping by the

Chitterlings, his inveterate enemies; biting he laughed, and laughing bit;

eat nothing fasting, and fasted eating nothing; mumbled upon suspicion,

drank by imagination, swam on the tops of high steeples, dried his clothes

in ponds and rivers, fished in the air, and there used to catch decumane

lobsters; hunted at the bottom of the herring-pond, and caught there

ibexes, stamboucs, chamois, and other wild goats; used to put out the eyes

of all the crows which he took sneakingly; feared nothing but his own

shadow and the cries of fat kids; used to gad abroad some days, like a

truant schoolboy; played with the ropes of bells on festival days of

saints; made a mallet of his fist, and writ on hairy parchment

prognostications and almanacks with his huge pin-case.

Is that the gentleman? said Friar John.  He is my man; this is the very

fellow I looked for.  I will send him a challenge immediately.  This is,

said Pantagruel, a strange and monstrous sort of man, if I may call him a

man.  You put me in mind of the form and looks of Amodunt and Dissonance.

How were they made? said Friar John.  May I be peeled like a raw onion if

ever I heard a word of them.  I’ll tell you what I read of them in some

ancient apologues, replied Pantagruel.

Physis--that is to say, Nature--at her first burthen begat Beauty and

Harmony without carnal copulation, being of herself very fruitful and

prolific.  Antiphysis, who ever was the counter part of Nature,

immediately, out of a malicious spite against her for her beautiful and

honourable productions, in opposition begot Amodunt and Dissonance by

copulation with Tellumon.  Their heads were round like a football, and not

gently flatted on both sides, like the common shape of men.  Their ears

stood pricked up like those of asses; their eyes, as hard as those of

crabs, and without brows, stared out of their heads, fixed on bones like

those of our heels; their feet were round like tennis-balls; their arms and

hands turned backwards towards their shoulders; and they walked on their

heads, continually turning round like a ball, topsy-turvy, heels over head.

Yet--as you know that apes esteem their young the handsomest in the world

--Antiphysis extolled her offspring, and strove to prove that their shape

was handsomer and neater than that of the children of Physis, saying that

thus to have spherical heads and feet, and walk in a circular manner,

wheeling round, had something in it of the perfection of the divine power,

which makes all beings eternally turn in that fashion; and that to have our

feet uppermost, and the head below them, was to imitate the Creator of the

universe; the hair being like the roots, and the legs like the branches of

man; for trees are better planted by their roots than they could be by their

branches.  By this demonstration she implied that her children were much

more to be praised for being like a standing tree, than those of Physis,

that made a figure of a tree upside down.  As for the arms and hands, she

pretended to prove that they were more justly turned towards the shoulders,

because that part of the body ought not to be without defence, while the

forepart is duly fenced with teeth, which a man cannot only use to chew, but

also to defend himself against those things that offend him. Thus, by the

testimony and astipulation of the brute beasts, she drew all the witless

herd and mob of fools into her opinion, and was admired by all brainless and

nonsensical people.

Since that, she begot the hypocritical tribes of eavesdropping dissemblers,

superstitious pope-mongers, and priest-ridden bigots, the frantic

Pistolets, (the demoniacal Calvins, impostors of Geneva,) the scrapers of

benefices, apparitors with the devil in them, and other grinders and

squeezers of livings, herb-stinking hermits, gulligutted dunces of the

cowl, church vermin, false zealots, devourers of the substance of men, and

many more other deformed and ill-favoured monsters, made in spite of

nature.

Chapter 4.XXXIII.

How Pantagruel discovered a monstrous physeter, or whirlpool, near the Wild

Island.

About sunset, coming near the Wild Island, Pantagruel spied afar off a huge

monstrous physeter (a sort of whale, which some call a whirlpool), that

came right upon us, neighing, snorting, raised above the waves higher than

our main-tops, and spouting water all the way into the air before itself,

like a large river falling from a mountain.  Pantagruel showed it to the

pilot and to Xenomanes.

By the pilot’s advice the trumpets of the Thalamege were sounded to warn

all the fleet to stand close and look to themselves.  This alarm being

given, all the ships, galleons, frigates, brigantines, according to their

naval discipline, placed themselves in the order and figure of an Y

(upsilon), the letter of Pythagoras, as cranes do in their flight, and like

an acute angle, in whose cone and basis the Thalamege placed herself ready

to fight smartly.  Friar John with the grenadiers got on the forecastle.

Poor Panurge began to cry and howl worse than ever.  Babille-babou, said

he, shrugging up his shoulders, quivering all over with fear, there will be

the devil upon dun.  This is a worse business than that t’other day.  Let

us fly, let us fly; old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan, described by

the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.  It will swallow us

all, ships and men, shag, rag, and bobtail, like a dose of pills.  Alas! it

will make no more of us, and we shall hold no more room in its hellish

jaws, than a sugarplum in an ass’s throat.  Look, look, ‘tis upon us; let

us wheel off, whip it away, and get ashore.  I believe ‘tis the very

individual sea-monster that was formerly designed to devour Andromeda; we

are all undone.  Oh! for some valiant Perseus here now to kill the dog.

I’ll do its business presently, said Pantagruel; fear nothing.  Ods-belly,

said Panurge, remove the cause of my fear then.  When the devil would you

have a man be afraid but when there is so much cause?  If your destiny be

such as Friar John was saying a while ago, replied Pantagruel, you ought to

be afraid of Pyroeis, Eous, Aethon, and Phlegon, the sun’s coach-horses,

that breathe fire at the nostrils; and not of physeters, that spout nothing

but water at the snout and mouth.  Their water will not endanger your life;

and that element will rather save and preserve than hurt or endanger you.

Ay, ay, trust to that, and hang me, quoth Panurge; yours is a very pretty

fancy.  Ods-fish! did I not give you a sufficient account of the elements’

transmutation, and the blunders that are made of roast for boiled, and

boiled for roast?  Alas! here ‘tis; I’ll go hide myself below.  We are dead

men, every mother’s son of us.  I see upon our main-top that merciless hag

Atropos, with her scissors new ground, ready to cut our threads all at one

snip.  Oh! how dreadful and abominable thou art; thou hast drowned a good

many beside us, who never made their brags of it.  Did it but spout good,

brisk, dainty, delicious white wine, instead of this damned bitter salt

water, one might better bear with it, and there would be some cause to be

patient; like that English lord, who being doomed to die, and had leave to

choose what kind of death he would, chose to be drowned in a butt of

malmsey.  Here it is.  Oh, oh! devil!  Sathanas!  Leviathan!  I cannot

abide to look upon thee, thou art so abominably ugly.  Go to the bar, go

take the pettifoggers.

Chapter 4.XXXIV.

How the monstrous physeter was slain by Pantagruel.

The physeter, coming between the ships and the galleons, threw water by

whole tuns upon them, as if it had been the cataracts of the Nile in

Ethiopia.  On the other side, arrows, darts, gleaves, javelins, spears,

harping-irons, and partizans, flew upon it like hail.  Friar John did not

spare himself in it.  Panurge was half dead for fear.  The artillery roared

and thundered like mad, and seemed to gall it in good earnest, but did but

little good; for the great iron and brass cannon-shot entering its skin

seemed to melt like tiles in the sun.

Pantagruel then, considering the weight and exigency of the matter,

stretched out his arms and showed what he could do.  You tell us, and it is

recorded, that Commudus, the Roman emperor, could shoot with a bow so

dexterously that at a good distance he would let fly an arrow through a

child’s fingers and never touch them.  You also tell us of an Indian

archer, who lived when Alexander the Great conquered India, and was so

skilful in drawing the bow, that at a considerable distance he would shoot

his arrows through a ring, though they were three cubits long, and their

iron so large and weighty that with them he used to pierce steel cutlasses,

thick shields, steel breastplates, and generally what he did hit, how firm,

resisting, hard, and strong soever it were.  You also tell us wonders of

the industry of the ancient Franks, who were preferred to all others in

point of archery; and when they hunted either black or dun beasts, used to

rub the head of their arrows with hellebore, because the flesh of the

venison struck with such an arrow was more tender, dainty, wholesome, and

delicious--paring off, nevertheless, the part that was touched round about.

You also talk of the Parthians, who used to shoot backwards more

dexterously than other nations forwards; and also celebrate the skill of

the Scythians in that art, who sent once to Darius, King of Persia, an

ambassador that made him a present of a bird, a frog, a mouse, and five

arrows, without speaking one word; and being asked what those presents

meant, and if he had commission to say anything, answered that he had not;

which puzzled and gravelled Darius very much, till Gobrias, one of the

seven captains that had killed the magi, explained it, saying to Darius:

By these gifts and offerings the Scythians silently tell you that except

the Persians like birds fly up to heaven, or like mice hide themselves near

the centre of the earth, or like frogs dive to the very bottom of ponds and

lakes, they shall be destroyed by the power and arrows of the Scythians.

The noble Pantagruel was, without comparison, more admirable yet in the art

of shooting and darting; for with his dreadful piles and darts, nearly

resembling the huge beams that support the bridges of Nantes, Saumur,

Bergerac, and at Paris the millers’ and the changers’ bridges, in length,

size, weight, and iron-work, he at a mile’s distance would open an oyster

and never touch the edges; he would snuff a candle without putting it out;

would shoot a magpie in the eye; take off a boot’s under-sole, or a

riding-hood’s lining, without soiling them a bit; turn over every leaf

of Friar John’s breviary, one after another, and not tear one.

With such darts, of which there was good store in the ship, at the first

blow he ran the physeter in at the forehead so furiously that he pierced

both its jaws and tongue; so that from that time to this it no more opened

its guttural trapdoor, nor drew and spouted water.  At the second blow he

put out its right eye, and at the third its left; and we had all the

pleasure to see the physeter bearing those three horns in its forehead,

somewhat leaning forwards in an equilateral triangle.

Meanwhile it turned about to and fro, staggering and straying like one

stunned, blinded, and taking his leave of the world.  Pantagruel, not

satisfied with this, let fly another dart, which took the monster under the

tail likewise sloping; then with three other on the chine, in a

perpendicular line, divided its flank from the tail to the snout at an

equal distance.  Then he larded it with fifty on one side, and after that,

to make even work, he darted as many on its other side; so that the body of

the physeter seemed like the hulk of a galleon with three masts, joined by

a competent dimension of its beams, as if they had been the ribs and

chain-wales of the keel; which was a pleasant sight.  The physeter then

giving up the ghost, turned itself upon its back, as all dead fishes do; and

being thus overturned, with the beams and darts upside down in the sea, it

seemed a scolopendra or centipede, as that serpent is described by the

ancient sage Nicander.

Chapter 4.XXXV.

How Pantagruel went on shore in the Wild Island, the ancient abode of the

Chitterlings.

The boat’s crew of the ship Lantern towed the physeter ashore on the

neighbouring shore, which happened to be the Wild Island, to make an

anatomical dissection of its body and save the fat of its kidneys, which,

they said, was very useful and necessary for the cure of a certain

distemper, which they called want of money.  As for Pantagruel, he took no

manner of notice of the monster; for he had seen many such, nay, bigger, in

the Gallic ocean.  Yet he condescended to land in the Wild Island, to dry

and refresh some of his men (whom the physeter had wetted and bedaubed), at

a small desert seaport towards the south, seated near a fine pleasant

grove, out of which flowed a delicious brook of fresh, clear, and purling

water.  Here they pitched their tents and set up their kitchens; nor did

they spare fuel.

Everyone having shifted as they thought fit, Friar John rang the bell, and

the cloth was immediately laid, and supper brought in.  Pantagruel eating

cheerfully with his men, much about the second course perceived certain

little sly Chitterlings clambering up a high tree near the pantry, as still

as so many mice.  Which made him ask Xenomanes what kind of creatures these

were, taking them for squirrels, weasels, martins, or ermines.  They are

Chitterlings, replied Xenomanes.  This is the Wild Island of which I spoke

to you this morning; there hath been an irreconcilable war this long time

between them and Shrovetide, their malicious and ancient enemy.  I believe

that the noise of the guns which we fired at the physeter hath alarmed

them, and made them fear their enemy was come with his forces to surprise

them, or lay the island waste, as he hath often attempted to do; though he

still came off but bluely, by reason of the care and vigilance of the

Chitterlings, who (as Dido said to Aeneas’s companions that would have

landed at Carthage without her leave or knowledge) were forced to watch and

stand upon their guard, considering the malice of their enemy and the

neighbourhood of his territories.

Pray, dear friend, said Pantagruel, if you find that by some honest means

we may bring this war to an end, and reconcile them together, give me

notice of it; I will use my endeavours in it with all my heart, and spare

nothing on my side to moderate and accommodate the points in dispute

between both parties.

That’s impossible at this time, answered Xenomanes.  About four years ago,

passing incognito by this country, I endeavoured to make a peace, or at

least a long truce among them; and I had certainly brought them to be good

friends and neighbours if both one and the other parties would have yielded

to one single article.  Shrovetide would not include in the treaty of peace

the wild puddings nor the highland sausages, their ancient gossips and

confederates.  The Chitterlings demanded that the fort of Cacques might be

under their government, as is the Castle of Sullouoir, and that a parcel of

I don’t know what stinking villains, murderers, robbers, that held it then,

should be expelled.  But they could not agree in this, and the terms that

were offered seemed too hard to either party.  So the treaty broke off, and

nothing was done.  Nevertheless, they became less severe, and gentler

enemies than they were before; but since the denunciation of the national

Council of Chesil, whereby they were roughly handled, hampered, and cited;

whereby also Shrovetide was declared filthy, beshitten, and berayed, in

case he made any league or agreement with them; they are grown wonderfully

inveterate, incensed, and obstinate against one another, and there is no

way to remedy it.  You might sooner reconcile cats and rats, or hounds and

hares together.

Chapter 4.XXXVI.

How the wild Chitterlings laid an ambuscado for Pantagruel.

While Xenomanes was saying this, Friar John spied twenty or thirty young

slender-shaped Chitterlings posting as fast as they could towards their

town, citadel, castle, and fort of Chimney, and said to Pantagruel, I smell

a rat; there will be here the devil upon two sticks, or I am much out.

These worshipful Chitterlings may chance to mistake you for Shrovetide,

though you are not a bit like him.  Let us once in our lives leave our

junketing for a while, and put ourselves in a posture to give ‘em a

bellyful of fighting, if they would be at that sport.  There can be no

false Latin in this, said Xenomanes; Chitterlings are still Chitterlings,

always double-hearted and treacherous.

Pantagruel then arose from table to visit and scour the thicket, and

returned presently; having discovered, on the left, an ambuscade of squab

Chitterlings; and on the right, about half a league from thence, a large

body of huge giant-like armed Chitterlings ranged in battalia along a

little hill, and marching furiously towards us at the sound of bagpipes,

sheep’s paunches, and bladders, the merry fifes and drums, trumpets, and

clarions, hoping to catch us as Moss caught his mare.  By the conjecture of

seventy-eight standards which we told, we guessed their number to be two

and forty thousand, at a modest computation.

Their order, proud gait, and resolute looks made us judge that they were

none of your raw, paltry links, but old warlike Chitterlings and Sausages.

From the foremost ranks to the colours they were all armed cap-a-pie with

small arms, as we reckoned them at a distance, yet very sharp and

case-hardened.  Their right and left wings were lined with a great number of

forest puddings, heavy pattipans, and horse sausages, all of them tall and

proper islanders, banditti, and wild.

Pantagruel was very much daunted, and not without cause; though Epistemon

told him that it might be the use and custom of the Chitterlingonians to

welcome and receive thus in arms their foreign friends, as the noble kings

of France are received and saluted at their first coming into the chief

cities of the kingdom after their advancement to the crown.  Perhaps, said

he, it may be the usual guard of the queen of the place, who, having notice

given her by the junior Chitterlings of the forlorn hope whom you saw on

the tree, of the arrival of your fine and pompous fleet, hath judged that

it was without doubt some rich and potent prince, and is come to visit you

in person.

Pantagruel, little trusting to this, called a council, to have their advice

at large in this doubtful case.  He briefly showed them how this way of

reception with arms had often, under colour of compliment and friendship,

been fatal.  Thus, said he, the Emperor Antonius Caracalla at one time

destroyed the citizens of Alexandria, and at another time cut off the

attendants of Artabanus, King of Persia, under colour of marrying his

daughter, which, by the way, did not pass unpunished, for a while after

this cost him his life.

Thus Jacob’s children destroyed the Sichemites, to revenge the rape of

their sister Dinah.  By such another hypocritical trick Gallienus, the

Roman emperor, put to death the military men in Constantinople.  Thus,

under colour of friendship, Antonius enticed Artavasdes, King of Armenia;

then, having caused him to be bound in heavy chains and shackled, at last

put him to death.

We find a thousand such instances in history; and King Charles VI. is

justly commended for his prudence to this day, in that, coming back

victorious over the Ghenters and other Flemings to his good city of Paris,

and when he came to Bourget, a league from thence, hearing that the

citizens with their mallets--whence they got the name of Maillotins--were

marched out of town in battalia, twenty thousand strong, he would not go

into the town till they had laid down their arms and retired to their

respective homes; though they protested to him that they had taken arms

with no other design than to receive him with the greater demonstration of

honour and respect.

Chapter 4.XXXVII.

How Pantagruel sent for Colonel Maul-chitterling and Colonel Cut-pudding;

with a discourse well worth your hearing about the names of places and

persons.

The resolution of the council was that, let things be how they would, it

behoved the Pantagruelists to stand upon their guard.  Therefore Carpalin

and Gymnast were ordered by Pantagruel to go for the soldiers that were on

board the Cup galley, under the command of Colonel Maul-chitterling, and

those on board the Vine-tub frigate, under the command of Colonel

Cut-pudding the younger.  I will ease Gymnast of that trouble, said Panurge,

who wanted to be upon the run; you may have occasion for him here.  By

this worthy frock of mine, quoth Friar John, thou hast a mind to slip thy

neck out of the collar and absent thyself from the fight, thou

white-livered son of a dunghill!  Upon my virginity thou wilt never come

back. Well, there can be no great loss in thee; for thou wouldst do nothing

here but howl, bray, weep, and dishearten the good soldiers.  I will

certainly come back, said Panurge, Friar John, my ghostly father, and

speedily too; do but take care that these plaguy Chitterlings do not board

our ships. All the while you will be a-fighting I will pray heartily for

your victory, after the example of the valiant captain and guide of the

people of Israel, Moses. Having said this, he wheeled off.

Then said Epistemon to Pantagruel:  The denomination of these two colonels

of yours, Maul-chitterling and Cut-pudding, promiseth us assurance,

success, and victory, if those Chitterlings should chance to set upon us.

You take it rightly, said Pantagruel, and it pleaseth me to see you foresee

and prognosticate our victory by the names of our colonels.

This way of foretelling by names is not new; it was in old times celebrated

and religiously observed by the Pythagoreans.  Several great princes and

emperors have formerly made good use of it.  Octavianus Augustus, second

emperor of the Romans, meeting on a day a country fellow named Eutychus

--that is, fortunate--driving an ass named Nicon--that is, in Greek,

Victorian--moved by the signification of the ass’s and ass-driver’s names,

remained assured of all prosperity and victory.

