Abstracted spirit, rapt in ecstasy,
Who while you haunt the skies, your origin,
Have left your servant host as you roam free,
Your well-matched body—quick to discipline,
Heeding you, for this pilgrim's life we're in
Sans sentiment, and to emotion slow;
Wouldn't you care for just a while to go
Out of the heavenly manor where you dwell,
To see in their third section here below
The joyous deeds of good Pantagruel?
Francis, by the grace of God, King of France:
to the Provost of Paris
Bailiff of Rouen, Seneschals of Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Dauphine,
Poitou, and all our other justices and officers and their lieutenants, and to
each of them as shall pertain to him, greetings [salut].3 On behalf of our
dear and well-loved Master Francois Rabelais, Doctor of Medicine of our
University of Montpellier, it has been set forth to us that, this petitioner
having hitherto offered for printing several books, notably two volumes
of the heroic deeds and sayings of Pantagruel, no less useful than delight-
ful, the printers have corrupted and perverted these books in many
places, to the great displeasure and detriment of the said petitioner and
disservice to the readers, wherefore he has abstained from publishing the
sequel and remainder of the said heroic deeds and sayings; however, he
was importiined daily by the learned and studious folk of our kingdom
an asked to put into use as well as into print the said sequel.
He has besought us to grant him a privilege so that no one may go
about printing them or putting them up for sale except for those [copies]
that he would have printed by booksellers, expressly, to whom he would
give his true and correct copies, and this [privilege] for the period of ten
consecutive years, beginning on the day and date of the printing of the
said books.
Wherefore we, having considered these things, wishing good letters
promoted throughout our kingdom for the utility and erudition of our
subjects, have given the said petitioner leave, license, and permission to
have printed and put on sale, by such booksellers as he shall see fit,
his said subsequent works about the heroic deeds of Pantagruel, begin
with the third volume, with the right and power to correct and revise
the first two heretofore composed by him, and to print them or have them
printed anew, to put them on sale or have them put on sale anew;
[meanwhile] issuing prohibitions and injunctions on our behalf, on great
and certain penalties, confiscation of the said books printed and arbitrary
fines, to all printers and others whom putting or having put on sale, the
books mentioned above, without the will and consent of the said peti-
tioner, within the term of six consecutive years, beginning on the day and
date of the printing of the said books, on pain of confiscation of the
[copies of] said books and of arbitrary fines. To do this we have given,
and do give, each one of you as it pertains to him, full power, commis-
sion, and authority; we order and command all our justices, officers, and
subjects, that by our present leave, privilege, and commission they cause,
allow, and permit the said petitioner to enjoy and make use of this peace-
ably; [order you] to be obeyed in doing this, for thus it is our pleasure that
it be done. Given at Paris, the nineteenth day of September, the year of
our Lord one thousand five hundred and forty-five, and of our reign the
xxxi [3ist]. So signed: by the counsel: Delaunay. And sealed with a simple
tongue [queue] of yellow wax.
Henry, by the grace of God, King of France, to the Provost of Paris,
Bailiff of Rouen, Seneschals of Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Dauphine,
Poitou, and to all our other justices and officers, or their lieutenants, and
to each one of them just as it shall pertain to him, greetings and affection.
On behalf of our dear and well-loved Master Francois Rabelais, Doctor
of Medicine, it has been set forth to us that, the said suppliant having
heretofore given for printing several books—in Greek, Latin, French, and
Tuscan, notably certain volumes about the heroic deeds and sayings of
Pantagruel, no less useful than delectable: (thattifie said printers had
perverted, corrupted, and depraved in many places. That furthermore
they ,had printed many other, scandalous books, in the name of the said
suppliant, to his great displeasure, prejudice, and ignominy, [books] to-
tally disavowed by him as false and supposititious; which, subject to our
good pleasure and will, he wished to suppresli Furthermore, to revise and
correct the others of his that were avowed,-but depraved and disguised, as
it is said, and to reprint them anew. Likewise [he wishes] to bring out and
put on sale the sequel to his heroic deeds and sayings of Pantagruel.
Humbly beseeching us thereupon to grant him the letter of ours that is
necessary and suitable for this.
So it is for this reason that we, inclining freely to the petition and
request of the said Master Francois Rabelais, petitioner, and wishing to
treat him well and favorably in this matter. To him for these reasons and
other good considerations impelling us to this, we have permitted,
granted and authorized, and by our certain knowlege and royal power
and authority, do permit, grant, and authorize, by these presents, that he
may, and it be lawful for him to, by such printers as he shall determine,
have printed, displayed, and put up for sale, each and all the said books
and sequel to Pantagruel, composed and undertaken by him—both those
that have already been printed and which for that purpose will by him be
revised and corrected, and also those new ones that he proposes to bring
out. Likewise (he may) suppress those that are falsely attributed to him.
And in order that he may have the means to meet the costs necessary to
open the said printing: we have by these presents most expressly prohib-
ited and forbidden, we do prohibit and forbid, all other booksellers and
printers of this our kingdom and our other lands and seigniories, from
going about printing or having printed, displayed, and put up for sale, any
of the aforesaid books, old or new, during the time and term of ten
ensuing consecutive years, beginning on the day and date of the printing
of the said books, without the will and consent of the said petitioner
[exposant]—and [this] on pain of confiscation of books found to have
been printed to the detriment of this our present permission, and [on pain
of] arbitrary fine.
So we will, and command each one of you, in your own regard and
howsoever it shall pertain to you, that you maintain, keep, and observe
our present leave, license, and permission, bans and prohibitions. And if
any were to be found to have contravened them, proceed against them
and institute proceedings against them on the aforesaid penalties and in
other ways. And have the aforesaid suppliant enjoy and use, fully and
peaceably, during the said time, beginning and all the rest as is stated
above. Ceasing and causing to cease any troubles or hindrances to the
contrary: for such is our pleasure. Notwithstanding any ordinances, re-
strictions, commands, or prohibitions whatsoever contrary to this. And
because in various places you will have to proceed with these presents,
we will that upon our official certification of these as exact copies [au
vidimus d'icelles], under the royal seal, they be trusted just as is this
present original.
Given at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the sixth day of August, the year
of Our Lord one thousand five hundred and fifty. And of our reign
the fourth.
By the King, with the Cardinal [Odet] de Chastillon present.
Signed:
DU THIER
Master Francois Rabelais,
for the third book
of the heroic deeds and sayings
of the good Pantagruel.1
Good folk, most illustrious topers, and you, most precious poxies, did
you ever see Diogenes, the Cynic philosopher? If you have seen him, you
hadn't lost your sight, unless I've completely departed from my intelli-
gence and logical sense. It's a fine thing to see the brightness of the wine
and sun (crowns) [veoir la clairte du vin et escuz Soleil]. I call to witness
the man born blind, so renowned in the most Holy Bible [Mark 10.51],
who, having the choice to ask for all he wanted, by the command of Him
Who is Almighty and Whose word is in a moment shown forth in deed,
asked for nothing more than to see.
Item, you are not young, a quality competent for more than physically,'
philosophizing in wine, not in vain [vin and vain are homonyms], and for
being from now on in the Bacchic council, in order in assaying to assess
[pour en lopinant opiner] the substance, color, odor, excellence, emi-
nence, properties, faculty, virtues, effect, and dignity of the blessed and
much-desired plot [vino].:
If seen him you have not (as I am easily induced to believe), at least
you have heard speak of him. For his name and renown throughout the air
and the whole heaven has up to now remained memorable and famous
enough, and then you're all sprung from Phrygian blood (or I'm mis-
taken), and, if you haven't as many gold crowns as Midas had, yet you
do have a certain something of his about you that the Persians prized in
their spies [otacustes] and which was most desired by the Emperor
Antoninus, something for which later the Rohan serpentine got the nick-
name, Fine Ears.'
If you haven't heard of him I want to tell you now a story to make a
start on the wine (so drink up) and the talk (so listen), informing you
(so
that you may not by simplicity be fooled like unbelievers) that in his time
he was one rare and joyous philosopher in a thousand. If he had a few
imperfections, so have you, so have we. Nothing, except God, is perfect.
Yet the fact is that Alexander the Great, although he had Aristotle for his
household tutor, held him in such high esteem that he wished, in case he
were not Alexander, to be Diogenes of Sinope.
When Philip, king of Macedon, undertook to besiege and destroy
Corinth, the Corinthians, alerted by their spies that he was coming
against them in great array and with a big army, were all, not unreason-
ably, frightened, and were not negligent in each making it his business to
resist his hostile approach and defend their city.
Some were bringing back from the fields and into the fortresses mov-
ables, cattle, grains, wines, fruits, necessary victuals, and munitions.
Others were repairing walls,
setting up bastions,
squaring off ravelins,
digging ditches,
cleaning out countermines,
setting up gabions in the defenses,
arranging high platforms,
emptying casemates,
putting new bars on roads upon the walls,
erecting high platforms for artillery,
rebuilding counterscarps,
cementing curtain walls,
setting up snipers' posts,
raising ramps to the parapets,
mortising barbicans,
reinforcing machicolations,
rebinding portcullises,
stationing sentinels,
sending out patrols.
Every man was on the watch, every man was carrying his basket. Some
were polishing corslets, varnishing cuirasses, cleaning housings, front-
stalls, habergeons, brigandines, helmets, beavers, metal skullcaps, double
pikes, horsemen's headpieces, morions, coats of mail, jazerants, brassarts,
tasses, gussets, gorgets, arm-plates and thigh-plates, jointed corslets,
hauberks, targets, bucklers, greaves, foot-pieces, spurs.
Others were readying bows, slings, crossbows, pellets, catapults, fire-
arrows, fireballs, fire-pots, fire-rings, grenades, stone-throwing ballistae,
and scorpions, and other warlike machines made to repel and destroy
siege towers.
They were sharpening boar spears, pikes, hooks, halberds, crooks, long-
handled billhooks, lances, assagais, pitchforks, partisans, maces, battle-
axes, darts, dartlets, javelins ancient and modern, hunting spears. They
were whetting scimitars, cutlasses, swords, tucks, hangers, broad old-
style short-swords, poniards, knives, blades, three-edged daggers.
Everyone was exercising his poniard; everyone was scouring the rust off
his hanger. No woman was there, however old and prudish, who did not
get her harness furbished; for, as you know, the old-time Corinthian
women were courageous in combat.
Diogenes, seeing them turning everything upside down with such fer-
vor, and not being employed by the magistrates to do anything, for a few
days contemplated their behavior without saying anything. Then, as if
excited by martial spirit, he flung his cloak around him like a scarf, trussed
up his robe like an apple picker, handed an old comrade of his his wallet,
his books, and his writing tablets, took a fine esplanade out of the city
toward Cranion, a hill and promontory near Corinth, rolled over to it the
earthenware barrel that served him as a house against the assaults from the
sky, and, exerting his arms in great vehemence of spirit, veered it,'
feathered it, caparisoned it, brought it down below from atop, precipi-
tated it off Cranion, then brought it back up from below to the top, as
Sisyphus did with his stone; so much so that he barely missed knocking a
hole in it.
Seeing this, one of his friends asked him what cause impelled him thus
to torment his body, his spirit, and his barrel. To which the philosopher
replied that being employed on no other business by the commonwealth,
he harried his barrel this way amid this people so fervent and occupied,
not alone to seem a slacker and an idler.
I likewise, although free from fear, am nonetheless not free from care,
seeing that I am held to be of no account worth putting to work, and
considering that throughout this whole most noble kingdom of France,
both on this side of the mountains and beyond them [deck dela les
mons], today each and every man is earnestly exerting himself and work-
ing, partly on the fortification of his fatherland and defending it, partly
on repelling the enemy and harming them, all this in such fair polity, such
wonderful ordering, and to such evident advantage for the future (for
henceforth shall France be superbly bordered [bournee], shall the French
be secured in repose) that little restrains me from coming to the opinion
of the good Heraclitus, that war was the father of all good things, and
from believing that war in Latin is said to be beautiful [bellum, belle] not
by antiphrasis, as have supposed certain patchers of old Latin iron, be-
cause in war they saw no goodness and beauty, but absolutely and simply,
for the reason that in war appears eveg„kind of good and beauty, there is
hidden every kind of evil and ugliness. As proof that this is so, the wise
and peaceable King Solomon knew better way to represent the inef-
fable perfection of the divine wisdom than by comparing it to the order-
ing of an army in camp.
So for not being enrolled and placed in the ranks of our men in the
offensive part, since they have judged me to be too feeble and impotent,
and in the other, which is defensive, not being employed at all, even if
it
were in carrying hods, burying sewage, binding, kindling, or breaking up
clods,' it didn't matter to me, I thought it a more than moderate shame to
be seen an idle spectator of so many valiant, eloquent, and knightly per-
sonages, who in the sight and spectacle of all Europe are playing this
notable fable and tragic comedy,8 not to put out my utmost effort myself, and not to accomplish by it that little, my all, that I had left. For scant
glory seems to me to accrue to those who employ on it only their eyes,
for the rest sparing their strength, concealing their gold crowns, hiding
their silver, scratching their head with one finger, like disenchanted no-
goods, gaping at flies like idiot moon-calves, flapping their ears like
Arcadian donkeys at the musicians' song and by their faces signifying in
silence that they consent to the prosopopoeia [performance].
This choice and option taken I thought I would perform no useless and
importunate exercise if I agitated my Diogenic barrel, which alone has
been left me from the shipwreck incurred in the past at the lighthouse by
the Strait of Malencounter. By this dingledangling of my barrel, what do
you think I will accomplish? By the virgin tucking up her skirts?9 I don't
know yet. Wait a minute while I sniff down a snifter from this bottle; it's
my one real Helicon. It's my Caballine spring, my one and only enthusi-
asm. Here drinking I deliberate, I discourse, I resolve and conclude. After
the epilogue,'° I laugh, I write, I compose, I drink. Ennius drinking
wrote, writing drank. Aeschylus (if you put any faith in Plutarch, in his
Symposiaca [Questiones naturales] drank composing, drinking composed.
Homer never wrote on an empty stomach. Cato never wrote except after
drinking. This so that you may not say that I live like this without
the example of those well praised and best prized. It's good and fresh
enough, as you might say just at the start of the second degree;" God, the
good God Sabaoth (that is to say, of the armies) be eternally praised
for it. If you folks likewise drink one big swig or two little swigs under
your cloak, I see no problem in that provided you praise God a bit
for everything.
So since it is my lot or destiny (for not to every man is it granted to
enter and inhabit Corinth [Horace Epistles I.18.36]), my intention is to be
so little idle and unprofitable, that I will set myself to serve the one and
the other sort of folk. Among the diggers, pioneers, and rampart-builders,
I will do what Neptune and Apollo did in Troy under Laomedon, what
Renaud de Montauban did in his last days: I'll serve the masons, I'll put
on to boil for the masons; and once the meal is over, to the sound of
musical pipes I'll measure the musery of the musers [je...mesureray la
musarderie des musars]. Thus did Amphion fund, build, and construct,
by playing on his lyre, the great famous city of Thebes. For the combat-
ants I'm again going to pierce my barrel, and from the draft, which by
two preceding volumes (if by the printers' imposture they had not been
perverted and jumbled) was well enough known to you, draw them,
from the vintage of our afterdinner pastimes, a gallant third draft and
consecutively a merry fourth, of Pantagruelic sayings; by me it will be
licit to call them Diogenic. And since comrade I may not be, they shall
have me as loyal steward of the feast, within my small power offering
refreshment for their return from alarms, and tireless, I say, in praise of
their exploits and glorious feats of arms. I shall not fail them, by lapathium
acutum of God, if Mars should not fail in Lent; but he'll be careful not
to do that, the old lecher.
However, I remember reading that when Ptolemy, son of Lagus one
clay, among other spoils and booties of his conquests, offered the Egyp-
tians, in the midst of the theater an all-black Bactrian camel and a slave
motley colored in such a way that half of his body was black, the other
white (not divided in latitude at the diaphragm as was that woman sacred
to the Indian Venus who was noted by the Tyanian philosopher between
the river Hydaspes and Mount Caucasus, but in the perpendicular dimen-
sion, things not yet seen in Egypt), he hoped by these novelties to aug-
ment the people's love for him. What comes of it? At the presentation of
the camel all were frightened and indignant; at the sight of the motley-
colored man some sneered, others abominated him as an infamous mon-
ster, created by an error of nature. In sum, the hope he had of pleasing
the Egyptians, and by this means extending the affection they naturally
bore him, slipped out of his hands. And he understood that they took
more pleasure and delight in things beautiful, elegant, and perfect, than
ridiculous and monstrous. After that he held both the slave and the camel
in such scorn that soon after, through negligence and lack of proper
treatment, they exchanged life for death.
This example makes me oscillate between hope and fear, afraid that in
place of anticipated contentment I encounter what I abhor, my treasure
proves to be lumps of coal, instead of Venus, I come up with Whiskers
the dog," instead of serving them I offend them, instead of pleasing them
I displease, and my outcome be such as that of Euclion's Rooster, made
so famous by Plautus in his Pot [Aularia 3.4] and by Ausonius in his Gryphus and elsewhere, who, for having discovered the treasure in his
scratching, had his coat thrut.' Should that come to pass, ought it to
get
my goat? It has happened in the past; happen it still could. No it won't by
Hercules! I recognize in them all a specific form and individual property
that our ancestors called Pantagruelism, on condition of which they never
take in bad part things they know issue from a good, free, and honest
heart. I have seen them ordinarily take good will in payment and be
content with that, even when weakness in power has been associated
with it.
With that point expedited, I return to my barrel. Up and at this time,
mates! Fill up your mugs, lads! If it doesn't seem good to you, leave it.
I'm not one of those importunate fossilophers,'9 who by force, outrage,
and violence, constrain the fellows and comrades to toss her down, which
is worse. Every worthy toper, every worthy goutie, when thirsty, coming
to this barrel of mine, is not to drink if he doesn't want to; if they want
to, and the wine pleases the taste of the Excellency of their Excellencies
[la seigneurie de leurs seigneuries], let them drink freely, frankly, boldly,
without paying a thing, and not spare it. Such is my decree. And have no
fear that the wine will run out, as it did at the wedding in Cana in Galilee
[John 2.1-t z]. As much as I draw from the spigot, I'll funnel in through
the bung. Thus will the barrel remain inexhaustible. It has a living spring
and a perpetual vein. Such was the golden bough sacred to the subterra-
nean goddess, so celebrated by Virgil [Aeneid 6.63ff, 110-140, 174 ff]. It's
a real cornucopia of joyfulness and jesting. If at some point it seems to
you to be exhausted down to the lees, it will, however, not be dry. Good
hope lies at the bottom, as in Pandora's bottle,'" not despair, as in the jar
of the Danaids.''
Mark well what I have said, and what manner of people I invite. For
(that no one be misled), on the model of Lucilius, who protested that he
wrote only for his Tarentines and Cosenzans, I have pierced it only for
you, good people, topers of the first vintage-and gouties in your own
right. The doriphagous giants [les geans doriphages avalleurs de frimars],22
mist-swallowers, have occupations" enough, and enough pouches on
the hook for venison; let them see to that if they will. This is not their
game here.
About the hood-brained pettifoggers, the nitpicking sticklers for details,
don't talk to me, I beseech you in the name and reverence of the four
buttocks that engendered you and the life-giving kingpin that for that
time coupled them [Des cerveaulx a bourlet, grabeleurs de corrections, ne
me parlez, je vous supplie on nom et reverence des quatre fosses qui vous
engendrerent, et de la vivificque cheville qui pour lors les coupploit.] As
for the pious hypocrites, even less although they are all out-and-out
poxies, equipped with unquenchable thirst and insatiable mastication.
Why? Because they are not of good, but of evil, and of that evil from
which we daily beseech God to be delivered, although they sometimes
impersonate beggars. Never did an old monkey make a pretty face.
Behind me, curs! Out of here, impostors! Out of my sunlight, you
devil's rabble! Are you high-tailing it here to screw up my wine and piss
in my barrel? Look, here's the stick that Diogenes ordered in his will to
be placed next to him after his death to clobber and drive away these
coffin-haunting spooks and Cerberian curs. Out of here, you phonies! In
the name of the devil, out! Are you still there? I give up my share of
Papimania,24 if I can just catch you. Grr. Grrr. Grrrrr! Avaunt, Avaunt!
Will they ever go? May you never be able to crap except under the lash
of stirrup leathers, never piss but with the strappado, never get hot pants
except from a beating!
How Pantagruel transported
a colony of Utopians into Dipsody.
PANTAGRUEL, having utterly conquered the country of Dipsody, trans-
ported into it a colony of Utopians in the number of 9876543210 men
(not counting the women and little children), artisans in all trades and
professionals in all liberal disciplines, so as to refresh, populate and adorn
the said country, which was otherwise ill inhabited and for the most part
a wilderness. And he transported them not so much for the excessive
multitude of men and women who had multiplied like locusts in Uto-
pia—you understand well enough, there is no more need to inform you
of it further, that the Utopian men had genitals so fertile, and the Utopian
women wombs so ample, gluttonous, tenacious, and architecturally well
cellulated, that after every ninth month seven children at the very least,
both males and females, were born of each marriage, in imitation of
Judaic people in Egypt (if De Lyra is not delirious)—also not so much for
the fertility of the soil, salubriousness of the climate, and advantages of the
country of Dipsody, as in order to contain it in its duty and obedience by
a new importation of his faithful ancient subjects, who in all memory of
man had known, recognized, avowed, or served,rio other lord than him.
And who, when they were born and came into the world with their
mothers' milk also imbibed the sweetness and kindness of his rule, and in
this were ever confected and reared, which offered certain hope that they
would sooner give up this bodily life than that primal sole subjection
naturally due to their prince, whithersoever they might be dispersed and
transported) And not only such would they be and the children succes-
sively born oftheir blood, but also they would maintain in that fealty and
obedience the nations newly annexed to his empire.
This indeed happened, and in no way was he frustrated in his planning.
For if the Utopians, before this transmigration, had been loyal and truly
grateful, the Dipsodes, after associating with them for a few days, were
even more so, by I know not what fervor natural in all humans at the
beginning of all operations that are to their taste. Only they complained,
calling on all the heavens and the moving intelligences, that they had not
known sooner of the renown of the good Pantagruel.
So you will note here, topers, that the way to maintain and retain
newly acquired countries is not (as certain tyrannical spirits ' have opined,
to their hurt and dishonor) by plundering, forcing, harassing, ruining the
peoples and ruling them with iron rods, in short eating and devouring the
peoples in the way for which Homer [Iliad 1.231] calls the wicked King
Demovorous, that is to say, devourer of his people. In this connection I
shall not cite you the old stories, but shall merely recall to your memory
what ypur fathers have seen of this, and you yourselves, if you're not too
young.Like a newborn child we must nurse them, cradle them, fondle
them. Like a newly planted tree we must support them, secure them,
defend them against all storms, damages and calamities. Like a person
saved from a long potent illness and coming to convalescence, we must
coddle them, spare them, restore them. So that they may inwardly con-
ceive this opinion, that there is no king or prince in the world whom
they would want less as an enemy, opt for more as a friend. Thus Osiris,
the great king of the Egyptians, conquered the whole earth not so much
by force of arms as by relieving harassment, teaching how to live well and
in health, by comfortable laws, graciousness, and good deeds. Therefore
he was surnamed by everyone the great god Evergetes (that is to say
Benefactor) by order of Jupiter given to one Pamyla.
Hesiod, in his Theogony, locates the good daemons (call them if you
will angels or genii) as mediators between gods and men, superior to
men, inferior to gods.' And because through their hands riches and good
things come to us from heaven, and they are continually beneficent to us,
always preserving us from harm, he says they act the part of kings, since
always to do good, never harm, is a peculiarly kingly way to act. Thus
was Alexander of Macedon emperor of the universe. Thus was the whole
continent possessed by Hercules, relieving humans of monsters, oppres-
sions, exactions, and tyrannies, governing them with good treatment,
maintaining them in equity and justice, in a benign government suiting
the site of the countries instituting them, supplying what was lacking,
pricing down what was plentiful, and pardoning the entire past with
eternal oblivion of all preceding offense, as was the Amnesty of the Athe-
nians, when by the prowess and steadfisiness of a Thrasybulus the tyrants
were driven out, later expounded in Rome by Cicero and renewed un-
der Emperor Aurelian.'
These are the philters, snares, and lures of love, by which peacefully
one retains what one had painfully conquered. And no more happily can
a conqueror reign, be he king, prince, or philosopher, than by making
Justice succeed Valor. His valor appeared in the victory and conquest, his
justice will appear in that he will give laws by the will and kind affection
of the people, and publish edicts, establish religions, do right to each and
every man, as the noble poet Maro [Virgil Georgics 4.559-561] says of
Octavian Augustus:
Although the victor, yet he managed still
To govern by the conquered people's will.'
That is why Homer, in his Iliad [1.375 and 3.236], calls good princes
and great kings Kocrufropas Xaciiv, that is to say adorners of peoples. Such
was the consideration of Numa Pompilius, second king of the Romans, a
just statesman and philosopher, when he ordained that to the god Termi-
nus, on the day of his festival, which was called Terminalia, nothing was
to be sacrificed that had died, teaching us that in peacetime it is fitting to
guard and control the bounds, frontiers, in peace, friendliness, and genial-
ity, without soiling our hands with blood and pillage. Anyone who acts
otherwise will not only lose his gain but also will suffer this scandal and
opprobrium, that he will be thought to have acquired it wickedly and
wrongly, on the grounds that the gain perished in his hands. For ill-got
things perish ill; and even though all his life he may have enjoyed it
peaceably, if nonetheless the gain perishes in his heirs, the like scandal will
lie upon the deceased; and his memory will be accursed as a wicked
conqueror. For you say as a common proverb: "Of ill-got things the third
heir shall have no joy.
"
Note also, you true-blue gouties, in this matter, how by this means
Pantagruel made two angels out of one, an outcome opposite to
Charlemagne's decision when he made two devils out of one when he
transported the Saxons into Flanders and the Flemings into Saxony. For
being unable to keep the Saxons annexed by him to his empire in subjec-
tion, but that would burst into rebellion if by chance he was drawn away
into Spain or other far-off land, he transported them into a land of his
naturally obedient, to wit Flandefs-; and the Hainaulters and Flemings, his
natural subjects he transported into Saxony with no fear for their loyalty
even though they were transmigrating into foreign lands. But it turned
out that the Saxons continued in their original rebellion and obstinacy,
and the Flemings in Saxony imbibed the ways and the contrariness of
the Saxons.
How Panurge was made lord of Salmagundi in Dipsody
and ate his wheat in the blade.
IN ordering the government of Dipsody, Pantagruel assigned to Panurge
the castleship of Salmagundi in each year worth 6789106789 royals' in assured petty cash, not including the certain revenue from June bugs and
snailshells, which year in year out amounted to between 2435768 and
2435769 long-woolled sheep. Sometimes it came to 123454321 seraphs'
when it was a good year for snailshells and choice June bugs. But this was
not every year. And so well and prudently did Milord the new Lord of
the Manor govern himself that in less than a fortnight he had squandered
the revenue, certain and uncertain, of his castleship for three years.
He
did not really squander it, as you might say, on founding monasteries,
erecting churches, building schools and hospitals, or tossing his bacon to
the dogs; but he spent it on myriad joyous little banquets and feasts open
to all comers, especially good companions, young girls, and cute
wenches, felling woods, burning the big logs to sell the ashes, taking
money in advance, buying dear, selling cheap, and eating his wheat in
the blade.
Pantagruel, notified of the matter, for all that was not in the least
indignant, angry, or vexed inside. I've already told you, and yet again I
tell you, that he was the best nice little big little fellow that ever buckled
on a sword. All things he took in good art, all actions he interpreted for
the good; never did he torment himself never did he take offense; else he
would have quite departed from out the deific manor of reason [aussi
eust-il este bien forissu du deificque manoir de raison], if otherwise he
had let himself be affected; for all the goods that Heaven covers and earth
holds in all its dimensions--height, depth, length, and width do not
deserve to stir our affections or trouble our senses and spirits.
Only he drew Panurge aside and gently pointed out to him that if he
would live that way and not husband his resourees differently, impossible
it would be, or at least very difficult, to make him rich.
"Rich?" retorted Panurge. "Is that what you'd set your mind on? Had
you made it your • concern to make me rich in this world? Just put your
mind to living joyously, in the name of God and the good 'man!' May no
other concern, no other care, be received into the sacrosanct domicile of
your celestial brain., May the serenity thereof never be troubled by any
clouds whatever of thought laced with pain and distress. With you living
joyous, lusty, cheerful, I shall be only too rich Everyone cries: 'Thrift,
thrift!' but a man or two talks about thrift who nows not what it is. I'm
the orie whose advice they should take. And from me this time you shall
take notice that what is imputed to me as vice has been imitation of the
Univeisity and Parlement of Paris, places in which resides the true source
and living archetype of pantheology and also for all justice. Heretic he
who doubts it, and does not firmly believe it. At all. events in one day
they devour their bishop [Ilz toutesfoys en un jour mangent leur evesque]
or the revenue of the bishopric (it's all one) for one entire year, indeed for
two sometimes; that's on the day when he comes into it. And there's no
way to be excused from this, if he would not be stoned on the spot]
"It has also been an exercise of the four cardinal virtues [A este aussi
acte des quatre vertus principales].
"Of prudence, in taking money in advance, for you never know who
may bite or kick [car on ne scayt qui mord ne qui rue]. Who knows if the
world will last another three years? And even if it should last longer, is
there any man so insane as to dare promise himself to live three years?
Never had man the gods so much his way
As to be sure to live another day.
"Of commutative justice, buying dear (I mean on credit), selling cheap
(I mean for cash). What does Cato say in his Husbandry [De re rustica
2.55.7] on that subject? The paterfamilias, he says, must be a perpetual
seller. By this method it is impossible for him not to become rich at last,
if his provisions hold out.
"Distributive [justice], giving food to good (I mean good) companions,
whom Fortune had cast, like Ulysses, on the rocks of a good appetite
with no supply of food, and the nice (I mean nice) young French wenches
(I mean young; for, according to Hippocrates's saying, youth is intoler-
ant of hunger, especially if it is vivacious, lively, fast-moving, cur-
veting), which wenches willingly and heartily give pleasure to good men
and are Platonic and Ciceronian to the point where they think they are
born into the world not for themselves alone, but share their persons
partly with their country, partly with their boyfriends [font part a leur
patrie, part a leurs amis].
"Of strength, knocking down the big trees [en abastant les gros arbres],
like a second Milo; wiping out the dark forests, lairs of wolves, wild
boars, foxes, hideouts of brigands and murderers, burrows of assassins,
workshops of counterfeiters, hideaways for heretics, and leveling them
into bright open fields and fair heaths, playing the oboes [haulx boys],
and preparing the seats for Judgment Night.
"Of temperance, eating my wheat in the blade, living on salads and
roots like a hermit, emancipating myself from sensory appetites, and thus
saving up for the cripples and the afflicted. For by so doing I save on
weeders, who make money; the reapers, who like to drink, and without
water; the gleaners, who must have their cake; the threshers, who, on the
authority of Virgil's Thestylis, leave no garlic, onion, or shallot in the
gardens; the millers, who are ordinarily robbers; and the bakers, who are
hardly any better. Is that a petty saving? Besides the damage from the field
mice, the residues in the granaries, and what is eaten by the weevils and
mites?
"From wheat in the blade you make nice green sauce, simple to con-
coct and easy to digest, which refreshes your brain, cheers your animal
spirits, rejoices your sight, opens up your appetite, delights your taste,
fortifies your heart, tickles your tongue, brightens your color, strengthens
your muscles, tempers your blood, revives your diaphragm, freshens your
liver, unstops your spleen, relieves your kidneys, purges your bladder,
lulls your loins, limbers up your vertebrae, empties your ureters, dilates
your spermatic vessels, tightens up your cremasters, cleans out your blad-
der, fills up your genitals, straightens your foreskin, encrusts your gland,
erects your member, gives you a good belly, makes you do things well:
belch, fizzle, fart, shit, urinate, sneeze, sob, cough, spit, vomit, yawn,
blow your nose, puff, inhale, breathe, snore, sweat, get your pecker up,
and myriad other rare advantages."
"I quite understand," said Pantagruel, "you are inferring that dull-wit-
ted people could not spend so much in a short time. You are not the first
to conceive that heresy. Nero maintained it and admired above all hu-
mans his uncle Gaius Caligula, who in a few days, by wondrous ingenu-
ity, had spent all the patrimony and wealth that Tiberius had left him. But
instead of keeping and observing the culinary and sumptuary laws of the
Romans, the leges Orchia, Fannia, Didia, Licinia, Cornelia, Lepidania,
Antia, and those of the Corinthians, by which it was strictly forbidden to
each and every one to spend more per year than his annual income
allowed, you have performed Protervia, which among the Romans was a
sacrifice like that of the Paschal lamb among the Jews: you .were supposed
to eat up everything edible, throw the rest into the fire, save nothing for
the morrow. I can justly say of you what Cato said of Albidius, who, after
eating up all he possessed by excessive expenditure, since all that was left
was one house, he set fire to it, so as to say consummatum est," even as later
Saint Thomas Aquinas said when he had eaten up the whole lamprey. Let
it pass [Cela non force].
"BUT," asked Pantagruel, "when will you be out of debt?"
"At the Greek Calends," replied Panurge, "when everyone will be
happy and you will be heir to yourself God preserve me from being out
of it. Then I would no longer find anyone who would lend me a penny.
He who leaves no leaven in the evening will never make his dough rise
in the morning. Do you always owe something to someone? By him will
God be continually implored to give you a good, long, and happy life,
fearing to lose his debt; always will he speak well of you in all companies,
always will acquire for you new creditors, so that by means of them you
may make payment, and with other men's earth fill his ditch.
"When once upon a time in Gaul, by the ordinance of the druids, serfs,
servants, and attendants were all burned alive at the funerals and obsequies
of their masters and lords, weren't they good and scared that their masters
and lords would die, for they all had to die together? Didn't they continu-
ally pray to their great god Mercury, with Dis, the father with the ducats,'
to keep them in health for a long time? Weren't they careful to treat and
serve them well, for together they could live, at least, until death? Believe
me; in even more fervent devotion your creditors will pray God that you
live, will fear that you may die, the more so because they love the sleeve
more than the arm, the penny more than life; witness the userers of
Landerousse not long ago, who hanged themselves when they saw the
price of wheat and wines go down and good weather return."
As Pantagruel made no reply, Panurge went on:
"Honest to goodness [vray bog! When I really think of it, you put me
righ back behind the eight-ball,3 reproaching me for my debts and credi-
tors! Why, in that sole quality I considered myself august, reverend, and
redou table, in that, surpassing the opinion of all philosophers (who say
nothing is made out of nothing), having nothing and no primal matter, I
was a maker and creator.
"I had created what? All those lovely fine creditors. Creditors are (I
maintain right up to the stake exclusively)4 fine good creatures. Whoever
lends nothing is an ugly evil creature, a creature of the great foul fiend
of hell.
"And made what? Debts. 0 rare and antiquarian thing! Debts, I say,
exceeding the number of syllables resulting from coupling all the conso-
nants with all the vowels, a number once conceived and counted by the
noble Xenocrates. If by the numerosity of creditors you estimate the
perfection of debtors, you make no mistake in practical arithmetic.
Will you believe how happy I am when every morning I see around
me these creditors, so humble, so serviceable, and full of scrapes and
bows? And when I note that when I show one of them a more open face
and better greeting than to the others, the rascal thinks that he will get his
quittance first, thinks he will have his day first, and supposes that my smile
is ready money? It makes me think I'm still playing God in the Saumur
passion play surrounded by His angels and cherubim. They are my candi-
dates, my parasites, my glad-handers, my good-day-sayers, my perpetual
speechmakers. And I truly thought it was in debts that consisted the
heroic mountain of virtues described by Hesiod, in which I was first in
my class for my licence, toward which all humans seem to tend and aspire
(but few climb it, because the way up is difficult), since today I see
everyone in a fervent desire and clamourous appetite to make new debts
and creditors.
"However, not all are debtors who would be not all make creditors
who want to. And you want to oust me from this sable-smooth felicity?
You ask me when you shall be out of debts?
"There's much worse than that; I give myself to Saint Babolin the
good saint if all my life I've not considered debts to be a sort of connect-
ing link between Heaven and earth, a unique interrelationship of the
human race--I mean without which all humans would soon perish perad-
venture to be that great soul of the universe, which, according to
the Academics, gives life to all things.
"As proof of this, in a serene state of mind imagine thesidea and form of
some world--take, if you see fit, the thirtieth of those imagined by the
philosopher Metrodorus, or the seventy-eighth of Petron--in which
there is not one debtor or creditor: a world without debts. There, among
the stars, there will be no regular course whatever. All will be in disarray.
