To The Readers
Author's Prologue
I. Of the genealogy and antiquity of Gargantua.
2. The antidoted Frigglefraggles, found in an ancient monument.
3. How Gargantua was was carried eleven months in is mother's belly.
4. How Gargamelle, while pregnant with Gargantua, ate a great abundance of tripes.
5. The palaver of the potted.
6. How Gargantua was born in a very strange fashion.
7. How the name was given to Gargantua, and how he inhaled the plot wine.
8. How they dressed Gargantua.
9. Of the colors and livery of Gargantua.
10. Of what is signified by the colors white and blue.
11. Of the childhood of Gargantua.
12. Of Gargantua's hobbyhorses.
13. How Grandgousier recognized the marvelous mind of Gargantua by the invention of an ass-wipe.
14. How Gargantua was instructed by a sophist in Latin letters.
15. How Gargantua was put under other teachers.
16. How Gargantua was sent to Paris, and of the enormous mare that
bore him, and how she killed the ox-flies of Beauce.
17. How Gargantua paid his welcome to the Parisians and how he
took the great bells of Notre Dame Church.
18. How Janotus de Bragmardo was sent to recover the great bells
from Gargantua.
19. The harangue of Master Janotus de Bragmardo to Gargantua to
recover the bells.
20. How the sophist took home his cloth and how he had a suit
against the other masters.
21. Gargantua's mode of study according to the teaching of his
sophist tutors.
22. Gargantua's games.
23. How Gargantua was taught by Ponocrates in such a regimen that
he did not waste an hour of the day.
24. How Gargantua used his time when the air was rainy.
25. How there was aroused between the fouaciers of Lerne and the
men of Gargantua's country a great dispute from which were
built up great wars.
26. How the inhabitants of Lerne, at the command of Picrochole,
their king, made an unexpected attack on Gargantua's
shepherds.
27. How a monk of Seuille saved the abbey close from being sacked
by the enemy.
28. How Picrochole took by storm La Roche Clermauld, and the
regret and difficulty that Grandgousier felt about undertaking
war.
29. The tenor of the letter that Grandgousier wrote to Gargantua.
30. How Ulrich Gallet was sent to Picrochole.
31. The speech made by Ulrich Gallet to Picrochole.
32. How Grandgousier, to buy peace, had the fouaces returned.
33. How certain counselors of Picrochole, by rash advice, placed him
in the utmost peril.
34. How Gargantua left the city of Paris to succor his country, and
how Gymnaste met the enemy.
35. How Gymnaste killed Captain Tripet and others of Picrochole's
army.
36. How Gargantua demolished the château of the Ford of Vede, and
how they crossed the ford. 84 How Gargantua, in combing his hair,
made artillery shells fall out of it.
37. How Gargantua in a salad ate six pilfiims.
38. How the monk was feasted by Gargantua, and his fine talk at
supper.
39. Why monks are shunned by everyone and why some people have
bigger noses than others.
40. How the monk put Gargantua to sleep, and of his hours and
breviary.
41. How the monk encourages his companions and how he hanged
from a tree:
42. How Picrochole's scouting party was met by Gargantua, and how
, the monk killed Captain Tiravant [Forward March], and then
was taken prisoner by the enemy.
43. How the monk got rid of his guards, and how Picrochole's
scouting party was defeated.
44. How the monk brought the pilgrims, and the kind words that
Grandgousier spoke to them.
45. How Grandgousier humanely treated his prisoner Blowhard.
46. How Grandgousier sent for his legions, and how Blowhard killed
Hastycalf, then was killed by order of Picrochole.
47. How Gargantua attacked Picrochole in La Roche Clermauld, and
defeated the said Picrochole's army.
48. How Picrochole in flight was surprised by ill fortune, and what
Gargantua did after the battle.
49. The speech that Gargantua made to the vanquished.
50. How the Gargantuist victors were rewarded after the battle.
51. How Gargantua built for the monk the abbey of Theleme.
52. How the abbey of the Thelemites was built and endowed.
53. Inscription placed over the great gate of Theleme.
54. How the manor of the Thelemites ran.
55. How the religious of Theleme, men and women, were
dressed.
56. How the Thelemites were regulated in their way of life.
57. A prophetic riddle.