The Emperor Vespasian being once all alone at prayers in the temple of

Serapis, at the sight and unexpected coming of a certain servant of his

named Basilides--that is, royal--whom he had left sick a great way behind,

took hopes and assurance of obtaining the empire of the Romans.  Regilian

was chosen emperor by the soldiers for no other reason but the

signification of his name.  See the Cratylus of the divine Plato.  (By my

thirst, I will read it, said Rhizotome; I hear you so often quote it.)  See

how the Pythagoreans, by reason of the names and numbers, conclude that

Patroclus was to fall by the hand of Hector; Hector by Achilles; Achilles

by Paris; Paris by Philoctetes.  I am quite lost in my understanding when I

reflect upon the admirable invention of Pythagoras, who by the number,

either even or odd, of the syllables of every name, would tell you of what

side a man was lame, hulch-backed, blind, gouty, troubled with the palsy,

pleurisy, or any other distemper incident to humankind; allotting even

numbers to the left (Motteux reads--‘even numbers to the Right, and odd

ones to the Left.’), and odd ones to the right side of the body.

Indeed, said Epistemon, I saw this way of syllabizing tried at Xaintes at a

general procession, in the presence of that good, virtuous, learned and

just president, Brian Vallee, Lord of Douhait.  When there went by a man or

woman that was either lame, blind of one eye, or humpbacked, he had an

account brought him of his or her name; and if the syllables of the name

were of an odd number, immediately, without seeing the persons, he declared

them to be deformed, blind, lame, or crooked of the right side; and of the

left, if they were even in number; and such indeed we ever found them.

By this syllabical invention, said Pantagruel, the learned have affirmed

that Achilles kneeling was wounded by the arrow of Paris in the right heel,

for his name is of odd syllables (here we ought to observe that the

ancients used to kneel the right foot); and that Venus was also wounded

before Troy in the left hand, for her name in Greek is Aphrodite, of four

syllables; Vulcan lamed of his left foot for the same reason; Philip, King

of Macedon, and Hannibal, blind of the right eye; not to speak of

sciaticas, broken bellies, and hemicranias, which may be distinguished by

this Pythagorean reason.

But returning to names:  do but consider how Alexander the Great, son of

King Philip, of whom we spoke just now, compassed his undertaking merely by

the interpretation of a name.  He had besieged the strong city of Tyre, and

for several weeks battered it with all his power; but all in vain.  His

engines and attempts were still baffled by the Tyrians, which made him

finally resolve to raise the siege, to his great grief; foreseeing the

great stain which such a shameful retreat would be to his reputation.  In

this anxiety and agitation of mind he fell asleep and dreamed that a satyr

was come into his tent, capering, skipping, and tripping it up and down,

with his goatish hoofs, and that he strove to lay hold on him.  But the

satyr still slipped from him, till at last, having penned him up into a

corner, he took him.  With this he awoke, and telling his dream to the

philosophers and sages of his court, they let him know that it was a

promise of victory from the gods, and that he should soon be master of

Tyre; the word satyros divided in two being sa Tyros, and signifying Tyre

is thine; and in truth, at the next onset, he took the town by storm, and

by a complete victory reduced that stubborn people to subjection.

On the other hand, see how, by the signification of one word, Pompey fell

into despair.  Being overcome by Caesar at the battle of Pharsalia, he had

no other way left to escape but by flight; which attempting by sea, he

arrived near the island of Cyprus, and perceived on the shore near the city

of Paphos a beautiful and stately palace; now asking the pilot what was the

name of it, he told him that it was called kakobasilea, that is, evil king;

which struck such a dread and terror in him that he fell into despair, as

being assured of losing shortly his life; insomuch that his complaints,

sighs, and groans were heard by the mariners and other passengers.  And

indeed, a while after, a certain strange peasant, called Achillas, cut off

his head.

To all these examples might be added what happened to L. Paulus Emilius

when the senate elected him imperator, that is, chief of the army which

they sent against Perses, King of Macedon.  That evening returning home to

prepare for his expedition, and kissing a little daughter of his called

Trasia, she seemed somewhat sad to him.  What is the matter, said he, my

chicken?  Why is my Trasia thus sad and melancholy?  Daddy, replied the

child, Persa is dead.  This was the name of a little bitch which she loved

mightily.  Hearing this, Paulus took assurance of a victory over Perses.

If time would permit us to discourse of the sacred Hebrew writ, we might

find a hundred noted passages evidently showing how religiously they

observed proper names and their significations.

He had hardly ended this discourse, when the two colonels arrived with

their soldiers, all well armed and resolute.  Pantagruel made them a short

speech, entreating them to behave themselves bravely in case they were

attacked; for he could not yet believe that the Chitterlings were so

treacherous; but he bade them by no means to give the first offence, giving

them Carnival for the watchword.

Chapter 4.XXXVIII.

How Chitterlings are not to be slighted by men.

You shake your empty noddles now, jolly topers, and do not believe what I

tell you here, any more than if it were some tale of a tub.  Well, well, I

cannot help it.  Believe it if you will; if you won’t, let it alone.  For

my part, I very well know what I say.  It was in the Wild Island, in our

voyage to the Holy Bottle.  I tell you the time and place; what would you

have more?  I would have you call to mind the strength of the ancient

giants that undertook to lay the high mountain Pelion on the top of Ossa,

and set among those the shady Olympus, to dash out the gods’ brains,

unnestle them, and scour their heavenly lodgings.  Theirs was no small

strength, you may well think, and yet they were nothing but Chitterlings

from the waist downwards, or at least serpents, not to tell a lie for the

matter.

The serpent that tempted Eve, too, was of the Chitterling kind, and yet it

is recorded of him that he was more subtle than any beast of the field.

Even so are Chitterlings.  Nay, to this very hour they hold in some

universities that this same tempter was the Chitterling called Ithyphallus,

into which was transformed bawdy Priapus, arch-seducer of females in

paradise, that is, a garden, in Greek.

Pray now tell me who can tell but that the Swiss, now so bold and warlike,

were formerly Chitterlings?  For my part, I would not take my oath to the

contrary.  The Himantopodes, a nation very famous in Ethiopia, according to

Pliny’s description, are Chitterlings, and nothing else.  If all this will

not satisfy your worships, or remove your incredulity, I would have you

forthwith (I mean drinking first, that nothing be done rashly) visit

Lusignan, Parthenay, Vouant, Mervant, and Ponzauges in Poitou.  There you

will find a cloud of witnesses, not of your affidavit-men of the right

stamp, but credible time out of mind, that will take their corporal oath,

on Rigome’s knuckle-bone, that Melusina their founder or foundress, which

you please, was woman from the head to the prick-purse, and thence

downwards was a serpentine Chitterling, or if you’ll have it otherwise, a

Chitterlingdized serpent.  She nevertheless had a genteel and noble gait,

imitated to this very day by your hop-merchants of Brittany, in their

paspie and country dances.

What do you think was the cause of Erichthonius’s being the first inventor

of coaches, litters, and chariots?  Nothing but because Vulcan had begot

him with Chitterlingdized legs, which to hide he chose to ride in a litter,

rather than on horseback; for Chitterlings were not yet in esteem at that

time.

The Scythian nymph, Ora, was likewise half woman and half Chitterling, and

yet seemed so beautiful to Jupiter that nothing could serve him but he must

give her a touch of his godship’s kindness; and accordingly he had a brave

boy by her, called Colaxes; and therefore I would have you leave off

shaking your empty noddles at this, as if it were a story, and firmly

believe that nothing is truer than the gospel.

Chapter 4.XXXIX.

How Friar John joined with the cooks to fight the Chitterlings.

Friar John seeing these furious Chitterlings thus boldly march up, said to

Pantagruel, Here will be a rare battle of hobby-horses, a pretty kind of

puppet-show fight, for aught I see.  Oh! what mighty honour and wonderful

glory will attend our victory!  I would have you only be a bare spectator

of this fight, and for anything else leave me and my men to deal with them.

What men? said Pantagruel.  Matter of breviary, replied Friar John.  How

came Potiphar, who was head-cook of Pharaoh’s kitchens, he that bought

Joseph, and whom the said Joseph might have made a cuckold if he had not

been a Joseph; how came he, I say, to be made general of all the horse in

the kingdom of Egypt?  Why was Nabuzardan, King Nebuchadnezzar’s head-cook,

chosen to the exclusion of all other captains to besiege and destroy

Jerusalem?  I hear you, replied Pantagruel.  By St. Christopher’s whiskers,

said Friar John, I dare lay a wager that it was because they had formerly

engaged Chitterlings, or men as little valued; whom to rout, conquer, and

destroy, cooks are without comparison more fit than cuirassiers and

gendarmes armed at all points, or all the horse and foot in the world.

You put me in mind, said Pantagruel, of what is written amongst the

facetious and merry sayings of Cicero.  During the more than civil wars

between Caesar and Pompey, though he was much courted by the first, he

naturally leaned more to the side of the latter.  Now one day hearing that

the Pompeians in a certain rencontre had lost a great many men, he took a

fancy to visit their camp.  There he perceived little strength, less

courage, but much disorder.  From that time, foreseeing that things would

go ill with them, as it since happened, he began to banter now one and then

another, and be very free of his cutting jests; so some of Pompey’s

captains, playing the good fellows to show their assurance, told him, Do

you see how many eagles we have yet?  (They were then the device of the

Romans in war.)  They might be of use to you, replied Cicero, if you had to

do with magpies.

Thus, seeing we are to fight Chitterlings, pursued Pantagruel, you infer

thence that it is a culinary war, and have a mind to join with the cooks.

Well, do as you please, I’ll stay here in the meantime, and wait for the

event of the rumpus.

Friar John went that very moment among the sutlers, into the cooks’ tents,

and told them in a pleasing manner:  I must see you crowned with honour and

triumph this day, my lads; to your arms are reserved such achievements as

never yet were performed within the memory of man.  Ods-belly, do they make

nothing of the valiant cooks?  Let us go fight yonder fornicating

Chitterlings!  I’ll be your captain.  But first let’s drink, boys.  Come

on! let us be of good cheer.  Noble captain, returned the kitchen tribe,

this was spoken like yourself; bravely offered.  Huzza! we are all at your

excellency’s command, and we live and die by you.  Live, live, said Friar

John, a God’s name; but die by no means.  That is the Chitterlings’ lot;

they shall have their bellyful of it.  Come on then, let us put ourselves

in order; Nabuzardan’s the word.

Chapter 4.XL.

How Friar John fitted up the sow; and of the valiant cooks that went into

it.

Then, by Friar John’s order, the engineers and their workmen fitted up the

great sow that was in the ship Leathern Bottle.  It was a wonderful

machine, so contrived that, by means of large engines that were round about

it in rows, it throw’d forked iron bars and four-squared steel bolts; and

in its hold two hundred men at least could easily fight, and be sheltered.

It was made after the model of the sow of Riole, by the means of which

Bergerac was retaken from the English in the reign of Charles the Sixth.

Here are the names of the noble and valiant cooks who went into the sow, as

the Greeks did into the Trojan horse:

Sour-sauce.        Crisp-pig.         Carbonado.

Sweet-meat.        Greasy-slouch.     Sop-in-pan.

Greedy-gut.        Fat-gut.           Pick-fowl.

Liquorice-chops.   Bray-mortar.       Mustard-pot.

Soused-pork.       Lick-sauce.        Hog’s-haslet.

Slap-sauce.        Hog’s-foot.        Chopped-phiz.

Cock-broth.        Hodge-podge.       Gallimaufry.

Slipslop.

All these noble cooks in their coat-of-arms did bear, in a field gules, a

larding-pin vert, charged with a chevron argent.

Lard, hog’s-lard.  Pinch-lard.        Snatch-lard.

Nibble-lard.       Top-lard.          Gnaw-lard.

Filch-lard.        Pick-lard.         Scrape-lard.

Fat-lard.          Save-lard.         Chew-lard.

Gaillard (by syncope) born near Rambouillet.  The said culinary doctor’s

name was Gaillardlard, in the same manner as you use to say idolatrous for

idololatrous.

Stiff-lard.        Cut-lard.          Waste-lard.

Watch-lard.        Mince-lard.        Ogle-lard.

Sweet-lard.        Dainty-lard.       Weigh-lard.

Eat-lard.          Fresh-lard.        Gulch-lard.

Snap-lard.         Rusty-lard.        Eye-lard.

Catch-lard.

Names unknown among the Marranes and Jews.

Ballocky.          Thirsty.           Porridge-pot.

Pick-sallat.       Kitchen-stuff.     Lick-dish.

Broil-rasher.      Verjuice.          Salt-gullet.

Coney-skin.        Save-dripping.     Snail-dresser.

Dainty-chops.      Watercress.        Soup-monger.

Pie-wright.        Scrape-turnip.     Brewis-belly.

Pudding-pan.       Trivet.            Chine-picker.

Toss-pot.          Monsieur Ragout.   Suck-gravy.

Mustard-sauce.     Crack-pipkin.      Macaroon.

Claret-sauce.      Scrape-pot.        Skewer-maker.

Swill-broth.

Smell-smock.  He was afterwards taken from the kitchen and removed to

chamber-practice, for the service of the noble Cardinal Hunt-venison.

Rot-roast.         Hog’s gullet.      Fox-tail.

Dish-clout.        Sirloin.           Fly-flap.

Save-suet.         Spit-mutton.       Old Grizzle.

Fire-fumbler.      Fritter-frier.     Ruff-belly.

Pillicock.         Flesh-smith.       Saffron-sauce.

Long-tool.         Cram-gut.          Strutting-tom.

Prick-pride.       Tuzzy-mussy.       Slashed-snout.

Prick-madam.       Jacket-liner.      Smutty-face.

Pricket.           Guzzle-drink.

Mondam, that first invented madam’s sauce, and for that discovery was thus

called in the Scotch-French dialect.

Loblolly.          Sloven.            Trencher-man.

Slabber-chops.     Swallow-pitcher.   Goodman Goosecap.

Scum-pot.          Wafer-monger.      Munch-turnip.

Gully-guts.        Snap-gobbet.       Pudding-bag.

Rinse-pot.         Scurvy-phiz.       Pig-sticker.

Drink-spiller.

Robert.  He invented Robert’s sauce, so good and necessary for roasted

coneys, ducks, fresh pork, poached eggs, salt fish, and a thousand other

such dishes.

Cold-eel.          Frying-pan.        Big-snout.

Thornback.         Man of dough.      Lick-finger.

Gurnard.           Sauce-doctor.      Tit-bit.

Grumbling-gut.     Waste-butter.      Sauce-box.

Alms-scrip.        Shitbreech.        All-fours.

Taste-all.         Thick-brawn.       Whimwham.

Scrap-merchant.    Tom T--d.          Baste-roast.

Belly-timberman.   Mouldy-crust.      Gaping-hoyden.

Hashee.            Hasty.             Calf’s-pluck.

Frig-palate.       Red-herring.       Leather-breeches.

Powdering-tub.     Cheesecake.

All these noble cooks went into the sow, merry, cheery, hale, brisk, old

dogs at mischief, and ready to fight stoutly.  Friar John ever and anon

waving his huge scimitar, brought up the rear, and double-locked the doors

on the inside.

Chapter 4.XLI.

How Pantagruel broke the Chitterlings at the knees.

The Chitterlings advanced so near that Pantagruel perceived that they

stretched their arms and already began to charge their lances, which caused

him to send Gymnast to know what they meant, and why they thus, without the

least provocation, came to fall upon their old trusty friends, who had

neither said nor done the least ill thing to them.  Gymnast being advanced

near their front, bowed very low, and said to them as loud as ever he

could:  We are friends, we are friends; all, all of us your friends, yours,

and at your command; we are for Carnival, your old confederate.  Some have

since told me that he mistook, and said cavernal instead of carnival.

Whatever it was, the word was no sooner out of his mouth but a huge little

squab Sausage, starting out of the front of their main body, would have

griped him by the collar.  By the helmet of Mars, said Gymnast, I will

swallow thee; but thou shalt only come in in chips and slices; for, big as

thou art, thou couldst never come in whole.  This spoke, he lugs out his

trusty sword, Kiss-mine-arse (so he called it) with both his fists, and cut

the Sausage in twain.  Bless me, how fat the foul thief was! it puts me in

mind of the huge bull of Berne, that was slain at Marignan when the drunken

Swiss were so mauled there.  Believe me, it had little less than four

inches’ lard on its paunch.

The Sausage’s job being done, a crowd of others flew upon Gymnast, and had

most scurvily dragged him down when Pantagruel with his men came up to his

relief.  Then began the martial fray, higgledy-piggledy.  Maul-chitterling

did maul chitterlings; Cut-pudding did cut puddings; Pantagruel did break

the Chitterlings at the knees; Friar John played at least in sight within

his sow, viewing and observing all things; when the Pattipans that lay in

ambuscade most furiously sallied out upon Pantagruel.

Friar John, who lay snug all this while, by that time perceiving the rout

and hurlyburly, set open the doors of his sow and sallied out with his

merry Greeks, some of them armed with iron spits, others with andirons,

racks, fire-shovels, frying-pans, kettles, grid-irons, oven forks, tongs,

dripping pans, brooms, iron pots, mortars, pestles, all in battle array,

like so many housebreakers, hallooing and roaring out all together most

frightfully, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan, Nabuzardan.  Thus shouting and hooting

they fought like dragons, and charged through the Pattipans and Sausages.

The Chitterlings perceiving this fresh reinforcement, and that the others

would be too hard for ‘em, betook themselves to their heels, scampering off

with full speed, as if the devil had come for them.  Friar John, with an

iron crow, knocked them down as fast as hops; his men, too, were not

sparing on their side.  Oh, what a woeful sight it was! the field was all

over strewed with heaps of dead or wounded Chitterlings; and history

relates that had not heaven had a hand in it, the Chitterling tribe had

been totally routed out of the world by the culinary champions.  But there

happened a wonderful thing, you may believe as little or as much of it as

you please.

From the north flew towards us a huge, fat, thick, grizzly swine, with long

and large wings, like those of a windmill; its plumes red crimson, like

those of a phenicoptere (which in Languedoc they call flaman); its eyes

were red, and flaming like a carbuncle; its ears green, like a Prasin

emerald; its teeth like a topaz; its tail long and black, like jet; its

feet white, diaphanous and transparent like a diamond, somewhat broad, and

of the splay kind, like those of geese, and as Queen Dick’s used to be at

Toulouse in the days of yore.  About its neck it wore a gold collar, round

which were some Ionian characters, whereof I could pick out but two words,

US ATHENAN, hog-teaching Minerva.

The sky was clear before; but at that monster’s appearance it changed so

mightily for the worse that we were all amazed at it.  As soon as the

Chitterlings perceived the flying hog, down they all threw their weapons

and fell on their knees, lifting up their hands joined together, without

speaking one word, in a posture of adoration.  Friar John and his party

kept on mincing, felling, braining, mangling, and spitting the Chitterlings

like mad; but Pantagruel sounded a retreat, and all hostility ceased.

The monster having several times hovered backwards and forwards between the

two armies, with a tail-shot voided above twenty-seven butts of mustard on

the ground; then flew away through the air, crying all the while, Carnival,

Carnival, Carnival.

Chapter 4.XLII.

How Pantagruel held a treaty with Niphleseth, Queen of the Chitterlings.

The monster being out of sight, and the two armies remaining silent,

Pantagruel demanded a parley with the lady Niphleseth, Queen of the

Chitterlings, who was in her chariot by the standards; and it was easily

granted.  The queen alighted, courteously received Pantagruel, and was glad

to see him.  Pantagruel complained to her of this breach of peace; but she

civilly made her excuse, telling him that a false information had caused

all this mischief; her spies having brought her word that Shrovetide, their

mortal foe, was landed, and spent his time in examining the urine of

physeters.