Jupiter, not thinking himself a debtor to Saturn, will dispossess him of
his sphere, and with his Homeric chain [Iliad 8.19-27; I5.19-22] will
suspend all the intelliences, gods, heavens, daemons, heroes, devils,
earth, sea; all elements. Saturn will join forces with Mars, and they will
put this whole worl into confusion. Mercury won't be willing to subject
himself to the others, no longer will be their Camillus, as he was called in
the Etruscan language; for he is not their debtor in anything. Venus will
not be venerated. The moon will remain bloody and dark: on what
ground will the sun impart his light to her? He was in no way bound to.
The sun will not shine on their earth, the stars will exert no good influ-
ence there, for the earth was desisting from lending them nourishment by
vapors and exhalations, by which (Heraclitus was wont to say, the Stoics
to prove, Cicero to maintain) the stars were fed [maintenoit estre les
estoilles alimentees].
"Among the elements there will be no sympathizing, alternation, or
transmutation whatever, for the one will not repute himself obliged to the
other; he hadn't lent him anything. Of earth will water not be made; fire
will not warm the earth. The earth will produce nothing but monsters,
Titans, Aloidae, and giants; rain will not rain there, nor light shine there,
nor wind blow there, nor will there be summer or autumn there. Lucifer
will loose his bonds and, issuing from the depths of hell with the Furies,
the Pains, and horned devils, will try to dislodge from the heavens all the
gods of both the greater and the lesser peoples.
"This nothing-lending world will be nothing but bitchery, a more
unearthly wrangle than the election of the University Rector in Paris, a
more confused deviltry than that of the Doue plays. Among humans one
will not save the other; there'll be no use his shouting: 'Help! Fire! Man
overboard! Murder!' No one will go and help. Why? He hadn't lent
anything; no one owed him anything. No one feels anything to lose in his
fire, in his shipwreck, in his ruin, in his death; And likewise he didn't
lend anything. And likewise he wouldn't have lent anything afterward.
"In short, from this world will be banished Faith, Hope, Charity, for
men are born to aid and succor men. In place of these will succeed
Mistrust, Contempt, Rancor, and the cohort of all evils, all curses, and
all miseries. You will really think that there Pandora had poured out her
bottle. Men to men will be wolves, werewolves, and goblins, as were Lycaon,
Bellerophon, Nebuchadnezzar; brigands, assassins, poisoners, evildoers,
evil-thinkers, evil-willers, and everyone bearing hatred against all,
like Ishmael, like Metabus, like Timon of Athens, who for that reason
was surnamed ino-dyeityrros [misanthropos]. So that an easier thing it
would be in nature to nourish the fish in the air, feed the stags at the
bottom of the ocean, than to endure this rascally scoundrelly rabble of
a world, which lends nothing. My faith, I really hate them!
"And if on the model of this loathsome peevish world lending nothing
you imagine the other, little world, which is man,' in him you'll find a
terrible jinglejangle. The head will not want to lend the sight of its eyes
to guide the feet and hands; the feet will not deign to carry the head.
The hands will stop working for it. The heart will be annoyed at working
so much for the members' pulse and will no longer lend to them. The lungs
will no longer make it a loan of their bellows. The liver will not send
it blood for its upkeep. The bladder won't want to be indebted to the
kidney: the urine will be stopped. The brain, considering this unnatural
carrying-on, will go off into a reverie and will give no feeling to the
nerves, nor movement to the muscles. In sum, in this disrupted world,
owing nothing, lending nothing, borrowing nothing, you will see an
even more pernicious conspiracy than Aesop represented in his fable.8
And it will perish beyond a doubt; not only will it perish, but it will
perish soon, were it Aesculapius himself. And the body will promptly fall
into putrefaction; the soul, all indignant, will take its flight to all
the devils, after my money [rime toute indignee prendra course a tous les
Diables, apres mon argent].
Continuation of Pantirge's speech
in praise of creditors and debtors.
ON the contrary, imagine a different world in which everyone lends,
everyone owes, all are debtors, all are lenders.
"O what harmony there will be among the re lar movements of the hea- vens! I.think I hear it as well as Plato ever did. What sympathy among
the elements! 0 how Nature will delight in her works and productions!
Ceres laden with wheat; Bacchus, with wines; Flora, with flowers;
Pomona, with fruits; Juno in her serene air, herself serene, salubrious,
pleasant. I'm lost in this contemplation. Among humans, peace, love,
fondness, fidelity, repose, banquets, feasts, joy, blitheness, gold, sil-
ver, small change, chains, rings, merchandise will trot about from hand to
hand. No lawsuit, no war, no dispute; no one there will be a userer, no
one a sneak, no one stingy, no one a refuser.
"Honest to God, won't that be the age of gold, the reign of Saturn, the
model of the Olympian regions in which all othrgri virtues give way.
Charity alone reigns, governs, dominates, triumphs? Everyone will be
good, everyone will be beautiful, everyone will be just. 0 happy world!
O people of that happy world! 0 thrice and four times blessed! It seems
to me I'm there. I swear to you by honest-to-goodness [Je vous jure le
bon Vraybis] that if this world, blessed world, thus lending to each and
every one, refusing nothing, had a pope teeming with cardinals and asso-
ciates of his sacred college, in a few years you would see there saints
more clustered, more miracle working, with more readings, more prayers,
more batons, and more tapers, than are all those of the nine bishoprics of
Brittany,' excepting only Saint Ives.
"Consider how the noble Pathelin, wanting to deify, and by divine
praises place all the way up in the third heaven Guillaume, Jousseaulme's
father, said nothing more than
Always did he heed
Requests for loans for all in want or need.
"O what a lovely statement! On that pattern imagine all our micro-
cosm, id est little world, which is man, in all his members lending, bor-
rowing, owing, that is to say in his natural state. For Nature created man
only to lend and borrow. No greater is the harmony of the heavens than
will be that of his polity. The intention of the Founder of this microcosm
is to maintain in it the soul, which He has placed there as a guest, and life.
Life consists in blood. Blood is the seat of the soul.' Therefore this micro-
cosm labors at one sole task, to form blood continually. In this formation
are all the members in their proper function; and their hierarchy is such
that without stopping one borrows from the other, one to the other is
debtor. The material and metal fit to be transmuted into blood is given by
nature: bread and wine. In these two are comprised every kind of food,
and from this it is called companage [victuals] in Langue d'Oc. To find,
prepare, and concoct these [icelles...cuire], the hands work, the feet
travel and carry this whole machine; the eyes guide everything; the appe-
tite, in the orifice of the stomach, with the help of a little bitter melan-
choly, which is transmitted to it from the spleen, exhorts to take in food.
The tongue makes trial of it; the teeth chew it; the stomach receives it,
digests it, and chylifies it. The mesaraic veins suck out of it what is good
and suitable, discarding the excrements, which by an expulsive property
are voided outside by conduits made for that, then carry it to the liver;
from that point on it transmutes it and makes blood of it.
"Then what joy do you suppose there is among these members [ces
officiers], when they have seen this stream of gold [the blood], which is
their one restorative? No greater is the joy of the alchemists when, after
long labors, with great care and expense, they see the metal transmuted in
their furnace.
"So then each member prepares itself and puts forth its powers to purify
and refine this treasure. The kidneys, by the emulgent veins [the renal
conduits], draw off from it the aquosity that you call urine, and by the
ureters pass it down below. Way down it finds its own receptacle, that is
the bladder, which at an opportune time voids it outside. The spleen
draws off from it the earthy part and the lees, which you call melancholy
[black bile]. The bile duct draws off from it the superfluous choler! Then
it is transported into another workshop to be better refined: that
heart, which by its diastolic and systolic movements subtilizes it and in-
flames it, so that by the right ventricle it brings it to perfection and
through the veins sends it to all the members. Each member draws it to
itself and feeds on it at will: feet, hands, eyes, all of them; and then they
are made into debtors, who before were lenders. By the left ventricle it
makes it so subtle that it is called spiritual, and it sends it to all the
members by its arterie, to warm up and ventilate the other blood from the
veins. The lungs with their lobes and bellows never stop refreshing it. In
gratitude for this boon the heart imparts the best of it to them by the
pulmonary artery. In fine, it is so refined Within the marvelous network
that afterward are made from it the animal spirits, by means of which the
soul imagines, discourses, resolves, deliberates, reasons, and remembers.
"Goshamighty [Vertus guoy]! I. drown, I get lost, I go astray, when I
enter the profound abyss of this world thus lending, thus owing. Believe
me, a divine thing is lending, owing is a heroic virtue. Still that is not all.
This lending, owing, borrowing world is so good that when this feeding
is completed, it is already thinking about lending to those who are not yet
born, and by lending perpetuating itself if it can and multiplying itself in
images like itself; these are children. To this end each member cuts and
clips off a portion of the most precious part of its nourishment and sends
it back down below; there Nature has prepared opportune vessels and
receptacles for it, by which, flowing down to the genitals through long
roundabout windings, it receives adequate form and finds suitable places,
in man just as in woman, to preserve and perpetuate the human race. The
whole thing is done by loans and debts from one to another; therefore, it
is called the duty or debt [le debvoir] of marriage.'
"A penalty is imposed by nature on the refuser, a sharp vexation among
the members, and frenzy among the senses; tojhe lender a reward as-
signed, pleasure, blitheness, and voluptuousness."
I understand," said Pantagruel, "and you seem to me a good advocate
and devoted to your cause. But preach and plead from now to
Whitsunday, in the end you'll be dumbfounded at how you won't have
persuaded me one bit, and by your fancy talk you'll never make me go
into debt. 'Owe nothing,' says the Holy Apostle [Saint Paul: Romans
13.8], 'save love and mutual affection.'
"You're using on me here beautiful representations and descriptions,
and I like them very much; but I tell you that, if you imagine a boastful
blusterer [un affronteur efronte et importun emprunteur] and bothersome
borrower coming anew into a town already informed of his ways, you'll
find that at his entry the citizens will be in more fear and trepidation than
if the plague had entered in such attire as the Tyanian philosopher' found
it wearing at Ephesus. (And I believe the Persians were not mistaken in
considering that the second vice was lying, and the first was being in
debt.' For debts and lies are ordinarily allied together.
I don't mean to infer for all that never must we owe, never must we
le-rid. There is no man so rich that he may not at some time owe. There
is no one so poor that one may not at some time borrow from him. The
occasion will be such as Plato stated it in his Laws [8.86643 when he
ordains that a man is not to let the neighbors draw water from his well
until they had first dug and probed in their own meadows until they
found that kind of earth they call ceramite (that is potter's clay) and there
had not come upon a spring or dripping of water. For this earth by its
substance, which is greasy, strong, slippery, and dense, retains humidity,
and does not easily allow runoff or evaporation.'
"Thus it is a great disgrace always, in every place, to borrow from each
and every one, rather than to work and earn. Only then (in my judg-
ment) should one lend, when the person, by working, has been unable to
gain by his labor or when he has suddenly fallen into an unexpected loss
of his goods.
"Therefore let's drop this subject, and from now on don't get involved
with creditors; of the past I set you free."
"The least I should do, the most I can," said Panurge, "in this matter
will be to thank you; and if the thanks are to be measured by the affection
of the benefactors, that will be infinitely, eternally; for the love that by
your grace you bear me is beyond the bounds of estimate, it transcends all
weight, all number, all measure; it is infinite, eternal. But if you measure
it by the caliber of the benefits and the contentment of the recipients, that
will be rather laxly. The good things you do for me are much much more
than belong to me, more than I have deserved of you, more than my
merits warranted, I am forced to confess it but by no means as much as
you think in this matter.
"That's not what bothers me, that's not what irks and gripes me. For
from now on, being quit, what face am I going to wear? Believe me, I'll
look bad for the first months, seeing that I'm neither trained nor accus-
tomed to it. I'm very much afraid so.
Besides, from now on not a fart will be born in all Salmagundi that
won't get sent back to my nose. All the farting farters in the world say:
`That for the quit!' My life will soon end, I foresee it. And I'll die all
pickled in farts. If some day as a restorative for farting for good women
suffering acutely from windy colic the doctors are not satisfied with the
ordinary medicament, the mummy of my lousy befarted body will be a
remedy at hand for them. By taking the least little bit of it, they will
fart more than they understand.
"That's why I would like to ask you to leave me some hundred-odd
debts, as King Louis the Eleventh, on casting out of lawsuits Milles
d'Illiers, bishop of Chartres, was importuned by him to leave him one
or two to practice on. I would rather give them [my creditors] my
snailshellery, and with it my Junebuggery, however, without drawing
anything out of the principal."
"Let's drop this subject," said Pantagruel, "I've already told you
that once."'
"BUT," asked Panurge, "in what law was it instituted and established
that those who should plant a new vineyard, those who should build a
new lodging, and newlyweds, would be exempt from going to war for
the first year?"
"In the law of Moses," said Pantagruel.
"Why," asked Panurge, "the newlyweds? About the vine-planters, I'm
too old to be concerned; I agree in the concern for the vintagers; and the
fair new builders with dead stones are not inscribed in my book of life. I
build only with live stones: that is men."
"In my judgment," replied Pantagruel, "it was so that for the first year
they should enjoy their loves at their pleasure, keep busy in the produc-
tion of lineage, and make provision of heirs. Thus, at the least, if in
the second year they were killed in war, their name and coat of arms would
remain in their children. Also so that their wives should be certainly
known to be either barren or fertile (for the one-year trial seemed to
them sufficient, considering the mature age at which they got married),
in order after their first husbands' deaths to be able to bestow them bet-
ter in second marriages: the fertile on those who would wish to multiply
in children; the barren on those who would not want any, and would take
them for their virtues, learning, good graces, simply for domestic comfort
and household maintenance."
"The preachers of Varennes," said Panurge, "detest second marriages as
crazy and indecent."
"They're welcome," said Pantagruel, "to a nice juicy quartan fever."
"Yes indeed," said Panurge, "and so is Friar Sheathing-it [Enguainnant],
who, preaching at Parille, right in his sermon, inveighing against second
marriages, swore up and down, and offered to give himself to the swiftest
devil in hell in case he wouldn't rather deflower a hundred maidens than
one widow.
"I think your reason is sound and well founded. But what would you
say if this exemption were granted them for the reason that, in the course
of this first year, they would have thumped their newly-won ladyloves so
roundly (as is their rightful debt and duty), and so drained their spermatic
vessels, that it left them all bedraggled, all unmanned, all enervated and
drooping, so that when the day of battle came they would sooner take a
dive like ducks than stand up with the fighters and valiant champions in
the place where Enyo stirs the melee and the blows are handed out, and
under the banner of Mars that would not strike one blow worthy of the
name? For the great blows would have landed under the bed-curtains of
his ladylove Venus.
"As proof that this is so, we still see nowadays, among other relics and
mementos of antiquity, that in all good houses, after I know not how
many days, they send these newlywed men to see their uncle, to get them
away from their wives and meanwhile rest them up and revictual them,
the better to combat on their return, although often they have neither
uncle nor aunt; in the same manner as King Petaud, after the battle of the
Cornets [des Cornabons], did not fire us, strictly speaking, I mean me and
Courcaillet [Quailpiper], but sent us to refresh ourselves in our houses.
He's still looking for his. My grandfather's godmother used to say, when
I was little, that
Paternosters and praying
Are fine for those whom they concern.
A fifer going haying
Can outdo two on their return.'
"What leads me to this opinion is that the vine-planters hardly used to
eat grapes or drink wine of their labor during the first year; andl the
builders, for the first year, did not live in their new-made lodgings, on
pain of dying there from failure in breathing out, as Galen learnedly noted
in Book 2 On difficulty in breathing.
"I didn't ask this without well-grounded grounds or without well-
resounding reason. [sans cause bien causee, ne sans raison bien
resonnante]. No offense to you."
How Panurge had a flea in his ear,
and left off wearing his magnificent codpiece.
ON the morrow Panurge had his ear pierced Judaic style and fastened
in it a little gold ring with silver thread inlay, in the bezel of which
was set a flea. And the flea was black, so that you may have no doubt about
anything (it's a fine thing to be well informed in every case), the expense
for which, as reported to his bureau, each quarter amounted to hardly
more than the marriage of one Hyrcanian tigress, as you might say 600,000
maravedis. At such excessive expenditure he grew angry when he was quit,
and afterward fed it in the fashion of tyrants and attorneys: on the sweat
and blood of his subjects.
He took four ells of bureau; dressed himself in it as a long gown with
a single closure; left off wearing his breeches; and attached spectacles to
his bonnet.'
In such state he presented himself to Pantagruel, who found the dis-
guise strange, especially no longer seeing his lovely magnificent codpiece,
in which, as in a holy anchor, he was wont to constitute his last refuge
against all shipwrecks of adversity.
Since the good Pantagruel did not understand this mystery, he ques-
tioned him, asking what this new disguise meant.
"I have a flea in my ear," said Panurge; "I want to get married."
"I wish you well," said Pantagruel; "you've just made me very happy.
To be sure, I wouldn't hold on to a red-hot iron as a bet on it. But this
is not the attire of lovers, thus to have breeches at half-mast and let your
shirt hang down over your unbrecched knees, with a long gown of brown frieze
[bureau], which is an unusual color for full-length gowns among men of qual-
ity and virtue.
"If some adherents to heresies and individual sects have dressed in this in
times past, although many have imputed it to trickery, imposture, and affect-
ation of tyranny over the crude populace, I do not therefore want to blame
them and in that to make a sinister judgment of them. Let every man be full
of his own ideas,' especially in matters alien, extraneous, and indifferent,
which are in themselves neither good nor bad, because they do not issue from
our hearts and thoughts, which are the workshop producing all good and all
evil: good, if good it is, with the disposition ruled by the pure spirit;
bad, if by the evil spirit and the disposition is depraved. Only I don't
like novelty and disdain for common usage."
"The color," replied Panurge, "is aspre aux potz [harsh on pots; hom-onym of
apropos]. Apropos (that's my bureau)! I mean henceforth to run my affairs and
check closely on them. Since now for once I'm quit, you've never seen a meaner
man than I'll be, unless God helps me.
"See my spectacles here. To see me from a distance you'd rightly say it's
Friar Jean Bourgeois. I think in this coming year I'll once more preach a
crusade. God keep the ballocks from harm!
"Do you see this bureau? Believe me, in it consists some occult quality known
to few people. I put it on only this morning, but already I'm wild, I'm un-
sheathing, I'm sizzling to be married and go to work like a brown devil upon
my wife, with no fear of sticks or a beating. O what a great householder
I'll
be!' After I die they'll have me burned on an honorific pyre, to get the ashes
in memory and model of the perfect householder. 'Odsbody! On this bureau of
mine my paymaster had better not play around with stretching the esses; or my
fists would go trotting all over him!
"Look me over, front and rear: this is the form of a toga, ancient attire of
the Romans in time of peace. I took the pattern of it from Trajan's column in
Rome, also from the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus. I'm tired of war,
tired of buff coats and foot soldiers' cassocks. My shoulders are all worn
down from wearing harness. Farewell arms, hail togas! At least for all this
coming year, if I'm married, as you told me yesterday, by the law of Moses.
"As regards the breeches, my great-aunt Laurence used to tell me long ago that
they were made for the codpiece. I believe it by the same inference as that mad
wag Galen, Book 9 Of the fumction of our members [De usu partium 8.5] says the
head is made for the eyes. For nature might have put our heads at our knees or
our elbows; but, arranging the eyes to spy out afar, she set them in the head
like a staff of the highest point of the body; as we see that lighthouses
and
high towers are erected above seaports so that the beacon may be seen from
afar.
"And because I would like, for a certain length of time, a year at the least,
to draw breath free from the military art, that is to say to many, I'm no long-
er wearing a codpiece, or consequently breeches. For the codpiece is the first
piece of the harness to arm the warrior. And I maintain up to the stake (ex-
clusively, you understand) that the Turks are not properly armed, since wearing
codpieces is expressly forbidden in their laws."
How the codpiece is the first piece
of harness among warriors.
Do you mean," said Pantagruel, "to maintain that the codpiece is the first piece
of military harness? That's a very paradoxical and novel doctrine, for we say
that with the spun you begin to arm yourself."
"I do maintain it," replied Panurge, "and not wrongly do I maintain it.
"See how nature, wanting to perpetuate and continue to all successive ages the
plants, trees, shrubs, herbs, and zoophytes once created by her without the
species dying out, even though the individuals perish, care-fully armed their
germs and seeds, in which this perpetuity consists, and protected and covered
them, by admirable ingenuity, with husks, sheaths, hulls, pits, tiny skins,
shells, ears down, bark, prickly spines, which are for them like fair strong
natural codpieces. Examples are manifest in peas, beans, string beans, walnuts,
clingstone peaches, cotton, colocynths, wheats, poppies, lemons, chestnuts,
generally all plants in which we clearly see that the germ and seed is more
covered, protected, and armed than any other pan of them. Not thus did nature
provide for the perpetu-ation of the human race, but created man naked, tender,
fragile, without either offensive or defensive arms, in a state of innocence
and original golden age, as an animal, not a plant, as an animal, I say, born
to peace not to war, an animal born to wondrous enjoyment of all fruits and
vegetal plants, an animal born to peaceful domination over all beasts.
"When there came the multiplication of malice among humans that succeeded the
iron age and Jupiter's reign, the earth began to produce nettles, thistles,
thorns, and such other kinds of rebellion among veg-etables against man; more-
over, almost all the animals, by fated disposition, emancipated themselves
from man and tacitly conspired together to serve him no more, obey him no
longer in so far as they could resist, but harm him according to their capa-
city and power.
"Thereupon man, wanting to maintain his original enjoyment and con-tinue his
original domination, also being unable conveniently to do with-out the service
of several animals, had the need to arm himself anew."
"By the Holy Mother of Goose!" exclaimed Pantagruel, "since
the last rains
you've become a great fossilopher, or rather I mean philosopher."
"Consider," said Panurge, "how nature inspired him to arm himself, and what
pan of his body he first began to arm. By God's power, it was his balls,
And Priapus, that good signor,
When he had done, asked her no more.
"Thus testifies the Hebrew captain and philosopher Moses, affirming that he
armed himself with a fine gallant codpiece, by most lovely inven-tion made
of fig leaves, which are natural and completely suitable in stiffness, inden-
tations, embossing, polish, size, color, odor, virtues, and ability to cover
and arm ballocks.
"Excepting only the horrific ballocks of Lorraine, which come down unbridled
right to the bottom of the hose, shun the manor of the lofty codpiece, and
are out of all order; witness Viardiere, the noble Valentin; whom I found one
May Day in Nancy, so as to be more gorgeous, scouring his ballocks, which
were stretched out on a table, like a Spanish-style cape.
"So henceforth we must not say, unless we want to; speak improperly, when we
send the franc-taupin off to war:
'Stevie [Tevot], save the wine-pot,'
(that's the noggin): we must say:
'Stevie, save the milk-jug,'
that's the balls, by all the devils in hell! The head lost,'perishes only
the
person; the balls lost, would perish all human nature.
"That's what impelled the gallant Cl. Galen, in Book i On sperm [De
spermate], to conclude that it would be 'better (that is, less bad) to have no
heart than to have no genitals. For there, as in a sacred repository, consists
the preserving germ of the human line. And for less than a hundred francs
I'd be ready to believe that those are the very stones of which Deucalion
and Pyrrha restored the human race, abolished by the deluge fabled by
the poets.
"That's what led the valiant Justinian, in Book 4 De cagotis tollendis [On
the elevation of hypocrites], to locate the supreme good in shorts and
codpieces [summum bonum in braguibus et braguetis].
"For this and other reasons, as Lord de Merville was trying on a new
harness one day. to follow his king in war (for his ancient half-rusted one
he could no longer use well, because for a number of years the skin of his
belly had gone far away from his kidneys), his wife considered, in a
thoughtful spirit, that he was taking little care of the common packet and
staff of their marriage, seeing that he was arming it only with chain mail,
and came to the conclusion that he should arm it very well and gabion it
with a stout jousting helmet that was hanging useless in his den. About
her are written these verses in the third book of The Shitter-Shatter of
the Maidens:'
Seeing her husband armed from tip to toe,
Save for the codpiece, heading for the fray,
One woman said: "To keep you safe today,
My love, protect the part I cherish so."
Could any scoffer rate her counsel low?
No, no, I say; because her greatest fear,
Seeing it lively, was to let it go
That precious morsel that she held so dear;
"So leave off your amazement at this novel attire of mhine."
How Panurge takes counsel of Pantagruel
to learn whether he should marry.
As Pantagruel made no reply, Panurge went on and said with a
deep sigh:
"My Lord, you have heard my plan, which is to marry, unless by bad
fortune all the holes should be closed, shut, and locked; I beseech you by
the love you have borne me for so long, tell me what Vro-u think about it."
"Since once," said Pantagruel, "you've cast the die and have thus de-
creed it and made a firm plan to do it, there's nothing more to say about
it; all that remains is to put it into execution."
"True," said Panurge, "but I wouldn't want to execute it without your
counsel and favorable advice."
"My advice is favorable," said Pantagruel, "and I counsel you to."
"But," said Panurge, "if you knew that my best course was to stay just
as I am, without undertaking anything new, I'd rather not marry at all."
"Don't marry at all, then," replied Pantagruel.'
"All right," said Panurge, "but would you want me to stay all alone this
way all my life without conjugal company? You know that it is written:
veh soli [woe unto him who is alone]. A man alone never has such solace
as you see among the married."
"Then get married, in God's name," replied Pantagruel.
"But," said Panurge, "what if my wife made me a cuckold, for you
know it's a big year for them, that would be enough to drive me beyond
the bounds of patience. I like cuckolds perfectly well, and they seem like
fine people to me, and I enjoy their company, but for the life of me I
wouldn't want to be one. That's a point that has too sharp a point."
"No point in it then, don't get married," responded Pantagruel; "for
Seneca's dictum is true without any exception: whatever you've done to
others, be sure that others will do to you."
"Do you say that," asked Panurge, "without exception?"
"Without exception he says that," replied Pantagruel.
"Oho!" said Panurge, "by the wee devil! He means either
in this world
or the other. All right, but since I can no more do without a wife than
can a blind man without a stick (for the drill must get its exercise, other-
wise I couldn't live), isn't it better for me to take on with me some good
worthy woman, rather than change from day to day with continual dan-
ger of a beating, or at the worst the pox'? For no decent woman ever
meant anything to me. (And no offense to their husbands.)"
"Then get married, in God's name!" replied Pantagruel.
"But," said Panurge, "if God so willed, and it came about that I mar-
ried some worthy woman and she beat me, I'd be worse off than Job's
tercel,' if I didn't go stark raving mad. For, I've been told that these
oh-so-virtuous women usually have a nasty temper; and so they have good
vinegar in the house. My temper would be even worse, and I'd beat her
outlying parts [batteroys] with might and main: that is to say arms, legs,
head, lungs, liver, and spleen; I would tear her clothes to shreds so badly
in every way, that that great old Devil would lie in wait for her damned
sou1.From all this ruckus I'd like to be free for this year, and happy not
to get into it at all."
"Then don't get married at all," said Pantagruel.
"All right," said Panurge, "but being in the state I'm in, quit and not
married—mind you, 1 say quit at a bad time; for if I were very deep in
debt, my creditors would be only too concerned about my Paternity
but quit and unmarried, I have no one to care as much about me and bear
me such love as they tell me conjugal love is. And if by chance I fell
ill, I would be treated only wrong way round. The sage [Ecclesiasticus
36.25-26] says: 'Where there is no wife (meaning wife and mother, in
lawful marriage), a patient is in a sorry plight.' I've seen clear evi-
dence of this in popes, legates, cardinals, bishops, abbots, priests,
and monks. Now there you'll never get me."
"Get married then, in the name of God!" replied Pantagruel.
"But if," said Panurge, "while I might be ill and impotent for the
duties [debvoir] of marriage, my wife, impatient of my languor, abandoned
herself to others, and not only did not help me in my need but also made
fun of my calamity and (worse yet, robbed me, as I have often seen
happen, that would complete my pretty picture and drive me to go run
about the streets in my doublet."
"Then don't go about getting Married," replied Pantagruel.
"All right," said Panurge, "but in no other way would I ever have
legitimate sons or daughters, in whom I would have hope of perpetuating
my name and coat of arms; to whom I can leave my inheritances and
acquisitions (I'll have some beauties one of these mornings, have no
doubt of it, and furthermore I'll be a great payer-off of mortgages),
with whom I can have fun when otherwise I'd be feeling low, as every
day I see your most benign and good-natured father do with you, and
as all good people do in the privacy of their own home. For being quit,
not being married, suppose by some mishap I were made wretched!
Instead of consoling me, it seems to me that over my trouble you're
making merry!"
"Marry then, in the name of God!" replied Pantagruel.
How Pantagruel points out to Panurge
that advice about marriage is a difficult thing,
and of Homeric and Virgilian lots.
"YOUR advice," said Panurge, "subject to correction, is like the Rico-
chet song. It's nothing but sarcasms, mockeries, and contrary repetitions.
One group cancels out the other. I don't know which ones to rely on."
"Accordingly," replied Pantagruel, "in your propositions there are so
many ifs and but's that I can't possibly base or resolve anything upon
them. Aren't you certain of your will? The main point lies there: all the
rest is fortuitous and dependent on the fated dispositions of heaven.
"We see a good number of people so happy in this encounter that in
their marriage there seems to shine forth some idea and representation of
the joys of paradise. Others are so unhappy in it that the devils who tempt
the hermits around the deserts of the Thebaid and Montserrat are not
more so. You have to go into it at a venture, eyes blindfolded, bowing
your head, kissing the ground, since once for all you want to go into it.
No other assurance about it could I possibly give you.
"Now, here's something you might do if you see fit. Bring sca Le the
works of Virgil, and, opening them with your fingernail three times
running, we'll explore, by the verses whose numbers we agree on, the
future lot of your marriage. For, as by Homeric lots a man has often come
upon his destiny.
"Witness Socrates in prison, who, hearing this bit of verse from Homer
spoken of Achilles, in Iliad 9 [363].
I shall arrive without furtherrdelay,
At fertile Phthia, right on the third day.'
He foresaw that he would die on the third day thereafter, and assured
Aeschines of it, as Plato writes in his Crito [44b], Cicero in Book i of De
divinatione, and Diogenes Laertius.
"Witness Opilius Macrinus, to whom, wishing to know whether he
would be emperor of Rome, there came by chance this saying from the
Iliad 8 [102-103]
Old man, these tough young fighters are too strong,
And age won't let you hold on very long.
"Indeed he was already old, and, having held the empire for only one
year and two months, by powerful young Heliogabalus he was dispos-
sessed and slain.
"Witness Brutus, who, wanting to explore the fate of the battle of
Pharsalia, in which he was killed, came upon this verse spoken by
Patroclus in the Iliad 16 [849]:
By the cruel frown of Fate I was undone,
And by the rancor of Latona's son.
"That's Apollo, whose name served as the watchword on the day of
that battle.
"Also by Virgilian lots in olden times were known and foreseen re-
markable things and matters of great importance, indeed even to the
winning of the Roman empire, as happened to Alexander Severus, who
in this kind of lot came upon this written verse of the Aeneid 6 [851]:
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.
Remember, Roman, o'er the world to rule.
"Then after a number of allotted years was really and in fact made em-
peror of Rome.
"In the case of Hadrian, Roman emperor, who, being in doubt and anxiety
to know what was Trajan's opinion of him and what feeling he had for him,
took counsel by Virgilian lots and came upon this verse in
the Aeneid 6 [8o8-81o]:
Quis procul ille autem, ramis insignis olivae Sacra ferens? Nosco crines
insanaque menta Regis Romani .
Bearing the olive branches, who is he?
His hair and priestly gown show him to be The aged Roman king.
"Then was he adopted by Trajan, and succeeded him as emperor.
"In the case of Claudius the Second, highly praised emperor of Rome, on
whom by lot fell this verse written in the Aeneid [1.265]:
Tertia dum Latio regnantem viderit aestas
While the third summer saw his Latian reign.
"In fact he ruled for only two years. To that very man, inquiring about
his brother Quintilius, whom he wanted to bring into the government of
the empire with him, there came this verse of the Aeneid 6 [869]:
Ostendent terns hunc tantum fata
Fate will but show this man unto the lands.
"This thing came to pass, for he was killed seventeen days after assuming
the management of the empire; this same fate fell to Emperor Gordian the
Younger.
"To Clodius Albinus, eager to hear his good fortune, came what is written
in the Aeneid 6 [857]:
Hic rem Romanam magno turbante tumultu Sistet eques, etc.
This knight shall hold aloft the place of Rome
While. great. disturbance dominates at home,
Subduing Carthaginian and. Gaul,
And handing their revolts a heavy fall.
"To the Divine Claudius [II, Roman emperor A.D. 268-27o], the em-
peror who preceded Aurelian, concerned about his posterity, came this verse
from the Aeneid i [278]:
His ego nec mesas rerum, nec tempora pono
For these no bounds are set, no deadlines drawn. Accordingly he had a long
genealogy of successors.
"In the case of Master Pierre Amy,4 when he tried to learn whether he should
escape, the hobgoblins, and came upon this verb of the Aeneid 3 [44]:
Heu! Fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum.
Woe! Flee this cruel land, this evil shore.
And then escaped from their hands safe and sound."A thousand others, whose ad-
ventures it would be long-winded to relate, which happened according to the
pronouncement of the verse come upon by lot.
"I do not want to imply, however, lest you be misled by it, that this lot is u-
niversally infallible."
How Pantagruel points out
that fortune-telling by throwing dice is unlawful.
"This," said Panurge, "would be sooner done and dispatched
with three fine dice."
"No," said Pantagruel, "that kind of divination is deceitful, illicit, and extremely
scandalous. Don't ever trust it. That accursed Book of Games of Chance' was
invented long ago by our enemy the infernal calumniator; near Boura in Achaea
and in front of the statue of Bouraic Hercules he once used to lead, and at pre-
sent in many places leads, many a simple soul to fall into his snares. You know
how my father Gargantua in all his kingdoms has forbidden it, burned it with all
its types and pictures, and completely banned, suppressed, and abolished it, as
a very dangerous plague.
"What I've said about dice I likewise say to you about knucklebones; it's a com-
parably deceptive game of chance. And don't allege to me to the contrary the for-
tunate case of the knucklebones that Tiberius made in the fountain of Aponus at
Geryon's oracle. Those cases are the bait with which the Calumniator draws simple
souls to eternal perdition.
"To satisfy you all the same, I'm quite content that you should throw three dice
on this table. From the number of points that come up we'll take the verses on the
page you will have opened to. Do you have some dice there in your purse?"
A game-pouch full," said Panurge. "That's the green amulet against the Devil,2 as
Merlin Coccai explains in the second book Of the country of the devils.
The Devil
would catch me unawares3 if he came upon me with no dice."
The dice were brought out and cast, and fell showing five, six, and five
points.
'That's sixteen," said Panurge. "Let's take the sixteenth verse on the page. I
like the number, and I think we'll be well set. I'll hurl myself through all the
devils in hell, like a bowling ball through a game of skittles or a cannonball
through a battalion of foot soldiers. Let anyone who wants to beware of the dev-
ils, in case I don't bolt my future wife that many times on my wedding night."
"I have no doubt of it," said Pantagruel; "there was no need to take such a hor-
rific oath on it. The first time will be a fault and count fifteen. On getting off
your perch you'll make it up; that way it'll make sixteen."
"And so," said Panurge, "that's how you understand it? Never was a slip up made
by the valiant champion who does sentry duty for me in my lower belly. Have
you
ever found me in the confraternity or the defaulters? Never, never, to the very
end never. I do it without fail, like a holy father. Just ask the players!"
These words finished, there were brought out the works of Virgil. Before opening
them, Panurge said to Pantagruel:
"My heart is beating through my body like a mitaine.5 Just touch my pulse a bit
in this-artery in the left arm. From its frequency-and elevation you'd think I
was being belabored at a thesis defense in the Sorbonne. You 'wouldn't advise,
before going any further, that we invoke Hercules and the Tenite goddesses, who
are said to preside over the Chamber of Lots?"
"Neither the'one nor the others," replied Pantagruel. "Just open it up with your
fingernail!'
How Pantagruel explores by Virgilian lots
what sort of marriage Panurge's will be.
PANURGE, opening the book, came upon this verse in the sixteenth line [Virgil,
Eclogues 4.63]:
Nec Deus hunc mensa, Dea nec dignata cubili est.
No god bid her to table, no goddess to her couch.
"This one," said Pantagruel, "is not to your advantage. It signifies that your
wife will be a slattern, consequently yourself a cuckold.
