THE FOURTH BOOK
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.
END OF BOOK IV.