She therefore entreated him to pardon them their offence, telling him that

sir-reverence was sooner found in Chitterlings than gall; and offering, for

herself and all her successors, to hold of him and his the whole island and

country; to obey him in all his commands, be friends to his friends, and

foes to his foes; and also to send every year, as an acknowledgment of

their homage, a tribute of seventy-eight thousand royal Chitterlings, to

serve him at his first course at table six months in the year; which was

punctually performed.  For the next day she sent the aforesaid quantity of

royal Chitterlings to the good Gargantua, under the conduct of young

Niphleseth, infanta of the island.

The good Gargantua made a present of them to the great King of Paris.  But

by change of air, and for want of mustard (the natural balsam and restorer

of Chitterlings), most of them died.  By the great king’s particular grant

they were buried in heaps in a part of Paris to this day called La Rue

pavee d’Andouilles, the street paved with Chitterlings.  At the request of

the ladies at his court young Niphleseth was preserved, honourably used,

and since that married to heart’s content; and was the mother of many

children, for which heaven be praised.

Pantagruel civilly thanked the queen, forgave all offences, refused the

offer she had made of her country, and gave her a pretty little knife.

After that he asked several nice questions concerning the apparition of

that flying hog.  She answered that it was the idea of Carnival, their

tutelary god in time of war, first founder and original of all the

Chitterling race; for which reason he resembled a hog, for Chitterlings

drew their extraction from hogs.

Pantagruel asking to what purpose and curative indication he had voided so

much mustard on the earth, the queen replied that mustard was their

sanc-greal and celestial balsam, of which, laying but a little in the wounds

of the fallen Chitterlings, in a very short time the wounded were healed and

the dead restored to life.  Pantagruel held no further discourse with the

queen, but retired a-shipboard.  The like did all the boon companions, with

their implements of destruction and their huge sow.

Chapter 4.XLIII.

How Pantagruel went into the island of Ruach.

Two days after we arrived at the island of Ruach; and I swear to you, by

the celestial hen and chickens, that I found the way of living of the

people so strange and wonderful that I can’t, for the heart’s blood of me,

half tell it you.  They live on nothing but wind, eat nothing but wind, and

drink nothing but wind.  They have no other houses but weathercocks.  They

sow no other seeds but the three sorts of windflowers, rue, and herbs that

may make one break wind to the purpose; these scour them off carefully.

The common sort of people to feed themselves make use of feather, paper, or

linen fans, according to their abilities.  As for the rich, they live by

the means of windmills.

When they would have some noble treat, the tables are spread under one or

two windmills.  There they feast as merry as beggars, and during the meal

their whole talk is commonly of the goodness, excellency, salubrity, and

rarity of winds; as you, jolly topers, in your cups philosophize and argue

upon wines.  The one praises the south-east, the other the south-west; this

the west and by south, and this the east and by north; another the west,

and another the east; and so of the rest.  As for lovers and amorous

sparks, no gale for them like a smock-gale.  For the sick they use bellows

as we use clysters among us.

Oh! said to me a little diminutive swollen bubble, that I had now but a

bladderful of that same Languedoc wind which they call Cierce.  The famous

physician, Scurron, passing one day by this country, was telling us that it

is so strong that it will make nothing of overturning a loaded waggon.  Oh!

what good would it not do my Oedipodic leg.  The biggest are not the best;

but, said Panurge, rather would I had here a large butt of that same good

Languedoc wine that grows at Mirevaux, Canteperdrix, and Frontignan.

I saw a good likely sort of a man there, much resembling Ventrose, tearing

and fuming in a grievous fret with a tall burly groom and a pimping little

page of his, laying them on, like the devil, with a buskin.  Not knowing

the cause of his anger, at first I thought that all this was by the

doctor’s advice, as being a thing very healthy to the master to be in a

passion and to his man to be banged for it.  But at last I heard him taxing

his man with stealing from him, like a rogue as he was, the better half of

a large leathern bag of an excellent southerly wind, which he had carefully

laid up, like a hidden reserve, against the cold weather.

They neither exonerate, dung, piss, nor spit in that island; but, to make

amends, they belch, fizzle, funk, and give tail-shots in abundance.  They

are troubled with all manner of distempers; and, indeed, all distempers are

engendered and proceed from ventosities, as Hippocrates demonstrates, lib.

De Flatibus.  But the most epidemical among them is the wind-cholic.  The

remedies which they use are large clysters, whereby they void store of

windiness.  They all die of dropsies and tympanies, the men farting and the

women fizzling; so that their soul takes her leave at the back-door.

Some time after, walking in the island, we met three hairbrained airy

fellows, who seemed mightily puffed up, and went to take their pastime and

view the plovers, who live on the same diet as themselves, and abound in

the island.  I observed that, as your true topers when they travel carry

flasks, leathern bottles, and small runlets along with them, so each of

them had at his girdle a pretty little pair of bellows.  If they happened

to want wind, by the help of those pretty bellows they immediately drew

some, fresh and cool, by attraction and reciprocal expulsion; for, as you

well know, wind essentially defined is nothing but fluctuating and agitated

air.

A while after, we were commanded, in the king’s name, not to receive for

three hours any man or woman of the country on board our ships; some having

stolen from him a rousing fart, of the very individual wind which old

goodman Aeolus the snorer gave Ulysses to conduct his ship whenever it

should happen to be becalmed.  Which fart the king kept religiously, like

another sanc-greal, and performed a world of wonderful cures with it in

many dangerous diseases, letting loose and distributing to the patient only

as much of it as might frame a virginal fart; which is, if you must know,

what our sanctimonials, alias nuns, in their dialect call ringing

backwards.

Chapter 4.XLIV.

How small rain lays a high wind.

Pantagruel commended their government and way of living, and said to their

hypenemian mayor:  If you approve Epicurus’s opinion, placing the summum

bonum in pleasure (I mean pleasure that’s easy and free from toil), I

esteem you happy; for your food being wind, costs you little or nothing,

since you need but blow.  True, sir, returned the mayor; but, alas! nothing

is perfect here below; for too often when we are at table, feeding on some

good blessed wind of God as on celestial manna, merry as so many friars,

down drops on a sudden some small rain, which lays our wind, and so robs us

of it.  Thus many a meal’s lost for want of meat.

Just so, quoth Panurge, Jenin Toss-pot of Quinquenais, evacuating some wine

of his own burning on his wife’s posteriors, laid the ill-fumed wind that

blowed out of their centre as out of some magisterial Aeolipile.  Here is a

kind of a whim on that subject which I made formerly:

  One evening when Toss-pot had been at his butts,

  And Joan his fat spouse crammed with turnips her guts,

  Together they pigged, nor did drink so besot him

  But he did what was done when his daddy begot him.

  Now when to recruit he’d fain have been snoring,

  Joan’s back-door was filthily puffing and roaring;

  So for spite he bepissed her, and quickly did find

  That a very small rain lays a very high wind.

We are also plagued yearly with a very great calamity, cried the mayor; for

a giant called Wide-nostrils, who lives in the island of Tohu, comes hither

every spring to purge, by the advice of his physicians, and swallows us,

like so many pills, a great number of windmills, and of bellows also, at

which his mouth waters exceedingly.

Now this is a sad mortification to us here, who are fain to fast over three

or four whole Lents every year for this, besides certain petty Lents, ember

weeks, and other orison and starving tides.  And have you no remedy for

this? asked Pantagruel.  By the advice of our Mezarims, replied the mayor,

about the time that he uses to give us a visit, we garrison our windmills

with good store of cocks and hens.  The first time that the greedy thief

swallowed them, they had like to have done his business at once; for they

crowed and cackled in his maw, and fluttered up and down athwart and along

in his stomach, which threw the glutton into a lipothymy cardiac passion

and dreadful and dangerous convulsions, as if some serpent, creeping in at

his mouth, had been frisking in his stomach.

Here is a comparative as altogether incongruous and impertinent, cried

Friar John, interrupting them; for I have formerly heard that if a serpent

chance to get into a man’s stomach it will not do him the least hurt, but

will immediately get out if you do but hang the patient by the heels and

lay a panful of warm milk near his mouth.  You were told this, said

Pantagruel, and so were those who gave you this account; but none ever saw

or read of such a cure.  On the contrary, Hippocrates, in his fifth book of

Epidem, writes that such a case happening in his time the patient presently

died of a spasm and convulsion.

Besides the cocks and hens, said the mayor, continuing his story, all the

foxes in the country whipped into Wide-nostril’s mouth, posting after the

poultry; which made such a stir with Reynard at their heels, that he

grievously fell into fits each minute of an hour.

At last, by the advice of a Baden enchanter, at the time of the paroxysm he

used to flay a fox by way of antidote and counter-poison.  Since that he

took better advice, and eases himself with taking a clyster made with a

decoction of wheat and barley corns, and of livers of goslings; to the

first of which the poultry run, and the foxes to the latter.  Besides, he

swallows some of your badgers or fox-dogs by the way of pills and boluses.

This is our misfortune.

Cease to fear, good people, cried Pantagruel; this huge Wide-nostrils, this

same swallower of windmills, is no more, I will assure you; he died, being

stifled and choked with a lump of fresh butter at the mouth of a hot oven,

by the advice of his physicians.

Chapter 4.XLV.

How Pantagruel went ashore in the island of Pope-Figland.

The next morning we arrived at the island of Pope-figs; formerly a rich and

free people, called the Gaillardets, but now, alas! miserably poor, and

under the yoke of the Papimen.  The occasion of it was this:

On a certain yearly high holiday, the burgomaster, syndics, and topping

rabbies of the Gaillardets chanced to go into the neighbouring island

Papimany to see the festival and pass away the time.  Now one of them

having espied the pope’s picture (with the sight of which, according to a

laudable custom, the people were blessed on high-offering holidays), made

mouths at it, and cried, A fig for it! as a sign of manifest contempt and

derision.  To be revenged of this affront, the Papimen, some days after,

without giving the others the least warning, took arms, and surprised,

destroyed, and ruined the whole island of the Gaillardets; putting the men

to the sword, and sparing none but the women and children, and those too

only on condition to do what the inhabitants of Milan were condemned to by

the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.

These had rebelled against him in his absence, and ignominiously turned the

empress out of the city, mounting her a-horseback on a mule called Thacor,

with her breech foremost towards the old jaded mule’s head, and her face

turned towards the crupper.  Now Frederick being returned, mastered them,

and caused so careful a search to be made that he found out and got the

famous mule Thacor.  Then the hangman by his order clapped a fig into the

mule’s jimcrack, in the presence of the enslaved cits that were brought

into the middle of the great market-place, and proclaimed in the emperor’s

name, with trumpets, that whosoever of them would save his own life should

publicly pull the fig out with his teeth, and after that put it in again in

the very individual cranny whence he had draw’d it without using his hands,

and that whoever refused to do this should presently swing for it and die

in his shoes.  Some sturdy fools, standing upon their punctilio, chose

honourably to be hanged rather than submit to so shameful and abominable a

disgrace; and others, less nice in point of ceremony, took heart of grace,

and even resolved to have at the fig, and a fig for’t, rather than make a

worse figure with a hempen collar, and die in the air at so short warning.

Accordingly, when they had neatly picked out the fig with their teeth from

old Thacor’s snatch-blatch, they plainly showed it the headsman, saying,

Ecco lo fico, Behold the fig!

By the same ignominy the rest of these poor distressed Gaillardets saved

their bacon, becoming tributaries and slaves, and the name of Pope-figs was

given them, because they said, A fig for the pope’s image.  Since this, the

poor wretches never prospered, but every year the devil was at their doors,

and they were plagued with hail, storms, famine, and all manner of woes, as

an everlasting punishment for the sin of their ancestors and relations.

Perceiving the misery and calamity of that generation, we did not care to

go further up into the country, contenting ourselves with going into a

little chapel near the haven to take some holy water.  It was dilapidated

and ruined, wanting also a cover--like Saint Peter at Rome.  When we were

in, as we dipped our fingers in the sanctified cistern, we spied in the

middle of that holy pickle a fellow muffled up with stoles, all under

water, like a diving duck, except the tip of his snout to draw his breath.

About him stood three priests, true shavelings, clean shorn and polled, who

were muttering strange words to the devils out of a conjuring book.

Pantagruel was not a little amazed at this, and inquiring what kind of

sport these were at, was told that for three years last past the plague had

so dreadfully raged in the island that the better half of it had been

utterly depopulated, and the lands lay fallow and unoccupied.  Now, the

mortality being over, this same fellow who had crept into the holy tub,

having a large piece of ground, chanced to be sowing it with white winter

wheat at the very minute of an hour that a kind of a silly sucking devil,

who could not yet write or read, or hail and thunder, unless it were on

parsley or coleworts, and got leave of his master Lucifer to go into this

island of Pope-figs, where the devils were very familiar with the men and

women, and often went to take their pastime.

This same devil being got thither, directed his discourse to the

husbandman, and asked him what he was doing.  The poor man told him that he

was sowing the ground with corn to help him to subsist the next year.  Ay,

but the ground is none of thine, Mr. Plough-jobber, cried the devil, but

mine; for since the time that you mocked the pope all this land has been

proscribed, adjudged, and abandoned to us.  However, to sow corn is not my

province; therefore I will give thee leave to sow the field, that is to

say, provided we share the profit.  I will, replied the farmer.  I mean,

said the devil, that of what the land shall bear, two lots shall be made,

one of what shall grow above ground, the other of what shall be covered

with earth.  The right of choosing belongs to me; for I am a devil of noble

and ancient race; thou art a base clown.  I therefore choose what shall lie

under ground, take thou what shall be above.  When dost thou reckon to

reap, hah?  About the middle of July, quoth the farmer.  Well, said the

devil, I’ll not fail thee then; in the meantime, slave as thou oughtest.

Work, clown, work.  I am going to tempt to the pleasing sin of whoring the

nuns of Dryfart, the sham saints of the cowl, and the gluttonish crew.  I

am more than sure of these.  They need but meet, and the job is done; true

fire and tinder, touch and take; down falls nun, and up gets friar.

Chapter 4.XLVI.

How a junior devil was fooled by a husbandman of Pope-Figland.

In the middle of July the devil came to the place aforesaid with all his

crew at his heels, a whole choir of the younger fry of hell; and having met

the farmer, said to him, Well, clodpate, how hast thou done since I went?

Thou and I must share the concern.  Ay, master devil, quoth the clown; it

is but reason we should.  Then he and his men began to cut and reap the

corn; and, on the other side, the devil’s imps fell to work, grubbing up

and pulling out the stubble by the root.

The countryman had his corn thrashed, winnowed it, put in into sacks, and

went with it to market.  The same did the devil’s servants, and sat them

down there by the man to sell their straw.  The countryman sold off his

corn at a good rate, and with the money filled an old kind of a demi-buskin

which was fastened to his girdle.  But the devil a sou the devils took; far

from taking handsel, they were flouted and jeered by the country louts.

Market being over, quoth the devil to the farmer, Well, clown, thou hast

choused me once, it is thy fault; chouse me twice, ‘twill be mine.  Nay,

good sir devil, replied the farmer; how can I be said to have choused you,

since it was your worship that chose first?  The truth is, that by this

trick you thought to cheat me, hoping that nothing would spring out of the

earth for my share, and that you should find whole underground the corn

which I had sowed, and with it tempt the poor and needy, the close

hypocrite, or the covetous griper; thus making them fall into your snares.

But troth, you must e’en go to school yet; you are no conjurer, for aught I

see; for the corn that was sow’d is dead and rotten, its corruption having

caused the generation of that which you saw me sell.  So you chose the

worst, and therefore are cursed in the gospel.  Well, talk no more of it,

quoth the devil; what canst thou sow our field with for next year?  If a

man would make the best of it, answered the ploughman, ‘twere fit he sow it

with radish.  Now, cried the devil, thou talkest like an honest fellow,

bumpkin.  Well, sow me good store of radish, I’ll see and keep them safe

from storms, and will not hail a bit on them.  But hark ye me, this time I

bespeak for my share what shall be above ground; what’s under shall be

thine.  Drudge on, looby, drudge on.  I am going to tempt heretics; their

souls are dainty victuals when broiled in rashers and well powdered.  My

Lord Lucifer has the griping in the guts; they’ll make a dainty warm dish

for his honour’s maw.

When the season of radishes was come, our devil failed not to meet in the

field, with a train of rascally underlings, all waiting devils, and finding

there the farmer and his men, he began to cut and gather the leaves of the

radishes.  After him the farmer with his spade dug up the radishes, and

clapped them up into pouches.  This done, the devil, the farmer, and their

gangs, hied them to market, and there the farmer presently made good money

of his radishes; but the poor devil took nothing; nay, what was worse, he

was made a common laughing-stock by the gaping hoidens.  I see thou hast

played me a scurvy trick, thou villainous fellow, cried the angry devil; at

last I am fully resolved even to make an end of the business betwixt thee

and myself about the ground, and these shall be the terms:  we will

clapperclaw each other, and whoever of us two shall first cry Hold, shall

quit his share of the field, which shall wholly belong to the conqueror.  I

fix the time for this trial of skill on this day seven-night; assure

thyself that I’ll claw thee off like a devil.  I was going to tempt your

fornicators, bailiffs, perplexers of causes, scriveners, forgers of deeds,

two-handed counsellors, prevaricating solicitors, and other such vermin;

but they were so civil as to send me word by an interpreter that they are

all mine already.  Besides, our master Lucifer is so cloyed with their

souls that he often sends them back to the smutty scullions and slovenly

devils of his kitchen, and they scarce go down with them, unless now and

then, when they are high-seasoned.

Some say there is no breakfast like a student’s, no dinner like a lawyer’s,

no afternoon’s nunchion like a vine-dresser’s, no supper like a

tradesman’s, no second supper like a serving-wench’s, and none of these

meals equal to a frockified hobgoblin’s.  All this is true enough.

Accordingly, at my Lord Lucifer’s first course, hobgoblins, alias imps in

cowls, are a standing dish.  He willingly used to breakfast on students;

but, alas!  I do not know by what ill luck they have of late years joined

the Holy Bible to their studies; so the devil a one we can get down among

us; and I verily believe that unless the hypocrites of the tribe of Levi

help us in it, taking from the enlightened book-mongers their St. Paul,

either by threats, revilings, force, violence, fire, and faggot, we shall

not be able to hook in any more of them to nibble at below.  He dines

commonly on counsellors, mischief-mongers, multipliers of lawsuits, such as

wrest and pervert right and law and grind and fleece the poor; he never

fears to want any of these.  But who can endure to be wedded to a dish?

He said t’other day, at a full chapter, that he had a great mind to eat the

soul of one of the fraternity of the cowl that had forgot to speak for

himself in his sermon, and he promised double pay and a large pension to

anyone that should bring him such a titbit piping hot.  We all went

a-hunting after such a rarity, but came home without the prey; for they all

admonish the good women to remember their convent.  As for afternoon

nunchions, he has left them off since he was so woefully griped with the

colic; his fosterers, sutlers, charcoal-men, and boiling cooks having been

sadly mauled and peppered off in the northern countries.

His high devilship sups very well on tradesmen, usurers, apothecaries,

cheats, coiners, and adulterers of wares.  Now and then, when he is on the

merry pin, his second supper is of serving-wenches who, after they have by

stealth soaked their faces with their master’s good liquor, fill up the

vessel with it at second hand, or with other stinking water.

Well, drudge on, boor, drudge on; I am going to tempt the students of

Trebisonde to leave father and mother, forego for ever the established and

common rule of living, disclaim and free themselves from obeying their

lawful sovereign’s edicts, live in absolute liberty, proudly despise

everyone, laugh at all mankind, and taking the fine jovial little cap of

poetic licence, become so many pretty hobgoblins.