"The goddess you will not have favorable is Minerva, a greatly feared virgin, a
powerful goddess, thunder-darting, enemy of cuckolds, of fops, adulterers, enemy
of lascivious women, who do not keep faith promised to their husbands and who
abandon themselves to other men. The god is Jupiter, hurling down thunder and
lightning from the skies. And you will note in the doctrine of the ancient Etrus-
cans that the manubiae (so they called the Vulcanian thundercasts) belong to her
alone (an example of this was given in the burning of the ships of Ajax, son of
Oileus) and to Jupiter her capital father.' To other Olympian gods it is not per-
mitted to hurl lightning; therefore, they are not so dreaded by humans.
"I'll tell you more, and you're to take it as drawn from high mythology. When the
giants undertook war against the gods, the gods at first made light of such ene-
mies, and said there was not enough work here for their pages. But when they saw,
by the work of the giants, Mount Pilion placed upon Mount Ossa and Mount Olympus
already shaken loose to be set atop the two of them, they were all frightened. So
Jupiter held a general council. There it was agreed by all the gods that they
would valiantly prepare for defense. And because they had many times seen battles
lost because of the women who were among the armies getting in the way, it was
decreed that for the time they would banish out of the skies into Egypt and to-
ward the confines of the Nile all that sluttery of goddesses disguised as weasels,
martens, bats, shrew-mice, and other metamorphoses. Minerva was retained to hurl
lightning with Jupiter, as goddess of letters and of war, of counsel and execution,
goddess both armed, goddess dreaded in heaven, in the air, on sea, and on land."
"'Od's belly!" said Panurge, "could I really be the Vulcan the poet speaks about?'
No, I'm neither lame, nor a counterfeiter, nor a black-smith, as he was. Perad-
venture my wife will be as beautiful and attractive as his Venus, but not a trol-
lop like her, nor I a cuckold like him. That lousy crookshank had himself declar-
ed a cuckold by a decision and in full view of all the gods. As for that, take
it in reverse.
"This lot denotes that my wife will be virtuous, modest, and faithful, not a bit
armed; bashful, neither brainless nor, like Pallas, taken out of a brain; and that
handsome Jove will never be a rival to me, never will dip his bread into my dip,
even if we should eat together at table.
"Consider his deeds and fine exploits. He was the sturdiest wencher and most in-
famous cor . . . --I mean bordelier--that ever was, always lecherous as a wild boar;
sure enough, he was nursed by a sow on Mount Dicte in Crete, if Agathocles the Bab-
ylonian is not lying; and more goatish than any goat; and so others say that he
was suckled by Amnalthea, a nannygoat. By the powers of Acheron! for one day's stint
he rammed out the third part of the world, beasts and men, rivers and mountains;
that was Europe. Because of that ramming the followers of Ammon had him portrayed
in the shape of a ram ramming, a horned ram.
"But I know how a man must protect himself from that horny character.
Believe me,
he won't find some stupid Amphitryon, some idiot Argus with his hundred eyeglasses,
a coward Acrisius, a silly goosecap Lucus of Thebes, a dotard Agenor, a phlegmatic
Asopus, a hairy-pawed Lycaon, a doltish Corytus of Tuscany, a stout-backed Atlas.
"He might transform himself a hundred and another hundred times into a swan, a bull,
a satyr, into gold, into a cuckold, as he did when he deflowered his sister Juno,
into an eagle, into a ram, into a pigeon, as he did when he was in love with the
maiden Phthia, who lived in Aegium; into fire, into a snake, indeed into
a flea,
into Epicurean atoms, or magistronostrally [magistronostralement] into second inten-
tions. I'll hook him with my crook. And do you know what I'll do to him? 'Odsbody
[Corbieu]! what Saturn did to his father Heaven, Uranus (Seneca has predicted it of
me and Lactantius confirmed it): what Rhea did to Atys. I'll up and cut
his balls
off right flush with his tail, not a hair's breadth less. For that reason he will
never be pope, for he has no testicles [testiculos non habet]."
"Easy now, Sonny," said Pantagruel, "easy now! Open for the second time." Then he
came upon this verse:
Membra quatit, gelidusque coit formidine sanguis.
He breaks his bones and shatters all his limbs;
Which turns his blood to ice; his vision swims.
"It denotes," said Pantagruel, "that she will drub you, back and belly."
"Conversely," replied Panurge, "that prediction is about me and says that I will
beat her like a tiger if she makes me angry. Martin Wagstaff will perform that fun-
ction. If I have no stick, Devil devour me if I would not eat her alive and kicking,
as Gambles, king of the Lydians, ate his."
"You," said Pantagruel, "are mighty courageous. Hercules would not fight you in this
frenzy. But that's what they say, that one poor Joe [le Jan] is as good as two, and
Hercules never dared fight alone against two."
"I'm a poor Joe?" said Panurge.
Not at all, not at all," replied Pantagruel. "I was thinking of two kinds of backgam-
mon."
On the third try he came upon this verse [Aeneid 2.782]:
Faemineo praedae et spoliorum ardebat amore.
She burned with eagerness, as women will,
To rob the baggage and to take her fill.
"It signifies," said Pantagruel, "that she will rob you. And I can see you in really
good shape according to these three lots: you will be a cuckold, you will be beaten,
you will be robbed."
"On the contrary," replied Panurge, "this verse signifies that she will love me with a
perfect love. Never did the Satirist [Juvenal] lie about it when he said that a woman
burning with supreme love sometimes takes pleasure in robbing her lover. Do you know of
what? A glove, a clasp, some trifle, nothing of importance.
"Likewise these little fusses, these hassles, that sometimes arise between lovers, are
like new fresheners and spurs of love. Just as we see, for example, cutlers sometimes
hammer on their whetstones the better to sharpen iron blades. 'This is why I take these
lots to my great advantage. Otherwise I appeal."
"Appeal," said Pantagruel, "one never can against judgments decided by lot and Fortune,
as our ancient jurists attest, and Baldus says so, L. ult.
C. de leg.
"The reason is because Fortune recognizes no superior to whom one may appeal from her
and her judgments. And in this case the ward cannot be restored to his full rights, so
he says clearly in L. Ait praetor.. ult. i. de minor."
How Pantagruel advises Panurge
to foresee by dreams
the fortune or misfortune of his marriage.
Now, since we don't agree with one another on the expounding of the Virgilian lots,
let's try another art of divination."--
"What one?". asked Panurge.
"A good one," replied Pantagruel, "ancient and authentic; that's by dreams; for by
dreaming under the conditions prescribed by Hippocrates in his book TIEpL 6)tn-rvioov
[On dreams], Plato, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Synesius, Aristotle, Xenophon, Galen, Plu-
tarch, Artemidorus Daldianus, Herophilus Q. Calaber, Theocritus, Pliny, Athenaeus,
and others, could often foresee future-things.
"There's no need to prove it to you at greater length. You understand it by vulgar
example when you see how, with children nicely cleaned, well fed and suckled, the
wet nurses go off and amuse themselves in freedom, as being for that time let off to do what they will for their presence around the cradle would seem useless. In
that fashion our soul, when the body is asleep and digestion is completed in all
parts, nothing more being necessary in it until awakening, amuses itself and a-
gain sees its native country, which is heaven.'
"From there it receives notable participation in its primal rights, origin, and
in contemplation of that infinite intellectual sphere whose center is in every
place and the circumference nowhere (that is God, according to the doctrine of
Hermes Trismegistus), where nothing happens, nothing passes, nothing decays; it
notes not only things past in our movements here below but also future things;
and by its senses and organs exposing them to friends, it is called soothsaying
and prophetic. True it is that it [the soul] does not report them in such purity
as it has seen them in, being impeded by the imperfection and frailty, of the
bodily senses; as the moon, receiving light from the sun, does not communicate
it as such--as lucid, as pure, as vivid and ardent, as it had received it. There-
fore also needed for these somnial vaticinations is an interpreter who is adroit,
wise, industrious, expert, rational, and an absolute oneirocritic and oneiropole;
thus they are called by the Greeks.
"That is why Heraclitus used to say that by dreams nothing was exposed to us, no-
thing was hidden from us, only we are given a signification and indication of
things to come for our happiness or unhappiness, or for the happiness or unhap-
piness of others. The Holy Scriptures attest it, profane history makes it cer-
tain, exposing to us myriad cases that came out according to the dreams both of
the person dreaming and of others.
"The Atlantides and those who live on the island of Thasos, one of the Cyclades,
are deprived of this commodity (dreams), for in their countries no one ever
dreamed. Also deprived were Cleon of Daulia, Thrasymedes, and in our time the
learned Frenchman Villenovanus,3 who never dreamed.
"So tomorrow, at the time when rosy-fingered Aurora [Dawn] drives away the shades
of night, set yourself to dreaming deeply. Meanwhile strip yourself of all human
passion: love, hatred, hope, and fear.
"For, as of old the great soothsayer Proteus, being disguised and transformed into
fire, water, a tiger, a dragon, and other strange masks, did not predict things to
come; to predict them he had to be restored into his own natural shape: indeed man
cannot receive divinity and the art of vaticination unless when the part in him
that is most divine (that is Nous and Mens) is quiet, tranquil, peaceful, not oc-
cupied or distracted by outside passions and emotions."
"I'm willing," said Panurge. "Must I have little or much for supper this evening?
I do not ask without cause. For if I do not sup well and plentifully, I don't sleep
worth a hoot; I do nothing but daydream, as empty of dreams as my belly then was."
"No supper at all," replied Pantagruel, "would be best, considering your well-fed
condition and habit. Amphiarus, an ancient soothsayer, wanted those who received
his oracles in dreams to eat nothing at all that day and not to drink wine for
three days before. We shall not employ such an extreme and rigorous diet.
"To be sure, I do believe that a man full of food and surfeited has difficulty tak-
ing note of spiritual things; I am not, however, of the opinion of those who, after
long and obstinate fasts, think they penetrate further into the contemplation of
celestial things.
"You may remember well enough how my father Gargantua (whom in honor I name)
often told us that the writings of these fasting hermits were as insipid, jejune,
and sour-spittled as were their bodies when they composed them, and that it was
hard for the spirits to remain good and serene when the body was in inanition,
seeing that the philosophers and doctors affirm that the animal spirits arise,
are born, and are active in the arterial blood, purified and refined to perfect-
ion with the marvelous network that lies beneath the ventricles of the brain;
giving us the example of a phi-losopher who thinks he is in solitude an outside
thee mob, the better to comment, discourse, and compose, while nevertheless a-
round him dogs bark, wolves howl, lions roar, horses neigh, elephants trumpet,
serpents hiss, donkeys bray, grasshoppers.chirp, turtledoves lament--that is to
say, he had more disturbances around him than if he had been_ at the fair of Fon-
tenay or NiOrt; for hunger was in the body; to remedy which the stomach barks,
the eyesight dazzles, the veins suck out some of the very substance of the flesh-
forming members, and draw back down below that wandering spirit, negligent of the
treatment of its natural nursling and guest, which is the body; as if the bird on
the fist wanted to take its fight into the air and should be instantly brought
down by the leaches.
"And in that connection alleging to us the authority of Homer, father of all phi-
losophy, who says [Iliad 18.2o] that the Greeks put an end to their tears of mourn-
ing for Patroclus, Achilles's great friend, then, and no sooner when hunger spoke
up and their bellies protested that they wou d furnish no more tears. For
in bodies
drained by long fasting there was no longer the wherewithal to weep and
shed tears.
"Moderation is in every case praised, and there you shall hold to it. For supper
you shall eat not beans, not hares or any other flesh, not octopus (which
is called
polyp), not cabbages or other foods that might trouble and obfuscate your
a-
nimal spirit. For, as the mirror cannot present the simulacra of the things set be-
fore it and expose it if its polish,is beclouded by breaths or by cloudy weather,
so the spirit does not receive the forms of divination by dreams if the body is dis-
quieted and troubled by the vapors and steams from the preceding foods, because of
the sympathy between the two, which is indissoluble.
"You shall eat good Crustumenian and Bergamot pears, one apple of the shortshank
pippin type, a few Tours plums, a few cherries from my orchard. And there will be
no reason why you must fear that from this your dreams may come out doubtful, fal-
lacious, or suspect, as some Peri-patetics have declared them to be in the autumn
season, which the an-cient prophets and poets teach us mystically, saying that vain
and falla-cious dreams are hidden beneath the leaves fSllen to the ground, because
in autumn the leaves fall from the trees. For that natural fervor that abounds in
new fruits and that by its ebullition evaporates in the animal parts (as we see
that most do) has long since expired and been dissolved. And you shall drink nice
water from my spring."
"The condition," said Panurge, "is a bit hard on me. I consent to it all the same,
whatever the cost, protesting that tomorrow I'll have breakfast early, right after
my dreamings. Moreover, I commend myself to the two gates of Homer [Odyssey 19.562
-567], to Morpheus, to Icelon, to Phantasus and Phobetor. If they help me in case
of need, I'll erect to them a joyous altar all made of fine down. If I
were in Paeonia
in the temple of Ino between Oetylus and Thalames, by her would my perplexity
be
resolved by dreaming with fair joyful dreams."
Then he asked Pantagruel: "Wouldn't it be a good thing if I put a few laurel branc-
hes under my pillow?"
"There's no need," said Pantagruel. "That's a superstitious thing, and there's no-
thing but misconceptions in what is written about it by Serapion Ascalonites, Anti-
phon, Philochorus, Artemon, and Fulgentius Planciade. I would say as much to you
about the left shoulder of the crocodile or of the chameleon, with all respect to
old Democritus; as much about the stone of the Bactrians named Eumetrides; as much
about the horn of Ammon: so the Ethiopians call a golden-colored precious stone in
the shape of a ram's horn, as is the horn of Jupiter Ammon; saying that the dreams
of those who wear it are as infallible as are divine oracles. Peradventure
it's what
Homer and Virgil [Aeneid 6.993] write about the two gates of dreams, to which you
are commended. One is of ivory, through which enter confused, fallacious,
and un-
certain dreams, as through ivory; however thin it is, it is impossible
ever to see
anything: its density and opacity prevent the penetration of the visive spirits'
and reception of the visible species. The other is of horn, by which enter the cer-
tain, true, and infallible dreams, just as through horn, by virtue of its shining
gloss and diaphaneity, all species appear certainly and distinctly."
"You mean to infer," said Frere Jean,`' "that the dreams of horned cuckolds, such
as Panurge will be, with the help of God and of his wife, are always true and in-
fallible?"
ABOUT seven o'clock the following morning, Panurge appeared before Pantagruel, there
being in the room Epistemon, Frere Jean des Entommeures, Ponocrates, Eudemon, Car-
palim, and others, to whom, on Panurge's arrival, Pantagruel said:
"Here comes our dreamer."'
"That remark," said Epistemon, "once cost a lot, and was sold very dear, to Jacob's
children."
Thereupon said Panurge:
"I've certainly been to Billy's in the Land of Nod.' I dreamed ever so much and more,
but I don't understand one bit of it. Except that in my dreamsI had a young wife,
sprightly, perfectly beautiful, who was treat-ing and entertaining me sweetly like her
little darling. Never was a man more delighted or more joyous. She was caressing me,
tickling me, feeling me, smoothing my hair, kissing me, hugging me, and in sport mak-
ing me two pretty little horns over my forehead. In the midst of our play I was rem-
onstrating to her that she should put them above my eyes, the better for me to see
what I'd like to but with them, so that Momus should not find in such a thing anything
imperfect and worthy of correction, as he did in the placement of bovine horns.' The
wanton, notwithstanding my remonstrance, kept fixing them even further forward on me.
And in this she didn't hurt me a bit, which is a wonderful fact.
"A little later it seemed to me that I was transformed, I know not how, into a drum,
and she into an owlet. At that point my sleep was inter-rupted, and I awoke all vexed,
perplexed, and indignant. Now there you see a fine platterful_of dreams, have a good
feast on them, and explain it as you understand it. Let's go have breakfast, Carpalim."
"I understand," said Pantagruel, "if I have any judgment
in the art of divination by
dreams, that your wife will not actually, and to outward appearance, plant horns on
your forehead, such as the satyrs wear, but that she will keep neither faith nor con-
jugal loyalty to you, but will abandon herself to others, and will make you a cuckold.
That point is clearly exposed by Artemidorus, as I said.
"Also you will not be metamorphosed into a drum, but you will be beaten by her like a
drum at a wedding;' nor she into an owl; but she will rob you, as is the nature of the
owl. And you see, your dreams are in conformity with the Virgilian lots: you will
be a cuckold; you will be beaten; you will be robbed."
Thereupon Frere Jean broke out and exclaimed:
"He's telling by God the truth, you'll be a cuckold, my fine fellow, I assure you,
you'll have beautiful horns. Heh, heh, heh, our own Master de Cornibus,' God preserve
you! Give us a few words of preaching, and I'll pass the hat around the parish."
"The other way around," said Panurge, "my dream presages that in my marriage I'll
have all goods in plenty together with the horn of abundance.
"You say they'll be satyr's horns. Amen [to that], amen, fiat! fiatur! ad differen-
tiam papae! Thus I'd eternally have my gimlet at the ready and indefatigable, as
the satyrs have. A thing that all men desire, and few are granted it by the heavens.
In consequence, a cuckold never, for the lack of that is the cause sine qua non,
the sole cause of making husbands cuckolds.
"What makes vagabonds beg? It's because in their homes they haven't the wherewithal
to fill their sacks. What makes the wolf come out of the woods? Lack of carnage.
What makes wives into strumpets? You understand me well enough. I ask milords the
clerics, milords the presidents of courts, counselors,--gforneys, procurators, and
other commentators on the venerable rubric De frigidis et maleficiatis [On the frigid
and spellbound].
"You (pardon me if I'm mistaken) seem to me evidently to err in interpreting
horns as
cuckoldry. Diana wears them on her head in the form of a fine crescent. Is she there-
fore a cuckold? How the devil could she be a cuckold, who was never married? For mer-
cy's sake, speak correctly, for fear she may make you some horns on the
model of
those she made for Actaeon.'
"Good old Bacchus likewise wears horns. Pan, Jupiter Ammon, so many others. Are they
cuckolds? Could Juno be a whore? For this would follow by the figure called
meta-
lepsis.'" Just as calling a child, in the presence of his father and mother, champis
or avoistre," that amounts to saying civilly, tacitly, that the father is a cuckold
and the mother a strumpet.
Let's speak more nicely. The horns my wife was making me are horns of abundance and
of plenty of all goods. I pledge my faith on it. Further-more, I'll be joyful as a
marriage drum, always sounding, always snoring, always buzzing and farting. Believe
me, that's the luck of my good fortune. My wife will be dainty and pretty as a love-
ly little owlet. Anyone who doesn't believe it,
Off to the gallows straight from
hell, While we sing Noel, Noel.
"I note," said Pantagruel, "the last point you have stated and compare it with the
first. At the beginning you were all steeped in delight over your dream. At the end
you awoke with a start, vexed, perplexed, and indignant . . . "
"True," said Panurge, "for I hadn't dined!"
All will go into desolation, I foresee. Know for a fact that any sleep ending with
a start and leaving the person vexed and indignant either means or presages, trouble.
"Means trouble, that is to say a cacoethic [cacoethe], malignant, pestilent, occult
disease, latent within the center of the body, which through sleep, which always
reinforces the concoctive power (according to the theorems of medicine), would be-
gin to declare itself and move toward the surface. At which sad movement would re-
pose be shattered and the first sensitive element" admonished to have compassion on
it and provide for it. As they put it in proverbs: rouse a hornet's nest, stir up
Lake Camarine, wake a sleeping cat.
"Presages trouble, that is to say when, by the behavior of the soul in the matter
of somnial divination, it gives us to understand that some misfortune is destined
and prepared for it, which will shortly come to light in its effect.
"Example: in the dream and frightful awakening of Hecuba, in the dream of Eurydice,
wife of Orpheus, of which Ennius says that they waked with a start and terrified.
And so afterward Hecuba saw her hus-band Priam, her children, her country slaughter-
ed and destroyed; Eurydice soon afterward died miserably.
"In Aeneas dreaming that he was talking to the defunct Hector, sud-denly waking with
a start. And so it was that very night that Troy was sacked and burned down. Another
time, dreaming that he sees his family gods and Penates and waking in dread, he suf-
fered on the following day a horrible tempest at sea.
In Turnus, who, incited by a fantasy vision of the infernal Fury to begin war against
Aeneas, waked with a start all indignant; then he was, after long tribulations, kill-
ed by this Aeneas. A thousand others.
"When I tell you stories about Aeneas, note that Fabius Pictor says that nothing was
done or undertaken by him, nothing happened to him, which he had not known of before-
hand and foreseen by divination through dreams.
"Reason is not lacking in these examples. For if sleep and repose is a special gift
and benefit of the gods--as the philosophers maintain and the poet attests [Aeneid 2.
268-269], saying:
This was the time when sleep, at heaven's behest,
Comes graciously to bring tired humans rest.
"Such a gift cannot be ended in vexation and indignation without foreboding great
unhappiness. Otherwise would rest not be rest, a gift not a gift, coming not from
the friendly gods but from the hostile devils, as in the common saying: ExOpwv 6.8
wpa 86pa [a gift from enemies is no gift]."
"As if the paterfamilias, sitting at an opulent table with a good appetite at the
start of his meal, is seen to jump to his feet in fright. Anyone not knowing the
reason might be astonished. But you see! geThad heard his manservants shout 'Fire!'
His maidservants cry 'Stop thief!' His children cry 'Murder!' He had to run to the
spot to remedy matters and restore order.
"Actually I remember that the cabalists and massoretes, interpreters of Holy Scrip-
ture, explaining in what way one could make out the truth by discernment about angel-
ic apparitions (for sometimes Satan's angel trans-forms himself into an angel of
light), say that the difference between the two is in that the benign, consoling an-
gel, appearing to man, terrifies him at the beginning, consoles him in the end,
leaves him happy and satisfied; the malign seducing angel delights him, at the start,
but in the end leaves him perturbed, vexed, and perplexed."
Panurge's excuse
and exposition of the monastic cabala
in the matter of salt
"GOD," said Panurge, "keep from harm him who sees well and
hears not a sound! ' I see you very well, but I don't hear you one bit. And I don't know what you're saying.
A
famished belly has no ears. I'm bellowing by God in a wild frenzy of hunger. I've gone
through too extraordinary an ordeal. It'll take a sharper man than Master Magic' to
get me to do dreaming this year. No supper at all, by the Devil? A plague on it! Come
on, Frere Jean, let's go have breakfast. When I've had a good big breakfast and my
stomach is well victualed and foddered, then all right, if there were need and in
case of necessity I'd get along without dinner. But to have no supper at all? Plague
take it! That's a mistake. That's a scandal in nature.
"Nature made the day to exercise in, to work, and for each man to
go about his busi-
ness; and in order to do that more aptly, she supplies us with a candle, that's the
bright joyful light of the sun. In the evening she begins to take it away and tells
us tacitly: 'Lads, you're good folk. That's enough work. The night is coming: it is
time to cease your labor and restore yourselves with good bread, good wine, good
food, then amuse yourselves a bit, go to bed, and rest, so as to be fresh the next
day and cheerfully ready for work as before.'
"Thus the falconers do. When they've fed their birds, they have them fly off their
feed: they let them digest on the perch, which was very well understood by the good
pope who first instituted fasts. He ordered men to fast_ until the hour of nones;3
the rest of the day was set at liberty to feed. In the olden times, few men dined,
except, you might say, the monks and canons (and indeed they have no other occupa-
tion: all days are feast days to them, and they diligently observe one claustral
proverb: de missa ad mensam--from mass to table--and would not put off, even if wait-
ing for the arrival of the abbot, plumping themselves down at table: there, while
they guzzle, the monks wait for the abbot all he wants, but not otherwise, or for
any other consideration), but everyone supped, except a few wool-gathering dreamers,
which is why supper is called coena, that is to say common to all.
"You know this very well, Fite Jean. Come on, my friend, by all the
devils, let's go! My stomach is baying with frantic hunger, like a dog. Let's
toss it many dips in its gullet to appease it, after the example of the sibyl
toward Cerberus. You love the dips served at prime; I prefer the grey-
hound's dips4 with a piece of powdered beef, nine lessons' worth."
"I understand you," replied Frere Jean. "That metaphor is drawn from
the claustral cooking pot. The powdered beef [le laboureur], that's the ox
that labors or has labored; nine lessons' worth, that is to say cooked to
perfection.
"For the good religious fathers, by a certain cabalistic institution of the
ancients, not written, but passed down from hand to hand, in my time,
on rising for matins, performed certain notable preambles before entering
the church: they crapped in the crapperies, pissed in the pisseries, spat in
the spitteries, coughed melodiously in the cougheries, daydreamed in the
daydreameries, so as not to bring anything foul into the divine service.
These things done, they piously betook themselves into the holy chapel
[saincte chapelle]—thus in their lingo was named the claustral kitchen
and piously urged that the beef be put on the fire for the breakfast of the
monks, brothers of Our Lord. They themselves often lit the fire beneath
the cooking pot.
"Now it's true that, when matins had nine lessons, they got up earlier
for a reason, and also increased in appetite and thirst by the baying at the
parchments more than when matins were hemmed over with one or
three lessons only. Getting up earlier, by the aforesaid cabala, sooner was
the beef on the fire; being there more, it remained more done; remaining
more done, it was more tender, wore down the teeth less, delighted the
palate, lay less heavy on the stomach, nourished the good monks more,
which is the sole aim and primary intention of the founders, in contem-
plation of the fact that they hardly at all eat to live, they live to eat, and
have only their life in this world. Let's go, Panurge!"
"At this point," said Panurge, "I've understood you, my velvety
ballock, claustral and cabalic ballock. I'm concerned for the cabal itself as
the capital. The principal, interest, and charges I forgo.6 I content myself
with the expenses, since you have given us such a learned rehearsal on the
singular subject of the culinary and monastic cabala. Come on, Carpalim!
Frere Jean, my baldrick,7 let's go! Good day to youi all, my good lords! I a
have dreamed enough to have a drink. Let's go!"
Panurge had not finished that remark when Epistemon cried aloud, saying:
"A very common and ordinary thing it is among humans to understand,
foresee, recognize, and predict the misfortune of others. But how rare
a thing it is to predict, foresee, and understand one's own misfortune!
And how wisely Aesop pictured this in his Fables, saying that every man
is born into this world wearing a wallet about his neck, in the front pouch
of which hang the misfortunes of others, always exposed .to our sight and
knowledge; in the rear pouch hang our 'awn faults and misfortunes, and
they are never seen or heard, except by those who enjoy the benevolent
regard of the heavens."
How Pantagruel advises Panurge
to consult with a sibyl of Panzoust.
A short time later, Pantagruel sent for Panurge and said to him:
"The inveterate love I have borne you for a long sequence of time
incites me to think of your welfare and profit. Hear my idea; I've been
told that at Panzoust, near Le Croulay, there is a very famous sibyl, who
predicts all future things; take Epistemon for company, get; yourself to
her, and hear what she'll tell you."
"She may," said Epistemon, "peradventure be a Canidia, a Sagana, a
pythoness and witch. What makes me think so is that this place has a bad
name for abounding in witches even more than Thessaly ever did. I'll not
go willingly. The thing is illicit and forbidden in the law of Moses.
"We're certainly not Jews," said Pantagruel, "and it's not an acknowl-
edged or attested fact that she's a witch. Let's put off until your return the
sifting and assessing of these matters.
"How do we know but that she's an eleventh sibyl, a second
Cassandra? And even if she were not a sibyl and didn't deserve the name
of sibyl, what risk do you run by consulting with her about your perplex-
ity? Especially considering that she is thought to now more, to under-
stand more, than is usual in her region or her sex. What harm is there in
always finding out and always learning, even if it's from a sot, a pot, a
dipper, a mitten, or a slipper?'
"Remember that Alexander the Great, having won the victory over
King Darius at Arbela, in the presence of his satraps, once refused an
audience to a fellow, then repented of it in vain thousands and thousands
of times [mille et mille foys]. He was in Persia, victorious, but so far from
his hereditary kingdom of Macedonia that he was most distressed not to
have been able to think up any way to get news of it, both because of the
enormous distance between the two places and of great rivers blocking
the way, the impediment of the deserts, and the barrier of the mountains.
In this predicament and troubled quandary, which was no small matter
(for someone could have occupied his country and kingdom and installed
there a new king and a new colony long before he had warning of it to
prevent it), there appeared before him a man from Sidon, an able and
sensible merchant, but for the rest rather poor and unimpressive in ap-
pearance, who announced and affirmed to him that he had found a way
and means by which his country could be notified in less than five days of
his Indian victories, and he of the state of Macedonia and Egypt. He
considered the promise so preposterous and impossible that he never
would lend an ear to him or grant him an audience.
"What would it have cost him to hear and understand what the man
had invented? What harm, what damage would he have incurred to find
out what was the means, what was the way, that the man wanted to
show him?
"Nature seems to me to have formed us not without cause with our
ears open, setting on them no gate or closure whatever as she did with the
eyes, tongue, and other openings in our bodies. I believe the cause is so
that always, every night, we may be continually able to hear, and by
hearing perpetually to learn; for that is the sense, above all others, most
apt for learning. And perhaps that man was an angel, that is to say a
messenger sent-by God, as was Raphael to Tobias. He disdained him too
promptly; he repented of it for too long afterward."
"You speak well," replied Epistemon, "but you'll never make me be-
lieve that it's a very advantageous thing to take counsel and advice from
a woman, in such a region."
"I," said Panurge, "find myself very well off for women's advice, and
especially old women's. On consulting them I always produce one or two
extraordinary stools. My friend, they are real pointer dogs, real rubrics of
the law books.' And those people speak quite properly who call them
sage women ["sages femmes" or "midwives"]. My custom and my style is
to call them presage women. Sage they are, for adroitly they know. But I
call them presage, for they foresee divinely and foretell certainly things
to come. Sometimes I call them not maunettes but monettes, like the
Romans' Juno, for from them always come to us salutary and profitable
admonitions. Inquire about it of Pythagoras, Socrates, Empedocles, and
Our Master Ortuinus.
"Likewise I praise to the high heavens the ancient institution of the
Germans, who prized old women's advice at the value of the sanctuary
standard and cordially revered it; by their counsels and replies they pros-
pered as happily as they had wisely received them. Witness old Aurinia
and that good mother Velleda in the time of Vespasian.
"Believe me, feminine old age is always abounding in zibeline' qual-
ity—I meant to say sibylline. Come on, with the help, come on, with the
power, of God, come on! Good-bye, Frere Jean, I commend my codpiece to
you."
"Very well," said Epistemon, "I'll follow you, protesting that if I have
warning that she is using lots of enchantment in her replies, I'll leave you
at the door, and you shall no longer be accompanied by me."
THEIR trip took three days. On the third, on a mountain crest, under a
great ample chestnut tree, they were shown the soothsayer's abode. With
no difficulty they entered the thatched cottage, ill-built, ill-furnished,
all blackened from smoke.
"No matter!" said Epistemon, "Heraclitus, a great Scotist and darksome
philosopher,' showed no astonishment on entering a similar house, ex-
plaining to his sectarians and disciples that the Gods resided there just
as well as in palaces full of delights. And I think that such was the but
of the very famous Hecale, when she regaled young' Theseus there; such
also that of Hireus and Oenopion, in which Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury
did not disdain to enter, feed, and lodge, in which in a pisspot, to pay
their way, they forged Orion."
In a corner of the hearth they found the old woman.
"She," exclaimed Epistemon, "is a real sibyl and a faithful portrait
represented true to life by Homer's rrn xapavot [the old furnace-woman:
Odyssey 18.27]."
The old woman was ill-favored, ill-dressed, ill-nourished, toothless,
blear-eyed, hunchbacked, runny-nosed, languid; and she was making a
green cabbage soup with a rind of bacon and some old broth from a
soup bone.
"Mother of pearl!" said Epistemon, "we've muffed it. We won't get
any answer at all out of her, for we don't have the golden bough!"4
"I've provided for it," replied Panurge, "I have it here in my game-
pouch in a golden ring in the company_of-some-iiit-e joyous carolus."
These words spoken, Panurge bbwed deeply to her, presented her with
six smoked ox tongues, a great butter-pot full of curds, a horn-shaped
drinking glass furnished with drink, a ram's-ballock purse full of new-
minted carolus, finally with a deep bow put on her ring finger a beautiful
gold ring, in which was magnificently set a toadstone from Beusse. Then
in a few words he explained to her his motive in coming, courteously
requesting her to tell him her advice and what good fortune his projected
marriage would have.
The old woman remained in silence for some time, pensive and grind-
ing her teeth, then sat down on the bottom of a cask, took in her hands
three spindles, turned and twisted them between her fingers in various
ways; then tested their points, kept the most pointed one in her hand,
tossed aside the other two under a millet mortar. After that, she took
her
spools and turned them nine times. At the ninth turn, without touching
them any longer, she considered the movement of the spools and waited
until they came to full rest. Later I saw that she took off one of her clogs
(we call them sabotz), raised her apron over her head as priests put up
their amice when they want to sing mass, then with an old speckled cloth
of many colors tied it under her throat. Thus decked out, she drew off a
great draft from the drinking glass, took from the ram's ballock three
carolus, put them in three nutshells and set them on the bottom of a
feather-pot, gave three turns with a broom over the hearth, threw into
the fire a half bundle of heath and a branch of dry laurel. She watched it
burn in silence and saw that as it burned it made no sputtering or noise
whatever. Thereupon she gave a frightful cry, muttering between her
teeth a few barbarous words with a strange ending, in such a way that
Panurge said to Epistemon:
"By the power of God, I'm trembling! I think I'm under a charm; she doesn't
speak Christian. See how-she seems to me four span taller than she was
when she covered her head with her apron. What's the meaning of this move-
ment of her chaps? What's the point of this shrugging of her shoulders?
To
what purpose does she quaver with her lips like a monkey dismembering cray-
fish? My ears are ringing; it seems to me I hear Proserpina crying out;
soon the
devils will come out on the spot. 0 what ugly beasts! Let's get out of
here!
Serpent of God, I'm dying of fear! I don't like devils one bit; they vex me and
are most unpleasant. Let's get out of here! Farewell, Madame, many thanks for
your help! I won't many at all, no indeed! I give it up from now on just
as before."
Thus he was starting to run out of the room; but the old woman got ahead of him,
holding the spindle in her hand, and went out into a garden near her house.
Here
there was an old sycamore; she shook it three times, and on eight leaves
that fell
from it, summarily, with the spindle she wrote a few short verses. Then she tossed
them to the wind and said to them:
"Go look for them if you want; find them if you can; the fated destiny of your
marriage is written on them."
These words said, she withdrew into her lair, and on the doorstep trussed herself
up, dress, petticoat, and smock, all the way to her armpits, and showed them her
tail. Panurge saw it, and said to Epistkmon:
"'Odsbodikins, there's the sibyl's hole."
Suddenly she barred the door after her, and was not seen thereafter. They chased
after the leaves and collected them, but not without great effort, for the wind
had strewn them among the bushes in the valley. And arranging them in order one
after another, they found this statement in verse:'
How Pantagruel and Panurge diversely interpret
the verses of the sibyl of Panzoust.
WHEN the leaves were collected, Epistemon and Panurge returned to Pantagruel's
court,
part joyous, part vexed. Joyous for the return; vexed for the labor of the road, which
they found rugged, stony, and poorly laid out. About their trip they made a full report
to Pantagruel about the condition of the sibyl. Finally they presented him with the
sycamore leaves and showed him what was written in the little verses. Pantagruel,
having read the whole thing, said to Panurge with a sigh:
"You're really in good shape! The sibyl's prophecy exposes to you what was already sig-
nified to us both by the Virgilian lots and by your own dreams; that by your wife you
will be dishonored, that she will make you a cuckold, abandoning herself to others and
becoming pregnant by someone else; that she will rob you of some good pan, and that
she will beat you, flaying and bruising some member of your body."
"You understand as much," replied Panurge, "in the expounding of these recent prophe-
cies as does a sow in spices. Don't be offended if I say so, for I'm feeling a little
vexed. The opposite is the truth. Take good heed of my words. The old woman says: Even
as the bean is not seen if it is not shucked, so my virtue and my perfection would
never be brought to renown if I were not married. How many times have I heard you say
that the magistracy and the office reveal the man and bring to light what he had in
his belly, that then is certainly known what kind of man the person is and what he's
good for when he's called to the handling of affairs. Before then, when the man is in
private, it is not known what kind of man he is, any more than is known of a bean in
the husk. So much for the first point.
"Otherwise, would you want to maintain that the honor and good renown of a decent man
should depend on the tail of a whore?