Chapter 4.XLVII.

How the devil was deceived by an old woman of Pope-Figland.

The country lob trudged home very much concerned and thoughtful, you may

swear; insomuch that his good woman, seeing him thus look moping, weened

that something had been stolen from him at market; but when she had heard

the cause of his affliction and seen his budget well lined with coin, she

bade him be of good cheer, assuring him that he would be never the worse

for the scratching bout in question; wishing him only to leave her to

manage that business, and not trouble his head about it; for she had

already contrived how to bring him off cleverly.  Let the worst come to the

worst, said the husbandman, it will be but a scratch; for I’ll yield at the

first stroke, and quit the field.  Quit a fart, replied the wife; he shall

have none of the field.  Rely upon me, and be quiet; let me alone to deal

with him.  You say he is a pimping little devil, that is enough; I will

soon make him give up the field, I will warrant you.  Indeed, had he been a

great devil, it had been somewhat.

The day that we landed in the island happened to be that which the devil

had fixed for the combat.  Now the countryman having, like a good Catholic,

very fairly confessed himself, and received betimes in the morning, by the

advice of the vicar had hid himself, all but the snout, in the holy-water

pot, in the posture in which we found him; and just as they were telling us

this story, news came that the old woman had fooled the devil and gained

the field.  You may not be sorry, perhaps, to hear how this happened.

The devil, you must know, came to the poor man’s door, and rapping there,

cried, So ho! ho, the house! ho, clodpate! where art thou?  Come out with a

vengeance; come out with a wannion; come out and be damned; now for

clawing.  Then briskly and resolutely entering the house, and not finding

the countryman there, he spied his wife lying on the ground, piteously

weeping and howling.  What is the matter? asked the devil.  Where is he?

what does he?  Oh! that I knew where he is, replied threescore and five;

the wicked rogue, the butcherly dog, the murderer!  He has spoiled me; I am

undone; I die of what he has done me.  How, cried the devil, what is it?

I’ll tickle him off for you by-and-by.  Alas! cried the old dissembler, he

told me, the butcher, the tyrant, the tearer of devils told me that he had

made a match to scratch with you this day, and to try his claws he did but

just touch me with his little finger here betwixt the legs, and has spoiled

me for ever.  Oh! I am a dead woman; I shall never be myself again; do but

see!  Nay, and besides, he talked of going to the smith’s to have his

pounces sharpened and pointed.  Alas! you are undone, Mr. Devil; good sir,

scamper quickly, I am sure he won’t stay; save yourself, I beseech you.

While she said this she uncovered herself up to the chin, after the manner

in which the Persian women met their children who fled from the fight, and

plainly showed her what do ye call them.  The frightened devil, seeing the

enormous solution of the continuity in all its dimensions, blessed himself,

and cried out, Mahon, Demiourgon, Megaera, Alecto, Persephone! ‘slife,

catch me here when he comes!  I am gone! ‘sdeath, what a gash!  I resign

him the field.

Having heard the catastrophe of the story, we retired a-shipboard, not

being willing to stay there any longer.  Pantagruel gave to the poor’s box

of the fabric of the church eighteen thousand good royals, in commiseration

of the poverty of the people and the calamity of the place.

Chapter 4.XLVIII.

How Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Papimany.

Having left the desolate island of the Pope-figs, we sailed for the space

of a day very fairly and merrily, and made the blessed island of Papimany.

As soon as we had dropt anchor in the road, before we had well moored our

ship with ground-tackle, four persons in different garbs rowed towards us

in a skiff.  One of them was dressed like a monk in his frock,

draggle-tailed, and booted; the other like a falconer, with a lure, and a

long-winged hawk on his fist; the third like a solicitor, with a large bag,

full of informations, subpoenas, breviates, bills, writs, cases, and other

implements of pettifogging; the fourth looked like one of your vine-barbers

about Ocleans, with a jaunty pair of canvas trousers, a dosser, and a

pruning knife at his girdle.

As soon as the boat had clapped them on board, they all with one voice

asked, Have you seen him, good passengers, have you seen him?  Who? asked

Pantagruel.  You know who, answered they.  Who is it? asked Friar John.

‘Sblood and ‘ounds, I’ll thrash him thick and threefold.  This he said

thinking that they inquired after some robber, murderer, or church-breaker.

Oh, wonderful! cried the four; do not you foreign people know the one?

Sirs, replied Epistemon, we do not understand those terms; but if you will

be pleased to let us know who you mean, we will tell you the truth of the

matter without any more ado.  We mean, said they, he that is.  Did you ever

see him?  He that is, returned Pantagruel, according to our theological

doctrine, is God, who said to Moses, I am that I am.  We never saw him, nor

can he be beheld by mortal eyes.  We mean nothing less than that supreme

God who rules in heaven, replied they; we mean the god on earth.  Did you

ever see him?  Upon my honour, replied Carpalin, they mean the pope.  Ay,

ay, answered Panurge; yea, verily, gentlemen, I have seen three of them,

whose sight has not much bettered me.  How! cried they, our sacred

decretals inform us that there never is more than one living.  I mean

successively, one after the other, returned Panurge; otherwise I never saw

more than one at a time.

O thrice and four times happy people! cried they; you are welcome, and more

than double welcome!  They then kneeled down before us and would have

kissed our feet, but we would not suffer it, telling them that should the

pope come thither in his own person, ‘tis all they could do to him.  No,

certainly, answered they, for we have already resolved upon the matter.  We

would kiss his bare arse without boggling at it, and eke his two pounders;

for he has a pair of them, the holy father, that he has; we find it so by

our fine decretals, otherwise he could not be pope.  So that, according to

our subtle decretaline philosophy, this is a necessary consequence:  he is

pope; therefore he has genitories, and should genitories no more be found

in the world, the world could no more have a pope.

While they were talking thus, Pantagruel inquired of one of the coxswain’s

crew who those persons were.  He answered that they were the four estates

of the island, and added that we should be made as welcome as princes,

since we had seen the pope.  Panurge having been acquainted with this by

Pantagruel, said to him in his ear, I swear and vow, sir, ‘tis even so; he

that has patience may compass anything.  Seeing the pope had done us no

good; now, in the devil’s name, ‘twill do us a great deal.  We then went

ashore, and the whole country, men, women, and children, came to meet us as

in a solemn procession.  Our four estates cried out to them with a loud

voice, They have seen him! they have seen him! they have seen him!  That

proclamation being made, all the mob kneeled before us, lifting up their

hands towards heaven, and crying, O happy men!  O most happy! and this

acclamation lasted above a quarter of an hour.

Then came the Busby (!) of the place, with all his pedagogues, ushers, and

schoolboys, whom he magisterially flogged, as they used to whip children in

our country formerly when some criminal was hanged, that they might

remember it.  This displeased Pantagruel, who said to them, Gentlemen, if

you do not leave off whipping these poor children, I am gone.  The people

were amazed, hearing his stentorian voice; and I saw a little hump with

long fingers say to the hypodidascal, What, in the name of wonder! do all

those that see the pope grow as tall as yon huge fellow that threatens us?

Ah! how I shall think time long till I have seen him too, that I may grow

and look as big.  In short, the acclamations were so great that Homenas (so

they called their bishop) hastened thither on an unbridled mule with green

trappings, attended by his apposts (as they said) and his supposts, or

officers bearing crosses, banners, standards, canopies, torches, holy-water

pots, &c.  He too wanted to kiss our feet (as the good Christian Valfinier

did to Pope Clement), saying that one of their hypothetes, that’s one of

the scavengers, scourers, and commentators of their holy decretals, had

written that, in the same manner as the Messiah, so long and so much

expected by the Jews, at last appeared among them; so, on some happy day of

God, the pope would come into that island; and that, while they waited for

that blessed time, if any who had seen him at Rome or elsewhere chanced to

come among them, they should be sure to make much of them, feast them

plentifully, and treat them with a great deal of reverence.  However, we

civilly desired to be excused.

Chapter 4.XLIX.

How Homenas, Bishop of Papimany, showed us the Uranopet decretals.

Homenas then said to us:  ‘Tis enjoined us by our holy decretals to visit

churches first and taverns after.  Therefore, not to decline that fine

institution, let us go to church; we will afterwards go and feast

ourselves.  Man of God, quoth Friar John, do you go before, we’ll follow

you.  You spoke in the matter properly, and like a good Christian; ‘tis

long since we saw any such.  For my part, this rejoices my mind very much,

and I verily believe that I shall have the better stomach after it.  Well,

‘tis a happy thing to meet with good men!  Being come near the gate of the

church, we spied a huge thick book, gilt, and covered all over with

precious stones, as rubies, emeralds, (diamonds,) and pearls, more, or at

least as valuable as those which Augustus consecrated to Jupiter

Capitolinus.  This book hanged in the air, being fastened with two thick

chains of gold to the zoophore of the porch.  We looked on it and admired

it.  As for Pantagruel, he handled it and dandled it and turned it as he

pleased, for he could reach it without straining; and he protested that

whenever he touched it, he was seized with a pleasant tickling at his

fingers’ end, new life and activity in his arms, and a violent temptation

in his mind to beat one or two sergeants, or such officers, provided they

were not of the shaveling kind.  Homenas then said to us, The law was

formerly given to the Jews by Moses, written by God himself.  At Delphos,

before the portal of Apollo’s temple, this sentence, GNOTHI SEAUTON, was

found written with a divine hand.  And some time after it, EI was also

seen, and as divinely written and transmitted from heaven. Cybele’s image

was brought out of heaven, into a field called Pessinunt, in Phrygia; so

was that of Diana to Tauris, if you will believe Euripides; the oriflamme,

or holy standard, was transmitted out of heaven to the noble and most

Christian kings of France, to fight against the unbelievers.  In the reign

of Numa Pompilius, second King of the Romans, the famous copper buckler

called Ancile was seen to descend from heaven.  At Acropolis, near Athens,

Minerva’s statue formerly fell from the empyreal heaven.  In like manner

the sacred decretals which you see were written with the hand of an angel

of the cherubim kind.  You outlandish people will hardly believe this, I

fear.  Little enough, of conscience, said Panurge.  And then, continued

Homenas, they were miraculously transmitted to us here from the very heaven

of heavens; in the same manner as the river Nile is called Diipetes by

Homer, the father of all philosophy--the holy decretals always excepted.

Now, because you have seen the pope, their evangelist and everlasting

protector, we will give you leave to see and kiss them on the inside, if

you think meet.  But then you must fast three days before, and canonically

confess; nicely and strictly mustering up and inventorizing your sins,

great and small, so thick that one single circumstance of them may not

escape you; as our holy decretals, which you see, direct.  This will take

up some time.  Man of God, answered Panurge, we have seen and descried

decrees, and eke decretals enough o’ conscience; some on paper, other on

parchment, fine and gay like any painted paper lantern, some on vellum,

some in manuscript, and others in print; so you need not take half these

pains to show us these.  We’ll take the goodwill for the deed, and thank

you as much as if we had.  Ay, marry, said Homenas, but you never saw these

that are angelically written.  Those in your country are only transcripts

from ours; as we find it written by one of our old decretaline scholiasts.

For me, do not spare me; I do not value the labour, so I may serve you.  Do

but tell me whether you will be confessed and fast only three short little

days of God?  As for shriving, answered Panurge, there can be no great harm

in’t; but this same fasting, master of mine, will hardly down with us at

this time, for we have so very much overfasted ourselves at sea that the

spiders have spun their cobwebs over our grinders.  Do but look on this

good Friar John des Entomeures (Homenas then courteously demi-clipped him

about the neck), some moss is growing in his throat for want of bestirring

and exercising his chaps.  He speaks the truth, vouched Friar John; I have

so much fasted that I’m almost grown hump-shouldered.  Come, then, let’s go

into the church, said Homenas; and pray forgive us if for the present we do

not sing you a fine high mass.  The hour of midday is past, and after it

our sacred decretals forbid us to sing mass, I mean your high and lawful

mass.  But I’ll say a low and dry one for you.  I had rather have one

moistened with some good Anjou wine, cried Panurge; fall to, fall to your

low mass, and despatch.  Ods-bodikins, quoth Friar John, it frets me to the

guts that I must have an empty stomach at this time of day; for, had I

eaten a good breakfast and fed like a monk, if he should chance to sing us

the Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, I had then brought thither bread and

wine for the traits passes (those that are gone before).  Well, patience;

pull away, and save tide; short and sweet, I pray you, and this for a

cause.

Chapter 4.L.

How Homenas showed us the archetype, or representation of a pope.

Mass being mumbled over, Homenas took a huge bundle of keys out of a trunk

near the head altar, and put thirty-two of them into so many keyholes; put

back so many springs; then with fourteen more mastered so many padlocks,

and at last opened an iron window strongly barred above the said altar.

This being done, in token of great mystery he covered himself with wet

sackcloth, and drawing a curtain of crimson satin, showed us an image

daubed over, coarsely enough, to my thinking; then he touched it with a

pretty long stick, and made us all kiss the part of the stick that had

touched the image.  After this he said unto us, What think you of this

image?  It is the likeness of a pope, answered Pantagruel; I know it by the

triple crown, his furred amice, his rochet, and his slipper.  You are in

the right, said Homenas; it is the idea of that same good god on earth

whose coming we devoutly await, and whom we hope one day to see in this

country.  O happy, wished-for, and much-expected day! and happy, most happy

you, whose propitious stars have so favoured you as to let you see the

living and real face of this good god on earth! by the single sight of

whose picture we obtain full remission of all the sins which we remember

that we have committed, as also a third part and eighteen quarantaines of

the sins which we have forgot; and indeed we only see it on high annual

holidays.

This caused Pantagruel to say that it was a work like those which Daedalus

used to make, since, though it were deformed and ill drawn, nevertheless

some divine energy, in point of pardons, lay hid and concealed in it.

Thus, said Friar John, at Seuille, the rascally beggars being one evening

on a solemn holiday at supper in the spital, one bragged of having got six

blancs, or twopence halfpenny; another eight liards, or twopence; a third,

seven caroluses, or sixpence; but an old mumper made his vaunts of having

got three testons, or five shillings.  Ah, but, cried his comrades, thou

hast a leg of God; as if, continued Friar John, some divine virtue could

lie hid in a stinking ulcerated rotten shank.  Pray, said Pantagruel, when

you are for telling us some such nauseous tale, be so kind as not to forget

to provide a basin, Friar John; I’ll assure you, I had much ado to forbear

bringing up my breakfast.  Fie! I wonder a man of your coat is not ashamed

to use thus the sacred name of God in speaking of things so filthy and

abominable! fie, I say.  If among your monking tribes such an abuse of

words is allowed, I beseech you leave it there, and do not let it come out

of the cloisters.  Physicians, said Epistemon, thus attribute a kind of

divinity to some diseases.  Nero also extolled mushrooms, and, in a Greek

proverb, termed them divine food, because with them he had poisoned

Claudius his predecessor.  But methinks, gentlemen, this same picture is

not over-like our late popes.  For I have seen them, not with their

pallium, amice, or rochet on, but with helmets on their heads, more like

the top of a Persian turban; and while the Christian commonwealth was in

peace, they alone were most furiously and cruelly making war.  This must

have been then, returned Homenas, against the rebellious, heretical

Protestants; reprobates who are disobedient to the holiness of this good

god on earth.  ‘Tis not only lawful for him to do so, but it is enjoined

him by the sacred decretals; and if any dare transgress one single iota

against their commands, whether they be emperors, kings, dukes, princes, or

commonwealths, he is immediately to pursue them with fire and sword, strip

them of all their goods, take their kingdoms from them, proscribe them,

anathematize them, and destroy not only their bodies, those of their

children, relations, and others, but damn also their souls to the very

bottom of the most hot and burning cauldron in hell.  Here, in the devil’s

name, said Panurge, the people are no heretics; such as was our

Raminagrobis, and as they are in Germany and England.  You are Christians

of the best edition, all picked and culled, for aught I see.  Ay, marry are

we, returned Homenas, and for that reason we shall all be saved.  Now let

us go and bless ourselves with holy water, and then to dinner.

Chapter 4.LI.

Table-talk in praise of the decretals.

Now, topers, pray observe that while Homenas was saying his dry mass, three

collectors, or licensed beggars of the church, each of them with a large

basin, went round among the people, with a loud voice:  Pray remember the

blessed men who have seen his face.  As we came out of the temple they

brought their basins brimful of Papimany chink to Homenas, who told us that

it was plentifully to feast with; and that, of this contribution and

voluntary tax, one part should be laid out in good drinking, another in

good eating, and the remainder in both, according to an admirable

exposition hidden in a corner of their holy decretals; which was performed

to a T, and that at a noted tavern not much unlike that of Will’s at

Amiens.  Believe me, we tickled it off there with copious cramming and

numerous swilling.

I made two notable observations at that dinner:  the one, that there was

not one dish served up, whether of cabrittas, capons, hogs (of which latter

there is great plenty in Papimany), pigeons, coneys, leverets, turkeys, or

others, without abundance of magistral stuff; the other, that every course,

and the fruit also, were served up by unmarried females of the place, tight

lasses, I’ll assure you, waggish, fair, good-conditioned, and comely,

spruce, and fit for business.  They were all clad in fine long white albs,

with two girts; their hair interwoven with narrow tape and purple ribbon,

stuck with roses, gillyflowers, marjoram, daffadowndillies, thyme, and

other sweet flowers.

At every cadence they invited us to drink and bang it about, dropping us

neat and genteel courtesies; nor was the sight of them unwelcome to all the

company; and as for Friar John, he leered on them sideways, like a cur that

steals a capon.  When the first course was taken off, the females

melodiously sung us an epode in the praise of the sacrosanct decretals; and

then the second course being served up, Homenas, joyful and cheery, said to

one of the she-butlers, Light here, Clerica.  Immediately one of the girls

brought him a tall-boy brimful of extravagant wine.  He took fast hold of

it, and fetching a deep sigh, said to Pantagruel, My lord, and you, my good

friends, here’s t’ye, with all my heart; you are all very welcome.  When he

had tipped that off, and given the tall-boy to the pretty creature, he

lifted up his voice and said, O most holy decretals, how good is good wine

found through your means!  This is the best jest we have had yet, observed

Panurge.  But it would still be a better, said Pantagruel, if they could

turn bad wine into good.

O seraphic Sextum! continued Homenas, how necessary are you not to the

salvation of poor mortals!  O cherubic Clementinae! how perfectly the

perfect institution of a true Christian is contained and described in you!

O angelical Extravagantes! how many poor souls that wander up and down in

mortal bodies through this vale of misery would perish were it not for you!

When, ah! when shall this special gift of grace be bestowed on mankind, as

to lay aside all other studies and concerns, to use you, to peruse you, to

understand you, to know you by heart, to practise you, to incorporate you,

to turn you into blood, and incentre you into the deepest ventricles of

their brains, the inmost marrow of their bones, and most intricate

labyrinth of their arteries?  Then, ah! then, and no sooner than then, nor

otherwise than thus, shall the world be happy!  While the old man was thus

running on, Epistemon rose and softly said to Panurge:  For want of a

close-stool, I must even leave you for a moment or two; this stuff has

unbunged the orifice of my mustard-barrel; but I’ll not tarry long.

Then, ah! then, continued Homenas, no hail, frost, ice, snow, overflowing,

or vis major; then plenty of all earthly goods here below.  Then

uninterrupted and eternal peace through the universe, an end of all wars,

plunderings, drudgeries, robbing, assassinates, unless it be to destroy

these cursed rebels the heretics.  Oh! then, rejoicing, cheerfulness,

jollity, solace, sports, and delicious pleasures, over the face of the

earth.  Oh! what great learning, inestimable erudition, and god-like

precepts are knit, linked, rivetted, and mortised in the divine chapters of

these eternal decretals!

Oh! how wonderfully, if you read but one demi-canon, short paragraph, or

single observation of these sacrosanct decretals, how wonderfully, I say,

do you not perceive to kindle in your hearts a furnace of divine love,

charity towards your neighbour (provided he be no heretic), bold contempt

of all casual and sublunary things, firm content in all your affections,

and ecstatic elevation of soul even to the third heaven.

Chapter 4.LII.

A continuation of the miracles caused by the decretals.

Wisely, brother Timothy, quoth Panurge, did am, did am; he says blew; but,

for my part, I believe as little of it as I can.  For one day by chance I

happened to read a chapter of them at Poictiers, at the most

decretalipotent Scotch doctor’s, and old Nick turn me into bumfodder, if

this did not make me so hide-bound and costive, that for four or five days

I hardly scumbered one poor butt of sir-reverence; and that, too, was full

as dry and hard, I protest, as Catullus tells us were those of his

neighbour Furius:

  Nec toto decies cacas in anno,

  Atque id durius est faba, et lapillis:

  Quod tu si manibus teras, fricesque,

  Non unquam digitum inquinare posses.

Oh, ho! cried Homenas; by’r lady, it may be you were then in the state of

mortal sin, my friend.  Well turned, cried Panurge; this was a new strain,

egad.

One day, said Friar John, at Seuille, I had applied to my posteriors, by

way of hind-towel, a leaf of an old Clementinae which our rent-gatherer,

John Guimard, had thrown out into the green of our cloister.  Now the devil

broil me like a black pudding, if I wasn’t so abominably plagued with

chaps, chawns, and piles at the fundament, that the orifice of my poor

nockandroe was in a most woeful pickle for I don’t know how long.  By’r our

lady, cried Homenas, it was a plain punishment of God for the sin that you

had committed in beraying that sacred book, which you ought rather to have

kissed and adored; I say with an adoration of latria, or of hyperdulia at

least.  The Panormitan never told a lie in the matter.

Saith Ponocrates:  At Montpelier, John Chouart having bought of the monks

of St. Olary a delicate set of decretals, written on fine large parchment

of Lamballe, to beat gold between the leaves, not so much as a piece that

was beaten in them came to good, but all were dilacerated and spoiled.

Mark this! cried Homenas; ‘twas a divine punishment and vengeance.

At Mans, said Eudemon, Francis Cornu, apothecary, had turned an old set of

Extravagantes into waste paper.  May I never stir, if whatever was lapped

up in them was not immediately corrupted, rotten, and spoiled; incense,

pepper, cloves, cinnamon, saffron, wax, cassia, rhubarb, tamarinds, all

drugs and spices, were lost without exception.  Mark, mark, quoth Homenas,

an effect of divine justice!  This comes of putting the sacred Scriptures

to such profane uses.

At Paris, said Carpalin, Snip Groignet the tailor had turned an old

Clementinae into patterns and measures, and all the clothes that were cut

on them were utterly spoiled and lost; gowns, hoods, cloaks, cassocks,

jerkins, jackets, waistcoats, capes, doublets, petticoats, corps de robes,

farthingales, and so forth.  Snip, thinking to cut a hood, would cut you

out a codpiece; instead of a cassock he would make you a high-crowned hat;

for a waistcoat he’d shape you out a rochet; on the pattern of a doublet

he’d make you a thing like a frying-pan.  Then his journeymen having

stitched it up did jag it and pink it at the bottom, and so it looked like

a pan to fry chestnuts.  Instead of a cape he made a buskin; for a

farthingale he shaped a montero cap; and thinking to make a cloak, he’d cut

out a pair of your big out-strouting Swiss breeches, with panes like the

outside of a tabor.  Insomuch that Snip was condemned to make good the

stuffs to all his customers; and to this day poor Cabbage’s hair grows

through his hood and his arse through his pocket-holes.  Mark, an effect of

heavenly wrath and vengeance! cried Homenas.

At Cahusac, said Gymnast, a match being made by the lords of Estissac and

Viscount Lausun to shoot at a mark, Perotou had taken to pieces a set of

decretals and set one of the leaves for the white to shoot at.  Now I sell,

nay, I give and bequeath for ever and aye, the mould of my doublet to

fifteen hundred hampers full of black devils, if ever any archer in the

country (though they are singular marksmen in Guienne) could hit the white.

Not the least bit of the holy scribble was contaminated or touched; nay,

and Sansornin the elder, who held stakes, swore to us, figues dioures, hard

figs (his greatest oath), that he had openly, visibly, and manifestly seen

the bolt of Carquelin moving right to the round circle in the middle of the

white; and that just on the point, when it was going to hit and enter, it

had gone aside above seven foot and four inches wide of it towards the

bakehouse.

Miracle! cried Homenas, miracle! miracle!  Clerica, come wench, light,

light here.  Here’s to you all, gentlemen; I vow you seem to me very sound

Christians.  While he said this, the maidens began to snicker at his elbow,

grinning, giggling, and twittering among themselves.  Friar John began to

paw, neigh, and whinny at the snout’s end, as one ready to leap, or at

least to play the ass, and get up and ride tantivy to the devil like a

beggar on horseback.

Methinks, said Pantagruel, a man might have been more out of danger near

the white of which Gymnast spoke than was formerly Diogenes near another.

How is that? asked Homenas; what was it?  Was he one of our decretalists?

Rarely fallen in again, egad, said Epistemon, returning from stool; I see

he will hook his decretals in, though by the head and shoulders.

Diogenes, said Pantagruel, one day for pastime went to see some archers

that shot at butts, one of whom was so unskilful, that when it was his turn

to shoot all the bystanders went aside, lest he should mistake them for the

mark.  Diogenes had seen him shoot extremely wide of it; so when the other

was taking aim a second time, and the people removed at a great distance to

the right and left of the white, he placed himself close by the mark,

holding that place to be the safest, and that so bad an archer would

certainly rather hit any other.

One of the Lord d’Estissac’s pages at last found out the charm, pursued

Gymnast, and by his advice Perotou put in another white made up of some

papers of Pouillac’s lawsuit, and then everyone shot cleverly.

At Landerousse, said Rhizotome, at John Delif’s wedding were very great

doings, as ‘twas then the custom of the country.  After supper several

farces, interludes, and comical scenes were acted; they had also several

morris-dancers with bells and tabors, and divers sorts of masks and mummers

were let in.  My schoolfellows and I, to grace the festival to the best of

our power (for fine white and purple liveries had been given to all of us

in the morning), contrived a merry mask with store of cockle-shells, shells

of snails, periwinkles, and such other.  Then for want of cuckoo-pint, or

priest-pintle, lousebur, clote, and paper, we made ourselves false faces

with the leaves of an old Sextum that had been thrown by and lay there for

anyone that would take it up, cutting out holes for the eyes, nose, and

mouth.  Now, did you ever hear the like since you were born?  When we had

played our little boyish antic tricks, and came to take off our sham faces,

we appeared more hideous and ugly than the little devils that acted the

Passion at Douay; for our faces were utterly spoiled at the places which

had been touched by those leaves.  One had there the small-pox; another,

God’s token, or the plague-spot; a third, the crinckums; a fourth, the

measles; a fifth, botches, pushes, and carbuncles; in short, he came off

the least hurt who only lost his teeth by the bargain.  Miracle! bawled out

Homenas, miracle!

Hold, hold! cried Rhizotome; it is not yet time to clap.  My sister Kate

and my sister Ren had put the crepines of their hoods, their ruffles,

snuffekins, and neck-ruffs new washed, starched, and ironed, into that very

book of decretals; for, you must know, it was covered with thick boards and

had strong clasps.  Now, by the virtue of God--Hold, interrupted Homenas,

what god do you mean?  There is but one, answered Rhizotome.  In heaven, I

grant, replied Homenas; but we have another here on earth, do you see?  Ay,

marry have we, said Rhizotome; but on my soul I protest I had quite forgot

it.  Well then, by the virtue of god the pope, their pinners, neck-ruffs,

bib, coifs, and other linen turned as black as a charcoal-man’s sack.

Miracle! cried Homenas.  Here, Clerica, light me here; and prithee, girl,

observe these rare stories.  How comes it to pass then, asked Friar John,

that people say,

  Ever since decrees had tails,

  And gendarmes lugged heavy mails,

  Since each monk would have a horse,

  All went here from bad to worse.

I understand you, answered Homenas; this is one of the quirks and little

satires of the new-fangled heretics.

Chapter 4.LIII.

How by the virtue of the decretals, gold is subtilely drawn out of France

to Rome.

I would, said Epistemon, it had cost me a pint of the best tripe that ever

can enter into gut, so we had but compared with the original the dreadful

chapters, Execrabilis, De multa, Si plures; De annatis per totum; Nisi

essent; Cum ad monasterium; Quod delectio; Mandatum; and certain others,

that draw every year out of France to Rome four hundred thousand ducats and

more.

Do you make nothing of this? asked Homenas.  Though, methinks, after all,

it is but little, if we consider that France, the most Christian, is the

only nurse the see of Rome has.  However, find me in the whole world a

book, whether of philosophy, physic, law, mathematics, or other humane

learning, nay, even, by my God, of the Holy Scripture itself, will draw as

much money thence?  None, none, psha, tush, blurt, pish; none can.  You may

look till your eyes drop out of your head, nay, till doomsday in the

afternoon, before you can find another of that energy; I’ll pass my word

for that.

Yet these devilish heretics refuse to learn and know it.  Burn ‘em, tear

‘em, nip ‘em with hot pincers, drown ‘em, hang ‘em, spit ‘em at the

bunghole, pelt ‘em, paut ‘em, bruise ‘em, beat ‘em, cripple ‘em, dismember

‘em, cut ‘em, gut ‘em, bowel ‘em, paunch ‘em, thrash ‘em, slash ‘em, gash

‘em, chop ‘em, slice ‘em, slit ‘em, carve ‘em, saw ‘em, bethwack ‘em, pare

‘em, hack ‘em, hew ‘em, mince ‘em, flay ‘em, boil ‘em, broil ‘em, roast

‘em, toast ‘em, bake ‘em, fry ‘em, crucify ‘em, crush ‘em, squeeze ‘em,

grind ‘em, batter ‘em, burst ‘em, quarter ‘em, unlimb ‘em, behump ‘em,

bethump ‘em, belam ‘em, belabour ‘em, pepper ‘em, spitchcock ‘em, and

carbonade ‘em on gridirons, these wicked heretics! decretalifuges,

decretalicides, worse than homicides, worse than patricides,

decretalictones of the devil of hell.

As for you other good people, I must earnestly pray and beseech you to

believe no other thing, to think on, say, undertake, or do no other thing,

than what’s contained in our sacred decretals and their corollaries, this

fine Sextum, these fine Clementinae, these fine Extravagantes.  O deific

books!  So shall you enjoy glory, honour, exaltation, wealth, dignities,

and preferments in this world; be revered and dreaded by all, preferred,

elected, and chosen above all men.

For there is not under the cope of heaven a condition of men out of which

you’ll find persons fitter to do and handle all things than those who by

divine prescience, eternal predestination, have applied themselves to the

study of the holy decretals.

Would you choose a worthy emperor, a good captain, a fit general in time of

war, one that can well foresee all inconveniences, avoid all dangers,

briskly and bravely bring his men on to a breach or attack, still be on

sure grounds, always overcome without loss of his men, and know how to make

a good use of his victory?  Take me a decretist.  No, no, I mean a

decretalist.  Ho, the foul blunder, whispered Epistemon.

Would you, in time of peace, find a man capable of wisely governing the

state of a commonwealth, of a kingdom, of an empire, of a monarchy;

sufficient to maintain the clergy, nobility, senate, and commons in wealth,

friendship, unity, obedience, virtue, and honesty?  Take a decretalist.

Would you find a man who, by his exemplary life, eloquence, and pious

admonitions, may in a short time, without effusion of human blood, conquer

the Holy Land, and bring over to the holy Church the misbelieving Turks,

Jews, Tartars, Muscovites, Mamelukes, and Sarrabonites?  Take me a

decretalist.

What makes, in many countries, the people rebellious and depraved, pages

saucy and mischievous, students sottish and duncical?  Nothing but that

their governors and tutors were not decretalists.

But what, on your conscience, was it, do you think, that established,

confirmed, and authorized those fine religious orders with whom you see the

Christian world everywhere adorned, graced, and illustrated, as the

firmament is with its glorious stars?  The holy decretals.

What was it that founded, underpropped, and fixed, and now maintains,

nourishes, and feeds the devout monks and friars in convents, monasteries,

and abbeys; so that did they not daily and mightily pray without ceasing,

the world would be in evident danger of returning to its primitive chaos?

The sacred decretals.

What makes and daily increases the famous and celebrated patrimony of St.

Peter in plenty of all temporal, corporeal, and spiritual blessings?  The

holy decretals.

What made the holy apostolic see and pope of Rome, in all times, and at

this present, so dreadful in the universe, that all kings, emperors,

potentates, and lords, willing, nilling, must depend upon him, hold of him,

be crowned, confirmed, and authorized by him, come thither to strike sail,

buckle, and fall down before his holy slipper, whose picture you have seen?

The mighty decretals of God.

I will discover you a great secret.  The universities of your world have

commonly a book, either open or shut, in their arms and devices; what book

do you think it is?  Truly, I do not know, answered Pantagruel; I never

read it.  It is the decretals, said Homenas, without which the privileges

of all universities would soon be lost.  You must own that I have taught

you this; ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

Here Homenas began to belch, to fart, to funk, to laugh, to slaver, and to

sweat; and then he gave his huge greasy four-cornered cap to one of the

lasses, who clapped it on her pretty head with a great deal of joy, after

she had lovingly bussed it, as a sure token that she should be first

married.  Vivat, cried Epistemon, fifat, bibat, pipat.

O apocalyptic secret! continued Homenas; light, light, Clerica; light here

with double lanterns.  Now for the fruit, virgins.

I was saying, then, that giving yourselves thus wholly to the study of the

holy decretals, you will gain wealth and honour in this world.  I add, that

in the next you will infallibly be saved in the blessed kingdom of heaven,

whose keys are given to our good god and decretaliarch.  O my good god,

whom I adore and never saw, by thy special grace open unto us, at the point

of death at least, this most sacred treasure of our holy Mother Church,

whose protector, preserver, butler, chief-larder, administrator, and

disposer thou art; and take care, I beseech thee, O lord, that the precious

works of supererogation, the goodly pardons, do not fail us in time of

need; so that the devils may not find an opportunity to gripe our precious

souls, and the dreadful jaws of hell may not swallow us.  If we must pass

through purgatory thy will be done.  It is in thy power to draw us out of

it when thou pleasest.  Here Homenas began to shed huge hot briny tears, to

beat his breast, and kiss his thumbs in the shape of a cross.

Chapter 4.LIV.

How Homenas gave Pantagruel some bon-Christian pears.

Epistemon, Friar John, and Panurge, seeing this doleful catastrophe, began,

under the cover of their napkins, to cry Meeow, meeow, meeow; feigning to

wipe their eyes all the while as if they had wept.  The wenches were doubly

diligent, and brought brimmers of Clementine wine to every one, besides

store of sweetmeats; and thus the feasting was revived.

Before we arose from table, Homenas gave us a great quantity of fair large

pears, saying, Here, my good friends, these are singular good pears.  You

will find none such anywhere else, I dare warrant.  Every soil bears not

everything, you know.  India alone boasts black ebony; the best incense is

produced in Sabaea; the sphragitid earth at Lemnos; so this island is the

only place where such fine pears grow.  You may, if you please, make

seminaries with their pippins in your country.

I like their taste extremely, said Pantagruel.  If they were sliced, and

put into a pan on the fire with wine and sugar, I fancy they would be very

wholesome meat for the sick, as well as for the healthy.  Pray what do you

call ‘em?  No otherwise than you have heard, replied Homenas.  We are a

plain downright sort of people, as God would have it, and call figs, figs;

plums, plums; and pears, pears.  Truly, said Pantagruel, if I live to go

home--which I hope will be speedily, God willing--I’ll set off and graff

some in my garden in Touraine, by the banks of the Loire, and will call

them bon-Christian or good-Christian pears, for I never saw better

Christians than are these good Papimans.  I would like him two to one

better yet, said Friar John, would he but give us two or three cartloads of

yon buxom lasses.  Why, what would you do with them? cried Homenas.  Quoth

Friar John, No harm, only bleed the kind-hearted souls straight between the

two great toes with certain clever lancets of the right stamp; by which

operation good Christian children would be inoculated upon them, and the

breed be multiplied in our country, in which there are not many over-good,

the more’s the pity.

Nay, verily, replied Homenas, we cannot do this; for you would make them

tread their shoes awry, crack their pipkins, and spoil their shapes.  You

love mutton, I see; you will run at sheep.  I know you by that same nose

and hair of yours, though I never saw your face before.  Alas! alas! how

kind you are!  And would you indeed damn your precious soul?  Our decretals

forbid this.  Ah, I wish you had them at your finger’s-end.  Patience, said

Friar John; but, si tu non vis dare, praesta, quaesumus.  Matter of

breviary.  As for that, I defy all the world, and I fear no man that wears

a head and a hood, though he were a crystalline, I mean a decretaline

doctor.

Dinner being over, we took our leave of the right reverend Homenas, and of

all the good people, humbly giving thanks; and, to make them amends for

their kind entertainment, promised them that, at our coming to Rome, we

would make our applications so effectually to the pope that he would

speedily be sure to come to visit them in person.  After this we went

o’board.

Pantagruel, by an act of generosity, and as an acknowledgment of the sight

of the pope’s picture, gave Homenas nine pieces of double friezed cloth of

gold to be set before the grates of the window.  He also caused the church

box for its repairs and fabric to be quite filled with double crowns of

gold; and ordered nine hundred and fourteen angels to be delivered to each

of the lasses who had waited at table, to buy them husbands when they could

get them.

Chapter 4.LV.

How Pantagruel, being at sea, heard various unfrozen words.

When we were at sea, junketting, tippling, discoursing, and telling

stories, Pantagruel rose and stood up to look out; then asked us, Do you

hear nothing, gentlemen?  Methinks I hear some people talking in the air,

yet I can see nobody.  Hark!  According to his command we listened, and

with full ears sucked in the air as some of you suck oysters, to find if we

could hear some sound scattered through the sky; and to lose none of it,

like the Emperor Antoninus some of us laid their hands hollow next to their

ears; but all this would not do, nor could we hear any voice.  Yet

Pantagruel continued to assure us he heard various voices in the air, some

of men, and some of women.