"The second says that my wife will become pregnant (here understand
the prime feli-
city of marriage), but not with me.'Odsbody, I believe it! It will be with
a handsome
tiny little child that she'll be pregnant. I'm already full of love for
him, and already
I'm quite doting on him; he'll be my little cutie. No vexation in the world, however
great and violent, will henceforth enter my mind that I'll not pass it off, just by
seeing him, and hearing him prate in his childish prattle. And blessed be the old woman!
I'd like, honest to Gosh [Vraybis], to set up for her in Salmagundi some
good source of
revenue, not some annuity like giddy bachelors of arts, but a solid landed one like
fine doctor professors. Otherwise, would you have my wife bear me within her loins,
conceive me, deliver me, and have people say; 'Panurge is a second Bacchus,
he's twice
born, he's a rene (reborn), as was Hippolytus, as was Proteus, once of Thetis and sec-
ondly of the mother of the philosopher Apollonius, as were the two Palici, beside the
river Simethos in Sicily. His wife was big with him. In him is renewed the ancient
palintocia of the Megarians and the palingenesis of Democritus? Wrong! Don't ever
speak to me about it.
"The third says that my wife will suck my sweet tip. I'm ready and waiting. You un-
derstand well enough that that's the single-ended stick that hangs between my legs.
I swear and promise to you that I'll always keep it succulent and well victualed. She
won't suck it on me in vain. In it eternally there'll be that little peck's worth,
or better. You explain this bit allegorically and interpret it as robbery and theft.
I praise the explanation, I like the allegory, but not in your sense. Perhaps the
sincere affection you bear me draws you to the advent and refractory side, as the
clerics say that love is a marvelously fearful thing and that a good love is never
without fear.
"But (according to my judgment) you understand within yourselves that theft, in this
passage, as in many other ancient Latin writers, means the sweet fruit of amourettcs,
which Venus wills to be secretly and furtively plucked. Why, tell me in
good faith?
Because the little business, performed on the sly, between two closed doors, across
the stairs, behind the tapestry, on a pile of loose kindling, is more pleasing to the
Cyprian goddess (and that's where I stand, without prejudice to higher authority)'
than performed in view of the sun, Cynic style, or under precious canopies, between
golden curtains, at long intervals, to one's heart's content, using a crimson flyswat-
ter, and chasing away the flies with a brush of Indian feathers, and the female pick-
ing her teeth with a little bit of straw that she had meanwhile plucked out from deep
down in the straw mattress.
"Otherwise, would you want me to tell you that she will rob me by sucking, as the wo-
men of Cilicia (witness Dioscorides) draw in the grain from the oak?' Wrong. He who
robs does not suck but snatches, nor swallows but wraps up, carries off and plays 'Now
you see it, now you don't.'
"The fourth says that my wife will flay it for me, but not all. O
what a nice thing to
say! You interpret it to mean beating and bruising. That's hitting the nail on the thumb,
speaking of masons and trowels! I beseech you, raise your minds a little from earthly
thought to the lofty contemplation of the wonders of nature, and here do you yourselves
condemn yourselves for the mistakes you have committed. in perversely expounding the
prophetic statements of the divine sibyl.
"Putting, but not admitting or conceding the case that my wife, on the instigation of
the enemy from hell, tried and undertook to do a bad turn, defame me, make me a cuckold
up to my ass, rob me and outrage me, still she won't bring off her plan and undertak-
ing. The reason that prompts me to say this is founded on this last point,
and is ex-
tracted from the depth of monastic Panthcology. Friar Arthur Tailpusher' once told me
it, and it was on a Monday morning, as we were together eating a bushel of minced veal
pies, and at that it was raining, I remember; God give him good day!
"The women, at the beginning of the world or soon after, conspired together to flay
the men alive completely, because the men wanted to lord it over them everywhere.
And this decree was promised, confirmed, and sworn among them by the holy blood of
the Goose." But O the vain undertakings of women! O the great frailty of the female
sex! They began to skin man, or flay him as Catullus puts it with the part they most
delight in, that's the muscular, cavernous member, over six thousand years ago, and
yet they still have got only to the head of it. Whereat, out of spite the Jews in
circumcision cut and trim themselves, preferring to be called snipped and shorn
marranos, rather than skinned by women, like the other nations. My wife, not degen-
erating from this enterprise, will flay it for me if it isn't so, I freely consent
to this, but not all, I assure you, my good king."
"You," said Epistemon, "are not responding to the fact that the laurel branch, under
our eyes, with her observing and exclaiming in a frightful frenzied voice, was burn-
ing without any noise or sputtering at all. You know that this is a sad augury and
a vastly redoubtable sign, as is attested by Propertius. Tibullus, Porphyry the
subtle philosoher, Eustathius on Homer's Iliad, and others."
"Really now," responded Panurge, "you're citing me some curious little calves!
They were crazy as poets and dotards as philosophers, as full of sheer
madness
as was their philosophy."
PANTAGRUEL, these words finished, remained silent rather a long time
and seemed greatly pensive. Then he said to Panurge:
"The malicious spirit is leading you astray, but listen. I've read that in
times past the surest and most truthful oracles were not those given out
in writing or proffered in words; many times mistakes were made even
by those who were esteemed subtle and ingenious, both because of
the uncertainties, ambiguities, and obscurities of the words and because
of the brevity of the pronouncements; therefore was Apollo, god of
vaticination, surnamed Aoetas [Loxias]. Those that were expounded by
gestures and sighs were considered the most truthful and certain. Such
was the opinion of Heraclitus. And thus did Jupiter vaticinate in Ammon;
thus did Apollo prophesy among the Assyrians. For this reason they por-
trayed him with a long beard and dressed like an olderson of sober
sense, not naked, young, and beardless, as the Greeks did.
Let's make use of this method; and do you, by signs without speaking,
take counsel of some mute."
"I agree to that," replied Panurge.
"But," said Pantagruel, "the mute should properly be deaf from birth
and consequently mute. For there is no mute more natural than one who
has never heard."
"How do you mean that?" replied Panurge. "If it were true that no
man ever spoke who had never heard speech, I would lead you to infer
logically a very preposterous and paradoxical position. But let it go. So
you don't believe what Herodotus writes [History 2.2] about the two
children kept in a but by the will of Psammetichus, king of the Egyptians,
and brought up in perpetual silence, who after a certain particular time
pronounced this word: becus, which in the Phrygian language means
'bread.'"
"Not a word of it," replied Pantagruel. "It's a misstatement to say that
we have a natural language: languages exist by arbitrary institutions and
conventions of peoples; words as the dialecticians say, signify not by
nature but by our pleasure. I do not make this statement to you without
occasion. For Bartolo, I. prima de verb. oblig. [Bartolus, in the first law Of
words of obligation], relates that in his time there was in Gubbio a certain
Messer Nello de Gabrielis, who by accident had become deaf this not-
withstanding, he understood any Italian man, however cryptically he
spoke, by the sight of his gestures and his lip movements. Moreover, I've
read in an elegant learned author that Tiridates, king of Armenia, visited
Rome in Nero's time and was received in honorable pomp and cer-
emony, so as to maintain him in eternal friendship with the Roman
senate and people, and there was not one memorable thing in the city
that was not shown and exposed to him. On his departure the emperor
made him great excessive gifts; besides, he gave him the option to choose
whatever he liked best in Rome, with t e sworn promise not to turn him
down, whatever he asked for. He asked only for one farce-player whom
he had seen at the theater, and, not understanding what he was saying,
understood what he was expressing by signs and gesticulations; stating
that under his dominion were peoples of various tongues, to answer and
speak to whom he had to use several interpreters; this man alone would
suffice for all For in the matter of signifying b gestures, he was so
excellent that he seemed to speak with his fingers.
"Therefore you must choose a mute deaf from firth, so that his gestures
and signs may be naturally prophetic, not feigned, prettified, or affected.
It still remains to be known whether you would want to take such advice
from a man or a woman."
"I," said Panurge, "would ladly take it from a woman, were it not that
I fear two things; one, that women, whatever things they see or represent
to themselves in their minds, or think they imagine it's the entry of the
sacred Ithyphalus; whatever gestures, signs, and appearances one may
make in their sight and presence, they interpret and refer them to the
moving act of bolting [elles les interpretent et referent a l'acte mouvent
de belutaige]. Therefore we would be misled, for the woman would think
that all our signs were venereal. Remember what happened in Rome two
hundred and sixty years after its founding: a young Roman gentleman,
meeting on Mount Coelion a Latin lady named Verona, deaf and dumb
from birth, asked her with Italian gestures, in ignorance of this deafness,
what senators she had met on the way up. She, not understanding what
he was saying, imagined it was what she had on her mind, and what a
young man naturally asks of a woman. And so by signs (which in love-
making are incomparably more alluring, effective, and valuable than
words), she drew him aside into her house, made signs to him that she
liked the game. Finally, without saying a word by mouth, they made a
fine duet of tail-pushing
"The other, that they would make no reply at all to our signs; they
would promptly fall over backward, as really consenting to our unspoken
requests. Or else, if they made us any signs responsive to our pro-
poundings, these would . be so wanton and ridiculous that we ourselves
would think l t it thoughts were venereal. You know how, at Croquignoles,
when the nun Sister Bigass s[Soeur Fessue] was made pregnant by
the young lay friar Stickitinstiff [Dam Royddimet] 3 and the preg-
nancy known, she, summoned by the abbess in chapter meeting and
accused of incest, excused herself, alleging that it had not been by her
consent; it had been by violence and by the strength of Friar Stickitinstiff.
"When the abbess answered and said: 'Wicked girl, this was in the
dormitory; why didn't you cry for help? We would have run to your
assistance!' She answered that she dared not cry out in the dormitory
because in the dormitory there was eternal silence. 'But,' said the abbess,
you wretch, why didn't you signal to your roommates?' I kept signaling
all I could with my tail,' replied Bigass, 'but no one came to help me.'
'But,' said the 'abbess, 'you bad girl, why didn't you come and tell me
right away and brit-1'g a regular accusation against him? That's what I
would have done if the same thing had happened to me, to demonstrate
my innocence.' Because; replied Bigass, 'fearful of remaining in sin and
a state of damnation, for fear I might be beaten to it by sudden death, I
made confession to him before I left the room, and he gave me as a
penance not to reveal it to anyone. Too enormous a sin it would have
been to reveal his confession, and too detestable in the sight of God and
the angels. It might peradventure have been reason for fire from heaven
to have burned down the whole abbey, and for us all to have fallen into
the abyss with Dathan and Abiram.'"
"You'll never," said Pantagruel, "make me laugh at that. I know well
enough that all monkery is less afraid to transgress God's commandments
than their provincial statutes. So take a man; Goatsnose [Nazdecabre,
Langue d'Oc for Nez-de-Chbre] seems to me suitable. He's deaf and
dumb from birth."
GOATSNOSE was summoned and arrived the next day. Panurge, on his
arrival, gave him a fatted calf, half a hog, two puncheons of wine, a load
of wheat, and thirty francs in small change; hen he brought him before
Pantagruel, and, in the presence of the gentlemen of the chamber, made him this sign. he yawned at some length, and, in yawning, outside his
mouth, with the thumb of his right hand he traced the shape of the Greek
letter called Tau, with frequent repetitions. Then he raised his eyes to
heaven and rolled them around in his head like a nannygoat aborting,
coughed as he did so, and deeply sighed. That done, he pointed to his
lack of a codpiece, and then under his shirt took his poniard' full in his
fist and clicked it melodiously between his thighs; then leaned over, bending
his left knee, and remained holding both arms clasped one over the other
on his chest.
Goatsnose kept looking at him curiously, then raised his left hand in the
air and kept all the fingers thereof closed into a fist except the thumb and
index finger, which he joined gently by the two nails.
"I understand," said Pantagruel, "what he means by this sign. It denotes
marriage, and moreover the trentenary [thirty-year] number, according to
the theory of the Pythagoreans. You will be married."
"Many thanks," said Panurge, turning toward Goatsnose, "my little
chief steward, my galley-master, my gendarme, my police sergeant."
Then he raised the said left hand higher in the air, extending all five of
the fingers thereof and stretching them as far apart from one another as
he could.
"Here," said Pantagruel, "he insinuates to us more fully, by signifying
the quinary number, that you will be married, and not only engaged,
wedded, and married, but besides, that you will live together and your
life will go on as a feast. For Pythagoras used to call the quinary number
a nuptial one, of wedding and consumated marriage, for this reason, that
it is composed of the triad, which is the first odd and superfluous' num-
ber, and of the dyad, which is the first even number, as of male and
female coupled together. Indeed in Rome, long ago, on the wedding
day, they used to light five wax torches, and it was not legal to light any
more, even at the Marriage of the richest, nor fewer, even at the marriage
of the most indigent. Moreover, in times east, the pagans used to implore
five gods, or one god for five benefits, upon those whom they were
marrying: Jupiter the nuptial god, Juno as presiding over the feast, Venus
the beautiful, Pitho the goddess of persuasion and fine talk, and Diana for
help in the travail of childbirth.'"
"O," said Panurge, that nice Goatsnose! I want to give him a
farm
near Cinais and a windmill in Mirebalais."
This done, the mute sneezed with remarkable violence and shaking of
his entire body, turning aside to the left.
"By the power of the Lard above [vertus beuf de boys]!" said
Pantagruel, "what's that? That's not to your advantage. It signifies that
your marriage will be unfelicitous and unhappy. That sneeze, according
to Terpsion's doctrine, is the Socratic daemon, which, done on the right,
means' that boldly and with assurance one may go ahead with what one
has planned: the start, progress, and outcome will be good and happy;
done on the left, to the contrary."
"You," said Panurge, "are always taking things at their worst and raising
troubles like another Davus. I don't believe a word of it. And I never
heard of that old fogy Terpsion except as a deceiver."
"However," said Pantagruel, "Cicero says about it I forgets what in the
second book of De divinatione [24o, par. 84]."
Then he [Panurge] turns toward Goatsnose and makes him a sign like this:
he rolled up his eyelids, twisted his jaws from right to left, stuck his
tongue halfway out of his mouth. That done, he put his left hand, except
for the middle finger, which he kept perpendicularly on his palm, and
thus set it on the place for his codpieCe; the right hand he kept closed into
a fist, except for the thumb, which he turned straight backward under his
right armpit, and then set it above the buttocks, on the place the Arabs
call Al Katim. Immediately afterward he changed and held his right hand
in the position of the left, and put it on the place for the codpiece; the
left he held in the position of the right, and placed it on the Al Katim. This
changing of hands he repeated nine times. On the ninth, he returned his
eyelids to their natural position; did the same thing also with his jaws and
his tongue; then he cast his squint-eyed glance upon Goatsnose, wiggling
his lips as monkeys do when free to, and as rabbits do when eating oats in
the sheaf.
Thereupon Goatsnose raised his Tight hand in the air wide open, put
the thumb thereof up to the first joint between the third joints of the
middle finger and the ring finger, squeezing rather hard around the
thumb, and pulling back into his fist the remaining joints of these, and
extending out straight the index and little fingers. His hand thus arranged
he placed on Panurge's navel, continually moving the said thumb, and
leaning his hand on the little and index fingers as on two legs. Thus with
his hand he climbed successively over the belly, the stomach, the chest,
and the neck of Panurge; then to the chin, and into his mouth put the
aforesaid waggling thumb; then he rubbed his nose with it, and climbing
on beyond up to the eyes, made as if to put them out with his thumb.
At that Panurge got mad and tried to pull away and shake off the mute.
But Goatsnose went right on, with this waggling thumb touching now
his eyes, now his forehead and the edges of his cap. Finally Panurge cried
out and said:
"By God, Master Fool, you'll get a beating if you don't leave me alone!
If you annoy me any more, you'll get a mask from the back of my hand
over your whoring face!"
"He's deaf," said Frere Jean. "He can't hear a word you're saying, old
ballock. Signal him with a hail of punches on the snout."
"What the devil," said Panurge, "does this Master Knowitall [Maistre
Alliboron] think he's doing? He almost poached my eyes in butter sauce
[poche les oeilz au beurre noir]. By God, da jurandi [excuse my swearing],
I'll feast you with a banquet of nose-tweaks, alternating with double
flicks."
Then he left, "blowing him the bird." The mute, seeing Panurge on
his way, got ahead of him forcibly and made this sign. he lowered his
right arm toward the knee as far as he could extend it, closing all the
fingers into a fist and putting his thumb between the middle and index
fingers; then with his left hand he rubbed the inside of the elbow of
the aforesaid right arm, and little by little, with this rubbing, raised that
hand into the air to the elbow and above, suddenly brought it down as
before, then at intervals raised it again, lowered it again, and displayed
it to Panurge.
Panurge, angry at this, raised his fist to hit the mute; but in reverence
for Pantagruel's presence he held back. Then said Pantagruel:
"If the signs vex you, how much more will the things signified vex
you! Every truth harmonizes with every truth The mute means and
signifies that you will be married, a cuckold, beaten, and robbed."
"The marriage," said Panurge, "I concede; I deny the rest. And I beg
you to do me the favor of believing that never had a man such good luck
with women and horses as is predestined for me."
How Panurge takes counsel
of an old French poet named Raminagrobis.
"I never thought," said Pantagruel," I'd meet a man as obstinate in his
preconceptions as I see you are. At all events, to clear up your doubt, my
notion is that we should leave no stone unturned. Hear my idea. Swans,
which are birds sacred to Apollo, when nearing their death, especially on
the Meander, a river in Phrygia (I say this because Aelian and Alexander
Myndius write of having seen several of them die elsewhere, but none
sang as they were dying) sing; so that a swan's song is a certain presage of
its coming death, and it does not die without first having sung [et ne
meurt que praealablement n'ayt chante]. Likewise poets, who are under
Apollo's protection, when nearing their death, ordinarily become proph-
ets and sing by Apollonian inspiration, vaticinating about future things.
"I have often heard,, moreover, that every old man, decrepit and near
his end, easily divines things to come. I remember that Aristophanes, in
one of his comedies [Knights v.61] calls old people sibyls;
0 8e yEpwv at.8uXXia
[The old man acts as a sibyl.]
For as we, standing on the pier and seeing from afar the sailors and
travelers in their ships on the open sea, watch them only in silence and
earnestly pray for their happy landing; but when they approach the har-
bor, in both words and gestures we greet them and congratulate them on having arrived at a safe haven with us; so the angels, heroes, and good
demons (according to the doctrine of the Platonists) seeing humans close
to death as to a very safe and salutary haven, a haven of repose and
tranquillity outside of earthly troubles and cares, greet them, console
them, talk with them, and already begin to pass on to them the art of
divination.
I will not allege to you the ancient examples of Isaac, Jacob, Patroclus
to Hector, Hector to Achilles, Polymnestor to Agamemnon and Hecuba,
the Great, Orodes to Mezentius, and others; I want only to recall to your
memory the learned and valiant knight Guillaume du Bellay, formerly
Lord of Langey, who died on Mount Tarare on the tenth of January, in
the climacteric mar of his life,3 and by our count in Roman reckoning
the year 1543. The three or four hours before his death, tranquil and
serene in sense, he employed in vigorous words predicting for us what we
have in part seen, in part are awaiting as coming although for that time
these prophecies seemed to us somewhat prep6Sterous and strange, be-
cause at the time there appeared to us no sign heralding what he was
predicting.
"We have here, near La Villaumere, a man who is both old and a poet:
that is Raminagrobis, who in his second marriage wedded La Grande
Guorre4 [the pox?], whence was born the fair Basochc. I've heard that
he's at death's door and in the final moments of his decease; get yourself
into his presence and hear his song. It may be that from him you'll get
what you're aiming for and that by him Apollo will resolve your doubt."
"I want to," replied Panurge. "Let's go there right away., Epistemon,
for fear death may come to him first. Will you come, Frere Jean?"
"I will most gladly," replied Frere Jean, "for love of you, old ballock.
For I do love you with all my heart and liver."
On the instant, they took to the road, and, reaching the poetic dwell-
ing, found the old man in the death throes with joyful bearing, open face,
and luminous glance.
Panurge, greeting him, put on his left hand, middle finger, as a pure
gift, a gold ring, in the bezel of which was a fine big oriental sapphire;
then, in imitation of Socrates, he offered him a white cock, which, once
set on his bed, head raised, in great delight shook his plumage, then sang
loudly on a very high note.
This done, Panurge asked him courteously to tell and expose his judg-
ment on the doubt about the projected marriage.
The good old man ordered pen, ink, and paper to be brought him. And
this was promptly delivered to him. Thereupon he wrote what follows:
Take the lady, take her not;
If you take her, good for you;
But if taking her will not do,
You will have picked the wiser lot.
Go at an amble, go at a trot;
Draw back, go right into the spot;
Take the lady, take her not .. .
Fast, eat twice what others got;
All that had been redone, undo;
All that had been undone, redo;
Wish her long life and death on the spot,
Take the lady, take her not . . .
•
Then he handed this to them and said to them: "Go, my children, in
the keeping of the great God in heaven, and bother me no more about
this matter or any other there may be. I have today, which is the last day
of May and of me [de May et de moy], driven out of my house with great
fatigue and difficulty a bunch of ugly, filthy, pestilential creatures, black,
piebald, tawny, white, ashen, speckled, which would not let me die in
pea& and comfort, and, by fraudulent prickings, harpyish snatchings, and
waspish importunities, all forged in the smithy of I know not what insa-
tiability, kept dragging me out of that sweet state of mind to which I was
consenting, contemplated and saw, and already touched and tasted,
the bliss and felicity,that the good God has prepared for His faithful and
elect in the other life and the state of immortality., Depart from their
footsteps, don't be like them, disturb me no more, and leave me in
silence, I beseech you!"
How Panurge champions the order
of the mendicant friars.
As he came out of Raminagrobis's room, Panurge, as if quite terrified,
said: "I do believe, by the power of God, that he's a heretic, or devil take me! He speaks ill of the good mendicant Franciscan and Jacobin friars,
who are the two hemispheres of Christendom, by whose gyrognomic circum-
bilivagination,' as on two caelivagous filendopoles,2 all the antonomatic
matagrabolism3 of the Roman Church, feeling itself pestiferated by any
jabbering of error or of heresy, homocentrically gives a violent start.
But what, by all the devils, have those poor devils the Capuchins and
Minims done to him? Aren't they battered enough, the poor devils?
Aren't they smoke-begrimed and perfumed enough with misery and
calamity, those poor sad sacks scraped up out of Ichthyophagia? 'Pon my
word, Frere Jean, is he in condition to be saved? He's on his way, by
God, damned as a serpent. to thirty thousand scuttlefuls of devils! To
speak ill of those good valiant pillars of the Church! Do you call that
poetic frenzy? I can't be content with that: he's sinning foully, he's
blaspheming against religion. I'm extremely scandalized by it."
"I," said Prete Jean, "don't care a rap about it. They speak ill of ev-
eryone; if everyone speaks ill of them it's no skin off my nose. Let's
see what he's written."
Panurge read the old man's writing attentively, then said to them: "He's
not making sense, the poor boozer. I excuse him, however; I think he's
near the end of his rope; let's go write his epitaph! From the answer
he gives us, I'm as wise as we ever baked in the oven.' Listen here,
Epistemon, old pot. Don't you find him mighty categorical in his an-
swers? By God, he's a slick, choplogic, natural-born sophist. I'll bet
he's a manano-belly, how careful he is not to make any mistake in his
words! He answers only in disjunctives;' he can't help speaking the
truth, for it's enough for the truth of these that one part should be
true. 0 what a sharp operator! By Santiago de Bressuire,‘ are there
still some of that sort around?"
"Thus." responded Epist6mon, "was the great prophet Tiresias wont to
protest at the start of all his divinations, saying clearly to those
who took counsel from him: 'What I say will either happen or not hap-
pen.' And that's the style of prudent prognosticators."'
"All the same," said Panurge, "Juno put out both his eyes."'
"True," replied Epistkmon "out of spite that he had given a better
judgment than she had on the problem proposed by Jupiter."
"But," said Panurge, "what devil possesses this Master Raminagrobis
who thus to no purpose, for no reason or occasion, speaks ill of the
poor blessed Jacobin, Minor, and Minim fathers? I'm greatly scandalized
by it, I swear, and I can't keep quiet about it. He has sinned griev-
ously. His soul is going off to thirty thousand basketfuls of devils."
"I understand you," replied Epistemon, "and you yourself scandalize
me greatly, perversely applying to the mendicant friars what the good
poet was saying about the fleas, bedbugs, gnats, flies, mosquitoes,
and other such creatures, which are some black, some tawny, sonic
ashen, some tanned and swarthy, but all bothersome, tyrannical, and
annoying, not only for the sick but also healthy and vigorous. Possi-
bly he may have ascarids, lumbrics, and tapeworms inside his body.
Peradventure he is suffering (as happens in Egypt in places beside
the Red Sea as common and ordinary thing) in the arms and legs from
some sting by the speckled Guinea worm that the Arabs call meden.
You do ill by explaining his words otherwise, and you wrong the good
poet by disparagement and the said friars by the imputation of such
meanness. We must always interpret all things about our neighbor for
the good."
"Stan giving me lessons," said Panurge, "in spotting flies
in milk!"
By God's power, he's a heretic. I mean a full-fledged heretic, a her-
etic as fit for burning as any little clock." His soul is flying off
to thirty thousand cartloads of devils. Do you know where to? 'Odsbody,
my friend, right beneath Proserpina's toilet seat, inside the chamber
pot where she delivers the fecal product of her enemas, on the left
side of the great caldron, just three fathoms from Lucifer's claws on
the way toward the black chamber of Demogorgon." O the wretch!"
How Panurge makes a speech for
returning to Raminagrobis.
"LET'S go back," continued Panurge, "and admonish him about his salvation.
Let's go in the name of God, let's go in the power of God. It will be a
charitable work done by us: at least, if he loses his life, let him not
damn his soul! We'll lead him into contrition for his sin, to ask pardon
of the most blessed fathers, absent as well as present—and we'll put it in writing, so that after his death they won't declare him a heretic and
damned, as the hobgoblins did with the provost's wife of Orleans—and give
them satisfaction for the insult by ordering for the holy fathers through-
out all the monasteries of this province plenty of handout snacks, plenty
of masses, plenty of obits and anniversaries;' and that on the anniver-
sary of his death they may forever get fivefold helpings, and that the
great flagon, full of the best, may trot from row to row around their
tables, both of the humming drones, the lay priests and guzzlers, and of
the priests and clerics, both of the novices and of the professed. Thus
will he be able to obtain God's pardon.
"Oh-oh! I'm going far off the track in what I'm saying! Devil take me if
I'm going there! Power of God, the room is already full of devils! Already
I hear them belaboring and beating the devil out of one another to see
who'll gulp down the Raminagrobidic soul and be the first to carry it,
hot off the spit [de broc en boucJ to Messer Lucifer. Shoo! Get out of
there. I'm not going there; devil take me if I go. Who knows but that
they might commit a qui pro quo [mistake in identity] and instead of Ram--
inagrobis, snatch away poor old Panurge, now quit of his debts? They've
often just missed doing so when I was saffron-tinted and in debt.
"Get out of there! I'm not going. I'm like to die, by God, from sheer
frenzy of fear. To find yourself among famished devils! Among factious
devils! Among devils at work! Get out of there! I'll bet that for the
same fear, at his burial there won't be a Jacobin, a Franciscan, a Carm-
elite, a Capuchin, a Theatine, or a Minim friar. And no fools they! Be-
sides, he left them nothing in his will. Devil take me if I go! If he's
damned, too bad about him! Why did he keep speaking ill of the holy
fathers? Why had he driven them out of his room at the moment when he
most needed their help, their pious prayers, and their saintly admoni-
tions? Why in his will didn't he leave them at least a few snacks, a
little to gorge on, a little belly-lining, to these poor folk who have
nothing in the world but their lives? If anyone wants to go, let him
go! Devil take me if I go! If I went, the devil would take me. A pox
on it! Get out of there!
"Frere Jean, do you want thirty thousand cartloads of devils to carry
you off in a moment? Do three things; give me your purse, for the cross
stands against enchantments, and there could happen to you what happened
to Jean Dodin, district tax collector of Le Couldray at the Ford of Vede,
when the soldiers broke the planks. This well-hung fellow, meeting on
the bank Adam Couscoil,' an Observantine Franciscan from Mircbcau,
promised him a frock on condition he would carry him pickaback across
the water on his shoulders; for he was a powerful rascal. Friar Couscoil
trusses himself up to his bollocks and loads him onto his back, like a
nice little Saint Christopher, the said requester Dodin.
"Thus he was carrying him gaily, as Aeneas carried his father Anchises
out of the burning of Troy [Iliad 2.948 singing a lovely Ave marls stella.
When they reached the ford's deepest point, above the mill wheel, he ask-
ed him if he hadn't any money on him. Dodin answered that he had a whole
pouchful, and that he shouldn't mistrust his promise of a new frock.
'How's that?' asked Friar Couscoil. 'You know very well that by a
specific section of a rule of our order, we are strictly forbidden to car-
ry money on us. You really are a wretch for making me sin on that point.
Why didn't you leave your purse with the miller? No mistake, you're going
to be punished for that right now. And if I ever get you in our chapter at
Mirebeau, you'll get the Miserere right through to the faulos!'s Suddenly
he unloads and tosses your Dodin right into the deep water head first.
"Heeding this example, Frere Jean, my sweet friend, so that the devils
may carry you off in greater comfort for you, don't carry any cross on you.
The danger in it is evident: if you have money bearing a cross, they'll
throw you on some rocks, as eagles throw tortoises to break them, witness
the peeled skull of the poet Aeschylus; and you would get hurt, my friend;
I'd be very sorry about it.
"Or else they'll drop you into some sea, I don't know where, far away, as
Icarus fell; and thereafter it would be called the Entommeric Sea.
"Secondly, be quit, for devils are very fond of the quit, I know that well
as regards me. The lechers never stop ogling me and paying court to me,
which they didn't used to do when I was saffron-tinted and indebted. The
soul of a man in debt is all feverish and emaciated. It's not meat for dev-
ils.
"Thirdly, with your 'froc et domino de grobis,4 go back to Raminagrobis.
In case thirty thousand boatloads of devils don't carry you off thus qual-
ified, I'll pay for your drink and firewood.' And if for your safety, you
want to have company, don't come looking for me, no sir! I'm telling you.
Get out of there, I'm not going there. Devil take me if I go!"
"I wouldn't be so very worried about them, peradventure," replied Fare
Jean, "as you might think once I had my cutlass in my fist."
"You're absolutely right," said Panurge, "and you speak about it like a
doctor subtle in lard.° In the time when I was studying at the Toledo
School, the Reverend Father in the Devil Picatris, Rector of the Diabolo-
logical Faculty, used to tell us that devils naturally fear the gleam of
swords as well as the light of the sun. Indeed, Hercules, going down into
hell to all the devils, did not frighten them as much, having only his
lion's skin and his club, as did Aeneas later [Aeneid 6.26o ff.], being
covered with a glittering harness and equipped with his well-furbished
and rust-free cutlass, with the help and counsel of the Cumcan sibyl.
That was perhaps the reason why Lord Gian Giacomo Trivulzio,' dying at
Chartres, called for his sword and died with naked sword in hand, laying
all about his bed like a valiant knight, and by this sword-play putting
to flight all the devils who were lying in wait for him on his passage
to death.
"When you ask the Massoretes and cabalists why devils never enter the
earthly paradise, they give no other answer but that at the gate is a
cherubim holding a flaming sword in his hand. For, to speak of true
Toledan diabology, I confess that devils cannot really die of sword-
strokes; but I maintain, according to the said diabolology, that they can
undergo solution of continuity,'" as if with your cutlass you cut across
a flame of burning fire or a thick dark smoke. And they scream like devils
at this feeling of dissolution, which is painful as the devil to them.
"When you see the clash of two armies, do you think, billyballock, that
such a great horrible noise as you hear comes from human voices? from
the crashing of harnesses? from the clatter of horse armor? from the bang-
ing of maces? from the clanging of pikes? from the shattering of lances?
from the screaming of the wounded? from the sound of drums and trum-
pets? from the neighing of the horses? from the thunder of pistols and
cannons? True, there is some of that, I must confess. But the great tur-
moil and principal racket comes from the anguish arid-ululation of the
devils, who, lying there pell-mell in wait for the poor souls of the
wounded, unexpectedly receive sword-strokes and suffer dissolution of
continuity of their airy and invisible substances: as if, to some lackey
swiping bacon strips from the spit, Master Slobby (the cook)" gives a hard
bang on the fingers with his stick; then they howl and cry like the devil,
as Homer says of Mars, when he was wounded by Diomedes before Troy
[Iliad 5.859-86o], shouted in a louder voice and more horrific din than
ten thousand mcn would make all together.
"But what I am getting to? We're talking about furbished harnesses and
gleaming swords. That's not how it is with your cutlass. For from
discontinuation of function and lack of exercise, it is, 'pon my word,
rustier than the keyhole of an old powdering tub. Therefore do one of
two things: either clean it up nice and neat from the rust, or, leaving it
rusty as it is, be sure you don't go back into Raminagrobis's house. For
my part I'm not going there. Devil take me if I go!"
LEAVING La Villaumere and returning toward Pantagruel, on the way
Panurge addressed Epistemon and said to him:
"Old friend and comrade, you see the perplexity of my mind. You
know so many good remedies! could you help me out?"
Epistemon spoke up and pointed out to Panurge how the general con-
versation was all taken up with jokes about his disguise, and advised
him to take a bit of hellebore, in order to purge the peccant humor
in him, and to resume his ordinary dress.
"Epistemon, my pal," said Panurge, "I've taken a fancy to get married.
But I'm afraid I'll be a cuckold and unfortunate in my marriage. There-
fore I've made a vow to saint Francis the Younger, who is held in great
devotion by all women at Plessis-lez-Tours, for he is the first founder
of the Good Men,' whom they naturally desire—a vow to wear spectacles
on my bonnet, to wear no codpiece on my breeches, until I've had a clear
solution to this perplexity of my mind."
"That," said Epistemon, "is truly a fine joyous vow. I'm amazed at you,
that you don't come back to yourself and recall your senses from this wild
distraction back to their natural tranquillity. When I hear you speak, you
remind me of the vow of the long-haired Argives, who, having lost the
battle against the Lacedaemonians in the dispute over Thyreae,' made a
vow not to wear any hair on their heads until they had recovered their
honor and their land. also of the vow of that comical Spaniard Michael
d'Oris, who wore apiece of a greave on his leg [qui porta le trancon de
greve en sa jambe].
"And I don't know which of the two would be more worthy and deserving
to wear the fool's motley and hare's ears,3 this glorious champion
or Enguerrand de Monstrelet,4 who tells such a long, detailed, and
boring story about it, forgetting the art and manner of writing history,
handed down by the philosopher of Samosata. For, as you read his long
account, you think it must be the beginning and occasion of some mighty
war or notable mutation of kingdoms; but when all is said and done, you
laugh at the silly champion and the Englishman who defied him and-at
Enguerrand, their scrivener, who drivels worse than a mustard pot. The
mockery is like that for Horace's mountain,' which kept loudly crying
out and complaining, like a woman in the labor of childbirth. At her cries
and lamentations all the neighborhood came running up in the expecta-
tion of seeing some wonderful and monstrous delivery; but finally all that
was born of her was a little mouse [souriz]."
j
"I'm not ready to smile [soubrys, homonym of souriz] about that," said
Panurge. "It's the lame mocking the halt [se mocque qui clocque]. So I'll
do as my vow requires. Now it's been a long time that you and I have
sworn faith and friendship together by Jupiter Philios; tell me what you
think about it: should I many or not?"
"Assuredly," said Epistemon, "it's a hazardous matter; I feel much too
inadequate to resolve it. And if ever was true in the art of medicine the
dictum of old Hippocrates of Lango [Cos]: 'Judgment is difficult,' 6 it is
most true in this matter. True, I have in my imagination a few ideas by
means of which we might have a determination of your perplexity; but
they don't completely satisfy me. Certain Platonists say that anyone who
can see his Genius' can understand their doctrine very well, and I don't
advise you to trust it. There are many mistakes in it. I've seen it tried out
in the case of a studious and curious gentleman in the land of Estangourre
[East Anglia]. That's the first point.