At last we began to fancy that we also heard something, or at least that

our ears tingled; and the more we listened, the plainer we discerned the

voices, so as to distinguish articulate sounds.  This mightily frightened

us, and not without cause; since we could see nothing, yet heard such

various sounds and voices of men, women, children, horses, &c., insomuch

that Panurge cried out, Cods-belly, there is no fooling with the devil; we

are all beshit, let’s fly.  There is some ambuscado hereabouts.  Friar

John, art thou here my love?  I pray thee, stay by me, old boy.  Hast thou

got thy swindging tool?  See that it do not stick in thy scabbard; thou

never scourest it half as it should be.  We are undone.  Hark!  They are

guns, gad judge me.  Let’s fly, I do not say with hands and feet, as Brutus

said at the battle of Pharsalia; I say, with sails and oars.  Let’s whip it

away.  I never find myself to have a bit of courage at sea; in cellars and

elsewhere I have more than enough.  Let’s fly and save our bacon.  I do not

say this for any fear that I have; for I dread nothing but danger, that I

don’t; I always say it that shouldn’t.  The free archer of Baignolet said

as much.  Let us hazard nothing, therefore, I say, lest we come off bluely.

Tack about, helm a-lee, thou son of a bachelor.  Would I were now well in

Quinquenais, though I were never to marry.  Haste away, let’s make all the

sail we can.  They’ll be too hard for us; we are not able to cope with

them; they are ten to our one, I’ll warrant you.  Nay, and they are on

their dunghill, while we do not know the country.  They will be the death

of us.  We’ll lose no honour by flying.  Demosthenes saith that the man

that runs away may fight another day.  At least let us retreat to the

leeward.  Helm a-lee; bring the main-tack aboard, haul the bowlines, hoist

the top-gallants.  We are all dead men; get off, in the devil’s name, get

off.

Pantagruel, hearing the sad outcry which Panurge made, said, Who talks of

flying?  Let’s first see who they are; perhaps they may be friends.  I can

discover nobody yet, though I can see a hundred miles round me.  But let’s

consider a little.  I have read that a philosopher named Petron was of

opinion that there were several worlds that touched each other in an

equilateral triangle; in whose centre, he said, was the dwelling of truth;

and that the words, ideas, copies, and images of all things past and to

come resided there; round which was the age; and that with success of time

part of them used to fall on mankind like rheums and mildews, just as the

dew fell on Gideon’s fleece, till the age was fulfilled.

I also remember, continued he, that Aristotle affirms Homer’s words to be

flying, moving, and consequently animated.  Besides, Antiphanes said that

Plato’s philosophy was like words which, being spoken in some country

during a hard winter, are immediately congealed, frozen up, and not heard;

for what Plato taught young lads could hardly be understood by them when

they were grown old.  Now, continued he, we should philosophize and search

whether this be not the place where those words are thawed.

You would wonder very much should this be the head and lyre of Orpheus.

When the Thracian women had torn him to pieces they threw his head and lyre

into the river Hebrus, down which they floated to the Euxine sea as far as

the island of Lesbos; the head continually uttering a doleful song, as it

were lamenting the death of Orpheus, and the lyre, with the wind’s impulse

moving its strings and harmoniously accompanying the voice.  Let’s see if

we cannot discover them hereabouts.

Chapter 4.LVI.

How among the frozen words Pantagruel found some odd ones.

The skipper made answer:  Be not afraid, my lord; we are on the confines of

the Frozen Sea, on which, about the beginning of last winter, happened a

great and bloody fight between the Arimaspians and the Nephelibates.  Then

the words and cries of men and women, the hacking, slashing, and hewing of

battle-axes, the shocking, knocking, and jolting of armours and harnesses,

the neighing of horses, and all other martial din and noise, froze in the

air; and now, the rigour of the winter being over, by the succeeding

serenity and warmth of the weather they melt and are heard.

By jingo, quoth Panurge, the man talks somewhat like.  I believe him.  But

couldn’t we see some of ‘em?  I think I have read that, on the edge of the

mountain on which Moses received the Judaic law, the people saw the voices

sensibly.  Here, here, said Pantagruel, here are some that are not yet

thawed.  He then threw us on the deck whole handfuls of frozen words, which

seemed to us like your rough sugar-plums, of many colours, like those used

in heraldry; some words gules (this means also jests and merry sayings),

some vert, some azure, some black, some or (this means also fair words);

and when we had somewhat warmed them between our hands, they melted like

snow, and we really heard them, but could not understand them, for it was a

barbarous gibberish.  One of them only, that was pretty big, having been

warmed between Friar John’s hands, gave a sound much like that of chestnuts

when they are thrown into the fire without being first cut, which made us

all start.  This was the report of a field-piece in its time, cried Friar

John.

Panurge prayed Pantagruel to give him some more; but Pantagruel told him

that to give words was the part of a lover.  Sell me some then, I pray you,

cried Panurge.  That’s the part of a lawyer, returned Pantagruel.  I would

sooner sell you silence, though at a dearer rate; as Demosthenes formerly

sold it by the means of his argentangina, or silver squinsy.

However, he threw three or four handfuls of them on the deck; among which I

perceived some very sharp words, and some bloody words, which the pilot

said used sometimes to go back and recoil to the place whence they came,

but it was with a slit weasand.  We also saw some terrible words, and some

others not very pleasant to the eye.

When they had been all melted together, we heard a strange noise, hin, hin,

hin, hin, his, tick, tock, taack, bredelinbrededack, frr, frr, frr, bou,

bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, track, track, trr, trr, trr, trrr,

trrrrrr, on, on, on, on, on, on, ououououon, gog, magog, and I do not know

what other barbarous words, which the pilot said were the noise made by the

charging squadrons, the shock and neighing of horses.

Then we heard some large ones go off like drums and fifes, and others like

clarions and trumpets.  Believe me, we had very good sport with them.  I

would fain have saved some merry odd words, and have preserved them in oil,

as ice and snow are kept, and between clean straw.  But Pantagruel would

not let me, saying that ‘tis a folly to hoard up what we are never like to

want or have always at hand, odd, quaint, merry, and fat words of gules

never being scarce among all good and jovial Pantagruelists.

Panurge somewhat vexed Friar John, and put him in the pouts; for he took

him at his word while he dreamed of nothing less.  This caused the friar to

threaten him with such a piece of revenge as was put upon G. Jousseaume,

who having taken the merry Patelin at his word when he had overbid himself

in some cloth, was afterwards fairly taken by the horns like a bullock by

his jovial chapman, whom he took at his word like a man.  Panurge, well

knowing that threatened folks live long, bobbed and made mouths at him in

token of derision, then cried, Would I had here the word of the Holy

Bottle, without being thus obliged to go further in pilgrimage to her.

Chapter 4.LVII.

How Pantagruel went ashore at the dwelling of Gaster, the first master of

arts in the world.

That day Pantagruel went ashore in an island which, for situation and

governor, may be said not to have its fellow.  When you just come into it,

you find it rugged, craggy, and barren, unpleasant to the eye, painful to

the feet, and almost as inaccessible as the mountain of Dauphine, which is

somewhat like a toadstool, and was never climbed as any can remember by any

but Doyac, who had the charge of King Charles the Eighth’s train of

artillery.

This same Doyac with strange tools and engines gained that mountain’s top,

and there he found an old ram.  It puzzled many a wise head to guess how it

got thither.  Some said that some eagle or great horncoot, having carried

it thither while it was yet a lambkin, it had got away and saved itself

among the bushes.

As for us, having with much toil and sweat overcome the difficult ways at

the entrance, we found the top of the mountain so fertile, healthful, and

pleasant, that I thought I was then in the true garden of Eden, or earthly

paradise, about whose situation our good theologues are in such a quandary

and keep such a pother.

As for Pantagruel, he said that here was the seat of Arete--that is as much

as to say, virtue--described by Hesiod.  This, however, with submission to

better judgments.  The ruler of this place was one Master Gaster, the first

master of arts in this world.  For, if you believe that fire is the great

master of arts, as Tully writes, you very much wrong him and yourself;

alas! Tully never believed this.  On the other side, if you fancy Mercury

to be the first inventor of arts, as our ancient Druids believed of old,

you are mightily beside the mark.  The satirist’s sentence, that affirms

Master Gaster to be the master of all arts, is true.  With him peacefully

resided old goody Penia, alias Poverty, the mother of the ninety-nine

Muses, on whom Porus, the lord of Plenty, formerly begot Love, that noble

child, the mediator of heaven and earth, as Plato affirms in Symposio.

We were all obliged to pay our homage and swear allegiance to that mighty

sovereign; for he is imperious, severe, blunt, hard, uneasy, inflexible;

you cannot make him believe, represent to him, or persuade him anything.

He does not hear; and as the Egyptians said that Harpocrates, the god of

silence, named Sigalion in Greek, was astome, that is, without a mouth, so

Gaster was created without ears, even like the image of Jupiter in Candia.

He only speaks by signs, but those signs are more readily obeyed by

everyone than the statutes of senates or commands of monarchs.  Neither

will he admit the least let or delay in his summons.  You say that when a

lion roars all the beasts at a considerable distance round about, as far as

his roar can be heard, are seized with a shivering.  This is written, it is

true, I have seen it. I assure you that at Master Gaster’s command the very

heavens tremble, and all the earth shakes.  His command is called, Do this

or die.  Needs must when the devil drives; there’s no gainsaying of it.

The pilot was telling us how, on a certain time, after the manner of the

members that mutinied against the belly, as Aesop describes it, the whole

kingdom of the Somates went off into a direct faction against Gaster,

resolving to throw off his yoke; but they soon found their mistake, and

most humbly submitted, for otherwise they had all been famished.

What company soever he is in, none dispute with him for precedence or

superiority; he still goes first, though kings, emperors, or even the pope,

were there.  So he held the first place at the council of Basle; though

some will tell you that the council was tumultuous by the contention and

ambition of many for priority.

Everyone is busied and labours to serve him, and indeed, to make amends for

this, he does this good to mankind, as to invent for them all arts,

machines, trades, engines, and crafts; he even instructs brutes in arts

which are against their nature, making poets of ravens, jackdaws,

chattering jays, parrots, and starlings, and poetesses of magpies, teaching

them to utter human language, speak, and sing; and all for the gut.  He

reclaims and tames eagles, gerfalcons, falcons gentle, sakers, lanners,

goshawks, sparrowhawks, merlins, haggards, passengers, wild rapacious

birds; so that, setting them free in the air whenever he thinks fit, as

high and as long as he pleases, he keeps them suspended, straying, flying,

hovering, and courting him above the clouds.  Then on a sudden he makes

them stoop, and come down amain from heaven next to the ground; and all for

the gut.

Elephants, lions, rhinoceroses, bears, horses, mares, and dogs, he teaches

to dance, prance, vault, fight, swim, hide themselves, fetch and carry what

he pleases; and all for the gut.

Salt and fresh-water fish, whales, and the monsters of the main, he brings

them up from the bottom of the deep; wolves he forces out of the woods,

bears out of the rocks, foxes out of their holes, and serpents out of the

ground, and all for the gut.

In short, he is so unruly, that in his rage he devours all men and beasts;

as was seen among the Vascons, when Q. Metellus besieged them in the

Sertorian wars, among the Saguntines besieged by Hannibal; among the Jews

besieged by the Romans, and six hundred more; and all for the gut.  When

his regent Penia takes a progress, wherever she moves all senates are shut

up, all statutes repealed, all orders and proclamations vain; she knows,

obeys, and has no law.  All shun her, in every place choosing rather to

expose themselves to shipwreck at sea, and venture through fire, rocks,

caves, and precipices, than be seized by that most dreadful tormentor.

Chapter 4.LVIII.

How, at the court of the master of ingenuity, Pantagruel detested the

Engastrimythes and the Gastrolaters.

At the court of that great master of ingenuity, Pantagruel observed two

sorts of troublesome and too officious apparitors, whom he very much

detested.  The first were called Engastrimythes; the others, Gastrolaters.

The first pretended to be descended of the ancient race of Eurycles, and

for this brought the authority of Aristophanes in his comedy called the

Wasps; whence of old they were called Euryclians, as Plato writes, and

Plutarch in his book of the Cessation of Oracles.  In the holy decrees, 26,

qu. 3, they are styled Ventriloqui; and the same name is given them in

Ionian by Hippocrates, in his fifth book of Epid., as men who speak from

the belly.  Sophocles calls them Sternomantes.  These were soothsayers,

enchanters, cheats, who gulled the mob, and seemed not to speak and give

answers from the mouth, but from the belly.

Such a one, about the year of our Lord 1513, was Jacoba Rodogina, an

Italian woman of mean extract; from whose belly we, as well as an infinite

number of others at Ferrara and elsewhere, have often heard the voice of

the evil spirit speak, low, feeble, and small, indeed, but yet very

distinct, articulate, and intelligible, when she was sent for out of

curiosity by the lords and princes of the Cisalpine Gaul.  To remove all

manner of doubt, and be assured that this was not a trick, they used to

have her stripped stark naked, and caused her mouth and nose to be stopped.

This evil spirit would be called Curled-pate, or Cincinnatulo, seeming

pleased when any called him by that name, at which he was always ready to

answer.  If any spoke to him of things past or present, he gave pertinent

answers, sometimes to the amazement of the hearers; but if of things to

come, then the devil was gravelled, and used to lie as fast as a dog can

trot.  Nay, sometimes he seemed to own his ignorance, instead of an answer

letting out a rousing fart, or muttering some words with barbarous and

uncouth inflexions, and not to be understood.

As for the Gastrolaters, they stuck close to one another in knots and

gangs.  Some of them merry, wanton, and soft as so many milk-sops; others

louring, grim, dogged, demure, and crabbed; all idle, mortal foes to

business, spending half their time in sleeping and the rest in doing

nothing, a rent-charge and dead unnecessary weight on the earth, as Hesiod

saith; afraid, as we judged, of offending or lessening their paunch.

Others were masked, disguised, and so oddly dressed that it would have done

you good to have seen them.

There’s a saying, and several ancient sages write, that the skill of nature

appears wonderful in the pleasure which she seems to have taken in the

configuration of sea-shells, so great is their variety in figures, colours,

streaks, and inimitable shapes.  I protest the variety we perceived in the

dresses of the gastrolatrous coquillons was not less.  They all owned

Gaster for their supreme god, adored him as a god, offered him sacrifices

as to their omnipotent deity, owned no other god, served, loved, and

honoured him above all things.

You would have thought that the holy apostle spoke of those when he said

(Phil. chap. 3), Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you

even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ:  whose end is

destruction, whose God is their belly.  Pantagruel compared them to the

Cyclops Polyphemus, whom Euripides brings in speaking thus:  I only

sacrifice to myself--not to the gods--and to this belly of mine, the

greatest of all the gods.

Chapter 4.LIX.

Of the ridiculous statue Manduce; and how and what the Gastrolaters

sacrifice to their ventripotent god.

While we fed our eyes with the sight of the phizzes and actions of these

lounging gulligutted Gastrolaters, we on a sudden heard the sound of a

musical instrument called a bell; at which all of them placed themselves in

rank and file as for some mighty battle, everyone according to his office,

degree, and seniority.

In this order they moved towards Master Gaster, after a plump, young,

lusty, gorbellied fellow, who on a long staff fairly gilt carried a wooden

statue, grossly carved, and as scurvily daubed over with paint; such a one

as Plautus, Juvenal, and Pomp. Festus describe it.  At Lyons during the

Carnival it is called Maschecroute or Gnawcrust; they call’d this Manduce.

It was a monstrous, ridiculous, hideous figure, fit to fright little

children; its eyes were bigger than its belly, and its head larger than all

the rest of its body; well mouth-cloven however, having a goodly pair of

wide, broad jaws, lined with two rows of teeth, upper tier and under tier,

which, by the magic of a small twine hid in the hollow part of the golden

staff, were made to clash, clatter, and rattle dreadfully one against

another; as they do at Metz with St. Clement’s dragon.

Coming near the Gastrolaters I saw they were followed by a great number of

fat waiters and tenders, laden with baskets, dossers, hampers, dishes,

wallets, pots, and kettles.  Then, under the conduct of Manduce, and

singing I do not know what dithyrambics, crepalocomes, and epenons, opening

their baskets and pots, they offered their god:

White hippocras,         Fricassees, nine       Cold loins of veal,

  with dry toasts.         sorts.                 with spice.

White bread.             Monastical brewis.     Zinziberine.

Brown bread.             Gravy soup.            Beatille pies.

Carbonadoes, six         Hotch-pots.            Brewis.

  sorts.                 Soft bread.            Marrow-bones, toast,

Brawn.                   Household bread.         and cabbage.

Sweetbreads.             Capirotadoes.          Hashes.

Eternal drink intermixed.  Brisk delicate white wine led the van; claret

and champagne followed, cool, nay, as cold as the very ice, I say, filled

and offered in large silver cups.  Then they offered:

Chitterlings, gar-       Chines and peas.       Hams.

  nished with mus-       Hog’s haslets.         Brawn heads.

  tard.                  Scotch collops.        Powdered venison,

Sausages.                Puddings.                with turnips.

Neats’ tongues.          Cervelats.             Pickled olives.

Hung beef.               Bologna sausages.

All this associated with sempiternal liquor.  Then they housed within his

muzzle:

Legs of mutton, with     Ribs of pork, with     Caponets.

  shallots.                onion sauce.         Caviare and toast.

Olias.                   Roast capons, basted   Fawns, deer.

Lumber pies, with          with their own       Hares, leverets.

  hot sauce.               dripping.            Plovers.

Partridges and young     Flamingoes.            Herons, and young

  partridges.            Cygnets.                 herons.

Dwarf-herons.            A reinforcement of     Olives.

Teals.                     vinegar intermixed.  Thrushes.

Duckers.                 Venison pasties.       Young sea-ravens.

Bitterns.                Lark pies.             Geese, goslings.

Shovellers.              Dormice pies.          Queests.

Curlews.                 Cabretto pasties.      Widgeons.

Wood-hens.               Roebuck pasties.       Mavises.

Coots, with leeks.       Pigeon pies.           Grouses.

Fat kids.                Kid pasties.           Turtles.

Shoulders of mutton,     Capon pies.            Doe-coneys.

  with capers.           Bacon pies.            Hedgehogs.

Sirloins of beef.        Soused hog’s feet.     Snites.

Breasts of veal.         Fried pasty-crust.     Then large puffs.

Pheasants and phea-      Forced capons.         Thistle-finches.

  sant poots.            Parmesan cheese.       Whore’s farts.

Peacocks.                Red and pale hip-      Fritters.

Storks.                    pocras.              Cakes, sixteen sorts.

Woodcocks.               Gold-peaches.          Crisp wafers.

Snipes.                  Artichokes.            Quince tarts.

Ortolans.                Dry and wet sweet-     Curds and cream.

Turkey cocks, hen          meats, seventy-      Whipped cream.

  turkeys, and turkey      eight sorts.         Preserved mirabo-

  poots.                 Boiled hens, and fat     lans.

Stock-doves, and           capons marinated.    Jellies.

  wood-culvers.          Pullets, with eggs.    Welsh barrapyclids.

Pigs, with wine sauce.   Chickens.              Macaroons.

Blackbirds, ousels, and  Rabbits, and sucking   Tarts, twenty sorts.

  rails.                   rabbits.             Lemon cream, rasp-

Moorhens.                Quails, and young        berry cream, &c.

Bustards, and bustard      quails.              Comfits, one hundred

  poots.                 Pigeons, squabs, and     colours.

Fig-peckers.               squeakers.           Cream wafers.

Young Guinea hens.       Fieldfares.            Cream cheese.

Vinegar brought up the rear to wash the mouth, and for fear of the squinsy;

also toasts to scour the grinders.

Chapter 4.LX.

What the Gastrolaters sacrificed to their god on interlarded fish-days.

Pantagruel did not like this pack of rascally scoundrels with their

manifold kitchen sacrifices, and would have been gone had not Epistemon

prevailed with him to stay and see the end of the farce.  He then asked the

skipper what the idle lobcocks used to sacrifice to their gorbellied god on

interlarded fish-days.  For his first course, said the skipper, they gave

him:

Caviare.                  tops, bishop’s-cods,    Red herrings.