"There's another. If we were still in the reign of the oracles of Jupiter
in Ammon, Apollo in Lebadia, Delphi, Delos, Cyrrha, Patara, Tegyra,
Praeneste, Lycia, Colophon; at the Castalian Spring, near Antioch in
Syria; among the Branchidae, of Bacchus in Dodona; of Mercury, Phares
near Patras; of Apis in Egypt; of Serapis in Canopus, Faunus in Maenalia
and at Albunea near Tivoli; of Tiresias at Orchomenus; of Mopsus in
Cilicia; of Orpheus in Lesbos; of Trophonius in Leucadia [read: Lebadia];
I would advise you (or peradventure I would not) to go there and hear
what would be their judgment on your undertaking. But you know that
they've all become muter than fish since the coming of that Savior King
of ours, at which came to an end all oracles and all prophecies, just as
when the bright sunlight comes, there disappear all sprites, lamias, lemurs,
werewolves, hobgoblins, and spirits of darkness. Now, even if they were
still in authority, I would not readily advise utting faith4in their replies;
too many people have been deceived by them.
"Furthermore, I remember that Agrippina reproached the fair Lollia
with having questioned the oracle of Apollo Clarius to learn whether she
would be married to the Emperor Claudius. For that reason she was first
banished and later ignominiously put to death."
"But," said Panurge, "let's do better yet. The Ogygian Islands are not
far from the port of Saint-Malo; let's take a trip there after we've spoken
to our king. In one of the four, the one looking out most toward the
setting sun, they say, and I've readeit in good ancient authors, that there
live several diviners, soothsayers, and prophets; and that Saturn is there,
bound with fine gold chains in a rock of gold, fed on ambrosia and divine
nectar, which are brought to him -daily from the heavens in abundance by
I know not what kind of birds (perhaps they are the same ravens that in
the deserts fed Saint Paul the first hermit),`' and he predicts openly, to
each and everyone who wants to hear his lot, his destiny and what is to
happen to him. For the Fates spin nothing, Jupiter considers nd plans
nothing, that good old father Saturn does not know in his sleep. It would
be a great shortening of our labor if we hear him a bit about this perplex-
ity of mine."
"That," replied Epistemon, "is too evident an imposture and too fabu-
lous a fable. I won't go."
"SEE, however," went on Epistemon, "what you'll do around here
before we go back to our king, if you'll be guided by me. Here, near
L'Isle-Bouchard, lives Her Trippa: you know how the arts of astrol-
ogy, geomancy, chiromancy, metopomancy, and others of the same ilkjj
he predicts all things to come. Let's confer with him about your affair."
"About that," replied Panurge, "I don't know a thing. I do know this well: that one day when he was talking to the Great King about celestial,
transcendent things, the court lackeys, along the steps, between the doors,
were tumbling his wife, who was rather passable, to their hearts' content.
And he, seeing all ethereal and terrestrial things without spectacles, dis-
coursing about all events past and present, predicting the whole mature,
failed only to see his wife having a romp, and never got word of it. Very
well! Lees go to him, since that's how you want it. One cannot possibly
learn too much."
The next day they arrived at Her Trippa's dwelling. Panurge gave him
a wolf-skin robe, a big well-gilded short-sword with a velvet sheath, and
fifty lovely angels [angelotz]; then he conferred with him privately about
his business.
The moment he arrived Her Trippa looked him in the face and said:
"You have the metoscopy and physiognomy of a cuckold, I mean a
notorious and defamed cuckold."
Then, studying Panurge's right hand all over, he said: "This disastrous
line I see here above the Mons Jovis was never in any hand but a
cuckold's."
Then with a stylus he hastily pricked a number of scattered points,
joined them together by geomancy, and said: "No truer is truth itself than
it is certain that you'll be a cuckold soon after you're married."
That done, he asked Panurge for the horoscope of his nativity. When
Panurge had given it to him, he promptly drew in his houses of heaven'
in all their parts, and, considering the site and aspects in their trip-
licities, he heaved a great sigh and said:
"I had already clearly predicted that you would be a cuckold; in that
you could not fail; here, furthermore, I have fresh assurance of it. And
I affirm to you that you'll be a cuckold. Besides, you'll be beaten by
your wife and by her you'll be robbed, for I find the seventh house'
malign in all aspects and open to the battering of all signs bearing horns,
such as Aries, Taurus, Capricorn, and others. In the fourth I find a falling
off of Jove, together with a tetragonal aspect of Saturn associated with
Mercury. You're going to be well peppered with the pox [bien poyvre],
my fine fellow."
"I am, am I?" replied Panurge. "A nice quartan fever to you, you old
fool! When the cuckolds all get together, you'll be the standard-bearer.
But where did I get this worm here between my two fingers?"
As he said this, he pointed straight at Her Trippa his index and middle
fingers in the form of two horns, and closed all the others into a fist.
Then he said to Epistemon:
"Here you see a real-life 0llus out of Martial, who devoted all his
attention to observing and understanding other people's troubles and mis-
eries; meanwhile, his wife was running le brelant [tenoit le brelant].5 For
his part, poorer than Irus, and at the same time more cocky, arrogant,
and insufferable that seventeen devils, in a word Tr-rwxaXaCuiv [penniless
braggart], as the ancients most appropriately called such scurvy rabble.
Come on, let's leave this crazy fool right here, this candidate for a strait
jacket, to rave his fill with his private devils. I wouldn't be very quick to
believe that the devils would serve such a dolt. He doesn't know the first
point of philosophy, which is 'know thyself, and, preening himself on
seeing a mote in someone else's eye, he doesn't see a great beam that
blocks out both his own. He's just the kind of Polypragmon described by
Plutarch. He's another Lamia--who in strangers' houses, in public, had
sharper eyes than a lynx, but in her .own house was blinder than a mole;
at home she saw nothing, for when she came back in from outside, she
took out of her head her eyes, removable as a pair of eyeglasses, and hid
them in a clog fastened behind the door of her house."
At these words, Her Trippa picked up a tamarisk branch.
"He's choosing well," said Epistemon, "Nicander calls divination."
"Do you want," said Her Trippa as he went on, "to know the truth
about it more amply by pyromancy,8 aeromancy,9 so justly celebrated by
Aristophanes in his Clouds, by hydromancy, by lecanomancy, once so
celebrated among the Assyrians and tried out by Hermolaus Barbarus? In
a basin full of water I'll show your wife having a romp with two ruffians."
"When," said Panurge, "you stick your nose up my ass, don't forget to
take off your glasses."
"By catoptromancy," said Her Trippa as he went on, "by means of
which Divus Julianus, emperor of Rome, used to foresee what was to
happen to him? You won't need any spectacles: you'll see her in a mirror
getting plugged just as clearly as if I showed her to you in the temple of
Minerva near Patras. By coscinomancy, once observed so religiously in
the ceremonies of the Romans? Let's have a sieve and some tongs, and
you'll see a devil of a sight. By alphitomancy, noted by Theocritus in his Pharmaceutria, and by aleuromancy, mixing wheat with flour? By astraga-
lomancy. I have the plans all ready in here. By tyromancy. I have a
Brehemont cheese ready at hand. By gyromancy, I'll have you turn arguipd
and around in circles, and you'll fall to the left every time, I assure
you. By sternomancy. My word, your chest is pretty ill-proportioned. By
libanomancy All you need is a little incense. By gastromancy? which in
Ferrara was long used by the lady Jacoba Rhodigina, an engastrimythe
[ventriloquist]? By cephalomancy? which the Germans used to use, roast-
ing an ass's head over burning coals. By ceromancy? there, by melted wax
dropped into water, you'll see the faces of your wife and her drummer boys.
By capnomancy? On burning coals we'll put some poppy and sesame seed:
0 what a gorgeous thing!
"By axinomancy? Just provide here an axe and a piece of jade, which
we'll put on the embers; 0 how admirably Homer uses it on Penelope's
suitors [Odyssey 2,..420-423]! By onymancy? Let's have some oil and some
wax. By tephramancy? You'll see ashes in the air showing your wife in a
fine
state. By botanomancy? I have some sage leaves here at hand. By syco-
mancy? 0 what a divine art! In fig leaves! By ichthyomancy," once so cele-
brated and widely practiced by Tiresias and Polydamas, as certain as was
done in Dina's pond in the wood sacred to Apollo in the land of the Lycians?
By choeromancy? Let's have plenty of hogs, and you shall have their
bladders. By cleromancy? as they find the bean in the cake on the eve of
Epiphany? By anthropomancy? which was used by Heliogabalus, emperor of
Rome? It's a bit annoying, but you'll put up with it well enough, since
you're
a destined cuckold. By sibylline stichomancy? By onomatomancy? What's
your name?"
"Crunchcrap [Maschemerdc]," said Panurge.
"Or else by alcctryomancy?" Here I'll draw a pretty boundary map, which,
as you see and watch me, I'll divide into twenty-four equal parts; on each
one I'll write a letter of the alphabet; on each letter I'll place a grain of
wheat; then III turn loose a virgin cock to go over it: you'll see, I pledge
you, that he'll eat the grains placed on the letters C. 0. Q. U. S. E.
R. A.
[coqu sera: "cuckold he'll be"], as fatidically as when, under the Emperor
Valens, when he was in perplexity to know the name of his successor, the
soothsaying alectryomantic cock ate. upon the letters 0. E. 0. A."
"Do you" want to learn about it by the art of haruspicy? or by
exispicy? by
augury taken from the flight of birds, the song of birds of omen, the dance
of ducks dropping grain on the ground?"
"Or else by necromancy? I'll suddenly bring back to life for you some¬one
who died not long ago, as did Apollonius of Tyana for Achilles, as did
the witch
of Endor in the presence of Saul (t Samuel 28.7-10], and this former dead
man will tell us the total, no more nor less than at Erichtho's invocation
a
deceased man told Pompey the whole outcome of the battle of Pharsalia."
Or, if you're afraid of the dead, as all cuckolds naturally arc, I'll just use
sciomancy."
"Go to the devil," replied Panurge, "you crazy lunatic,
and get yourself
frigged by some Albanian:" then you'll have a pointed hat. Why the devil
don't you advise me as well to hold an emerald, or a hyena stone? under
my tongue? or to lay in a stock of hoopoes' tongues and green frogs' hearts?
or to cat of the heart and liver of some dragon so as to hear my destinies
in the voice of swans and song of birds, as the Arabs used to do in the
land
of Mesopotamia?" Thirty devils take the horned cuckold, the marrano,
sor-
cerer to the devil, enchanter to the Antichrist! Let's go back to our king.
I'm sure he won't be pleased with us, if he once hears that we came here
into the lair of this begowned devil. I repent of having come here, and
would
gladly give a hundred nobles and fourteen corn¬moners22 on condition that
the man who used to blow in the bottom of my breeches would shortly shine
up his mustaches for him with his spittle. Good Lord! How he smelled me
up
with vexation and deviltry, with enchantments and sorcery! May the devil
run
off with him! Say amen, and let's go drink. I won't have a really good time for
two days, no, for four."
How Panurge takes counsel
of Prim Jean des Entommeures.
PANURGE was vexed by Her Trippa's remarks, and, after passing the hamlet
of
Huymes,' he addressed Rare Jean, stammering and scratching his left ear, and
said to him:
"Cheer me up a bit, you old rascal. I'm feeling all matagrabolized2
in my mind
from that devil-ridden lunatic's remarks. Listen, my bonny ballock,
harquebus-firing ballock, tail-pushing ballock, Frere Jean, my friend, I bear
you very great reverence, and I was saving you as the best for the last:
I beg
you, tell me your opinion: should I marry or not?"
Frere Jean answered him in a blithe spirit, saying: "Get married, in the devil's
name, get married, and carillon me double carillons of ballocks. I say, and I
mean, as soon as you can do it. By this evening have the banns announced
and get the bedstead ready for action. Power of God, until when do you
want
to hold back? Don't you know very well that the end of the world is coming
near? Today we're two rods and half a fathom nearer to it than we were yes-
terday. The Antichrist is already born, so I've been told. True it is that he still
does nothing but scratch his wet nurses and governesses, and he isn't yet
displaying the treasures,' for he's still little. 'Crescite. Nos qui vivimus, multi-
plicamini" (broken Latin: 'Increase. We the living, and multiply')
(so it is writ-
ten in breviary matter), as long as a sack of wheat isn't worth three patacz,
and a puncheon of wine only six blancs. Would you really want to be found
with your ballocics full at the Last Judgment, 'dum venerit judicare (when He
shall have come to judger?"
"You," said Panurge, "have a most limpid and serene mind, Frere Jean, my
metropolitan ballock, and you speak pertinently. This is what Leander
of Abydos in Asia was praying for as he was swimming across the sea of
the Hellespont to visit his ladylove Hero of Sestos in Europe, to Neptune
and all the gods of the sea:
If you will help me get there safe and sound,
Little I care if coming back I'm drowned.9
"He didn't want to die with his ballocks full. And I'm inclined to think
that from now on, in all my Salmagundia, when they want to execute
some malefactor in justice, a day or two beforehand they should have him
plug away like a pelican, so thoroughly that in all his spermatic vessels
there remain not enough to fashion a Greek letter Y." So precious a thing
must hot be witlessly lost! Peradventure he w engender a man. So he
will die without regret, leaving man for man."
"BY Saint Rigome," said Frere Jean, "Panurge, my gentle friend, I'm
not advising you to do anything I wouldn't do in your place. Only be
careful and always keep well in mind to link up your scores and keep them going. If you ever let up, you're mined, you poor guy, and there
will happen to you what happens to wet nurses. If they stop giving milk
to children, they lose their milk. If you don't continually exercise your
tool, it will lose its milk and serve you only as a game-pouch. I give you
fair warning, my friend. I've seen this experience in many who couldn't
when they wanted to, for they hadn't done it when they could have.
Thus by disuse are lost all privileges, so say the clerics. Therefore, son,
keep all those low-born troglodyte common folk in a state of perpetually
plowing the soil. See to it that they don't live like gentlemen, on their
incomes, without doing a thing."
"Lord, no," replied Panurge, "Frere Jean, my left ballock, I'll believe
you. You really go right to the point. Without exception or circumlocu-
tion you have plainly dissolved any fear that could have intimidated me.
Thus may it be granted you by the heavens always to operate stiff and
low! So now on your say-so I shall marry. There'll be no mistake. And
then I'll always have beautiful chambermaids when you come to see me,
and you shall be the protector of their Sorority.' So much for the first part
of the sermon."
"Listen," said Frere Jean, "to the oracle of the bells of Varennes. What
are they saying?"
"I hear them," replied Panurge. "Their sound, 'pon my thirst, is more
fatidic than that of Jupiter's caldrons in Dodona. Listen:
Get married, get married,
Marry, marry.
If you get married, married, married,
Very well off you'll be, you'll be, you'll be
Marry, marry.
"I assure you that I'll marry: all the elements invite me to. Let this word
be to you as a wall of bronze.
"As for the second point, you seem to be somewhat doubtful, indeed
mistrustful, of my Paternity, as having the stiff god of the gardens none
too favorable. I beseech you to do me this favor: to believe that I have it
at my command, docile, full of goodwill, attentive, obedient in all things
and everywhere. I need only loose his leashes, I mean his point, show
him his prey from close up, and tell him: 'Tallyho, pal!' And even if my
future wife should be as gluttonous for venereal pleasure as ever was
Messalina or the Marchioness of Winchester' in England, I beg you to
believe that mine is even more copious for contentment.
"I am unaware of what Solomon says [Proverbs 30.15-16], and he
spoke about it as a cleric and as one who knewrince his time Aristotle
has declared that woman's nature is in itself insatiable; but I want it
known that I have an indefatigable weapon of the same caliber. Don't
hold up to me as models those fabulous wenchers Hercules, Proculus
Caesar, and Mahomet, who boasts in the Koran that he has in his genitals
the strength of sixty ship-calkers.3 He lied, the lecher. Don't tell me
about the Indian so celebrated by Theophrastus, Pliny, and Athenaeus, who,
with the aid of a certain herb, used to do it seventy times and more in
one day. I don't believe a word of it; the number is suppoditious. I
beg you not to believe it. I beg you to believe (and you won't be believing
anything that isn't true) that my nature, my sacred Ithyphallus,' Messer
Thingumajig of Albinga (Messer Coral d'Albinguesj, is the prime del monde.'
"Listen here, old ballock. Did you ever see the frock of the monk from Cas-
tres? When they set it down in some house, whether in the open or under
cover, suddenly, by its horrific power, all the residents and inhab-itants
of
the said place went into the rut, beasts and people, men and women, even
to the rats and the cat. I swear to you that in my codpiece in other days I
have known a certain even more extraordinary energy.
"I won't speak to you of any house or shack, any sermon or market;
but at
the passion play they were performing at Saint-Maixent, when I came in onto
the ground floor of the theater one day, I saw that by the virtue and occult
property of this, suddenly everyone, actors as well as spectators, entered
into
such terrific temptation that there was no angel, human, devil, or she-devil
who didn't want to plug away. The director-prompter [le porter& for it promote]
tossed away his copy; the actor playing Saint Michael came down by the
stage
heaven; the devils came out of hell and started carrying away all these poor
little females; even Lucifer broke his chains. In short, seeing the disarray, I got
out of that place, afterthe example of Cato the Censor, who, seeing that
be-
cause of his presence the festival of Flora was in disorder, gave up being
a
spectator."
How Frere Jean comforts Panne
about his fear of cuckoldry.
I understand you," said Frere Jean, "but time subdues all things: there is no
marble or porphyry that does not have its old age and decay. If you're
not at
that point right now, after a few years I'll hear you confess-ing that
some peo-
ple's balls are hanging down for lack of a game-pouch. Already I see the
hair
on your head graying. Your beard, by its shading of gray, white, tan, and black,
seems to me a world map. Look here: there is there is Asia; here are Tigris
and
Euphrates. There's Africa; here are the Mountains of the Moon.' Do you
see the
marshes of the Nile? on the near side is Europe. Do you see Theleme? This
sheer
white tuft is the Hyperborean Mountains.' By my thirst, my friend, when
the
snows are in the mountains, I mean by that the head and chin, there's not much
heat in the valleys of the codpiece!"
"A fine case of chilblains to you!" replied Panurge. "You
don't understand your
topics.' When the snow is on the mountains, the lightning, the thunderbolts, the
leg ulcers, the pocky sores, the thunder, the storms, all the devils are in the val-
leys. Do you want to see this by experience? Go to Switzerland and consider Lake
Wunderberlich, four leagues from Berne, on the way to Sion. You reproach me
with my graying hair, and do not consider how it is in the nature of leeks, in which
we see the head white and the tail green, straight, and vigorous.
"True it is that in myself I recognize a certain sign indicative of
old age, I mean
green old age; don't tell a soul: it shall remain a secret between the
two of us. It
is that I find wine better and more savory to my taste than I used to.
I fear en-
countering bad wine. Note that that argues something of the setting sun
and sig-
nifies that noon is past. But then what? Still a jolly good fellow, as much as ever
or more so. I'm not afraid on that score, by the devil. That's not what bothers me.
I'm afraid that by some long absence of our King Pantagruel, whom I must
perforce
accompany, yes, even were he to go to all the devils, my wife may make
me a
cuckold. That's the key word, for all those I've spoken to about it threaten me
with it and affirm that it is thus predestined by the heavens."
"Not everyone," replied Frere Jean, "is a cuckold who wants
to be. If you're a
cuckold, ergo your wife will be beautiful, ergo you will be well treated
by her, ergo
you will have friends aplenty, ago you will be saved. These are monastic topics.
You'll be a better man for it, you old sinner. You never had it so good.
You won't
lose a thing by it. Your property will grow even more. If it is predestined thus,
would you want to contravene it? Say, withered ballock,
"Ballock away to the devil, Panurge my friend,, since it is so predestined for you;
would you make the planets reverse their course? all the heavenly spheres go off
track? propose error to the Moving Intelligences? blunt the spindles? slander the bob-
bins? reproach the reer condemn the spools for spun thread? unwind the skeins of the
Fates? A tough quartan fever to you, ballocker! You'd do worse than the Giari
"Come here, billicullion. Would you rather be jealous with no reason than a cuckold
without knowing it?"
"I wouldn't like," said Panurge, "to be either one. But if I'm once informed of it,
I'll get things straightened out, or the world will run out of sticks. Listen to what
the bells are telling me, at this point when they're nearer:
Marry not, marry not,
Not, not, not, not,
If you marry (marry not, marry not,
Not, not, not, not),
Sorry you'll be, you'll be, you'll be,
Cuckold you'll be.
"Worthy power of God! I'm beginning to get annoyed. Now you people, you befrocked brains,
don't you know any remedy for it? Has Nature so stripped humans that a married man cannot
pass through this world without falling into the abysses and dangers of cuckoldry?"
"I mean to teach you," said Frere Jean, "an expedient by means of which your wife will
never make you a cuckold without your knowledge and consent."
"I pray you to, velvety ballock," said Panurge, "So speak up, my friend."
"Take," said Frere Jean, Hans Carvel's ring, the great lapidary of the king of Melinda.
Hans Carvel was a learned, expert, studious man, a worthy man, with good sense and good
judgment, genial, charitable, giving alms, philosophical, moreover blithe, a good com-
panion, and a joker if ever there was one; a wee bit paunchy, nodding his head, and
rather awkward in person. In his old age he married the daughter of the bailiff Concor-
dat,' young, pretty, frisky, gallant, attractive, much too gracious toward her
neighbors
and servants. Whence it came about that after a few weeks he became jealous as a tiger
of her and suspicious that she was getting her tail drummed elsewhere. To obviate which
he told her her fill of nice stories about the miseries brought on by adultery; often
read her the legend of worthy women;8 preached modesty to her; made up for her a book
of praises of conjugal fidelity strongly detesting the wickedness of wanton wives;
and gave her a beautiful necklace all covered with oriental sapphires.
This notwith-
standing, he saw her so ready and on good terms with his neighbors that his jealousy
grew worse and worse.
"One night among others, in bed with her with such tormenting ideas in his mind, he
dreamed that he was talking with the Devil and telling him his troubles. The Devil
was comforting him and put a ring on his middle finger, saying:
"'I give you this ring; as long as you have it on your finger, your wife will not be
carnally known by anyone, else without your knowledge and consent.'
"'Many thanks indeed,' said Hans Carvel, 'Sir Devil. I'll deny Mahomet if anyone ever
takes it off my finger.'
"The Devil disappeared. Hans Carvel, overjoyed, woke up and found that he had his finger
in his wife's whatsitsname. I was forgetting to tell you that she was pulling back her
tail, as if to say: 'Yes, no, that's not the thing to put there'; and then it seemed to
Hans Carvel that someone was trying to rob him of his ring.
"Isn't that an infallible remedy? Follow this example, if_xou ask me, and you'll have
your wife's ring continually on your finger."
How Pantagruel calls a meeting of
a theologian, a doctor, a jurist, and a philosopher
to help Panurge's perplexity.
ONCE back in the palace, they told Pantagruel the story of their trip and
showed him
the statement of Raminagrobis. Pantagruel, after reading and rereading
it, said:
"I haven't yet seen a reply that I like better. He means, in sum, that in the under-
taking of marriage each man must be the arbiter of his own thoughts and take counsel
of himself. Such has always been my opinion, and I told you as much the first time you
spoke to me about it. But you were tacitly making fun of this, I remember, and I recog-
nize that philautie' and self-love is deceiving you. Let's do something different.
Here's what:
"All that we are and we have consists in three things; the soul, the body, the property.
For the conservation of each of the three respectively are destined nowadays three kinds
of people: theologians for the soul, doctors for the body, jurists for the property!
My idea is that on Sunday we have here for dinner a theologian, a doctor, and a jurist.
Together with them we will confer about your perplexity."
"By Saint Picault,"' replied Panurge, "we won't get anywhere that way; I can see that
clearly already. And just see how the world has gone to seed: we put our souls in trust
to the theologians, who for the most part are. heretics; our bodies to the doctors, who
all loathe medications and never take medicine; and our property to the
lawyers, who
never go to law with one another."
"Spoken like a courtier," said Pantagruel. "But the first point I deny, seeing that the
main, indeed the total and unique occupation of the good theologians is employed by deeds,
by words, and by writings, in extirpating errors and heresies (that's how far they are
from being stained with them), and in implanting deeply in human hearts the true living
Catholic faith. The second I praise, seeing the good doctors set to rights the preventive
and health-preserving part in their own regard so well that they have no need of the ther-
apeutic and curative part by medications. The third I concede, seeing the good lawyers so
involved in their pleadings and legal responses for others that they have no time or lei-
sure to look out for their own.
"Therefore, next Sunday, let's have as theologian our Father Hippothadee;3 as doctor, our
master Rondibilis; a as jurist, our friend Bridoye;' and still I think we should go into
the Pythagorean tetrad, and let's have as extra fourth our trusted liege the philosopher
Trouillogan,' considering especially that the perfect philosopher, such as Trouillogan is,
gives a positive answer on all doubts that are proposed. Carpalim, see to it that we have
all four next Sunday for dinner."
"I think," said Epistemon, "that you couldn't have chosen better in the whole country. I
say this not only as regards the perfections of each one in his field, which are beyond
any hazards of judgment, but, moreover, in that Rondibilis is married, had not been; Hip-
pothadee never was and is not; Bridoye has been and is not; Trouillogan is and has been.
I'll relieve Carpalim of one task. I'll go and invite Bridoye (if that suits you), who is
an old acquaintance of mine and whom I want to talk with for the good and advancement of
a worthy learned son of his, who is studying at Toulouse under the direction of the very
learned and virtuous Boyssonne."
"Do," said Pantagruel, "as you see fit. And find out if I can do anything for the advance-
ment of the son and for the dignity of Lord Boyssonne, whom I love and revere as one of
the ablest men there is today in his field. I'll work on that most cordially."
How Hippothadee,' the theologian,
gives advice to Panurge
on the undertaking of marriage.
ON the following Sunday the dinner was no sooner ready than the guests
appeared, ex-
cept Bridoye, who was deputy-governor of Fonsbeton [lieutenant de Fonsbeton]. When
they brought on the second service [the dessert], Panurge, with a deep
bow, said:
"Gentlemen, all that's at issue is one word. Should I marry or not? If my doubt is not
cleared up by you, I consider it insoluble, as are Alliaco's Insolubilia. For you are all
selected, chosen, and singled out, each in his respective field, like fine peas on the
sifter."„
Father Hippothadee, after Pantagruel's invitation and the bows of all those
present, re-
plied with incredible modesty:
"My friend, you ask advice of us, but first you must advise yourself. Do you feel impor-
tunately in your body the prickings of the flesh?"
"Very strongly," replied Panurge, "no offense to you, Father."
"No offense taken," said Hippothadee, "for it is far better to marry than to burn in the
fire of concupiscence."'
"That's the way to talk, that is," exclaimed Panurge, "gallantly, without circumbilivag-
inating about the bush. Many thanks, Our Father, Sir! I'll marry and no mistake, and I
invite you to my wedding. Cocksbody!4 We'll have quite a party. You shall have my colors
to wear, and we'll have goose to eat, and my wife won't roast it! Also I'll ask you to
lead off the first dance of the bridesmaids, if you'll be good enough to do me all that
honor, in return for the same. There remains one little scruple to resolve. A little one,
I say, less than nothing. Won't I be a cuckold?"
"No indeed, my friend," said Hippothadee, "if God please."
"Oh, Lord and His power help us!" exclaimed Panurge. "Where are you sending me back
to, good folk? To the conditionals, which in dialectic admit of all contradictions
and im-
possibilities. If my transalpine mule could fly, my transalpine mule would have wings.
If God please, I won't be a cuckold; I'll be a cuckold, if God please. Good Lord, if it
were a condition I could obviate, I wouldn't despair at all. But you send me back to
God's privy council, to the chamber of His petty pleasures. Where do you Frenchmen find
the road to get there? Our, Father, Sir, I think the best thing for you will be not to
come to my wedding. The noise and bustle of the wedding guests would shatter your whole
head and brain' You like repose, silence, and solitude. You won't be coming, I think.
And then you dance rather poorly and would feel embarrassed to lead off the first dance.
I'll send you some rissoles up to your room, also some wedding colors. You'll drink our
health. if you please."
"My friend," said Hippothadee, "take my words in good part, I beg you. When I say to you:
'If God please.' am I doing wrong? Is it ill spoken? Is it a blasphemous or scandalous
condition? Isn't it honoring the Lord, Creator, Protector, Preserver? Isn't it recog-
nizing Him as our sole Giver of all good? Isn't it declaring that we all depend on his
benignity, that without Him we are nothing, are worth nothing, can do nothing, if His
holy grace is not infused over us? Isn't it setting a canonical exception to all our en-
terprises, and entrusting all that we propose to what shall be disposed by His holy will,
in heaven as it is on earth? Isn't it truly sanctifying His blessed name? My friend, you
will not be a cuckold, if God please. To find out what is His pleasure in this, there is
no need to fall into despair, as over something abstruse, and to understand which you
have to consult His privy council and travel into the chamber of His petty pleasures.
The good God has done us this good, that He has revealed, announced, and openly des-
cribed them, in the Holy Bible.
"There you will find that you will never be a cuckold, that is to say that your wife will
never be a wanton, if you take her descended from good people, brought up in virtues and
decency, having associated with and frequented only company of good moral conduct, loving
and fearing God, loving to please God by faith and observation of His holy
commandments,
fearing to offend Him and lose His grace by lack of faith and transgression of His divine
law, in which adultery is rigorously forbidden. and she is ordered to cleave solely to
her husband, cherish him, serve him. love him totally after God.
"To reinforce this teaching, you, on your side, shall maintain her in conjugal affection,
shall continue in uprightness, shall set her a good example, shall live continently,
chastely, virtuously in your household, as you want her to live for her part; for even
as that mirror is not called good and perfect that is most adorned with gilt and precious
stones, but which truly represents the forms set before it, so that a wife is not to be
most esteemed who might be rich, beautiful, elegant, born of noble race, but who tries
the most to form herself in good grace with God and conform to her husband's ways. See
how the moon takes no light either from Mercury, or Jupiter, or Mars, or any other planet
or star that is in the sky; she receives it only from the sun, her husband, and receives
from him no more than he gives her by his infusion and aspects. Thus shall you be to your
wife as a model and exemplar of virtues and decency. And you shall continually implore
God's grace for your protection."
"So you want me." said Panurgc, pointing the ends of his mustaches. "to marry the capable
wife described by Solomon [Proverbs 31.10]. She's dead, and no mistake. I've never seen
her that I know of, God forgive me! Thanks anyway. Father. Here, eat a bit of marzipan:
it will help you with your digestion; then you'll drink a cup of red and white hippocras:
it's good for your health and stomach. Let's move on."
PANURGE continued his remarks, saying: "The first words spoken by the man who was gelding
the brown monks at Saussignac,' after gelding Friar Hotear. were 'Bring
on the rest [aux
aultres]! I say likewise: 'Bring on the rest!' Here now our Muter Rondibilis,
Sir, speed me
along. Should I marry or not?"
"By the ambles of my mule!" replied Rondibilis, "I don't know what I should reply to this
problem. You say you feel within yourself the sharp prickings of sensuality? I find in our
Faculty of Medicine, and we have taken it from the conclusion of the ancient Platonists, that concupiscence is cured by five means: By wine."
"I believe it." said Frere Jean. "When I'm good and drunk, I ask for nothing but to sleep."
"I mean," said Rondibilis, "by wine taken intemperately. For from intemperance in wine there
comes to the body a chilling of the blood, a slackening of the sinews, a dispersal of gen-
erative seed, a numbing of the senses, an impairment of the movements, which are all handi-
caps to the act of generation. Indeed, you see Bacchus, god of drunkards, portrayed beard-
less and in women's dress, as completely effeminate, and as a gelded eunuch. It is other-
wise with wine taken temperately. The ancient proverb shows this, in which it is said that
Venus catches cold without the company of Ceres and Bacchus. And it was the opinion of the
ancients, according to the account of Diodorus Siculus, and especially of the Lampsacians,
as Pausanias attests, that Messer Priapus was the son of Bacchus and Venus.
"Secondly, by certain drugs and plants, which make a man frigid, spellbound, and impotent
for generation. Experience shows this in the Heraclean water lily [nymphaea heraclia], the
amerine [agnus castus], willow, hempseed, honeysuckle [periclymenoa], tamarisk,
Abraham's
balm [vitex], mandrake, hemlock, the small orchid, the skin of a hippopotamus, and others,
which inside human bodies, both by their elementary virtues and by their specific proper-
ties, either freeze and mortify the reproductive germs, or dissipate the spirits that were
to lead them to the places destined by nature, or obstruct the passages and conduits by
which they could be ejected. As, on the contrary, we have some that head
up, excite, and
empower man for the venereal act.
"I don't need them, thank God!" said Panurge. "How about
you, Master? No offense, how-
ever. What I'm saying about this is not from any ill will I bear you."
"Thirdly," said Rondibilis, "by assiduous toil. For in this is brought about such great
dissolution of the body that the blood, which is dispersed through it for the nourishment
of each and every member, has no time, nor leisure, nor capacity to create
this seminal
exudation and superfluity of the third concoction. Nature in special circumstances re-
serves it for herself, as being far mo necessary for the preservation of hec individual
than for the multiplication of the human species and race. Thus Diana is called chaste,
who constantly toils at the hunt. Thus once upon a time the camps were called chaste4 in
which athletes and soldiers continually worked.
"Thus Hippocrate writes, lib. De aere, aqua et locis [in his book On air, water, and
places] of certain races in Scythia, who in his time were more impotent than eunuchs for
venereal sport, because they were continually on horseback and at work. As, on the con-
trary, the philosophers say that Idleness is the mother of Lechery. When Ovid used to be
asked why Aegisthus became an adulterer, he would answer nothing except that he was idle;
and if anyone removed Idleness from the world, soon would perish Cupid's arts;
his bow,
his quiver, his arrows would be a useless burden to him; never would he
strike anyone
with them. For he is by no means such a good archer that he can hit cranes
flying through
the air and stags springing from the woods, as the Parthians certainly used to do, that
is to say humans bustling about and working. He asks to have them quiet, sitting,
lying down, and idle. In fact Theophrastus, when sometimes asked what sort of creature,
what sort of thing he thought amours were, said that they were passions of idle minds.
Diogenes likewise used to say that lechery was the occupation of people not otherwise
occupied. Therefore Canachus the Sicyonian, a sculptor, wanting to make it understood
that idleness, laziness; and listlessness were the determinants of bawdry, made his
statue of Venus seated, not standing, as all his predecessors had done.
"Fourthly, by fervent study. For in it is produced an incredible dissolution
of the
spirits, to such a point that not enough remains to propel this generative exudation to
the destined places and inflate the cavernous nerve, whose function is to roject it out
for the propagation of mankind. To prove that this is so, observe the posture of a man
attentive to some study: you'll see in him all the arteries of the brain
taut as the string
of a crossbow to provide him deftly with sufficient spirits to fill the ventricles of
the common sense,5 of the imagination and apprehension, of reasoning and decision, of
memory and recollection, and to run nimbly from one to the other by the conduits mani-
fest in anatomy at the end of the wondrous network in which the arteries end, which took
their origin from the left chamber of the heart and refined the vital spirits in long
meanderings so as to make them animal. So that in such a studious person
you will see
all the faculties suspended, all the external senses halted; in short you will judge
him not to be living in himself, but to be abstracted out of himself by ecstasy, and
you will say that Socrates was not misusing the term when he said that philosophy was
nothing else but meditation on death.' Peradventure this is why Democritus blinded him-
self, considering less the loss of his sight than the diminution of his contemplations,
which he felt to be interrupted by the wandering of his eyes.
"Thus is said to be virgin Pallas, goddess a wisdom, tutor of studious folk; thus are
the Muses virgins; thus the Graces remain in eternal chastity. And I remember reading
that Cupid, when occasionally asked by his mother Venus why he did not attack
the Muses,
replied that he found than so beautiful, so pure, so decent, so modest and continually
occupied--one in contemplation of the stars, another in computation of numbers, another
in the measurement of geometrical bodies, another in rhetorical invention, another in
poetic composition, another in the arrangement of music--that when he came near them,
he would unstring his bow, close up his quiver, and put out his torch, for shame and
for fear of harming them. Then he would take the bandage off his eyes so as to look
them in the face more openly and hear their charming songs and poetic odes. In that
he took the greatest pleasure in the world, so much so that often he felt himself
quite ravished by their beauties and fine graces and went to sleep to their harmony.
So far was he from wanting to attack them or distract them from their studies.
"Under this heading I include what Hippocrates writes in the aforementioned book,
speaking of the Scythians, and in his book entitled De genitura [On breeding], say-
ing that all humans are impotent for generation who have once had their parotid ar-
teries cut (which are beside the ears), for the reason exposed above when I was
speaking to you about the dissolution of the spirits and of the spiritual blood of
which the arteries are the receptacles;9 also because he maintains that a great
part of the reproductive seed issues from the brain and the spinal column."
"Fifthly, by the venereal act."
"I was waiting for you there," said Panurge, "and take that one for my own. Let
anyone who wants use the preceding ones."
"That," said Frere Jean, "is what Friar Scyllino, Prior of Saint-Victor near Mar-
seille, calls maceration of the flesh. And I am of the opinion (so was the hermit
of Sainte-Radegonde above Chinon) that the hermits of the Thebaid could not more
aptly macerate their bodies, subdue that lecherous sensuality, put down the rebel-
lion of the flesh, than by doing it twenty-five or thirty times a day."
"I see Panurge," said Rondibilis, "well proportioned in his members, well tempered
in his humors, well constituted in his spirits, at a competent age, at an opportune
time, of a steady will to be married: if he meets a woman of similar temperament,
together they will engender children worthy of some transpontinem monarchy. The
sooner the better, if he wants to see his children provided for."
"Our Master, Sir," said Panurge, "I shall be, have no doubt
of it, and soon. During
your learned speech this flea I have in my ear has tickled me more than
it ever did.
I'll count on you for the party. We'll have a good time and a half, I promise you.
You'll bring your wife, if you please, with her lady neighbors, that's understood.
So here we go, all fair and aboveboard!"
How Rondibilis declares that cuckoldry
is naturally one of the attributes of marriage.
THERE remains," went on Panurge, "one little point to clear up.
In other days you have
seen on the banner of Rome: S. P. Q. R., Si Peu Que Rien.' Won't I be a cuckold?"
"Haven of Mercy [Havre de Grace]!" exclaimed Rondibilis, "What are you asking me? Whe- ther you'll be a cuckold? My friend, I am married; you will be after all this.) But
write this dictum in your brain with an iron stylus, that any married man is in danger
of being a cuckold. Cuckoldry is naturally one of the attributes of marriage. The sha-
dow follows the body no more naturally than cuckoldry follows marriage. And when you
hear said of anyone these three words: 'He is married,' if you say: 'Then he is, or
has been, or will. be, or may be a cuckold,' you will not be called an inexpert archi-
tect of natural consequences."
"By the belly and bowels of all the devils!" cried Panurge, "what are you telling me?"
"My friend," replied Rondibilis, "Hippocrates, going one day from Lango [Cos] to Poly-
stylo [Thrace] to visit the philosopher Democritus, wrote a letter to his old friend
Dionysius, in which he asked him, during his absence, to take his [Hippocrates'] wife
to her parents, who were honorable people of good repute, not wanting her to stay in
her house alone; nevertheless, asking him to watch over her carefully and take note of
wherever she went with her mother and what people should visit her at her parents.
Not,' he wrote, 'that I don't trust her virtue and modesty, which from times past has
been made clear and known to me; but she is a woman, that's all.'
"My friend, the nature of women is represented for us by the moon both in other re-
spects and in this one: that they hide, dissimulate, and constrain themselves in the
sight and presence of their husbands. In the absence of these, they take their advan-
tage, have themselves a good time, gad about, trot about, lay aside their hypocrisy,
and declare themselves, even as the moon does not appear in heaven or on earth in con-
junction the sun, but only in opposition to it, when at her greatest distance from the
sun, she shines forth in all her plenitude and appears full, especially
at nighttime.
Thus are all women women.
"When I say woman, I mean a sex so fragile, so variable, so mutable, so inconstant and
imperfect, that Nature (speaking in all honor and rever-ence) seems to me to have
stray-
ed from that good sense by which she had created and formed all things, when she built
woman.2 And, having thought about it one h ndred and five hundred times, I don't know
what to conclude, unless that in creating woman she had regard more to man's social
delectation and the perpetuation of the human species than to the perfection of in-
dividual femininity. Certainly Plato does not know in what category he should place
them, that of reasonable animals or that of brute beasts.' For Nature has placed in
their body, in a secret place inside, an animal, a member, which is not in men, in
which are sometimes engendered certain salty humors, nitrous, boracic, acrid, biting,
tearing, bitterly tickling, by whose pricking and painful titillation (for this member
is all nerves and acutely sensitive), their entire body is shaken, all their senses
transported, all desires internalized, all thoughts confused, so that if Nature had
not sprinkled their foreheads with a little shame, you would see them, as if beside
themselves, chasing the codpiece, more frightfully than ever did the Proetids,4 the
Mimallonids, or the Bacchic Thyades on the day of their Bachanals, because this ter-
rible animal has connections with all the main parts of the body, as is evident in
anatomy.
"I call it animal, following the doctrine of both the Acacginics and the Peripatetics.
For if automotion is a certain indicator of an animate being, as Aristotle
writes, an
if all that by itself moves itself is called animal, then Plato rightly calls it ani-
mal, recognizing in it independent motions of suffocation, precipitation, corrugation,
and indignation, indeed so violent that by them very often is ravished from woman e-
very other sense and movement, as if it were a lipothymy, a swoon, epilepsy, apoplexy,
and a real semblance of death. Furthermore, we see in this a manifest distinction of
odors, and women, aware of it, avoid the stinking ones and follow the aromatic.
"I know that Cl. Galen tries to prove that these are not independent and self-impelled
movements, but accidental, and that others of his sect labor to demonstrate
that this
is not in it a sensitive discrimination between odors, but a different capacity,
pro-
ceeding from the diversity of the odoriferous substances. But if you examine carefully,
and weigh in the balance of Critolaus, eir statements and reasons, you will find that,
both in this matter and in many others, they have spoken heedlessly and in the wish to
correct their elders, more than in the quest for truth.
"Into this dispute I shall not enter further. Only I will say to you that no small
praise is due to upright women, who have lived chastely and blamelessly, and have had
the virtue to bring this frenzied animal to obedience, to reason. And I will conclude
if I add this, that when this animal is satiated (if satiated it can be) by the food
that Nature as prepared for it in man, all its individual motions have
reached their
goal, all its appetites are put to sleep, all its furies pacified. Therefore
don't be as-
tonished if we are in perpetual danger ,of being cuckolds, we who do not always have
in abundance the wherewithal to pay it off and satisfy it to contentment.
"By the powers of others than little fishes!"5 said Panurge, "don't you know any remedy
for it in your art?"
"Indeed I do, my friend," replied Rondibilis, "and a very good one, which I use; and it
is written down in a famous author, eighteen hundred ears ago.6 Listen."
"By the power of God," said Panurge, "you're a good man, and I love you all my blessed
fill! Eat a bit of this quince pastry: quinces are suitable for closing the opening
of
the ventricle because of some happy stypticity that is in therri, and they help in the
first digestion. But what am I doing? I'm talking Latin irrfront of clerics! Wait until
I give you a drink in this Nestorean7 goblet. Will you have another draft of white hip-
pocras? Don't be afraid of the quinsy, no indeed [Ne ayez paour de l'esquinance, non].
There's neither squinancy in it, nor ginger, nor amomum seed. There's nothing but love-
ly sifted cinnamon and nice refined sugar, with good white wine from the vintage of La
Deviniere, in the vineyard with the big sorb-apple tree above the crow-infested walnut
tree. [du grand Cormier, au dessus du Noyer groslier]."
How Rondibilis, the doctor,
gives a remedy for cuckoldry.
"At the time," said Rondibilis, "when Jupiter established the estate of his Olympian
household and the calendar of all his gods and goddesses, having set up for each and
every one the day and season of his festival, assigned places for their oracles and
pilgrimages, ordained their sacrifices . . . "
"Didn't he do," asked Panurge, "as did Tinteville,' Bishop of Auxerre? The noble
pontiff loved good wine, as does every worthy man; therefore, he had especial care
and concern for the vine-shoots, forefather of Bacchus. Now the fact is that for
several years he saw the vine-shoots lamentably ruined by the frosts, drizzles, cold
mists, hoar frosts, ice storms, chills, hailstorms, and calamities, that came on the
feast days of Saints George, Mark, Vitalis,2 Eutropius, and Philip, on Holy Cross
Day, Ascension Day, and others, which come in the season when the sun passes under
the sign of Taurus [April 22]. And he got this idea, that the aforementioned are
saints that hail, freeze, and spoil the vine-shoots; therefore, he wanted to trans-
fer their festivals to winter, between Christmas and Epiphany, allowing them, in all
honor and reverence, to hail and freeze them all they wanted; the freeze then would
be in no way harmful, but evidently profitable, to the vine-shoots; to put in their
places the festivals of Saint Christopher, Saint John the Beheaded [the Baptist],
Saint Magdalen, Saint Anne, Saint Dominic, Saint Lawrence, indeed to assign mid-Au-
gust to May.' At which festivals, so far is anyone from being in danger from frost
that there are no tradesmen so much in demand as sellers of cold drinks, arrangers
of arbors, and coolers of wine."
"Jupiter," said Rondibilis, "forgot that poor devil Cuckoldry--who at that point
was not present; he was in Paris pleading some lousy case for one of his tenants
and vassals. I know not how many days afterward, Cuckoldry heard how he had been
bilked, stopped his pleading, for a new concern not to be excluded from the estate,
and appeared in person before the great Jupiter, alleging his earlier merits and
the good and pleasing services he had done him in other days, and urgently request-
ing him not to leave him without feast day, without sacrifices, without honor. Jup-
iter kept making excuses, pointing out that all his benefices were distributed and
that his estate was closed. However, he was so importuned by Messer. Cuckoldry that
at last he put him on the estate list and ordained for him on earth honor, sacri-
fices, and a festival.
"His festival was (because there was no empty and vacant spot in the whole calendar)
in competition with the goddess Jealousy and on the same day; his dominion, over mar-
ried men, especially those who should have beautiful wives; his sacrifices, suspicion,
mistrust, surliness, lying in wait, investigation, and spying by husbands
on their
wives, with a rigorous recommendation to each and every man to revere and honor him,
celebrate his festival twofold, and make him the aforementioned sacrifices, on pain
and prescription that to those who would not honor him as is said, Messer Cuckoldry
would not offer aid, or help, never would he take account of them, never would enter
their houses, never would frequent their companies, whatever pleas they might make
to him but would let them rot away eternally alone with their wives, without any
rival, and would shun them forever as heretic and sacrilegious folk, as
is the prac-
tice of other gods toward those who do not honor them duly: of Bacchus toward wine
growers, of Ceres toward farmers, of Pomona toward fruit growers, of Neptune toward
sailors, of Vulcan toward blacksmiths, and so for the rest. Attached, as
well, was
an infallible promise that to those who (as they say) should stop work for this fes-
tival, cease all business, neglect their own affairs to spy on their wives, lock
them up and mistreat them out of Jealousy, as the ordinance of his sacrifices
requires, he would be continually favorable, would love them, keep company
with them,
be in their houses day and night; never would they be destitute of his
presence. I
have spoken."
"Ha, ha, ha!" said Carpalim, laughing, "that's an even more natural remedy than Hans
Carvel's ring. Devil take me if I don't think so! The Pr- nature of women is like
that. Even as lightning does not shatter and burn any except hard, solid, resistant
materials, it does not stop for soft, empty, and yielding things: it will burn the
sword of steel without damaging the velvet scabbard; it will consume the bones in
bodies without hurting the flesh that covers them; so women never sense the conten-
tiousness, subtlety, and contrariness of their minds, unless toward what
they know
is prohibited and forbidden them."
"Indeed," said Hippothadee, "some of our doctors say that
the first woman in the
world, who the Hebrews call Eve, would hardly have entered into temptation to eat
the fruit of all knowledge, if it had not been forbidden her. To prove that this is
so, consider how the wily Tempter reminded her in his first words of the prohibition
made against this, as if meaning to infer: 'It is forbidden you, so you
must eat of it or
you would not be woman.' "
"AT the time," said Carpalim, "when I was running a bawdy house in Orleans,
I had no more valuable rhetorical trick or more persuasive argument for
the
young ladies to draw into my nets and the sport of amours than pointing
out to
them vividly, manifestly, how their husbands were jealous of them. I certainly
hadn't invented this: it is written up, and we have laws, examples, reasons on
the subject and daily experiences of it. Having this persuasion in their noggins,
they will infallibly make their husbands cuckolds, by God (no swearing intended)!
even esta, the women of if they had to do as did Semiramis, Pasiphae, Egbo
Mendes Island in Egypt, whom Herodotus and Strabo hold up to our blame, and
other such bitches."
"Really," said Ponocrates, "I've heard that Pope John XXII,
when he passed
one day through the abbey of Thrustitindeep [Coingnaufond], was asked by
the abbess and some discreet nuns to grant them an indult by means of
which they could confess to one another, under the seal of confession.
"'There is nothing' said the pope, 'that I won't gladly grant you. But I
see one problem in it, which is that confession must be kept secret. You
women would have a hard time concealing it.'
"'We'd do it very well,' said they, 'and better than the men do.'
On that very same day the Holy Father left a box in their keeping, in
which he had a little linnet put, asking them gently to lock it up in some
safe secret place, promising them, on a pope's word, to grant them the
terms of their request if they kept it secret, meanwhile strictly forbid-
ding them to go and open it, on pain of ecclesiastical censure and eternal
excommunication. No sooner was this prohibition made than their brains
were sizzling with eagerness to see what was inside, and they could hardly
wait for the pope to go out the door to get on with it. The Holy Father,
having given them his blessing, retired to his quarters. He wasn't yet three
steps from the abbey when the good ladies rushed in a crowd to open the
forbidden box and see what Was inside. 'The next day the pope visited
them, with the intention .(as it seemed to them) of dispatching them their
indult. But before starting to talk, he gave orders to have his box brought
him. It was brought him; but the little bird was no longer in it. There-
hat he remonstrated to them that it would be too hard a thing or them
to keep confessions secret, seeing that only for so short a time they had
kept secret the box so stringently entrusted to them."
"Our master, Sir, a most hearty welcome to you. It gave me great
pleasure to hear you, and I praise God for everything. I hadn't ever seen
you since back of Montpellier, when with our old friends Ant. Saporta,
Guy Douguier, Balthazar Noyer, Tolet, Jean Queutin, Francois Robinet,
Jean Perdrier, and Francois Rabelais, you played in the moral comedy of The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife."'
"I was there," said Epistemon. "The good husband wanted to have her
speak. She did speak, by the skill of the doctor and the surgeon, who cut
off a restricting cord•under her tongue. With her speech recovered she
talked and talked, so much that her husband went back to the doctor for
a remedy to shut her iip. The doctor replied that he had indeed in his
craft remedies to make women talk, but none to shut them up; the only
remedy for this interminable talking by his wife was deafness in the hus-
band. The rascal became deaf, through I know not what spell they cast.
His wife, seeing that he had become deaf, that she was talking in vain, he
wasn't hearing her, went mad. Then, when the doctor asked for his fee,
the husband replied that he really was deaf and couldn't hear his request.
The doctor cast over his back some powder or other by virtue of which
he went crazy. Thereupon the crazy husband and the mad wife joined
forces together and beat up the doctor and surgeon so badly that they left
them half dead. I've never laughed so hard as I did at that crazy farce."2
"Let's get back to our sheep," said Panurge. "Your Lords, translated
from gibberish into French, mean that I should boldly marry and not
worry about being a cuckold. That's really hitting the nail on the thumb!
Our Master, Sir, I really think that on our wedding day you'll be busy
elsewhere with patients and unable to show up. I'll excuse you.
Stercus et urina medici sunt prandia prima.
Ex aliis paleas, ex istis collige grana.
[Urine and dung for doctors make fine meals,
From one they gather straw, from the other grain.]
"You've got it wrong," said Rondibilis, "the second line goes like this:
Nobis sunt signa, vobis sunt prandia digna.
[Mere signs to us, to you they're worth dishes.]
"If my wife is ill, I'd want to check her urine, feel her pulse, and
examine the condition of her lower belly and umbilical parts, before
going any further, as Hippocrates orders us to do, Aphorisms Book2,
no. 35."
"No, no," said Panurge, "that's not the point. That's for us jurists, who
have the rule De ventre inspiciendo.3 I fix her a mighty enema. Don't
abandon your more urgent business elsewhere. I'll send you some rissoles
to your house, and you'll always be our friend."
Then he went up to him, and, without a word, slipped into his hand
four rose nobles. Rondibilis took them all right, then said in alarm, as
if indignant:
"Heh, heh, heh! Sir, you didn't need to. Many thanks all the same.
From wicked people I never accept anything. From good people I never
refuse. I'm always at your service."
How Trouillogan, the philosopher,
treats the difficulty of marriage.
WHEN these words were ended, Pantagruel said to Trouillogan, the
philosopher:
"Our trusty liege, from hand to hand the torch has come to you [De
main en main vous est la lampe baillee]. It's your turn now to respond.
Should Panurge marry or not?"
"Both," replied Trouillogan.
"What are you telling me?" asked Panurge.
"What you've heard," replied Trouillogan.
"What have I heard?" asked Panurge.
"What I said," replied Trouillogan.
"Aha! Is that where we stand?" said Panurge. "I'll pass. So now then,
should I marry or not?"
"Neither one," replied Trouillogan.
"Devil take me," said Panurge, "if I'm not losing my mind, and may he
take me if I understand you! Wait a bit. I'll put my eyeglasses on this left
ear, to hear you more clearly!"
At that moment, Pantagruel noticed near the door of the room Gargantua's
little dog, whom he called Kyne, because that was the name of Tobias's dog.'.
So he said to the entire company:
"Our king is not far from here, let's rise."
These words were not finished when Gargantua entered the banquet
hall. Everyone rose to make him a bow. Gargantua, having graciously
greeted the company, said:
"My friends, you'll do me the pleasure, pray, not to leave your places or
your talk. Bring me a chair to this end of the table. Give me something to
let me drink to the company. Pray be most welcome. Now tell me, what
were you talking about?"
Pantagruel answered that at the point when they brought on the des-
sert, Panurge had put forward a problematical matter, to wit, whether he
should marry or not, and that Father Hippothadee and Master Rondibilis
had delivered themselves of their answers; when he came in, his trusty
liege Trouillogan was answering. And first, when Panurge asked him:
"Should I marry or not?" he had answered: "Both at the same time"; the
second time had said: "Neither one." Then Panurge complains about
such incompatible and contradictory answers and protests that he doesn't
understand a word of it.
"I understand it, I think," said Gargantua. "The answer is like what an
ancient philosopher said when asked whether he had some woman whose
name they gave him. 'I have her as my love,' said he, 'but she doesn't
have my love. I possess her, I'm not possessed by her.'"2
"A similar answer," said Pantagruel, "was made by a servant girl from
Sparta. She was asked whether she'd ever had business with a man. She
answered: 'No, never, although men had sometimes had business with
me.' "3
"So," said Rondibilis, "let's count ourselves as neuter in medicine, and
in philosophy in the middle, by participation in both extremes and by
dividing the time now in one extreme, now in the other."
"The Holy Apostle," 4 said Hippothadee, "seems to me to have stated it
more clearly when he said: let those who are married be as if unmarried;
let those who have a wife be as if they had no wife.'"
"I interpret," said Pantagruel, "having and not having a wife in this
way: that having a wife is having her for such use as Nature created her
for, which is for the aid, pleasure, and society of man; not having a wife
is not getting slack by hanging about her, not contaminating for her sake
that unique and supreme affection that man naturally owes to God, not
giving up the duties he naturally owes to his country, the common-
wealth, his friends, not disregarding his studies and business to be con-
tinually making up to his wife. Taking in this way having and not having
a wife, I see no incompatibility or contradiction in the terms."
Continuation of the replies of Trouillogan,
the ephectic' and Pyrrhonian philosopher.
"YOUR talk sounds good," replied Panurge. "But I believe
I've gone
down into the dark well in which Heraclitus used to say Truth is hidden.
I can't see a thing, I can't hear a sound, I feel all my senses numbed, and
I'm much afraid I'm under a spell. I'll talk in a different style. Our trusty
liege, don't move. Don't pocket anything. Let's change the way we
throw the dice, and let's talk without disjunctives.3 These ill-joined
phrases annoy you, from what I can see. Now then, in God's name,
should I marry?"
TROUILLOGAN. It seems likely.
PANURGE. And if I don't many?
TROU. I don't see any disadvantage in that.
PAN. You don't see any?
TROU. No, or my eyes deceive me.
PAN. I find more than five hundred.
Thou. Count them.
PAN. I mean roughly speaking, and using a certain number for an
uncertain one, a definite for an indefinite: that is to say, many.
Thou. I'm listening.
PAN. I can't get along without a woman,4 by all the devils!
Thou. Get those ugly beasts' out of here!
PAN. In God's name, so be it! For my Salmagundians say that to
sleep alone or without a woman is a brutish life, and such Dido
kept calling it in her lamentations.6
Thou. At your service.
PAN. 'Odsbodikins!' I'm doing fine. Then shall I marry?
TROU. Peradventure.
PAN. Shall I be well off for it?
TROU. Depends how it turns out.
PAN. And.if I strike it lucky, as I hope to do, shall I be happy?
TROU. Rather.,
PAN. Let's turn this the other way around. And if I strike it unlucky?
TROU. My excuses for it.
PAN. But advise me, I beseech you: what should I do?
TROU. What you will.
PAN. Pish tush.
TROU. No invocations, please.
PAN. In God's name, so be it! I don't want a thing cxccpt what
you'll advise me. What do you advise me about this?
TROU. Nothing.
PAN. Shall I marry?
TROU. I wasn't there.
PAN. Then I won't marry at all?
TROU. I can't do another thing about it.
PAN. If I'm not married, I'll never be a cuckold.
TROU. I was thinking about that.
PAN. Let's put the case that I'm married.
TROU. Where shall we put it?
PAN. I mean, take the case that married I am.
TROU. I'm otherwise engaged.
PAN. That's shit in my nose [merde en mon nez]! Good Lord, if I
only dared have a little swearing session under my gown, what a
relief that would be! All right, then, patience! So then, if I'm
married, I'll be a cuckold?
Thou. It would seem so.
PAN. If my wife is virtuous and chaste, I'll never be a cuckold?
TROU. You seem to me to speak correctly.
PAN. Listen.
TROU. All you want.
PAN. Will she be virtuous and chaste? Only this point remains.
TROU. I doubt it.
PAN. You've never seen her?
TROU. Not that I know of.
PAN. Then why do you doubt something you don't know about?
TROU. For cause.
PAN. And if you knew her?
TROU. Even more.
PAN. Page, my cutey, hold my cap for me here. I'm giving it to
you, except for my spectacles; go down into the courtyard and
swear a wee half hour for me. I'll swear for you whenever you
want. But who will make me a cuckold?
TROU. Someone.
PAN. By the ox-belly of wood,'" I'll give you a good drubbing,
Mister Someone!
TROU. So you say.
PAN. May the devil, the one who has no whites in his eyes, take me
then, if I don't also lock my wife up Bergamask style" whenever
I go out of my seraglio.
TROU. Mend your talk.
PAN. That's doggone well shitten sungenu for all the speeches. Let's
come to some decision.
TROU. I'm not contradicting that. PAN. [Wait. Since from that area I can't draw any blood from you,
I'll try to bleed you from another vein. Are you married or not? .1
TROU. Neither one, and both at the same time.
PAN. God help us!..I'm sweating, 'sdeath! with effort, and I feel my
digestion interrupted. All my phrenes,2 metaphrenes, and dia-
phragms, are in suspense and tensed to incornifistibulate" what
you're saying and answering into the game-pouch of my under-
standing.
TROU. That's not my problem.
PAN. Giddap!Our trusty liege, are you married?
TROU. So I think.
PAN. You had been another time?
TROU. It's 'possible.
PAN. Did you find yourself well off for it the first time?
TROU. It's not impossible.
PAN. This second time, how do you find yourself off for it?
TROU. As my fated lot will have it.
PAN. But then what? Speaking seriously, do you find yourself well
off for it.
TROU. It's likely.
PAN. Here now, in the name of God, by Saint Christopher's bur-
den, I might just as well try to draw a fart out of a dead donkey
as an opinion out of you. Still, I'll get you this time.., Our trusty
liege, let's shame the devil in hell, let's confess the truth. Have
you ever been a cuckold? I mean you who are right here, not
you who are over yonder at the tennis court.
TROU. No, unless it is predestined.
PAN. By the flesh, I swear off? By the blood,16 I quit! By the body,
I give up! He gets away from me.
At these words, Gargantua rose and said: "Praise be to the good God
in all things. As far as I can see, the world has grown pretty sharp since
first I knew it. Is that where we stand? So then today the most learned
and prudent philosophers have entered the think-tank and school of the
Pyrrhonists,'7 aporrhetics, skeptics, and ephectics. Praise be to the good
Lord! Truly from now on it will be possible to catch lions by the thick
hair, hones by the mane, oxen by the horns, wild oxen by the muzzle,
wolves by the tail, goats by the beard, birds by the feet; but never will
such philosophers be caught by their words. Good-bye, my good
friends."
These words uttered, he withdrew from the company. Pantagruel and
the others ranted to follow him but he wouldn't permit it.
When Gargantua had left the room, Pantagruel said to the guests:
"Plato's Timaeus, at the beginning of the gathering, counted the guests;
we, conversely, count them at the end. One, two, three: where is the
fourth? Wasn't that our friend Bridoye?"
Epistemon replied that he had been to his house to invite him, but
hadn't found him. A messenger from the Myrelinguais Parlement in
Myrelingues had come to fetch him and set a date for him to appear in
person before the members to state his reason for some decision he had
made. Therefore he had left the day before, so as to present himself on
the day assigned and not fall into default or contempt of court.
"I want," said Pantagruel, "to hear what this is all about. It's been over
forty years that he's been a judge at Fonsbeton; during that time he has
handed down more than four thousand definitive decisions. Two thou-
sand three hundred and nine decisions handed down by him were ap-
pealed by the parties condemned to the sovereign court of the
Myrelinguais Parlement in Myrelingues; all were ratified, approved, and
confirmed by it, the appeals dismissed and annulled. So for him to be
summoned now in person in his old age, him who through all past time
has lived so righteously in his office, cannot be Without some disaster. I
want to be helpful to him with all my power, in equity. I know that
today the wickedness of the world has grown so much worse that the best
cause really needs support [ . . . bon droict a Bien besoing d'aide]. And I
plan to go to work on that shortly, for fear of some surprise."
Then the tables were cleared and removed.'9 Pantagruel gave his guests
precious and honorable gifts of rings, jewels, and plate of both gold and
silver, and, after thanking them cordially, retired to his room.
How Pantagruel persuades Panurge
to take counsel of some fool.
As Pantagruel was retiring, from the gallery he noticed Panurge look-
ing like a dreamer in a fog and wagging his head, and said to him:
"You look to me like a mouse ensnared in pitch:2 the more it tries to
get free of the pitch, the more it gets stuck. You likewise, straining to
get yourself out of the nets of perplexity, remain stuck in them more than
ever. and I know no remedy for it but one. Listen. I've often heard it as
a popular proverb that a fool may well teach a wise man. Since you are
not fully satisfied with the replies of the wise, take counsel of some fool;
it may be that by so doing you will be satisfied and contented more to
your taste. By 'the advice, counsel, and prediction of fools, you know
how many princes, kings, and commonwealths have been preserved, how
many battles won, how many perplexities solved.
"There's no need now to remind you of the examples. You will agree
on this reason: for even as a man who keeps close watch on his private
and domestic affairs, who is vigilant and attentive to the management of his household, whose mind is not wandering, who misses no chance
whatever to acquire and amass property and riches, who shrewdly knows
how to obviate the drawbacks of poverty, you call worldly wise, although
he may be an idiot in the estimation of the celestial Intelligences; even so
it is necessary, in order to be wise in their eyes, I mean sage and presage
[sage et praesage] by divine aspiration and apt to receive the gift of divi-
nation, for a man to forget himself, empty his senses of all earthly affec-
tion, purge his spirit of all human solicitude, and look at everything with
unconcern, which is popularly imputed to folly.
"In this manner was the great soothsayer Faunus, son of Picus, king of
the Latins, called Fatuel by the common herd.
"In this manner we see among traveling players, in the distribution of
parts, that the character of the Fool and Jester is always played by the
most competent and expert actor of their troupe.
In this manner the mathematicians say there is the same horoscope at
the birth of kings and of fools. And they give the example of Aeneas
and Choroebus, who Euphorion says was a fool, who had the same date
of origin.'
"I'll not be off the subject if I tell you what Jo. Andre says about a
canon of a certain papal rescript addressed to the mayor and burghers of
La Rochelle, and after him Panormitanus on this same canon, Barbatia on
the Pandects, and recently Jason in his Consilia,5 about Seigny Joan, noted
Paris fool, great-grandfather of Caillette. This is the case:
"In Paris, in the roastshop section of the Petit Chatelet, in front of a
roaster's stall, a porter was eating his bread in the steam from the roast and
finding it, thus perfumed, very savory indeed. The roaster was letting him
go ahead. Finally, when all the bread was guzzled, the roaster grabs the
porter by the collar, and wanted him to pay him for the steam of his roast.
The porter kept saying that he had in no way damaged his meat, taken
nothing of his, was in no way his debtor. The steam in question was
evaporating outside; one way or another it was being lost; never had it
been heard that in Paris steam from a roast had been sold in the street.
The roaster kept replying that he was not responsible for feeding porters
with the steam from his roast, and swearing that in case he didn't pay him
he would take away his load-hooks.
"The porter draws his cudgel an was setting himself ready in defense.
The altercation was great. The rubberneck populace of Paris came run-
ning up to the dispute from all sides. There happened to be there at the
right time Seigny Joan the fool, citizen of Paris. Having espied him, the
roaster asked the porter: 'Do you want to let this noble Seigny Joan settle
ow.' dispute?"Yes, by the goose's blood,'6 said the porter.
"Thereupon Seigny Joan, after hearing their dispute, ordered the porter
to pull him out some silver coin from his baldrick. The porter put into his
hand a Tournois philippus.7 Seigny Joan took it and put it on his left
shoulder as if checking whether it was of proper weight; then rang it on
the palm of his left hand as if to hear whether it was good alloy; then put
it on his right eyeball as if to see if it was well stamped. All this was done
in great silence of the whole rubberneck populace, as the roaster waited
confidently and the porter in despair. Finally he rang it on the counter
several times. Then, in presidential majesty, holding his fool's bauble in
his fist as if it were a scepter and putting on his cap of monkey martens
skins with its paper ears ridged like organ pipes, giving two or three good
preliminary coughs, he announced in a loud voice:
"The Court informs you that the porter who ate his bread in the steam of the
roast has civilly paid the roaster with the sound of his money. The said Court
orders everyone to withdraw to his everyhome, without costs, and for cause.'
"This decision o the Parisian fool seemed so equitable, and indeed admir-
able, to the aforesaid doctors, that they_ doubt whether, in case the
matter had been decided by the Parlement of the said place, or by the
Rota in Rome, or indeed by the Areopagites, it would have been more
judicially decided by them. Therefore consider whether you want to take
counsel of some fool."
How Triboullet is blazoned '
by Pantagruel and Panurge.
"'PON my soul,"replied Panurge, "I do want to! I think my
bowels are
loosening; a while ago they were tight and constipated. But even as
we chose the fine cream of wisdom as counsel, so I would like someone
to preside at our consultation who was a fool to a supreme degree."
"Triboullet," said Pantagruel, "seems to me competently a fool."
Panurge replied: "Properly and totally a fool."
PANTAGRUEL PANURGE
Fatal fool, Arrant fool
Fool by nature, B sharp and B flat fool
Celestial fool, Landed fool,
Jovial fool, Joyous and playful fool,
Mercurial fool, Pretty, giddy fool,
Lunatic fool, Fool with pompoms,
Erratic fool, Pimply fool,
Eccentric fool, Fool with bells,
Ethereal and Junonian fool, Laughing and venereal fool
Arctic fool, Bottom-of-the-barrel fool,
Heroic fool, Best-of-the-vat fool,
Genial fool, Fool of the first pressing,
Predestined fool, Fool from rising time,
August fool, Original fool,
Caesarian fool, Papal fool,
Imperial fool, Consistorial fool,
Royal fool, Conclavist fool,
Patriarchal fool, Bullist fool,
Original fool, Synodal fool,
Loyal fool, Episcopal fool,
Ducal fool, Doctoral fool,
Pennon fool, Monkish fool,
Lordly fool, Fiscal fool,
Palatine fool, Absurd fool,
Principal fool, Hooded fool,
Pretorial fool, Fool with simple tonsure,
Total fool, Cotal fool,
Elected fool, Graduate fool in folly,
Curial fool, Table-companion fool,
Primipilar4 fool, Fool first in his licence,
Triumphant fool, Train-bearing fool,
Vulgar fool, Fool in supererogation,
Domestic fool, Collateral fool,
Exemplary fool, Fool a latere,5 altere [thirsty],
Rare, peregrine fool Silly fool,
Aulic fool, Passing fool,
Civil fool, Brancher6 fool,
Popular fool, Haggard fool,
Familiar fool, Nice fool,
Notable fool, Mail-clad fool,
Favorite fool, Pilfering fool,
Latin fool, Fool with tail regrown,
Ordinary fool, Starling-colored fool,
Dreaded fool, Doting fool,
Transcendent fool, Exquisite fool,
Sovereign fool, Puffed-up fool,
Special fool, Supercockaloricky fool,
Metaphysical fool, Corollary fool,
Ecstatic fool, Levantine fool,
Categorical fool, Zibeline fool,
Preachable fool, Crimson fool,
Decumans fool, Fool dyed in the grain,
Officious fool, Bourgeois fool,
Fool in perspective, Feather-duster fool,
Algorismic fool, Masthead fool,
Algebraic fool, Modal fool
Cabaline fool, Second-intentional fool,
Talmudic fool, Niggardly fool,
Algamala9 fool, Heteroclite fool,
Compendious fool, Summist fool,
Abbreviated fool, Abbreviating fool,
Hyperbolic fool, Morris-dancing fool,
Antonomatic fool, Well-bulled fool,
Allegorical fool, Mandatory fool,
Tropological fool, Cowl-wearing fool,
Pleonastic fool, Titular fool,
Capital fool, Covert fool,
Cerebral fool, Grim-visaged fool,
Cordial fool, Well-tooled fool',
Intestine fool, Ill-fettered fool,
Hepatic'2 fool, Ballocky fool,
Splenetic fool, Crabbed fool,
Windy fool, Ventilated fool,
Legitimate fool, Culinary fool,
Azimuthal fool, Fool of high growth,
Almicantarath fool, Rack fool,
Proportioned fool, Wretched fool,
Architrave fool, Catarrhal fool,
Pedestal fool, Braggart fool,
Paragon fool, Twenty-four-carat fool,
Celebrated fool, Bizarre fool,
Cheerful and buxom fool, Egregious fool,
Solemn fool, Foolishly a fool,
Annual fool, Fool with batons,
Festival fool, Fool with a bauble,
Recreative fool, Fool from a good angle,
Villatic fool, Fool with a wide swath,
Amusing fool, Stumbling fool,
Privileged fool, Superannuated fool,
Rustic fool, Country-style fool,
Ordinary fool, Full-busted fool
Fool at all hours, Vainglorius fool,
Fool in diapason, Swaggering fool,
Resolute fool, Slovenly fool,
Hieroglyphic fool, Fool in his shorts,
Authentic fool, Fool with a pattern [a patron],
Fool of value, Fool with a hood [a chapron],
Precious fool, Double fool,
Fanatical fool, Damascene fool,
Fantastic fool, Variegated fool,
Lymphatic fool, Azimina fool,
Panic fool, Baritone fool,
Alembicated [distilled] fool, Flyspecked fool,
Unirritating fool, Harquebus-proof fool,
PANT. If there was good reason why long ago in Rome they called
the Feast of Fools Quirinals, one might rightly institute in France
the Triboulletinals.
PAN. If all fools wore a crupper, he would get his buttocks
wellchafed, raw.
PANT. If he were the god Fatuel, whom we talked about, his
father would be Bonadies [Good Day], his mother Bonadea [Good
Goddess].
PAN. If all fools went at an amble, although he has a crookshank, he
would pass them by a good fathom. Let's go in his direction
without waiting. From him we'll get some fine solution; I'm
expecting it.
"I want," said Pantagruel, "to attend Bridoye's judgment's While I go
to Myrelingues, which is beyond the River Loire, I'll send Carpalim to
bring Triboullet here from Blois!"'"
Then was Carpalim dispatched. Pantagruel, accompanied by his famil-
iars, Panurge, Epistemon, Ponocrates, Frere Jean, Gymnaste, Rhizotome,
and others, took the road for Myrelingues.
How Pantagruel attends
the trial of Judge Bridoye,
who decided lawsuits by the chance of dice.
ON the following day, at the appointed time, Pantagruel arrived in
Myrelingues. The president, senators,' counselors asked him to come in
with them and hear the decision on the causes and reasons that Bridoye
would advance why he had rendered a certain verdict against Assessor
Toucheronde,' which did not seem quite equitable to this centumviraP
Court.