Botargoes.                celery, chives, ram-    Pilchards.

Fresh butter.             pions, jew’s-ears (a    Anchovies.

Pease soup.               sort of mushrooms       Fry of tunny.

Spinach.                  that sprout out of      Cauliflowers.

Fresh herrings, full      old elders), spara-     Beans.

  roed.                   gus, wood-bind,         Salt salmon.

Salads, a hundred         and a world of          Pickled grigs.

  varieties, of cres-     others.                 Oysters in the shell.

  ses, sodden hop-

Then he must drink, or the devil would gripe him at the throat; this,

therefore, they take care to prevent, and nothing is wanting.  Which being

done, they give him lampreys with hippocras sauce:

Gurnards.               Thornbacks.             Fried oysters.

Salmon trouts.          Sleeves.                Cockles.

Barbels, great and      Sturgeons.              Prawns.

  small.                Sheath-fish.            Smelts.

Roaches.                Mackerels.              Rock-fish.

Cockerels.              Maids.                  Gracious lords.

Minnows.                Plaice.                 Sword-fish.

Skate-fish.             Sharplings.             Soles.

Lamprels.               Tunnies.                Mussels.

Jegs.                   Silver eels.            Lobsters.

Pickerels.              Chevins.                Great prawns.

Golden carps.           Crayfish.               Dace.

Burbates.               Pallours.               Bleaks.

Salmons.                Shrimps.                Tenches.

Salmon-peels.           Congers.                Ombres.

Dolphins.               Porpoises.              Fresh cods.

Barn trouts.            Bases.                  Dried melwels.

Miller’s-thumbs.        Shads.                  Darefish.

Precks.                 Murenes, a sort of      Fausens, and grigs.

Bret-fish.                lampreys.             Eel-pouts.

Flounders.              Graylings.              Tortoises.

Sea-nettles.            Smys.                   Serpents, i.e. wood-

Mullets.                Turbots.                  eels.

Gudgeons.               Trout, not above a      Dories.

Dabs and sandings.        foot long.            Moor-game.

Haddocks.               Salmons.                Perches.

Carps.                  Meagers.                Loaches.

Pikes.                  Sea-breams.             Crab-fish.

Bottitoes.              Halibuts.               Snails and whelks.

Rochets.                Dog’s tongue, or kind   Frogs.

Sea-bears.                fool.

If, when he had crammed all this down his guttural trapdoor, he did not

immediately make the fish swim again in his paunch, death would pack him

off in a trice.  Special care is taken to antidote his godship with

vine-tree syrup.  Then is sacrificed to him haberdines, poor-jack,

minglemangled, mismashed, &c.

Eggs fried, beaten,       sliced, roasted in     Green-fish.

  buttered, poached,      the embers, tossed     Sea-batts.

  hardened, boiled,       in the chimney, &c.    Cod’s sounds.

  broiled, stewed,      Stock-fish.              Sea-pikes.

Which to concoct and digest the more easily, vinegar is multiplied.  For

the latter part of their sacrifices they offer:

Rice milk, and hasty    Stewed prunes, and       Raisins.

  pudding.                baked bullace.         Dates.

Buttered wheat, and     Pistachios, or fistic    Chestnut and wal-

  flummery.               nuts.                    nuts.

Water-gruel, and        Figs.                    Filberts.

  milk-porridge.        Almond butter.           Parsnips.

Frumenty and bonny      Skirret root.            Artichokes.

  clamber.              White-pot.

              Perpetuity of soaking with the whole.

It was none of their fault, I will assure you, if this same god of theirs

was not publicly, preciously, and plentifully served in the sacrifices,

better yet than Heliogabalus’s idol; nay, more than Bel and the Dragon in

Babylon, under King Belshazzar.  Yet Gaster had the manners to own that he

was no god, but a poor, vile, wretched creature.  And as King Antigonus,

first of the name, when one Hermodotus (as poets will flatter, especially

princes) in some of his fustian dubbed him a god, and made the sun adopt

him for his son, said to him:  My lasanophore (or, in plain English, my

groom of the close-stool) can give thee the lie; so Master Gaster very

civilly used to send back his bigoted worshippers to his close-stool, to

see, smell, taste, philosophize, and examine what kind of divinity they

could pick out of his sir-reverence.

Chapter 4.LXI.

How Gaster invented means to get and preserve corn.

Those gastrolatrous hobgoblins being withdrawn, Pantagruel carefully minded

the famous master of arts, Gaster.  You know that, by the institution of

nature, bread has been assigned him for provision and food; and that, as an

addition to this blessing, he should never want the means to get bread.

Accordingly, from the beginning he invented the smith’s art, and husbandry

to manure the ground, that it might yield him corn; he invented arms and

the art of war to defend corn; physic and astronomy, with other parts of

mathematics which might be useful to keep corn a great number of years in

safety from the injuries of the air, beasts, robbers, and purloiners; he

invented water, wind, and handmills, and a thousand other engines to grind

corn and to turn it into meal; leaven to make the dough ferment, and the

use of salt to give it a savour; for he knew that nothing bred more

diseases than heavy, unleavened, unsavoury bread.

He found a way to get fire to bake it; hour-glasses, dials, and clocks to

mark the time of its baking; and as some countries wanted corn, he

contrived means to convey some out of one country into another.

He had the wit to pimp for asses and mares, animals of different species,

that they might copulate for the generation of a third, which we call

mules, more strong and fit for hard service than the other two.  He

invented carts and waggons to draw him along with greater ease; and as seas

and rivers hindered his progress, he devised boats, galleys, and ships (to

the astonishment of the elements) to waft him over to barbarous, unknown,

and far distant nations, thence to bring, or thither to carry corn.

Besides, seeing that when he had tilled the ground, some years the corn

perished in it for want of rain in due season, in others rotted or was

drowned by its excess, sometimes spoiled by hail, eat by worms in the ear,

or beaten down by storms, and so his stock was destroyed on the ground; we

were told that ever since the days of yore he has found out a way to

conjure the rain down from heaven only with cutting certain grass, common

enough in the field, yet known to very few, some of which was then shown

us.  I took it to be the same as the plant, one of whose boughs being

dipped by Jove’s priest in the Agrian fountain on the Lycian mountain in

Arcadia, in time of drought raised vapours which gathered into clouds, and

then dissolved into rain that kindly moistened the whole country.

Our master of arts was also said to have found a way to keep the rain up in

the air, and make it to fall into the sea; also to annihilate the hail,

suppress the winds, and remove storms as the Methanensians of Troezene used

to do.  And as in the fields thieves and plunderers sometimes stole and

took by force the corn and bread which others had toiled to get, he

invented the art of building towns, forts, and castles, to hoard and secure

that staff of life.  On the other hand, finding none in the fields, and

hearing that it was hoarded up and secured in towns, forts, and castles,

and watched with more care than ever were the golden pippins of the

Hesperides, he turned engineer, and found ways to beat, storm, and demolish

forts and castles with machines and warlike thunderbolts, battering-rams,

ballists, and catapults, whose shapes were shown to us, not over-well

understood by our engineers, architects, and other disciples of Vitruvius;

as Master Philibert de l’Orme, King Megistus’s principal architect, has

owned to us.

And seeing that sometimes all these tools of destruction were baffled by

the cunning subtlety or the subtle cunning (which you please) of

fortifiers, he lately invented cannons, field-pieces, culverins, bombards,

basiliskos, murdering instruments that dart iron, leaden, and brazen balls,

some of them outweighing huge anvils.  This by the means of a most dreadful

powder, whose hellish compound and effect has even amazed nature, and made

her own herself outdone by art, the Oxydracian thunders, hails, and storms

by which the people of that name immediately destroyed their enemies in the

field being but mere potguns to these.  For one of our great guns when used

is more dreadful, more terrible, more diabolical, and maims, tears, breaks,

slays, mows down, and sweeps away more men, and causes a greater

consternation and destruction than a hundred thunderbolts.

Chapter 4.LXII.

How Gaster invented an art to avoid being hurt or touched by cannon-balls.

Gaster having secured himself with his corn within strongholds, has

sometimes been attacked by enemies; his fortresses, by that thrice

threefold cursed instrument, levelled and destroyed; his dearly beloved

corn and bread snatched out of his mouth and sacked by a titanic force;

therefore he then sought means to preserve his walls, bastions, rampiers,

and sconces from cannon-shot, and to hinder the bullets from hitting him,

stopping them in their flight, or at least from doing him or the besieged

walls any damage.  He showed us a trial of this which has been since used

by Fronton, and is now common among the pastimes and harmless recreations

of the Thelemites.  I will tell you how he went to work, and pray for the

future be a little more ready to believe what Plutarch affirms to have

tried.  Suppose a herd of goats were all scampering as if the devil drove

them, do but put a bit of eringo into the mouth of the hindmost nanny, and

they will all stop stock still in the time you can tell three.

Thus Gaster, having caused a brass falcon to be charged with a sufficient

quantity of gunpowder well purged from its sulphur, and curiously made up

with fine camphor, he then had a suitable ball put into the piece, with

twenty-four little pellets like hail-shot, some round, some pearl fashion;

then taking his aim and levelling it at a page of his, as if he would have

hit him on the breast.  About sixty strides off the piece, halfway between

it and the page in a right line, he hanged on a gibbet by a rope a very

large siderite or iron-like stone, otherwise called herculean, formerly

found on Ida in Phrygia by one Magnes, as Nicander writes, and commonly

called loadstone; then he gave fire to the prime on the piece’s touch-hole,

which in an instant consuming the powder, the ball and hail-shot were with

incredible violence and swiftness hurried out of the gun at its muzzle,

that the air might penetrate to its chamber, where otherwise would have

been a vacuum, which nature abhors so much, that this universal machine,

heaven, air, land, and sea, would sooner return to the primitive chaos than

admit the least void anywhere.  Now the ball and small shot, which

threatened the page with no less than quick destruction, lost their

impetuosity and remained suspended and hovering round the stone; nor did

any of them, notwithstanding the fury with which they rushed, reach the

page.

Master Gaster could do more than all this yet, if you will believe me; for

he invented a way how to cause bullets to fly backwards, and recoil on

those that sent them with as great a force, and in the very numerical

parallel for which the guns were planted.  And indeed, why should he have

thought this difficult? seeing the herb ethiopis opens all locks

whatsoever, and an echinus or remora, a silly weakly fish, in spite of all

the winds that blow from the thirty-two points of the compass, will in the

midst of a hurricane make you the biggest first-rate remain stock still, as

if she were becalmed or the blustering tribe had blown their last.  Nay,

and with the flesh of that fish, preserved with salt, you may fish gold out

of the deepest well that was ever sounded with a plummet; for it will

certainly draw up the precious metal, since Democritus affirmed it.

Theophrastus believed and experienced that there was an herb at whose

single touch an iron wedge, though never so far driven into a huge log of

the hardest wood that is, would presently come out; and it is this same

herb your hickways, alias woodpeckers, use, when with some mighty axe

anyone stops up the hole of their nests, which they industriously dig and

make in the trunk of some sturdy tree.  Since stags and hinds, when deeply

wounded with darts, arrows, and bolts, if they do but meet the herb called

dittany, which is common in Candia, and eat a little of it, presently the

shafts come out and all is well again; even as kind Venus cured her beloved

byblow Aeneas when he was wounded on the right thigh with an arrow by

Juturna, Turnus’s sister.  Since the very wind of laurels, fig-trees, or

sea-calves makes the thunder sheer off insomuch that it never strikes them.

Since at the sight of a ram, mad elephants recover their former senses.

Since mad bulls coming near wild fig-trees, called caprifici, grow tame,

and will not budge a foot, as if they had the cramp.  Since the venomous

rage of vipers is assuaged if you but touch them with a beechen bough.

Since also Euphorion writes that in the isle of Samos, before Juno’s temple

was built there, he has seen some beasts called neades, whose voice made

the neighbouring places gape and sink into a chasm and abyss.  In short,

since elders grow of a more pleasing sound, and fitter to make flutes, in

such places where the crowing of cocks is not heard, as the ancient sages

have writ and Theophrastus relates; as if the crowing of a cock dulled,

flattened, and perverted the wood of the elder, as it is said to astonish

and stupify with fear that strong and resolute animal, a lion.  I know that

some have understood this of wild elder, that grows so far from towns or

villages that the crowing of cocks cannot reach near it; and doubtless that

sort ought to be preferred to the stenching common elder that grows about

decayed and ruined places; but others have understood this in a higher

sense, not literal, but allegorical, according to the method of the

Pythagoreans, as when it was said that Mercury’s statue could not be made

of every sort of wood; to which sentence they gave this sense, that God is

not to be worshipped in a vulgar form, but in a chosen and religious

manner.  In the same manner, by this elder which grows far from places

where cocks are heard, the ancients meant that the wise and studious ought

not to give their minds to trivial or vulgar music, but to that which is

celestial, divine, angelical, more abstracted, and brought from remoter

parts, that is, from a region where the crowing of cocks is not heard; for,

to denote a solitary and unfrequented place, we say cocks are never heard

to crow there.

Chapter 4.LXIII.

How Pantagruel fell asleep near the island of Chaneph, and of the problems

proposed to be solved when he waked.

The next day, merrily pursuing our voyage, we came in sight of the island

of Chaneph, where Pantagruel’s ship could not arrive, the wind chopping

about, and then failing us so that we were becalmed, and could hardly get

ahead, tacking about from starboard to larboard, and larboard to starboard,

though to our sails we added drabblers.

With this accident we were all out of sorts, moping, drooping,

metagrabolized, as dull as dun in the mire, in C sol fa ut flat, out of

tune, off the hinges, and I-don’t-know-howish, without caring to speak one

single syllable to each other.

Pantagruel was taking a nap, slumbering and nodding on the quarter-deck by

the cuddy, with an Heliodorus in his hand; for still it was his custom to

sleep better by book than by heart.

Epistemon was conjuring, with his astrolabe, to know what latitude we were

in.

Friar John was got into the cook-room, examining, by the ascendant of the

spits and the horoscope of ragouts and fricassees, what time of day it

might then be.

Panurge (sweet baby!) held a stalk of Pantagruelions, alias hemp, next his

tongue, and with it made pretty bubbles and bladders.

Gymnast was making tooth-pickers with lentisk.

Ponocrates, dozing, dozed, and dreaming, dreamed; tickled himself to make

himself laugh, and with one finger scratched his noddle where it did not

itch.

Carpalin, with a nutshell and a trencher of verne (that’s a card in

Gascony), was making a pretty little merry windmill, cutting the card

longways into four slips, and fastening them with a pin to the convex of

the nut, and its concave to the tarred side of the gunnel of the ship.

Eusthenes, bestriding one of the guns, was playing on it with his fingers

as if it had been a trump-marine.

Rhizotome, with the soft coat of a field tortoise, alias ycleped a mole,

was making himself a velvet purse.

Xenomanes was patching up an old weather-beaten lantern with a hawk’s

jesses.

Our pilot (good man!) was pulling maggots out of the seamen’s noses.

At last Friar John, returning from the forecastle, perceived that

Pantagruel was awake.  Then breaking this obstinate silence, he briskly and

cheerfully asked him how a man should kill time, and raise good weather,

during a calm at sea.

Panurge, whose belly thought his throat cut, backed the motion presently,

and asked for a pill to purge melancholy.

Epistemon also came on, and asked how a man might be ready to bepiss

himself with laughing when he has no heart to be merry.

Gymnast, arising, demanded a remedy for a dimness of eyes.

Ponocrates, after he had a while rubbed his noddle and shaken his ears,

asked how one might avoid dog-sleep.  Hold! cried Pantagruel, the

Peripatetics have wisely made a rule that all problems, questions, and

doubts which are offered to be solved ought to be certain, clear, and

intelligible.  What do you mean by dog-sleep?  I mean, answered Ponocrates,

to sleep fasting in the sun at noonday, as the dogs do.

Rhizotome, who lay stooping on the pump, raised his drowsy head, and lazily

yawning, by natural sympathy set almost everyone in the ship a-yawning too;

then he asked for a remedy against oscitations and gapings.

Xenomanes, half puzzled, and tired out with new-vamping his antiquated

lantern, asked how the hold of the stomach might be so well ballasted and

freighted from the keel to the main hatch, with stores well stowed, that

our human vessels might not heel or be walt, but well trimmed and stiff.

Carpalin, twirling his diminutive windmill, asked how many motions are to

be felt in nature before a gentleman may be said to be hungry.

Eusthenes, hearing them talk, came from between decks, and from the capstan

called out to know why a man that is fasting, bit by a serpent also

fasting, is in greater danger of death than when man and serpent have eat

their breakfasts;--why a man’s fasting-spittle is poisonous to serpents and

venomous creatures.

One single solution may serve for all your problems, gentlemen, answered

Pantagruel; and one single medicine for all such symptoms and accidents.

My answer shall be short, not to tire you with a long needless train of

pedantic cant.  The belly has no ears, nor is it to be filled with fair

words; you shall be answered to content by signs and gestures.  As formerly

at Rome, Tarquin the Proud, its last king, sent an answer by signs to his

son Sextus, who was among the Gabii at Gabii.  (Saying this, he pulled the

string of a little bell, and Friar John hurried away to the cook-room.)

The son having sent his father a messenger to know how he might bring the

Gabii under a close subjection, the king, mistrusting the messenger, made

him no answer, and only took him into his privy garden, and in his presence

with his sword lopped off the heads of the tall poppies that were there.

The express returned without any other despatch, yet having related to the

prince what he had seen his father do, he easily understood that by those

signs he advised him to cut off the heads of the chief men in the town, the

better to keep under the rest of the people.

Chapter 4.LXIV.

How Pantagruel gave no answer to the problems.

Pantagruel then asked what sort of people dwelt in that damned island.

They are, answered Xenomanes, all hypocrites, holy mountebanks, tumblers of

beads, mumblers of ave-marias, spiritual comedians, sham saints, hermits,

all of them poor rogues who, like the hermit of Lormont between Blaye and

Bordeaux, live wholly on alms given them by passengers.  Catch me there if

you can, cried Panurge; may the devil’s head-cook conjure my bumgut into a

pair of bellows if ever you find me among them!  Hermits, sham saints,

living forms of mortification, holy mountebanks, avaunt! in the name of

your father Satan, get out of my sight!  When the devil’s a hog, you shall

eat bacon.  I shall not forget yet awhile our fat Concilipetes of Chesil.

O that Beelzebub and Astaroth had counselled them to hang themselves out of

the way, and they had done’t! we had not then suffered so much by devilish

storms as we did for having seen ‘em.  Hark ye me, dear rogue, Xenomanes,

my friend, I prithee are these hermits, hypocrites, and eavesdroppers maids

or married?  Is there anything of the feminine gender among them?  Could a

body hypocritically take there a small hypocritical touch?  Will they lie

backwards, and let out their fore-rooms?  There’s a fine question to be

asked, cried Pantagruel.  Yes, yes, answered Xenomanes; you may find there

many goodly hypocritesses, jolly spiritual actresses, kind hermitesses,

women that have a plaguy deal of religion; then there’s the copies of ‘em,

little hypocritillons, sham sanctitos, and hermitillons.  Foh! away with

them, cried Friar John; a young saint, an old devil!  (Mark this, an old

saying, and as true a one as, a young whore, an old saint.)  Were there not

such, continued Xenomanes, the isle of Chaneph, for want of a

multiplication of progeny, had long ere this been desert and desolate.