Pantagruel enters willingly and finds Bridoye sitting there in the middle
of the parquet,' and, for all reasons and excuses, answering nothing but
this, that he had grown old and hadn't as good eyesight as he used to,
alleging many miseries and calamities that old age brings with it, which
not. per Archid. d. lxxxvj. c. tanta [are noted by the Archdeacon in
Distinctio, section 86, chapter Tanta]." Therefore he did not make out as
distinctly as in the past the spots on the dice. So it might be that in the
way in which Isaac, old and seeing poorly, took Jacob for Esau," thus, in
deciding the lawsuit in question, he had taken a four for a five, especially
since he reported that he had then used his little dice. And that, by the
intent of the law, natural imperfections are not be imputed to crime, as
is clear from "f de re milit. 1. qui cum uno, ff. de reg. jur. 1. fere de
edil. ed. per totum, ft de term. mo., 1. Divus Adrianus; resolu. per Lud.
Rn in 1. si vero, ff. solu. matri." And if anyone did otherwise he would
be accusing not man, but nature, as is evident "in 1. maximum vitium. C.
de lib. praeter."'
"What dice do you mean, my friend?" asked Trinquamelle, grand
president of this Court.
"The dice," answered Bridoye, "of judgments, alea judiciorum,8 of
which it is written by `Doct. 26. q. ij. c. Sors; 1. nec emptio. ff. de
contrah. empt. 1. quod debetur. ff. de pecul. et ibi Barthol.'9 And which
dice you gentlemen ordinarily use in this sovereign Court of yours; so do
all other judges in deciding lawsuits, according to what has been noted
about it by D. Henri Ferrandat,' and `no. gl. in c. fin. de sortil. et
1. sed
cum ambo., ff. de judi., ubi doct.' [where the learned doctors] note that
chance is very good, honorable, useful, and necessary for the settlement of
lawsuits and dissensions. Even more clearly this has been said by Bal.,
Bart. and Alex. 'C. communia de 1. Si duo.' "
"And how," asked Trinquamelle, "do you proceed, my friend?"
"I shall reply briefly," " answered Bridoye, "according to the teaching
of the '1. Ampliorem, par. in refutatoriis, C. de appella.' and what is said
in `Gl. l. j. ff. quod met. cau. Gaudent brevitate moderni." 12 I
do as you
gentlemen do, as is the practice in judicature, to which our laws com-
mand us always to defer: 'ut no. extra. de consuet. c. ex literis, et ibi Innoc.' Having well seen, reviewed, read, reread, papered, and leafed
through the complaints, summonings, appearances, commissions, in-
quests, preparatories, statements, allegations, depositions, replications,
petitions, questionings, rebuttals, rejoinders, second replies, written testi-
monies, exceptions, anticipatories, evocations, referrals, referrals back,
determinations, reasons for a stay, reasons for rejecting, reconciliations,
reliefs, acknowledgments, acts, and other such goodies and spices from
one part and the other, as a good judge must do, according to what has
been noted about it by `Spec.13 de ordinario parTirl., et tit. de offs. om. ju.
par. fi.' and `de rescriptis praesenta., par. j.'
"I set at one end of the table in my study all the defendant's sacks and
shot for him first, as you gentlemen do." And this is 'not., 1.
Favorabiliores, ff. de reg. jur., et in c. cum sunt, eod. tit. lib. vj,' which
says: 'Cum sunt partium jura obscura, reo favendum est potius quam
actori.'
"That done, I set the plaintiff's sacks, as you gentlemen do, on the other
end, visum visa [face to face]. For, 'opposita juxta se posita magis
elucescunt [placed facing one another, opposites become clearer], ut not.
in 1. j., par. videamus, ff. de his qui sunt sui vel alie. jur. et in 1. munerum
j. mixta ff. de muner, et honor.' Likewise and at the same time, I shoot
for him."
"But, my friend," asked Trinquamelle, - "how do you recognize the
obscurity of the claims of the litigating parties?"
"As you gentlemen do," answered. Bridoye, "to Wit, when there are
many sacks on. one side and on the other. And then I use my little dice,
as you gentlemen do, pursuant to the law `Semper in stipulationibus,15
de' reg. jur.,' and the capital-letter law in verse, `q. eod. tit.'
Semper in obscuris quod minimum est sequimur,
[In obscure cases we always take minimum action,]
adopted in canon law 'in c. in obscuris, eod. tit. lib. vj.'
"I have other, big dice, very handsome and harmonious, which I use, as
you gentlemen do, when the matter is more liquid, that is to say when
there are fewer sacks."
"That done," said Trinquamelle, "how do you pass sentence, my
friend?" `
"As you gentlenien do," replied Bridoye: "I pronounce sentence in
favor of the one whose chance, by the lot of the judicial, tribunian,
praetorial dice,16 comes out first. Thus it is ordained by our laws 'ff. qui
po. in pig., 1. potior. leg. creditor., C. de consul., 1. j. Et de reg. jur., in
vj: Qui prior est tempore potior est jure.'"
How Bridoye explains the reasons
why he examined the lawsuits
that he decided by the chance of dice.
"YES, my friend," asked Trinquamelle, "but since you make your
decisions by chance and the casting of dice, why don't you try that
chance the very day and hour when the parties in dispute appear before
you, without any further delay? What use do you make of the writs and
other documents contained in the sacks?"
"As you gentlemen do," replied Bridoye, "I use them for three things
that are exquisite, requisite, and authentic.
"First, for form's sake, for lack of which there is no value in what one
has done, as is very well proven by 'Spec. tit. de instr. edi. et tit. de
rescrip. praesent.' Besides, you know only too well that often, in judicial
proceedings, the formalities destroy the substantive materials. For, 'forma
mutata, mutatur substantia. ff. ad exhib., 1. Julianus; ff. ad le-Cfalcid., 1. Si
is qui quadringenta. Et extra., de deci., c. ad audientiam, et de celebra.
miss. c. in quadam.'
"Secondly, like you gentlemen, I use them as a worthy and salutary
exercise. The late Mr. Othoman Vadare, a great doctor, as you would say,
`C. de comit. et archi. lib. xij,' has told me many a time that the lack of
bodily exercise is the sole cause of the paucity of health and shortness of
life of you gentlemen and of all officers of the law, which had been noted
very well before him by Bart. 'in 1. j. C. de senten. quae pro eo quod.'
Therefore are conceded to us, in turn, as to you gentlemen, 'quia
accessorium naturam sequitur principalis, de reg. jur. lib. vj. et 1. cum
principalis, et 1. nihil dolo., fil eod. titu.; ff. de fidejusso., 1. fidejussor.
et
extra de offic. de leg. c. j.,' certain games offering decent and recreative
exercise, 'ff. de al. lus. et aleat., 1. solent. et autent. ut omnes obediant, in
princ. coll. vij, et ff. de praescript. verb. 1. si gratuitam et 1. j. C, de spect.
lib. xj.' And such is the opinion of 'D. Thomae, in secunda secundae
quaest. clxviij,' most appropriately cited by D. Alberic de Ros., who Tuit
magnus practicus' and a solemn doctor, as Barbatis attests 'in prin. tonsil.'
The reason is set forth 'per gl. in proaemio. ff., par. ne autem tertii':
Interpone tuis interdum gaudia curis.'
[Take a few merry breaks between cares.]
"In fact, one day in the year 1489, having some monetary business in
the chamber of the Lord Commissioners of the Treasury, and entering by
pecuniary permission of the usher--as you gentlemen know, 'pecuniae
obediunt omnia [all things obey money],' and Bald. has said so in '1.
Singularia, ff. si certum pet. et Salic. in 1. recepticia, C. de constit. pecun.
et Card. in Cle. j., de baptis.' I found them all playing 'Baste the Bear" as
a salubrious exercise, before or after a meal; it's all or one to me provided
that 'Hic no [Here note]' that the game of 'Baste the Bear' is worthy,
salubrious, ancient, and legal, 'a Musco inventore, de quo. C., de petit.
haered., 1. si post motam.' And 'Muscarii, id est' people who play 'Baste
the Bear' are excusable by law '1. j., C., de excus. artif., lib. x.'
"And at that point the 'Bear' was Mr. rielman Picquet,3 I remember,
and he was laughing at how the gentlemen of the said Court were ruining
their bonnets by basting him on the shoulders; he was saying that this
notwithstanding they were not excusable, to their wives on their return
home from the Court, by `c. j., extra de praesump., et ibi gl.' Now,
`resolutorie loquendo [I make bold to say],' I would say, like you gentle-
men, that in this palatine world there is no exercise like this one or more
aromatic than this: emptying sacks, leafing through papers, marking up
booklets, filling baskets, examining lawsuits, 'ex Bart. et Jo. de Pm.' in 1.
falsa de condit. et demon. ff.'
"Thirdly, like you gentlemen, I consider that time ripens all things; by
time all things come into evidence; time is the father of truth, `gl. in 1. j.,
C. de servit., Autent.,' de restit. et ea quae pa., et Spec. tit. de requis.
cons.' That is why, like you gentlemen, I stay, delay, and put off the
judgment, so that the suit, well ventilated, Scrutinized, and batted around,
may be borne more' easily by the losing parties,_ as `no. glo. ff. de excu.
nit., 1. Tria onera':
Portatur leviter, quod portat quisque libenter.
[Gladly is borne what each man gladly bears.]
In judging it when it is raw, green, and at the beginning, there would
be the danger of the harm that doctors say occurs when they lance an
abscess before it is ripe, when they purge some harmful humor from the
human body before it is digested. For, as it is written in 'Autent., Haec
constit. in Inno. const. prin.,' and repeated, `gl. in c. Caeterum. extra,
de jura. calum.':
Quod medicamenta morbis exhibent, hoc jura negotiis.
[What drugs do for diseases, laws for business do.]
Moreover, Nature teaches us to pluck and eat fruits when they are ripe,
Instit. de re. di par. is ad quem, et ff de acti. empt., 1. Julianus,' to marry
oft girls when they are ripe, 'ff. de donat. int. vir. et uxo., 1. cum hic
status, par. si quis sponsa., et 27. q., j., c., Sicut' says `gl.':
Jam matura thoris plenis adoleverat annis
Virginitas,
[By now the maidenhood, fit for the marriage bed,
For years enough had ripened,]
to do nothing except in full maturity, `xxii.j. q. ij. par. ult.' and `xxxiij.
d. c. ult.'
How Bridoye tells the story
of the settler of lawsuits.
"I remember on this subject," said Bridoye as he went on, "that at the
time when I was studying law at Poitiers under Blackstone's Commentar-
ies,' there was a man at Smarve2 by the name of Perrin Dendin, an
honorable man, a good plowman, singing well in the church choir, and
about the age of most of you gentlemen, who used to say that he had seen
that great fellow Lateran Council, with his broad red hat, and with him
his wife, the good lady Pragmatic Sanction, with her wide headband of
sky-blue satin and her great jet rosary.
"This worthy man used to settle more lawsuits than were decided in
the whole Hall of Justice in Poitiers, in the court of Montmorillon, in the
market-hall of Parthenay-le-Vieux, which made him venerated in the
entire neighborhood. From Chauvigny, Nouaille, Croutelles, Esgne,
Liguge, La Motte, Lusignan, Vivonne, Mezeaulx, Estables, and adjacent
places, all disputes, lawsuits, and controversies were adjusted by his solu-
tions as if by a sovereign judge, although judge he was not, but a worthy
man,' `Arg. in 1. sed si unius., ff. de jureju., et de verb. oblig., 1.
econtinuus!' There was not a hog killed in the whole neighborhood of
which he didn't get some of the roast pork and blood puddings. And
almost every day he was a guest at a banquet, a wedding feast, a christen-
ing, a churching,4 and in the tavern--to effect some reconciliation, you
understand, for never did he reconcile the parties but that he had them
drink together, as a symbol of reconciliation, perfect accord, and joy
renewed, 'tit no. per doct., ff de peri. et comm. rei.•vend. 1. j.'
"He had a son named Tenots Dendin, a great roister and gallant man,
s'help me God, who likewise tried to mediate and reconcile litigants, as
you know that
Saepe solet similis filius esse patri,
Et sequitur leviter filia matris iter,
[The son is wont to take after the sire,
And daughters to their mothers' ways aspire,]
'ut ait gl., vj. q., j. c. Si quis; g. de cons., d. v. c. j. fi.; et est no. per doct.,
C. de impu. et aliis subst., 1. ult. et 1. legitimae, ff. de stat. horn., gl. in 1.
quod si nolit, ff. de edil. ed., 1. quis, C. ad le. Jul. majest. Excipio filios a
moniali susceptos ex monacho, per gl. in c. Impudicas, xxvij q.j.' And
among his titles he 'assumed that of the Settler of Suits.
"In this business he was so active and vigilant--for `vigilantibus jura
subveniunt [the laws 'assist the vigilant], ex. 1. pupillus, ff quae in fraud.
cred., et ibid. 1. non. enim., et Instit. in proaemio,' that as soon as he
sniffed out 'tit ff. si quad. pau. fec., 1. Agaso, gl. in verbo olfecit i. nasum.
ad culum posuit [that according to the Pandects, if a quadriped is said to
have caused any misery, law Agaso, gloss at the words he sniffed, he stuck
his nose in his ass, and he heard that in the region any lawsuit or dispute
was afoot, he butted in to try to reconcile the parties. It is written:
Qui non laborat non manige ducat,'
[He who does not work shall not eat],
and so says `gl. ff. de dam. infect., 1. quamvis,' and currere faster than a pace
Vetulam compellit egestas,
[Need makes the old hag run at a gallop,]
'gi., ff. de lib. agnos., 1. Si quis pro qua facit; 1. Si plures, C. de cond.
incer.' But in such an operation he fared so poorly that never did he settle
any controversy whatever, however small a one you might mention.
Instead of settling them, he irritated and embittered them even more.
You know, gentlemen, that
Sermo datur cunctis, animi sapientia paucis,
[Speech is given to all, a wise mind to but few,]
`gl. E de alie. ju. mu. caus. fa., 1. ij.' And the tavern-keepers of Smarve
used to say that in his day they didn't sell as much settlement wine (so
they called the good Liguge wine) in a year as they used to do in half an
hour in his father's time.
"It happened that he complained about it to his father and was blaming,
as the causes of his failure, the perversity of the men of his time, holding
up against him the claim that' if in the old days people had been that
perverse, litigious, unruly, and irreconcilable, he [his father] would not
have won the title of such an irreversible arbitrator as he had. In which
Tenot was acting against equity, by which children are forbidden to reproach
their own fathers, 'per gl. et Bar., 1. iij par. si quis, ff. de condi. ob
caus., et Autent., de nup., par. sed quod sancitum, coll. iiij.'
"You have,' replied Perrin, `to go about it differently, my son Dendin.
Now,'
When oportet comes in play,
Things just must be done that way,
`gl. C. de appell., 1. eos etiam.' That's where the problem [le lievre] lies.
You never settle disagreements: Why? You take them at the beginning,
when they are still green and raw. .I settle them all: why? I take them near
their end, quite ripe and digested, Thus says `gl.':
Dulcior est fructus post multa pericula ductus,
[Sweeter is fruit through many perils grown,]
`l. non moriturus, C. de contrah. et comit. stip.' Don't you know that in
the common proverb they say: Happy is the doctor called in on the waning
of the illness. The illness was of itself nearing its final crisis, even
without the doctor's coming in. My litigants likewise were winding down
by themselves to the final goal of pleading, for their purses were empty;
of themselves they were ceasing to prosecute and solicit: there was no
more dough in the wallet to solicit and prosecute with:
Deficiente pecu, deficit omne, nias
[If mo is lacking, all is lacking, ney.]
•
"Missing was only someone for a go-between and mediator, to save both
parties from the pernicious shame of it being said: 'This one gave in
first; he first spoke of settlement; he tired first; his case was not the
stronger; he felt the saddle chafing him.' At that point, Dendin, I'm
Johnny on the spot, like bacon in peas. That's my joy. That's my profit.
That's my good fortune. And I tell you, my nice looking son Dendin,
that by this method I could bring peace, or at least truces, between the
Great King and the Venetians, between the emperor and the Swiss, be-
tween the English and the Scots, between the pope and the Ferrarese.
Shall I go further? So help me God, between the Turk and the Sophy;
between the Tartan sand the Muscovites.
"Understand me clearly. I would take them at the point where both e
sides would be weary of making war, would have emptied their coffers,
exhausted their subjects' purses, sold their domain, mortgaged their lands,
consumed their victuals and munitions. Then, in the name of God or of
His Mother, they are forcibly forced to catch their breath and moderate
their felonies: That's the teaching in `gl. xxxvii d. c. Si quango':
Odero si potero, si non, invitus amabo."9
[I will hate if I can, if not I'll grudging love.]
How lawsuits are born,
and how they come to perfection.
"THAT is why," said Bridoye as he went on, "like you gentlemen, I
temporize, waiting for the ripeness of the lawsuit and its perfectedness in
all its members: (these are writs and sacks. Virg. in 1. si major., C. commu.
divi. et de cons., d. j, c. Solennitates, et ibi gl."
"A lawsuit when first born seems to me, as to you gentlemen, shapeless
and imperfect. As a new-born bear has neither feet nor hands, skin, hair,
nor head; he's just a piece of rough and shapeless flesh; the she-bear, by
dint of licking,2 brings this to perfection of the members 'tit no. doct.,
ad leg. Aquil., 1. ij. in fi.'
"So I see, like you gentlemen, lawsuits born at their beginnings shape-
less and without members. They have only one or two documents, that's
an ugly beast for the time. But when they are well packed, stacked, and
sacked [entassez, enchassez et ensacheq, they may truly be said to have
shape and limbs. For 'forma dat esse rell [form gives the thing being] l. si
is qui, ff. ad leg. falci. in c. cum dilecta, extra de rescrip. Barbatia consil.
12, lib. 2,' and before him 'Bald in c. ulti. extra de consue., et 1. Julianus,
ad exhib., et 1. quaesitum. ff. de lega. iij.' The manner is such as is
stated by `gl. p. q. j. c. Paulus':
Debile principium melior fortuna sequetur.
[Better fortune will follow a weak start.]
"Like you gentlemen, similarly the sergeants, ushers, summoners, shy-
sters, procurators, commissioners, advocates, investigators, notaries pub-
lic, notaries, registrars, and lower-court judges, 'de quibus tit. est. lib. iij
Cod.,' sucking very hard and continuously on the parties' purses, engen-
der for their lawsuits head, feet, claws, beak, teeth, hands, veins, arteries,
nerves, muscles, humors. These are the sacks, `gl. de cons., d. iiij. c.
accepisti.'
Qualis vestis erit, talia corda gerit.
[As is the jacket, such the heart he wears.]
Hic no. [Here note] that in this regard happier are the litigants than the
ministers of justice, for
Beatius est dare quam accipere,3
[It is more: blessed to 'give than to receive,]
`ff. comm., 1. iij. et extra de celebra. Miss., c. cum Marthae, et 24. q. j. c.
Odi. gl.'
Thus they make the lawsuit perfected, gallant, well informed, as stated in
gl. can.:
Accipe, sumei. cape sunt verba placentia papae,
[Accept, receive, and take are words that please the pope,]
which Alber. de Ros. has stated more clearly in verb. Roma.:
Roma manus rodit, quas rodere non valet, odit.
Dantes custodit, non dantes spernit et odit.
[Rome gnaws the hands, hates hands it cannot gnaw;
Protects the giver, spurns and hates those who do not give.]
The reason why?
Ad praesens ova, cras pullis sunt meliora,
[Today's eggs rather than tomorrow's chicks,]
ut est glo., in 1. quum hi, ff. de transac.' The disadvantage of the converse
is stated 'in gl. c. de allu , 1. F.':
Cum labor in damno est, crescit mortalis egestas.
[When work avails not, mortal poverty grows.]
"The true etymology of lawsuit [proces] is that in its pursuit [prochatz]
it must have many sacks [prou sacs]. On this we have some heavenly
quips:
Litigando jura crescunt. Litigando jus acquiritur.
[The laws grow by litigation. Justice is earned by litigation.]
"'Item gl. in c. Illud, ext. de praesumpt., et C. de prob., 1. instrumenta,
non epistolic, 1. non nudis,'
Et cum non prosunt singula, multa juvant.'
[And when lone efforts fail, multiple efforts help.]
"True," replied Trinquamelle. "But, my friend, how do you proceed in a crim-
inal action, when the guilty party has been caught flagrante crimine?"
"Like you gentlemen," replied Bridoye, "I allow and command the plaintiff to
get a good sound sleep before the case opens, then appear before me, bringing
me a good judicial attestation of his sleep, according to the `gl., 32. q.
vij. c. Si quis cum,'
Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.6
[Sometimes good Homer nods.]
"This act engenders some other members; from that one is born another,
even
as link by link is made a coat of mail. Finally, by inquiry, I find the
lawsuit well
formed and perfected in its members. Thereupon I go back to my dice. And
such furbishing is not done by me without
reason and notable experience.
"I recall that in the camp at Stockholm' a Gascon named Gratianauld, a native
of Saint-Sever, having lost all his money at gambling and being very vexed a-
bout it--as you know, `pecunia est alter sanguis [money is another blood],
ut ait Anto. de Butrio,8 in c. accedens., ij, extra. ut lit. non contest.,'
and Bald. 'in 1. si tuis, C. de op. li. per no., et 1. advocate, C. de advo
div. jud.: Pecunia est vita hominis et optimus fidejussor in necessitatibus,'
on leaving the game, in front of all his comrades, kept calling out loudly:
'By ox's head, laddies, may cask fever bat you down! Now that my twenty-four
bits`' are loser I'd just as soon also hand out some knocks, bangs, and
whacks. Is there any one of you who'd like to take me on and fight it out
with me?'" When no one answered his invitation, he passes on to the camp of
the Hondrespondres [the English], and kept repeating these same words, in-
viting them to fight with him. But these last-named kept saying: 'The Gascon
sets himself up to fight with any one of us, but he's more inclined to steal:
therefore, dear ladies, keep an eye on the baggage.' And none of their con-
tingent offered to fight. Therefore the Gascon passes on to the camp of the
French freebooters, saying the same thing as before and inviting them lust-
ily to combat, with, little Gascon gambols. But no one answered him. Then
the Gascon, at the end of the camp, lay down near the tents of stout Christ-
ian, Chevalier de Crisse,'2 and went to sleep.
"At that point a freebooter, having likewise lost all his money, came out
with his sword, determined to fight with the Gascon, inasmuch as he had
lost like him [Juvenal, Satires, no. 13, v.134]
Ploratui lachrymis amissa pecunia veris,
[With real tears he laments the money lost,]
says `glos. de paenitent. dist. 3, c. sunt plures.' Indeed, after looking for
him all through the camp, finally he found him asleep. So then he said to him:
'Hey, on your feet! Sonnyboy of all the devils, get up; I've lost my money
just as well as you have. Let's go have a good scrap together and bang each
other around good and proper. Have a look, my tuck is no longer than your
rapier.'
"The Gascon, still all dazed, answered him: 'By Saint Arnault's head,'3 who
are you, to come waking me up? May tavern fever bat you down! Oh, by Saint-
Sever, patron saint of Gascony, I was just having a good sleep when this
here now no-good came around pestering me.' The freebooter kept inviting
him again to fight; but the Gascon said to him: 'Hey, you poor guy, I'd
skin
you alive, now that I'm rested. Go get a bit of rest the way I did, then we'll
fight.' Even as he had forgotten his loss, he had lost his urge to fight.
In
short, instead of fighting each other aria possibly killing one another,
they
went off to have a drink together, each one on money loaned for his sword.
Sleep had done this good deed, and pacified the ardent frenzy of these
two
worthy champions. Here apply the golden words of Giovanni Andrea" c. ult.
de sent. et re judic. libro sexto:
Sedendo et quiescendo fit anima prudens."
[Quiet and rest give prudence to the soul.]
How Pantagruel excuses Bridoye
about the verdicts
rendered by the chance of dice.
Wmt that Bridoye was silent. Trinquamelle ordered him to leave the court-
room, which was done. Then he said to Pantagruel:
"Reason will have it, most august Prince, not only by the obligation in
which by infinite kindnesses you hold this Parlement and the whole Marqui-
sate of Myrelingues, but also by the good sense, discerning judgment, and
admirable learning that great God, Giver of all good things, has placed
in you, we should offer you the decision in this matter of Bridoye, so
novel, so strange and paradoxical, who in your presence, sight, and hear-
ing, has confessed to making judgments by the chance of dice. So we beg
you to be willing to pass judgment as it shall seem to you juridical and
equitable."
To this Pantagruel replied: "Gentlemen. my estate lies not in professing
to judge lawsuits, as you know. But since you are pleased to do me so
much honor, instead of pnforming the function ofjudge, I'll assume that
of petitioner.
"In Bridoye I recognize many qualities by which he would seem to me to
merit pardon in the case in point. Firstly, old age; secondly, simplicity:
in both of which you understand full well what ease our laws and statutes
grant in pardon and excuse for a misdeed. Thirdly, I recognize another
point, likewise drawn from our laws, in awn of Bridoye: it's that this
one and only Emit should be abolished, extinguished, and absorbed in
the immense sea of so many equitable judgments that he has handed down
in the past, and that in forty years and more no act of his has been found
deserving of reprehension. As if, into the River Loire, I were to cast a
drop of sea water: for that one and only drop, no one would call it salty.
"And it seems to me that in this there is something. I know not what, of
God, Who has brought to pass and determined that in these judgments by
chance all the preceding verdicts have been found good in this vener-
able and sovereign Court of yours--God Who, as you know, often wills to
have His glory appear in the befuddlement of the wise, the humbling of
the mighty, and the exaltation of the simple and humble.
"I'm willing to waive all these points. I will only beg you--not by that
obligation that you proles toward my house, which I do not recognize,
but the sincere affection that from all antiquity you have found in us,
both on the near side and the far side of the Loire, for the mainte-
nance of your estate and dignities--that for this one time you pardon
and forgive him upon two conditions; first, that he satisfy or put a
sufficient surety for the satisfaction of the party wronged by the in-
justice of the sentence in question: for the fulfillment of this article,
I will provide sufficiently. And secondly, that for his subsidiary and
in the weighty charge of administering justice, you would be pleased
to give him someone younger, learned, prudent, expert and virtuous in
counseling, on whose advice henceforth he will conduct his judicial
proceedings.
"In case you should want to depose him completely from his office, I
will ask you very earnestly to bestow him on me as a present and a
pure gift. I'll find places and estates enough in my kingdoms to em-
ploy him and make use of him. For this I shall beseech the good God,
Creator, Preserver, and Giver of all good things, to keep you forever
in His holy Grace."
These words spoken, Pantagruel made a bow to the whole Court and left
the courtroom. At the door he found Panurge, Epistemon, Frne Jean,
and others. There they mounted their horses to go back to Gargantua.
Along the way Pantagruel was telling them point by point the story of
the judgment of Bridoye. Frere Jean said that he had known Perrin
Dendin at the time when he was staying at Fontenay-le-Comte under the
noble Abbe Ardillon.' Gynuiaste said he was in the tent of stout
Christian, Chevalier de Crisse, when the Gaston answered the free-
booter. Panurge was raising some difficulty over believing the good
fortune of the judgments by chance, especially for such a long time.
Episternon said to Pantagruel:
'They tell us a parallel story about a provost of Montlhery.' But
what would you say about that good fortune with the dice continued
over so many successive years? For one or two judgments given like
that I wouldn't be astonished, especially in matters in themselves
ambiguous, intricate, entangled, and obscure."
How Epistemon'tells a strange story
of the perplexities of human judgment.
As was the controversy argued before Cneius Dolabella, proconsul
in Asia. This is the case: A woman in Smyrna had by her first hus-
band a child named A. B. C. When her husband died, after a certain
time she remarried and, by her second husband, had a son named F.
E. G. It happened (as you know, rare is the affection of stepfath-
ers, fathers-in-law, and stepmothers toward the children of deceas-
ed first fathers and mothers) that this husband and his son secret-
ly, treacherously, in ambush, killed A. B. C.
"The woman, learning of the treachery and wickedness, would not
let the crime remain unpunished, and brought about the death of
them both, avenging the death of her fint son. She was apprehended
by the law and brought before Cneius Dolabella. In his presence
she confessed the deed, without any dissimulation; only she alleg-
ed that by right and by reason she had killed them. That was the
state of the case.
"He found the affair so ambiguous that he didn't know to which side
to lean. The woman's crime was great, who had killed her second hus-
band and son. But the cause of the murder seemed to him so natural
--and, as it were, founded in the law of nations, seeing that they
had killed her first son, the two of them together, treacherously,
in ambush, not having been outraged or injured by him, but only out
of greed to possess the whole inheritance--that, for the decision,
he sent to the Areopagites in Athens to learn what would be their
advice and verdict on this.
"The Areopagites made reply that a hundred years later they should
send them the contending parties in person to answer to certain
questions that were not contained in the trial record. That was to
say that the perplexity and obscurity of the matter seemed to them
so great than they didn't know what to say or judge about it.
"If anyone had decided the case by the chance of dice, he would not
have been wrong, come what might: if against the woman, she deserved
punishment, seeing that she had taken into her hands the vengeance,
which belonged to the law; if for the woman, she seemed to have had
cause for atrocious grief.
"But, in Bridoye, the continuation over so many years astonishes me."
"I cannot," responded Pantagruel,' "answer your question categori- cally, I must confess. Conjecturally. I would attribute this good
fortune to the benevolent aspect of the heavens and the favor of the
Moving Intelligences. These--in consideration of the simplicity and
sincere good intent of Judge Bridoye, who, mistrusting his knowledge
and capacity, knowing the inconsistencies and contradictions of the
laws, edicts, customs, and ordinances, knowing the wiles of the In-
fernal Calumniator (who often transforms himself into a messenger
of light by his ministers, the perverse advocate, counselor, prose-
cuting attorneys. and other such officers, turns black into white,
fancifully makes it seem to each party that it is in the right--as
you know, there is no cause so bad but that it finds its advocate,
without that there would never be a lawsuit in the world), should
commend himself humbly to God the Just Judge, call celestial grace
to his aid, and trust himself to the Sacrosanct Spirit for the haz-
ard and perplexity of a definitive judgment, and by that chance
should explore its decision and good pleasure, which we call a ver-
dict--these Intelligences would move and turn the dice to make them
fall in favor of the man who, armed with a just complaint, should
request to have his rights maintained by justice; as the Talmudists
say, there is no harm whatever contained in chance, and only by
chance, in human anxiety and doubt, is the divine will manifested.
"I would not want to think or say, nor indeed do I believe, that the
all too evident iniquity and corruption of those responsible for jus-
tice in this Myrelinguais Parlement in Myrelingues is so extraordina-
ry that a lawsuit could not be decided worse by casting dice, come
what might, than it is now, passing through their hands full of blood
and perverse inclination. Considering especially that their entire
rule-book in common law was given by one Tribonianus, an unbeliever,
infidel, barbarian, so malicious, so perverse, so avaricious and wick-
ed, that he used to sell laws, edicts. bills, constitutions, and or-
dinances for cash on the line to the highest bidder. And thus he cut
their pieces for them by these little bits and scraps of the laws
they have in use, suppressing and abolishing the rest, which worked
for the total law, for fear that, if the total law remained and the
books of the ancient jurists were seen in the exposition of the
twelve tables4 and edicts of the praetor, his wickedness would be
clearly known to everyone.
"Therefore it would often be better (that is to say less harm would
come of it) for the parties in dispute to walk over caltrops than
to entrust themselves for their rights to these men's responses and
judgments, even as Cato in his day wished and advised that the law
court should be paved with caltrops."
0N the sixth day following, Pantagruel of back at the time when Tri- boullet had arrived by water from Blois. Panurge, on Triboullet's
arrival, gave him a well-inflated pig's bladder, resounding because
of the dried peas that were inside; also a well-gilded wooden sword;
also a little game-pouch made of a tortoise shell; also a wicker-
covered bottle full of Breton wine, and two dozen Blandureau apples.'
"How's that?" said Carpalim, "is he as crazy as a good round cabbage?"
Triboullet girded on the sword and the game-pouch, took the bladder
in his hand, ate part of the apples, drank all of the wine. Panurge
kept looking at him curiously and said:
"I still have never seen a fool—and yet I've seen over ten thousand
francs' worth—who didn't drink gladly and in long drafts."
Then he explained his business to him in elegant rhetorical terms.
Before he had finished, Triboullet gave him a big punch with his
fist between the two shoulders, gave him back the bottle into his
hand, kept flicking his nose with the pig's bladder, and as his,
whole answer said to him, shaking his head very hard:
These words uttered, he moved away from the company and kept
playing with the bladder, delighting in the melodious rattling of the
pea.
After that, it was not possible to drag any word whatever out of
him. And when Panurge wanted to question him further, Triboullet
drew his wooden sword and tried to strike him width it.
"Now we're really in great shape [Nous en sommes bien, vrayement]!"
said Panurge. That's a fine solution. Good and crazy he is, there's
no denying that; but crazier still is the rnan who brought him to
me, and supremely crazy I, for communicating my thoughts to him."
"That," said Carpalim, "is aimed straight at my visor."
"Without getting worked up," said Pantagruel, "let's consider his
gestures and his words. In these I observed notable mysteries, and
I'm no longer as amazed as I used to be that the Turks revere such
madmen as Musaphis and prophets. Did you consider how his head shook
and wagged before he opened his mouth to speak? By the teaching of
the ancient philosophers, by the ceremonies of the Magi, and the
observations of the jurists, you may judge that this movement was
prompted by the coming and inspiration of the prophetic spirit,
which, entering abruptly into a weak and tiny substance (as you
know, a big brain cannot be contained within a small head), shook
it up in such a way as doctors say a tremor comes upon the members
of the human body, partly from the weight and violent 'impetuosity
of the burden borne, partly from the weak capacity of the organ
bearing.
"A manifest example is in those who, on an empty stomach, cannot
carry a big goblet full of wine in their hand without their hands
trembling. This the Pythian prophetess prefigured to us of old mien,
before responding with the oracle, she would shake her domestic
laurel. Thus Lampridius says that the Emperor Heliogabalus, in or-
der to be reputed a diviner, throughout many festivals of his great
ido1,4 among his fanatical eunuchs used to shake his head publicly.
Thus Plautus declares in his Asinarias that Surias used to walk a-
long shaking his head, as if frenzied and out of his senses, fright-
ening everyone who encountered him. And elsewhere [Trinummus 5.2.45],
explaining why Charmides used to shake his head, he says it was in
ecstasy.
"Thus Catullus tells us, in Berecynthia and Atys [Elegies 63 .23],
of the place where the maenads, Bacchic women, priestesses of Bac-
chus, frenzied diviners, bearing boughs of ivy, used *to shake
their heads. In a similar case did the gelded Galli, priests of
Cybele, in celebrating their festivals. Wherefore she is so named,
according to the ancient theologian.), for Ktflto-Tai means to
turn, to twist, to shake one's head, and act like a wryneck.
"Thus Livy writes that in the Bacchanalia in Rome, men and women
seemed to vaticinate, because of a certain shaking and agitation
of the body that they affected. For the common voice of the phil-
osophers and the opinion of the people was that the power of pro-
phecy was never given by the heavens without frenzy and shaking
of the trembling and shuddering body, not only wheri this was re-
ceiving it but also when it was manifesting and declaring it.
"In fact Julian, a notable jurist, when sometimes asked whether
a slave should be considered sane who, in the company of fanati-
cal and frenzied people, had conversed and peradventure prophe-
sied, but without such shaking of the head, replied that he
would be considered sane. Thus nowadays we see tutors and pre-
ceptors shake their pupils' heads, as you do a pot by the han-
dles, by pinching and pulling their ears (which, according to
the Egyptian sages, are the members consecrated to Memory), to
restore their senses, then perchance far afield in strange
thoughts and as it were made skittish by disorderly desires,
to good philosophical learning, which Virgil [Eclogues 6.3-4]
confesses about himself in his shaking by Apollo Cynthius."
How Pantagruel and Panurge
diversely interpret
the words of Triboullet.
"HE says you're a fool?' And what kind of fool?' A crazy fool,
who in your old age wants to bind and enslave yourself in mar-
riage. 'Beware monk!' Pon my honor, that by some monk you will
be made a cuckold. I stake my honor on it, and nothing greater
could I stake, even were I sole and peaceful ruler in Europe,
Africa, and Asia.
"Note how much I rely on our morosophe,2 Triboullet. The other
oracles and replies have determined that you will peacefully be
made a cuckold, but had not yet clearly expressed by whom your
wife would be led into adultery and you cuckolded. This noble Triboullet tells that. And the cuckoldry will be notorious
and extremely scandalous. Must your conjugal bed be defiled
and contaminated by monkery?
"He says further that you will be the Buzancais bagpipe,3 that
is to say well horned, antlered, and cornute [bien come, corn-
ard et cornu]. And just as he, wanting to ask King Louis XH
for the salt controllership at Buzancais for his brother, ask-
ed for a bagpipe, so you likewise, thinking to marry some good,
honorable woman, will marry a woman empty of prudence, full of
wind and arrogance, loud mouthed and unpleasant, like a bagpipe.
"Note further that with the bladder he kept flicking you on the
nose, and gave you a punch on the backbone: that presages that
you will be beaten, flicked on the nose, and robbed, as you had
robbed the little children of Vaubreton of the pig's bladder."
"On the contrary," replied Panurge. "Not that I mean to exempt
myself shamelessly from the domain of folly. I'm its vassal and
belong to it, I confess. Everyone is mad. In Lorraine, Fou is
near Tou by sound discernment. Everything is mad. Solomon says
that infinite is the number of fools.' From infinity nothing
can be subtracted, to it nothing added, as Aristotle proves".
And a crazy fool would I be if, being a fool, a fool I did not
think myself. That is what likewise makes the number of maniacs
and madmen infinite. Avicenna says that infinite are the species
of mania.
"But the rest of his words and gestures work for me. He says to
my wife: 'Beware monk!' That's a sparrow' that she will cherish,
like the one that Catullus's Lesbia had, who will go flying after
flies and spend his time on that, as cheerily as ever did Domi-
tian the flycatcher.
"He says further that she will be a village girl, and pleasant
as a lovely bagpipe from Saulieu or Buzancais. That truthful
Triboullet well discerned my nature and my inward inclinations.
For I swear to you that I like better the merry little dish-
eveled shepherdesses, whose tail smells of thyme, than the
ladies of the great courts with their rich attire and their
perfumes redolent of maujoint.8 I like the sound of the rustic
bagpipe better than the quavers of the courtly lutes, rebecs,
and violins.
"He gave me a punch on my jolly old lady of a backbone? For the
love of God, so be it, and be it that much of a deduction less-
ening the pains of purgatory! He wasn't doing it to harm. He
thought he was striking some page. He's a goodly fool; innocent,
I swear to you; and anyone sins who thinks ill of him. I pardon
him with all my heart.
"He was flicking my nose: those are little tomfooleries between
my wife and me, as happens with all newlyweds."
How Pantagruel and Panurge
decide to visit
the oracle of the Divine Bottle.'
"HERE is quite another point, which you're not considering. Nev-
ertheless it's the heart of the matter. He gave me back the bot-
tle into my hand. Now what does that signify? What is the mean-
ing of that?"
"Peradventure," replied Pantagruel, "it signifies that your wife
will be a drunkard."
"On the contrary," said Panurge, "for it was empty swear to you
by the backbone of Saint Fiacre in Brie that our morosophe [soph-
omore], the unique but not lunatic [l'unicque, non, lunaticque]
Triboullet, is sending me back to the bottle. And once more I
refresh my first vow, and swear by Styx and Acheron, in your
presence, to wear spectacles on my bonnet and wear no codpiece
on my breeches until I have got the Divine Bottle's word about
my project. I know a prudent man, a friend of mine, who knows
the spot, the region, and the country its temple and oracle is
in. He'll take us there safely. Let's go there together. I be-
seech you not to turn me down. I'll be an Achates to you, a
Damis, and a companion on the entire trip. I've long known you
to be a lover of foreign travel and wishing always to see and
always to learn. We'll see wonderful things, believe me!"
"Gladly," replied Pantagruel, "but before we set out on this
long peregrination, full of risk, full of evident dangers..."
"What dangers?" said Panurge, interrupting his remarks. "Dangers
flee from me, wherever I may be, for seven leagues around; even
as, when the prince comes on the scene, the magistrate ceases
to be one; 2 when the sun comes out, the darkness vanishes; and
as illnesses used to flee at the coming of Saint Martin's body
at Candes."
"By the way," said Pantagruel, "before we set out, we must
take
care of certain points. First, let's send Triboullet back to
Blois (which was done right away, and Pantagruel gave him a
robe of braided cloth of gold). Secondly, we must have the ad-
vice and leave of my father the king. Besides, we need to find
some sibyl as our guide and interpreter."
Panurge replied that his friend Xenomanes would suffice for
them, and moreover was planning to pass through the country of
Lanternland3 and there to pick up some learned and useful Lan-
terness, who would be to them for this trip what the sibyl was
to Aeneas when he went down into the Elysian Fields. Carpalim,
passing by on his way to take Triboullet back, heard this
statement and called out to say:
"Ho there, Panurge, Sir Quit-of-debts, pick up Milord Debt-
puty4 in Calais, for he's a goud fallot and don't forget [to
forgive] our debtors:6 those are lanterns. Thus you will have
both a torch [fallot] and lanterns."
"My prognosis," said Pantagruel," is that along the way we
won't breed melancholy Already I perceive this clearly. My
one regret is that I don't speak goo Lanternese."
"I," responded Panurge, "will speak it for you all; I under-
stand it like my mother tongue; I'm as versed in it as in the
vernacular:7
"Those," replied Epistemon, "are names of devils errant, dev-
ils passant, devils rampant."
"Your words are bery9 true, my fine friend," said Panurge.
"That's Lanternese courtier language. Along the way, I'll
make you up a nice little dictionary of it, which will last
hardly any longer than a new pair of shoes: you'll have
learned it by heart before you see daybreak. What I said,
translated from Lanternese into the vernacular, sings like
this:
When I was under Cupid's yoke,
Mishaps on me, but no good fell.
Happier are the married folk
Panurge is one, and knows it well.
"So what remains," said Pantagruel, "is to hear my father
the king's will, and obtain leave from him."
How Gargantua points out
that it is not lawful for children
to marry without the knowledge
and consent of their fathers and mothers.'
WHEN Pantagruel entered the great hall of the château, he
found the good Gargantua2 coming out of his council, gave
him a summary of their adventures, explained their project,
and besought him that by his leave and agreement they might
put it into execution. That good chap Gargantua, holding in
his hands two fat bundles of petitions answered and memor-
anda for answers, gave them to Ulrich Gallet, his long-time
Master of Petitions and Requests, drew Pantagruel aside,
and, with an expression even more joyous than usual, said
to him:
"I praise God, my very dear son, for keeping you in virtuous
desires, and I'm very pleased to have you complete this jour-
ney. But I'd like to see you too come to the will and desire
to marry. It seems to me that from now on you are coming
into the age suitable for it. Panurge has striven enough to
break down the difficulties that could have been an obstacle
to him. Speak for yourself."
"My very kind father," replied Pantagruel. "I hadn't yet giv-
en it a thought. I was referring all that business to your goodwill and paternal command. I pray to God rather to be
seen stone dead for having displeased you than without your
pleasure to be seen alive and married. I have never heard
that by any law whatever,4 whether sacred or profane and
barbarous, it has been up to the fancy of children to marry
when their fathers, mothers, and close relatives did not
consent, will it, and promote it. All lawgivers have with-
held this freedom from children and reserved it for the
parents."
"My very dear son," said Gargantua, "I take you at your word,
and priaise God that into your knowledge come only good
and laudable things, and that in through the windows of your
senses nothing has entered the domicile of your mind but
liberal knowledge: for in my time there was a country' on
the continent in which I know not what mole-catching image-
bearers [pastophores taulpetiers]6 just like the pontiffs
of Cybele in Phrygia (if those had been capons, not cocks
full of salaciousness and lasciviousness) who have pro-
nounced laws to married people in the matter of marriage.
And I don't know which I should abominate more: the tyran-
nical presumption of these dreaded mole-catchers who do
not confine themselves within the gates of their mysterious
temples but thrust themselves into dealings diametrically
opposite to their estate, or superstitious stupidity of the
married people who have ratified and given obedience to such
malign and barbaric laws, and do not see (what is clearer
than the morning star) how such connubial ratifications all
work to the advantage of their priests, none to the welfare
and profit of the married people, which is reason enough to
make them suspect as unfair and fraudulent.
"By reciprocal temerity they might establish laws for their
priests on the matter of their ceremonies and sacrifices,
considering that these (men) cut tenths and gnaw from the
gain coming forth from their labors and the sweat of their
hands in order to feed and keep them up in plenty. And such
laws would not (in my judgment) be as perverse and imperti-
nent as theirs are, which they have received from them.
For (as you have very well said) there was no law in the
world that gave children freedom to marry without the avow-
al and consent of their fathers.
"By means of the laws I'm telling you about, there is no scoun-
drel, rogue, criminal, gallows-bird, stinking, putrid, leper, rob-
ber, villain in their countries, who may not violently snatch a-
way whatever girl he may want to choose, however noble,
beautiful, rich, modest, decent you could possibly say, from her
father's house, her mother's arms, in spite of all her relatives,
if the scoundrel has once taken on with him some priest who
will some day participate in the booty.'
"Would the Goths, the Scythians, the Massagetae do worse,
and any more cruel act in an enemy site long besieged by them
and assaulted at great costs?
"And do the grieving fathers and mothers see dragged out of
their houses by a stranger, barbaric, mongrel, all totted, cankered,
cadaverous, poor, wretched, their ever so lovely, delicate, rich,
and healthy daughters, whom they had brought up so fondly in
all virtuous practices, hoping at an opportune time to unite
them in marriage with the sons of their old friends and neigh-
bors, (also) born and brought up with the same care to arrive
at that felicity of marriage, that they should see born lineage
related and inheriting no less the ways of their fathers and
mothers than their goods, furniture, and inheritances. What
sort of spectacle do you think this is for them?
"Do not think that any more enormous was the desolation of the
Roman people and their confederates, on hearing of the death
of Germanicus Drusus [see Tacitus Annals 2.72.82].
"Do not think that any more pitiable was the comfortlessness
of the Lacedaemonians when they saw Grecian Helen furtively
abducted from their country by the Trojan adulterer.
"Do not think that their grief and lamentations are lesser than
those of Ceres when her daughter Proserpina was ravished from
her; than those of Isis at the loss of Osiris; of Venus at the
death of Adonis; of Hercules at the loss of Hylas [Theocritus Idylls 13.55 ff.]; of Hecuba at the removal of Polyxena [see
especially Euripides' Hecuba vs. 391 ff.].
"They, however, are so possessed by fear of the devil and by sup-
erstition that they dare not speak against it, since the mole-
catcher was present and making the contract. And they remain in
their houses, deprived of their dearly-loved daughters, the father
cursing the day and hour of his wedding, the mother sorry that
she had not aborted in such a sad and unhappy child-bearing; and
in tears and lamentations they finish their lives, which by rights
they were to finish in joy and good treatment from them.
"Others have been so beside themselves and virtually crazy with
grief that they have drowned, hanged, killed themselves, unable
to bear such indignity.
"Others have had a more heroic spirit, and, on the example of
Jacob's sons avenging the rape of their sister Dina [Genesis 34],
have found the libertine, in company with his mole-catcher, clan-
destinely soliciting and suborning their daughters; they have cut
them to pieces and furiously killed them on the spot, later throw-
ing their bodies to the wolves and crows amid the fields. At which
most manly and knightly act the mole-catching confriars trembled
and lamented miserably, fashioned horrible complaints, and with
all importunity begged and implored the secular arm and civil jus-
tice, insisting fiercely and demanding that for such cases exem-
plary punishment be exacted.
"But, neither in natural equity; nor in the rights of man, nor in
any imperial law whatever, has there ever been found a clause, par-
agraph, point, or title, by which any penalty or torture was pre-
scribed for such an act, for reason would oppose this, nature find
it repugnant. For there is not a virtuous man in the world who
would not naturally and by reason be more perturbed in mind, hear-
ing the news of his daughter's rape, defamation, and dishonor, than
by that of her death. Now it is a fact that each and every man,
finding the murderer wickedly and treacherously in the act of homi-
cide upon the person of his daughter, by reason may, by nature
should, slay him on the spot, and will not be apprehended by the
law for it. So it is no wonder then if on finding the libertine
trying, on the urging of the mole-catcher to suborn his daughter
and steal her out of his house, he should, even if she were consent-
ing, put them ignominiously to death, and throw their bodies to be
torn by the wild beasts, as being unworthy to receive the sweet,
longed-for, final embrace of that great foster mother Earth, which
we call burial.
"My very dear son, after my death, take care that such laws are not
received in this kingdom; so long as I shall be living and breathing
in this body, I'll see to it in good order, with the help of my God.
So since you're referring your marriage to me, I'm for it, I'll see
to it. Make ready for Panurge's trip. Take with you Epistemon, Frere
Jean, and any others you choose. Do as you will with my treasury.
Whatever you do cannot fail to please me. From my arsenal at Tha-
lasse take whatever ships and equipments you want, such pilots,
sailors, and interpreters as you want, and, when the wind is favor-
able, set sail, in the name and under the protection of God our
Savior.
"During your absence, I'll make the preparations for both a wife
for you and a feast that I want to make famous, if ever there was
one, at your wedding."
How Pantagruel made his preparations
to put out to sea and
of the herb named Pantagruelion.
Afew days later Pantagruel, taking leave of the good Gargantua as he
was praying earnestly for his son's trip, arrived at the port of
Thalasse, near Saint-Malo, accompanied by Epistemon, Frere Jean des
Entommeures, abbot of Theleme, and others of the noble house, notab-
ly Xenomanes the great traveler and voyager across perilous ways,'
who had come at Panurge's command, because he held some manor or
others as a mesne fief 2 of the seignory of Salmagundi.On arriving
there, Pantagruel got the ships equipped and ready, in the number
of those that Ajax of Salamis long ago had brought the Greeks as a
convoy to Troy. Sailors, pilots, rowers, interpreters, artisans, war-
riors, victuals, artillery, munitions, clothes, cash, and other goods,
he took and brought on board, as was necessary for a long and risky trip.
Among other things, I saw that he had a great store loaded on of his herb
Pantagruelion, both green and raw and prepared and put up.3
The herb Pantagruelion has a small root, rather tough and rough, ending
in a blunt white point, with a few filaments, and it burrows no deeper
than a cubit into the ground. From the root rises a single stem, round,
like a cane, green on the outside, paling to white within, concave, like
the stem of smyrnium olusatrum [hemp], beans, gentian; woody, straight,
friable, a bit crenelated in the form of slightly striated columns, full
of fibers, in which consists the entire worth of the herb, especially in
the part called mesa, meaning middle, and that which is called mylasea.
The height of it is usually from five to six feet. Sometimes it exceeds
the height of a lance: to wit, when it encounters soil that is sweet,
damp, light, humid but not cold, as is that of Olonne and that of Rosea,
near Praeneste in Sabine territory, and when it has no lack of rain around
the times of the fishermen's festivals' and in the summer solstice. And
then it surpasses the height of trees and is called, as you say, dendro-
malache [Greek for "tree-mallow"], on the authority of Theophrastus [see
his Inquiry into Plants], although it is an herb dying each year, not a
tree enduring in its root, trunk, stock, and branches. And from the stem
come out strong branches.
It has leaves three times longer than wide, always green, rather rough
like bugloss, rather tough, indented all around like a sickle and like
betony, ending in a point, like a Macedonian pike, and like a lancet that
surgeons use. The shape of it is not very different from that of leaves of
ash or agrimony; and so much like liverwort that many herbalists have
called it cultivated agrimony, and called liverwort Pantagruelion run wild.
And they are in rows spread out at equal distapces around the stem, in the
number of either five or seven in each row. So much has Nature cher-
ished it that she has endowed it in its leaves with these two odd numbers,
so divine and mysterious. The odor of these is strong and unpleasant to
delicate noses.
The seed appears near the head of the stem and a little below. Indi-
vidual seeds are as numerous as of any herb there is, spherical, oblong,
or rhomboid, jet black or somewhat tawny, rather tough, covered with a
frail coating, delicious to all songbirds, such as linnets, goldfinches,
larks, green Provence canaries, yellowhammers, and many others; but in man
they extinguish the generative seed in anyone who should eat many of
them often; and although long ago, among the Greeks, they used to make
of them certain kinds of snack, tarts, andt`fritters, which they ate after
supper as sweetmeats and to enjoy the wine more; yet the fact is that they
are hard to digest and bad for the stomach; they engender bad blood,
and by their excessive heat they, hit the ,brain and fill the head with
harmful and painful vapors. And—as in many plants there are two sexes,
male and female which we see in laurels, palms, oaks, yews, asphodels,
mandragora, ferns, agarics, birthwort, cypress, turpentine, pennyroyal,
peonies, and others—so in this herb there is a male, which bears no
flower but abounds in seed, and a female, which abounds in little whitish
flowers, useless, and bears no seed worth noting, and, as with herbs like
it, has a leaf wider and less tough than the male, and does not grow to
the
same height.
They sow the Pantagruelion at the first coming of the swallows; they
take it out of the ground when the cicadas begin to get hoarse.
How the famous Pantagruelion
is to be prepared and put to use.
PANTAGRUELION is prepared under the autumnal equinox in various
ways, according to the fancy of the peoples and the diversity of the
regions. Pantagruel's first instructions were: strip the stem of its leaves
and seed; macerate it in standing, not running water for five days, if the
weather is dry and the water warm, for nine to twelve if the weather is
cloudy and the water cold; then dry it in the sun; then in the shade strip
off the cortex and separate the fibers (in which, as we have said, consists
its entire worth and value) from the woody part, which is useless, except
to make a bright flame, to light the fire and to fill pig's bladders for
the amusement of little children. Gourmands sometimes use it, on the sly,
as siphons to suck up and draw in by one's breath the new wine through
the bunghole.
Some modern Pantagruelists, to avoid the manual labor it would take
to make such a separation, use certain crushing instruments made in the
form in which angry Juno held her hands bound together to prevent the
child-bearing of Alcmene, mother of Hercules; and, through this, they
shatter and pound the woody part and make it useless, to salvage the
fibers from it. In this sole preparation agree those who, against every-
one's opinion and in a way paradoxical to all philosophers, earn their
living by walking backward.2 Those who want to bring it up to a more ev-
ident value do what we are told was the pastime of the three sister Fates,
the nocturnal amusement of the noble Circe, and the long-lasting excuse
of Penelope to her foppish suitors during the absence of her husband
Ulysses. Thus it is put in possession of its inestimable virtues, part of
which I will explain to you (for to explain the whole lot is impossible)
if first I may interpret for you the denomination thereof.
I find that plants are named in various ways. Some have taken the name
of the man who first discovered them, revealed, cultivated; domesticated,
and appropriated them; as mercuriale [dog's mercury], from Mercury; pana-
cea, from Panacea, daughter of Aesculapius; armoise [motherwort], from
Artemis; who is Diana; eupatorium, from King Eupator [of Pontus]; tele-
phiuin [orpine], from Telephus; euphorbia, from Euphorbus, King Juba's
doctor; clymenos [honeysuckle], from Clymenus; alcibiadion, from Alci-
biades; gentian from Gentius, king of Slavonia.
And so highly was esteemed of old this prerogative of giving one's
name to herbs discovered that, even a controversy was stirred up between
Neptune and Pallas over which one the land newly discovered by them
both together should take its name from, land which later was called
Athens after Athene, that is to say Minerva; likewise Lyncus, king of
Scythia, made a hard try to kill, by treachery, young Triptolemus,3 sent
by Ceres to show men the still unknown froment [wheat],4 so that by his
death he might impose his own name, and, to his immortal honor and
glory, be called the discoverer of this grain so useful and necessary to
human life. For which treachery he was transformed by Ceres into a lynx
or bobcat. Likewise, great long wars were stirred up between certain
transient kings in Cappadocia over this sole dispute, after which one's
name should be named one single herb, which, for such a dispute, was
called polemonia, like "warlike."
Others have retained the name of the regions from which they were
brought, such as Medie apples, those are lemons from Edeia, in which
they were first found; Punic apples, those are pomegranates brought from
Punicia (that's Carthage); ligusticum (that's lovage), brought from Ligu-
ria (that's the coast off Genoa); rhubarbe, from the barbarian river named
Rha,5 as Ammianus attests; santonica; fenugreek; castanes [chestnuts];'
persicae [peaches]; sabine [juniper],8 stoechas,9 from my Iles d'Hyeres,
in antiquity called Stoechades; spica celtica [a kind of nard]- and others.
Others have their name from antiphrasis and contrariety: such as absynthe
and its opposite to pynthe,'° for it is disagreeable to drink; holosteon
(that's tout de os) [meaning "all of bone"], on the contrary,
for no plant
in nature is more frail and tender than it is.
Others are named for their virtues and operations, such as aristolochia,"
which helps women in childbirth; lichen, which cures the skin diseases
that bear its name; mallow,'2 which mollifies; callithrichum,B which makes
hair beautiful; alyssum, ephemerum, bechium," nasturtium, which is garden
cress, hyoscyame [pig-bean], henbane,15 and others.
Others, by the admirable qualities that have been observed in them, such
as heliotrope,14 that's soulcil [marigold], which follows the sun; for
when the sun rises it blooms; when it climbs, it rises, when it sinks it
droops, when it goes down and hides, it closes; adiantum," for it never
holds moisture/although it grows near water and may be sunk under
water a long time; ilhieracium [hawkweed],'8 eryngo, and others.
Others, by metamorphosis of men and women of similar name like daphne
(that's the laurel), from Daphne; the myrtle, from Myrsine; the pitys,
from Pitys; the cynara (that's the artichoke); narcissus, saffron, smilax,
and others.
Others, by similitude, like hippuris (that's prelle), for it looks like a
horse's tail; alopecuros, like a fox's tail; psylion, which looks like a
flea; delphinium, like a dolphin; bugloss, like an ox-tongue; iris, like
the rainbow in its flowers; myosotis, like a mouse's ear; coronopous,
like a crow's foot, and others.
By reciprocal denomination [Par reciproque denomination] are named
the Fabii, from beans [febves]; the Pisos, from peas; the Lentuli, from
lentils; the Ciceros, from chickpeas; as also, by loftier resemblance is
named the Venus's navel, Venus's hair, Venus's basin, Jupiter's beard,
Jupiter's eye, Mars's blood, Mercury's fingers (hermodactyles), and o-
thers.
Others, by their forms; like trevoil, which has three leaves; pentaphyllon,
which has five leaves; serpolet, because it creeps [serpentlike] along the
ground; helxine [or pellitory]; petasites [or sunshades]; myrobalans [plums]
which Arabs call been, for they look like acorns and are oleaginous.
Why it is called Pantagruelion,
and of the admirable virtues thereof.
IN all these ways (except the fabulous, for God forbid we should use
fable in this ever so truthful history), the herb is called Pantagruelion.
For Pantagruel was the discoverer of it: I don't mean as regards the plant,
but as to a certain use, which is more abhorred and hated by thieves, more
contrary and hostile to them, than are dodder and choke-week to flax,
cattail to fern, horsetail to reapers,' broom rape [orobanche] to chickpeas,
darnel [aegilops] to barley, hatchet-vetch [securidaca] to lentils, antra-
nium to beans, tares to wheat, ivy to walls; than the water lily and nym-
phoea heraclia, to bawdy monks; than the rod and birch to schoolboys at
Navarre;2 than is the cabbage to the bile, garlic to the magnet, onion to
the sight, fern seed to pregnant women, willow seed to depraved nuns,
the shade of the yew tree to any who sleep under it, aconite to leopard
and wolves, the smell of the fig tree to angry bulls, hemlock to goslings,
purslane to teeth, oil to trees. For many of these [robbers] we have seen,
by such a use, their lives ended, strung up high and short, on the example
of Phyllis, queen of the Thracians; Bonosus, emperor of Rome; Amata,
wife of King Latinus; Iphis, Auctolia, Lycambes, Arachne, Phaedra, Leda,
Acheus, king of Lydia, and others; offended at this alone, that without
their being otherwise ill, by Pantagruelion people stopped up the passages
by which good remarks come out and good morsels come in, more
banefully than would a bad choking spell or mortal quinsy.
Others we have heard, at the moment when Atropos was cutting the
thread of their life, grievously complaining and lamenting that Pantagruel
had them by the throat. But, alackaday! it wasn't Pantagruel at all; he
never was an executioner; it was Pantagruelion, performing its function as
a halter and serving them as a cravat. And they were speaking inaccurately
and in a solecism, unless they could be excused for it as a synecdoche,
taking the discovery for the discoverer, as we say Ceres for bread,
Bacchus for wine. I swear to you here and now‘by the bright remarks
that are in that bottle yonder cooling in that' tub, that the noble
Pantagruel never took anyone by the throat, unless those who are negli-
gent about forestalling imminent thirst.
In another way it is called Pantagruelion by a similarity. For Pantagruel,
when he was born into the world, was as tall as the herb I'm telling you
about, and this measurement was taken easily, seeing that he was born in
a season of drought, when they gather tee said herb, anwhen Icarus's
dog,3 by his barking at the sun, makes everyone a troglodyte, forcing
people to live iri caves or cellars or other underground places.
In another way it is called Pantagruelion,by its virtues and special prop-
erties. For, even as Pantagruel has been the ideal and exemplar of all
joyous perfection .(I think none of you drinkers is in any doubt about
that), so in Pantagruelion I recognize so many virtues, so much energy, so
many perfections, so many admirable effects, that ifit had been known in
its qualities when (by the account of the Prophet)4 the trees held an
election of a wooden king to rule and govern them, without a doubt it
would have won a plurality of the votes and suffrages.
Shall I say more? If Oxylus, son of Orius, had engen ered it by his sister
Hamadryas, he would have taken more delight in its worth alone than in
all his eight children, so celebrated by the mythologists, who have set
their names into. eternal remembrance. The eldest, a daughter, was named
Vine; the next-born. son, was named Fig-tree; another, Walnut-tree;
another, Oak; another, Sorb-apple tree; another, Nettle-tree; another,
Po lar; the last was named Elm and was a great surgeon in his time.
I forbear to tell you how the juice thereof, squeezed out and dropped
into the ears, kills every kind of vermin that might have bred there by
putrefaction and any other creature that had got in. If you put some of
this juice intb a pail of water, you immediately see the water congealed,
as if it were curds, so great is its power. And water thus curdled is a
handy remedy for horses with colic and griping pains.
The root thereof, cooked in water, softens shrunken sinews, contracted
joints, sclerotic gouties, and gouty knots.
If you want to heal a burn promptly, whether from water or fire, apply
to it some raw Pantagruelion, that is, just as it comes out of the ground,
without any other preparation or compounding.- And be careful to change
it as soon as you see it drying on the burned spot.
Without it, kitchens would be a disgrace, tables loathsome, even were
they covered with every exquisite dish; beds without delight [les lictz
sans deices], although abounding in gold, silver, Old and silver alloy,
ivory, and porphyry. Without it, millers would not carry wheat to the
mill, or bring back flo . Without it, how would advocates' pleas be
carried to the courtroom? How would plaster, without it, be carried to
the workshop? Without it, how would water be drawn from the well?
Without it, what would scribes, copyists, secretaries, and scriveners do?
Wouldn't official documents and rent-rolls perish? Wouldn't the noble art
of printing perish? What would they make the frames of? How would they
ring the bells? ith it are the priests of Isis adorned, the image bearers
cloth-
ed, all human beings covered in their original positon. Not all the wool-
bearing trees of the Seres,5 the cotton bushes of Tylos and the Persian
Gulf, or those of the Arabs or the vines of Malta, clothe as many people
as does this herb all aloneTtprotects armies against cold and rain, surely
more adequately than skins used to do. It protects theaters and amphithe-
aters against the heat, surrounds woods and groves for the pleasure of
hunters, goes down into both fresh and sea water to the advantage of
fishermen. By it are shaped and prepared for use ordinary boots, high
boots, buskins, shoes, pumps, slippers, gym shoes. By it bows are strung, crossbows bent, slingshots made. And, as if it were a sacred plant, like
verbena, and revered by the Manes and Lemurs, dead human bodies
are not buried without it.
I will say more. By means of this herb, invisible substances are visibly
arrested, caught, detained, and as it were imprisoned. By their seizure
and arrest great heavy mill wheels are nimbly turned for the notable pro-
fit of human life-And I am amazed how the discovery of such a practice
was hidden for so many centuries from the ancient philosophers, in view
of the priceless utility that comes out of it, in view of the intolerable
labor they endured without it in their mills.
Thanks to it by retention of the waves of the air, the stout cargo ships,
the ample cabined barges, the mighty galleons, the ships holding a thou-
sand or ten thousand men, are launched out of their stations and driven
forward at the will of the commanders.
Thanks to it, the nations that Nature seemed to keep hidden, impenetrable,
and unknown, have come to us, and we to them: a thing the birds would not
do, whatever their lightness of wing and whatever freedom is given them
by Nature for swimming in the air. Taprobrana [Sri Lanka, once Ceylon]
has seen Lapland; Java has seen the Riphaean Mountains; Phebol shall see
Theleme; the Icelanders and Greenlanders shall see the Euphrates. By it
Boreas has seen the manor of Auster; Eurus has visited Zephyros. With the
result that the Celestial Intelligences, the gods of both sea and land,
have all been frightened by this, seeing, by the use of this blessed Pan-
tagruelion, the Arctic peoples, in full sight of the Antarctics, cross the
Atlantic Ocean, pass the two tropics, turn down beneath the torrid zone,
measure the entire zodiac, sport beneath the equinoctial line, have both
poles in sight level with their horizon.
The Olympian gods in similar fright have said: "Pantagruel has plunged us
into a novel and irksome kind of thought, more than the AloIdae ever did,
by the use and virtues of his herb. He will shortly be married, and by his
wife will have children. This destiny we cannot contravene, for it has pass-
ed through the hands and spindles of the sister Fates, daughters of Neces-
sity. Perhaps by his children may be discovered an herb of similar energy,
by means of which humans will be able to visit the sources of hailstorms,
the floodgates of rains, and the workshop producing lightnings will be able
to invade the regions of the Moon, enter the territory of the celestial
signs, and there take lodging, some at the Golden Eagle,' others at the
Lamb, others at the Crown, others at the Harp, others at the Silver Lion sit
down at table with us, and take our goddesses as wives, which are the only
ways to be deified."
Finally they set the remedy-for obviating this under deliberation and counsel.
How a certain kind of Pantagruelion
cannot be consumed by fire.
WHAT I have told you is great and admirable. But ifyou should be willing
to
risk believing some other divine property of this sacred Pantagruelion, I
would tell it to you. Believe it or not, it's all one to me. Enough for me
to have told you the truth. Truth I will tell you. But, in order to get into
it, for it's rather rough and—hard to get at, I ask you this: if I had put
into this bottle two gills' of wine and one of water, very well mixed toge-
ther, how would you get them apart? How would you separate them, so that
you would give me back the water without the wine, the wine, without the
water, in the same measure in which I had put them in?
Put it another way: If your carriers and boatmen, bringing us provision for
your households a certain number of casks, pipes, and puncheons of Graves,
Orleans, Beaune, and Mirevaux wines had drunk up and adulterated half of
them, filling the rest with water, as the Limousins do by the bootful in
carting the wines of Argenton and Saint-Gaultier, how would you get the wat-
er completely out? How would you purify them? I quite understand you're go-
ing to tell me about an ivy funnel. That's down in writing. It's true, and
attested by a thousand experiments. You knew it already. But those who
didn't know it and never saw it wouldn't think it possible. Let's move on.
If we were in the time of Sulla. Marius, Caesar, and other Roman emperors,
or in the time of our ancient druids, who had the dead bodies of their rel-
atives and lords burned, and you wanted to drink the ashes of your wife or
father in an infusion of some good white wine, as Artemisia did the ashes
of her husband Mausolus, or otherwise preserve them entire in some urn or
reliquary, how would you salvage these ashes apart and separate from the
ashes of the pyre and funeral fire? Answer me.
By my foot. you'd have plenty of trouble. I'll discharge you of it. and tell
you that if you take as much of this heavenly Pantagruelion as you'd need
to cover the body of the deceased and completely enclose the said body in
it, tie it and sew it up with the same material; then just throw it on the
fire, however great and blazing it be; the fire, through the Pantagruelion,
will bum and reduce to ashes the body and bones; the Pantagruelion not only
will not be consumed or burned, and will not lose a single atom of the ash-
es enclosed inside, will not take on a single atom of the ashes of the pyre,
but will finally be drawn out of the fire more beautiful, white, and clean
than when you threw it in. For that reason it is called asbestos! You will
find plenty of it in Carpasium, and in the region of Syene, quite cheap.
O what a great thine 0 what an admirable thine Fire, which destroys. wastes,
and consumes everything, cleans, purges, and whitens this Carpasian asbes-
tine Pantagruelion alone. If, like Jews and unbelievers. you don't believe
this and ask for demonstration and a customary sign, take a fresh egg and
wrap it all around with this divine Pantagruelion. So wrapped, put it in
a
brazier as big and fiery as you like. Leave it in as long as you want. Fin-
ally you will take out the egg hard and burned, without alteration, mutation,
or heating, of the holy Pantagruelion. For less than fifty thousand Bordeaux
crowns, reduced to the twelfth part of a pithe (quarter denier', you'll make
the experiment.
Don't talk to me about that paragon the salamander:' that's a hoax. I do con-
fess that a little straw fire invigorates and gladdens it. But I assure you
that in a great furnace, like any other living thing, it is suffocated and
consumed. We have seen this by experience. Galen, long ago, had confirmed and
demonstrated it, lib. 3 De temperamentis Iin his third book, On the humors],
and Dioscorides maintains it, lib. 2 (Book 2).
Don't talk to me about feather alum,' or the wooden tower in Peiracus that L.
Sulla never could burn, because Archclaus, governor of the town for King Mid-
nidates, had completely coated it with alum.
Don't give me here the comparison with that tree that Alexander Cornelius name-
d eon, and said it was like the oak that bears the mistletoe and could not be
consumed or damaged by either water or fire, any more than the oak's mistletoe,
and said that of this wood had been made and built the ever so famous ship Argo.
Try and find somebody to believe that; count me out.
Don't tell me about that other paragon, however marvelous it may be. that kind
of tree that you see around the mountains of Briancon and Ambrun, which of its
roots produces for us that good agaric; of its body gives us that resin so excel-
lent that Galen dares to match it to turpentine; on its delicate leaves catches
for us that fine honey from heaven that is manna; and although it is gummy and
oily, it cannot be consumed by fire. You name it larix in Greek and Latin; the
people of the Alps name it meize; the Antenorides (Paduans] and Venetians, larege.
From which was named Larignum the castle in Piedmont that foiled Julius Caesar
on his way to Gaul!
Julius Caesar had issued a command to all the residents and inhabitants of the
Alps and Piedmont to bring victuals and provisions to the stations set up along
the military road, for his army as it passed through. All obeyed except those
who were in Larignum, who, trusting in the natural strength of the place, refine-
d the contribution. To chastise them for this refusal, the emperor had his army
head straight for the place. In front of the castle gate was a tower built of
stout beams of larix, stacked and bound crosswise upon one another like a wood-
pile, rising up to such a height that from the machicolations one could easily
repel with stones and bars those who came near. When Caesar heard that those in-
side had no other defenses than stones and bars, he ordered his soldiers to throw
around it fagots aplenty and set fire to them, which was instantly done. When
the fagots were set on fire, the flame was so great and high that it covered the
whole castle. Whereby they thought that soon afterward the tower would be burned
down and consumed. But when the flames died and the fagots were consumed, the
tower appeared, whole and not a bit damaged by it. Considering which, Caesar or-
dered that all around it, outside a stone's throw, they build a network of ditch-
es and trenches.
Thereupon the Latignans surrendered on terms. And from their account Caesar learn-
ed of the admirable nature of this wood, which of itself makes neither fire, flame,
nor charcoal. And in this respect it would deserve to be set on the same level as
real Pantagruclion?and the more so because Pantagruel willed that of this be made
all the doors, gates, windows, gutters, coping and wainscoting, of Thelame: like-
wise he cov-ered with it the sterns, prows, galleys, hatches, gangways, and fore-
casdes of his great carracks, ships, galleys, galleons, brigantines, light galleys,
and other vessels of his arsenal at Thalasse?were it not that larix, in a great
furnace of fire coming from other kinds of wood, is finally marred and destroyed,
as are stones in a lime kiln: asbestine Panagruelion is renewed and cleaned by
this rather than marred or altered. Therefore,
Sabaeans, Arabs, Indians, refrain
From praising incense, myrrh, and ebony so.
Come see the goodly things of this domain,
And from our herb take seed back when you go;
Then, if within your lands this gift can grow,
Give thanks to heaven by the million,
Rejoicing that this reign in France can show
The coming of Pantagruelion
End of the Third Book of the heroic
deeds and sayings of the
good Pantagruel.