Pantagruel sent them by Gymnast in the pinnace seventy-eight thousand fine

pretty little gold half-crowns, of those that are marked with a lantern.

After this he asked, What’s o’clock?  Past nine, answered Epistemon.  It is

then the best time to go to dinner, said Pantagruel; for the sacred line so

celebrated by Aristophanes in his play called Concionatrices is at hand,

never failing when the shadow is decempedal.

Formerly, among the Persians, dinner-time was at a set hour only for kings;

as for all others, their appetite and their belly was their clock; when

that chimed, they thought it time to go to dinner.  So we find in Plautus a

certain parasite making a heavy do, and sadly railing at the inventors of

hour-glasses and dials as being unnecessary things, there being no clock

more regular than the belly.

Diogenes being asked at what times a man ought to eat, answered, The rich

when he is hungry, the poor when he has anything to eat.  Physicians more

properly say that the canonical hours are,

  To rise at five, to dine at nine,

  To sup at five, to sleep at nine.

The famous king Petosiris’s magic was different,--Here the officers for the

gut came in, and got ready the tables and cupboards; laid the cloth, whose

sight and pleasant smell were very comfortable; and brought plates,

napkins, salts, tankards, flagons, tall-boys, ewers, tumblers, cups,

goblets, basins, and cisterns.

Friar John, at the head of the stewards, sewers, yeomen of the pantry, and

of the mouth, tasters, carvers, cupbearers, and cupboard-keepers, brought

four stately pasties, so huge that they put me in mind of the four bastions

at Turin.  Ods-fish, how manfully did they storm them!  What havoc did they

make with the long train of dishes that came after them!  How bravely did

they stand to their pan-puddings, and paid off their dust!  How merrily did

they soak their noses!

The fruit was not yet brought in, when a fresh gale at west and by north

began to fill the main-course, mizen-sail, fore-sail, tops, and

top-gallants; for which blessing they all sung divers hymns of thanks and

praise.

When the fruit was on the table, Pantagruel asked, Now tell me, gentlemen,

are your doubts fully resolved or no?  I gape and yawn no more, answered

Rhizotome.  I sleep no longer like a dog, said Ponocrates.  I have cleared

my eyesight, said Gymnast.  I have broke my fast, said Eusthenes; so that

for this whole day I shall be secure from the danger of my spittle.

Asps.             Black wag leg-flies.  Domeses.

Amphisbenes.      Spanish flies.        Dryinades.

Anerudutes.       Catoblepes.           Dragons.

Abedissimons.     Horned snakes.        Elopes.

Alhartrafz.       Caterpillars.         Enhydrides.

Ammobates.        Crocodiles.           Falvises.

Apimaos.          Toads.                Galeotes.

Alhatrabans.      Nightmares.           Harmenes.

Aractes.          Mad dogs.             Handons.

Asterions.        Colotes.              Icles.

Alcharates.       Cychriodes.           Jarraries.

Arges.            Cafezates.            Ilicines.

Spiders.          Cauhares.             Pharaoh’s mice.

Starry lizards.   Snakes.               Kesudures.

Attelabes.        Cuhersks, two-        Sea-hares.

Ascalabotes.        tongued adders.     Chalcidic newts.

Haemorrhoids.     Amphibious ser-       Footed serpents.

Basilisks.          pents.              Manticores.

Fitches.          Cenchres.             Molures.

Sucking water-    Cockatrices.          Mouse-serpents.

  snakes.         Dipsades.             Shrew-mice.

Miliares.         Salamanders.          Stinkfish.

Megalaunes.       Slowworms.            Stuphes.

Spitting-asps.    Stellions.            Sabrins.

Porphyri.         Scorpenes.            Blood-sucking flies.

Pareades.         Scorpions.            Hornfretters.

Phalanges.        Hornworms.            Scolopendres.

Penphredons.      Scalavotins.          Tarantulas.

Pinetree-worms.   Solofuidars.          Blind worms.

Ruteles.          Deaf-asps.            Tetragnathias.

Worms.            Horseleeches.         Teristales.

Rhagions.         Salt-haters.          Vipers, &c.

Rhaganes.         Rot-serpents.

Chapter 4.LXV.

How Pantagruel passed the time with his servants.

In what hierarchy of such venomous creatures do you place Panurge’s future

spouse? asked Friar John.  Art thou speaking ill of women, cried Panurge,

thou mangy scoundrel, thou sorry, noddy-peaked shaveling monk?  By the

cenomanic paunch and gixy, said Epistemon, Euripides has written, and makes

Andromache say it, that by industry, and the help of the gods, men had

found remedies against all poisonous creatures; but none was yet found

against a bad wife.

This flaunting Euripides, cried Panurge, was gabbling against women every

foot, and therefore was devoured by dogs, as a judgment from above; as

Aristophanes observes.  Let’s go on.  Let him speak that is next.  I can

leak now like any stone-horse, said then Epistemon.  I am, said Xenomanes,

full as an egg and round as a hoop; my ship’s hold can hold no more, and

will now make shift to bear a steady sail.  Said Carpalin, A truce with

thirst, a truce with hunger; they are strong, but wine and meat are

stronger.  I’m no more in the dumps cried Panurge; my heart’s a pound

lighter.  I’m in the right cue now, as brisk as a body-louse, and as merry

as a beggar.  For my part, I know what I do when I drink; and it is a true

thing (though ‘tis in your Euripides) that is said by that jolly toper

Silenus of blessed memory, that--

  The man’s emphatically mad,

  Who drinks the best, yet can be sad.

We must not fail to return our humble and hearty thanks to the Being who,

with this good bread, this cool delicious wine, these good meats and rare

dainties, removes from our bodies and minds these pains and perturbations,

and at the same time fills us with pleasure and with food.

But methinks, sir, you did not give an answer to Friar John’s question;

which, as I take it, was how to raise good weather.  Since you ask no more

than this easy question, answered Pantagruel, I’ll strive to give you

satisfaction; and some other time we’ll talk of the rest of the problems,

if you will.

Well then, Friar John asked how good weather might be raised.  Have we not

raised it?  Look up and see our full topsails.  Hark how the wind whistles

through the shrouds, what a stiff gale it blows.  Observe the rattling of

the tacklings, and see the sheets that fasten the mainsail behind; the

force of the wind puts them upon the stretch.  While we passed our time

merrily, the dull weather also passed away; and while we raised the glasses

to our mouths, we also raised the wind by a secret sympathy in nature.

Thus Atlas and Hercules clubbed to raise and underprop the falling sky, if

you’ll believe the wise mythologists, but they raised it some half an inch

too high, Atlas to entertain his guest Hercules more pleasantly, and

Hercules to make himself amends for the thirst which some time before had

tormented him in the deserts of Africa.  Your good father, said Friar John,

interrupting him, takes care to free many people from such an

inconveniency; for I have been told by many venerable doctors that his

chief-butler, Turelupin, saves above eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly

to make servants, and all comers and goers, drink before they are a-dry.

As the camels and dromedaries of a caravan, continued Pantagruel, use to

drink for the thirst that’s past, for the present, and for that to come, so

did Hercules; and being thus excessively raised, this gave new motion to

the sky, which is that of titubation and trepidation, about which our

crackbrained astrologers make such a pother.  This, said Panurge, makes the

saying good:

  While jolly companions carouse it together,

  A fig for the storm, it gives way to good weather.

Nay, continued Pantagruel, some will tell you that we have not only

shortened the time of the calm, but also much disburthened the ship; not

like Aesop’s basket, by easing it of the provision, but by breaking our

fasts; and that a man is more terrestrial and heavy when fasting than when

he has eaten and drank, even as they pretend that he weighs more dead than

living.  However it is, you will grant they are in the right who take their

morning’s draught and breakfast before a long journey; then say that the

horses will perform the better, and that a spur in the head is worth two in

the flank; or, in the same horse dialect--

  That a cup in the pate

  Is a mile in the gate.

Don’t you know that formerly the Amycleans worshipped the noble Bacchus

above all other gods, and gave him the name of Psila, which in the Doric

dialect signifies wings; for, as the birds raise themselves by a towering

flight with their wings above the clouds, so, with the help of soaring

Bacchus, the powerful juice of the grape, our spirits are exalted to a

pitch above themselves, our bodies are more sprightly, and their earthly

parts become soft and pliant.

Chapter 4.LXVI.

How, by Pantagruel’s order, the Muses were saluted near the isle of

Ganabim.

This fair wind and as fine talk brought us in sight of a high land, which

Pantagruel discovering afar off, showed it Xenomanes, and asked him, Do you

see yonder to the leeward a high rock with two tops, much like Mount

Parnassus in Phocis?  I do plainly, answered Xenomanes; ‘tis the isle of

Ganabim.  Have you a mind to go ashore there?  No, returned Pantagruel.

You do well, indeed, said Xenomanes; for there is nothing worth seeing in

the place.  The people are all thieves; yet there is the finest fountain in

the world, and a very large forest towards the right top of the mountain.

Your fleet may take in wood and water there.

He that spoke last, spoke well, quoth Panurge; let us not by any means be

so mad as to go among a parcel of thieves and sharpers.  You may take my

word for’t, this place is just such another as, to my knowledge, formerly

were the islands of Sark and Herm, between the smaller and the greater

Britain; such as was the Poneropolis of Philip in Thrace; islands of

thieves, banditti, picaroons, robbers, ruffians, and murderers, worse than

raw-head and bloody-bones, and full as honest as the senior fellows of the

college of iniquity, the very outcasts of the county gaol’s common-side.

As you love yourself, do not go among ‘em.  If you go you’ll come off but

bluely, if you come off at all.  If you will not believe me, at least

believe what the good and wise Xenomanes tells you; for may I never stir if

they are not worse than the very cannibals; they would certainly eat us

alive.  Do not go among ‘em, I pray you; it were safer to take a journey to

hell.  Hark! by Cod’s body, I hear ‘em ringing the alarm-bell most

dreadfully, as the Gascons about Bordeaux used formerly to do against the

commissaries and officers for the tax on salt, or my ears tingle.  Let’s

sheer off.

Believe me, sir, said Friar John, let’s rather land; we will rid the world

of that vermin, and inn there for nothing.  Old Nick go with thee for me,

quoth Panurge.  This rash hairbrained devil of a friar fears nothing, but

ventures and runs on like a mad devil as he is, and cares not a rush what

becomes of others; as if everyone was a monk, like his friarship.  A pox on

grinning honour, say I.  Go to, returned the friar, thou mangy noddy-peak!

thou forlorn druggle-headed sneaksby! and may a million of black devils

anatomize thy cockle brain.  The hen-hearted rascal is so cowardly that he

berays himself for fear every day.  If thou art so afraid, dunghill, do not

go; stay here and be hanged; or go and hide thy loggerhead under Madam

Proserpine’s petticoat.

Panurge hearing this, his breech began to make buttons; so he slunk in in

an instant, and went to hide his head down in the bread-room among the

musty biscuits and the orts and scraps of broken bread.

Pantagruel in the meantime said to the rest:  I feel a pressing retraction

in my soul, which like a voice admonishes me not to land there.  Whenever I

have felt such a motion within me I have found myself happy in avoiding

what it directed me to shun, or in undertaking what it prompted me to do;

and I never had occasion to repent following its dictates.

As much, said Epistemon, is related of the daemon of Socrates, so

celebrated among the Academics.  Well then, sir, said Friar John, while the

ship’s crew water have you a mind to have good sport?  Panurge is got down

somewhere in the hold, where he is crept into some corner, and lurks like a

mouse in a cranny.  Let ‘em give the word for the gunner to fire yon gun

over the round-house on the poop; this will serve to salute the Muses of

this Anti-parnassus; besides, the powder does but decay in it.  You are in

the right, said Pantagruel; here, give the word for the gunner.

The gunner immediately came, and was ordered by Pantagruel to fire that

gun, and then charge it with fresh powder, which was soon done.  The

gunners of the other ships, frigates, galleons, and galleys of the fleet,

hearing us fire, gave every one a gun to the island; which made such a

horrid noise that you would have sworn heaven had been tumbling about our

ears.

Chapter 4.LXVII.

How Panurge berayed himself for fear; and of the huge cat Rodilardus, which

he took for a puny devil.

Panurge, like a wild, addle-pated, giddy-goat, sallies out of the

bread-room in his shirt, with nothing else about him but one of his

stockings, half on, half off, about his heel, like a rough-footed pigeon;

his hair and beard all bepowdered with crumbs of bread in which he had been

over head and ears, and a huge and mighty puss partly wrapped up in his

other stocking.  In this equipage, his chaps moving like a monkey’s who’s

a-louse-hunting, his eyes staring like a dead pig’s, his teeth chattering,

and his bum quivering, the poor dog fled to Friar John, who was then sitting

by the chain-wales of the starboard side of the ship, and prayed him

heartily to take pity on him and keep him in the safeguard of his trusty

bilbo; swearing, by his share of Papimany, that he had seen all hell broke

loose.

Woe is me, my Jacky, cried he, my dear Johnny, my old crony, my brother, my

ghostly father! all the devils keep holiday, all the devils keep their

feast to-day, man.  Pork and peas choke me if ever thou sawest such

preparations in thy life for an infernal feast.  Dost thou see the smoke of

hell’s kitchens?  (This he said, showing him the smoke of the gunpowder

above the ships.)  Thou never sawest so many damned souls since thou wast

born; and so fair, so bewitching they seem, that one would swear they are

Stygian ambrosia.  I thought at first, God forgive me! that they had been

English souls; and I don’t know but that this morning the isle of Horses,

near Scotland, was sacked, with all the English who had surprised it, by

the lords of Termes and Essay.

Friar John, at the approach of Panurge, was entertained with a kind of

smell that was not like that of gunpowder, nor altogether so sweet as musk;

which made him turn Panurge about, and then he saw that his shirt was

dismally bepawed and berayed with fresh sir-reverence.  The retentive

faculty of the nerve which restrains the muscle called sphincter [‘tis the

arse-hole, an it please you) was relaxated by the violence of the fear

which he had been in during his fantastic visions.  Add to this the

thundering noise of the shooting, which seems more dreadful between decks

than above.  Nor ought you to wonder at such a mishap; for one of the

symptoms and accidents of fear is, that it often opens the wicket of the

cupboard wherein second-hand meat is kept for a time.  Let’s illustrate

this noble theme with some examples.

Messer Pantolfe de la Cassina of Siena, riding post from Rome, came to

Chambery, and alighting at honest Vinet’s took one of the pitchforks in the

stable; then turning to the innkeeper, said to him, Da Roma in qua io non

son andato del corpo.  Di gratia piglia in mano questa forcha, et fa mi

paura.  (I have not had a stool since I left Rome.  I pray thee take this

pitchfork and fright me.)  Vinet took it, and made several offers as if he

would in good earnest have hit the signor, but all in vain; so the Sienese

said to him, Si tu non fai altramente, tu non fai nulla; pero sforzati di

adoperarli piu guagliardamente.  (If thou dost not go another way to work,

thou hadst as good do nothing; therefore try to bestir thyself more

briskly.)  With this, Vinet lent him such a swinging stoater with the

pitchfork souse between the neck and the collar of his jerkin, that down

fell signor on the ground arsyversy, with his spindle shanks wide

straggling over his poll.  Then mine host sputtering, with a full-mouthed

laugh, said to his guest, By Beelzebub’s bumgut, much good may it do you,

Signore Italiano.  Take notice this is datum Camberiaci, given at Chambery.

‘Twas well the Sienese had untrussed his points and let down his drawers;

for this physic worked with him as soon as he took it, and as copious was

the evacuation as that of nine buffaloes and fourteen missificating

arch-lubbers.  Which operation being over, the mannerly Sienese courteously

gave mine host a whole bushel of thanks, saying to him, Io ti ringratio, bel

messere; cosi facendo tu m’ ai esparmiata la speza d’un servitiale.  (I

thank thee, good landlord; by this thou hast e’en saved me the expense of a

clyster.)

I’ll give you another example of Edward V., King of England.  Master

Francis Villon, being banished France, fled to him, and got so far into his

favour as to be privy to all his household affairs.  One day the king,

being on his close-stool, showed Villon the arms of France, and said to

him, Dost thou see what respect I have for thy French kings?  I have none

of their arms anywhere but in this backside, near my close-stool.

Ods-life, said the buffoon, how wise, prudent, and careful of your health

your highness is!  How carefully your learned doctor, Thomas Linacre, looks

after you!  He saw that now you grow old you are inclined to be somewhat

costive, and every day were fain to have an apothecary, I mean a suppository

or clyster, thrust into your royal nockandroe; so he has, much to the

purpose, induced you to place here the arms of France; for the very sight of

them puts you into such a dreadful fright that you immediately let fly as

much as would come from eighteen squattering bonasi of Paeonia.  And if they

were painted in other parts of your house, by jingo, you would presently

conskite yourself wherever you saw them.  Nay, had you but here a picture of

the great oriflamme of France, ods-bodikins, your tripes and bowels would be

in no small danger of dropping out at the orifice of your posteriors.  But

henh, henh, atque iterum henh.

  A silly cockney am I not,

    As ever did from Paris come?

  And with a rope and sliding knot

    My neck shall know what weighs my bum.

A cockney of short reach, I say, shallow of judgment and judging shallowly,

to wonder that you should cause your points to be untrussed in your chamber

before you come into this closet.  By’r lady, at first I thought your

close-stool had stood behind the hangings of your bed; otherwise it seemed

very odd to me you should untruss so far from the place of evacuation.  But

now I find I was a gull, a wittol, a woodcock, a mere ninny, a dolt-head, a

noddy, a changeling, a calf-lolly, a doddipoll.  You do wisely, by the

mass, you do wisely; for had you not been ready to clap your hind face on

the mustard-pot as soon as you came within sight of these arms--mark ye me,

cop’s body--the bottom of your breeches had supplied the office of a

close-stool.

Friar John, stopping the handle of his face with his left hand, did, with

the forefinger of the right, point out Panurge’s shirt to Pantagruel, who,

seeing him in this pickle, scared, appalled, shivering, raving, staring,

berayed, and torn with the claws of the famous cat Rodilardus, could not

choose but laugh, and said to him, Prithee what wouldst thou do with this

cat?  With this cat? quoth Panurge; the devil scratch me if I did not think

it had been a young soft-chinned devil, which, with this same stocking

instead of mitten, I had snatched up in the great hutch of hell as

thievishly as any sizar of Montague college could have done.  The devil

take Tybert!  I feel it has all bepinked my poor hide, and drawn on it to

the life I don’t know how many lobsters’ whiskers.  With this he threw his

boar-cat down.

Go, go, said Pantagruel, be bathed and cleaned, calm your fears, put on a

clean shift, and then your clothes.  What! do you think I am afraid? cried

Panurge.  Not I, I protest.  By the testicles of Hercules, I am more

hearty, bold, and stout, though I say it that should not, than if I had

swallowed as many flies as are put into plumcakes and other paste at Paris

from Midsummer to Christmas.  But what’s this?  Hah! oh, ho! how the devil

came I by this?  Do you call this what the cat left in the malt, filth,

dirt, dung, dejection, faecal matter, excrement, stercoration,

sir-reverence, ordure, second-hand meats, fumets, stronts, scybal, or

spyrathe? ‘Tis Hibernian saffron, I protest.  Hah, hah, hah! ‘tis Irish

saffron, by Shaint Pautrick, and so much for this time.  Selah.  Let’s

drink.

Rabelais Index