　　　　　　　　To The Readers



You friends and readers of this book, take heed: Pray put all
perturbation far behind, And do not be offended as you read:
It holds no evil to corrupt the mind; Though here perfection
may be hard to find, Unless in point of laughter and good cheer;
No other subject can my heart hold dear, Seeing the grief that
robs you of your rest: Better a laugh to write of than a tear,
For it is laughter that becomes man best.



　　　　　　　　　　Author's Prologue




Most illustrious topers, and you, most precious poxies--for to you, not to others,
my writings are dedicated--Alcibiades, in Plato's dialogue entitled The Symposium,
praising his master Socrates, incontrovertibly the prince of philosophers, among
other things says he is like the Sileni. Sileni were in olden times little boxes,
such as we see nowadays in apothecaries' shops, painted on the outside with merry
frivolous pictures, such as harpies, satyrs, bridled goslings, saddled ducks, fly-
ing goats, harnessed stags, and other such paintings imagined at will to set everyone
laughing (such was Silenus, master of good old Bacchus); but inside they preserved
fine drugs such as balm, amergris, amomum, musk, civet, precious stones, and other
valuables.

Such he said was Socrates, because, seeing him from the outside and estimating him
by his external appearance, you wouldn't have given a shred of onion peel for him,
so ugly in body was he and ridiculous in bearing, pointed nose, glance like a bull's,
face of a madman, simple in manners, rustic in clothing, poor in fortune, unlucky in
women, inept for all offices of the commonwealth, always gibbering, always dissembl-
ing his divine learning, but, on opening the box, you would have found inside a hea-
venly drug beyond price: superhuman understanding, wondrous virtue, invincible cou-
rage, matchless sobriety, certain contentment, perfect assurance, incredible disesteem
for everything on account of which humans so lie awake, run, labor, sail, and fight.

To what purpose, you may well ask, does this prelude and essay point? It's inasmuch
as you, my good disciples, and a few other unoccupied madmen, reading the merry titles
of certain books of our creating, such as Gargantua, Pantagruel, Tosspint, On the dig-
nity of codpieces, On peas with bacon cum commento, etc., too easily judge that inside
there is nothing treated but mockeries, tomfooleries, and merry falsehoods, seeing that
the outward sign (that is the title) is commonly received without further inquiry as
derision and jest. But it is not fitting to assess the works of humans so lightly, for
you say yourselves that the robe does not make the monk, and a man may wear a Spanish
cape who in courage has no relation to Spain. That is why you must open the book and
carefully consider what is expounded in it. Then you will recognize that the drug con-
tained inside is of quite other value than the box promised, that is to say that the
matters here treated are not so foolish as the title above claimed.

And, even in case in the literal sense you find these matters rather jolly and corre-
sponding to the name, you should not stop there, as the Sirens' song, but interpret in
a higher sense what peradventure you thought was said casually. Did you ever pick a
lock and swipe some bottles? Son of a bitch! Call back to memory the way you looked.
Did you ever see a dog coming upon some marrow bone? That is, as Plato says, Book 2
of The Republic, the most philosophic animal in the world.32 If seen one you have, you
were able to note with what devotion he watches it, with what care he guards it, with
what fervor he holds it, with what prudence he starts on it, with what affection he
breaks it, with what diligence he sucks it. What leads him to do this? What is the
hope of his endeavor? What good does he aspire to? Nothing more than a little mar-
row. True it is that this little is more delicious than the much of all the others,
because marrow is the food elaborated to perfection by nature, as Galen says, iij
Facu. natural., and xj De usu parti. [On the natural faculties, Book 3, and On the
parts of the body and their functions, Book II].

After this example it behooves you to be wise enough to sniff out and assess these
exquisite books, to be light footed in pursuit and bold in the encounter; then by
careful reading and frequent meditation, break the bone and suck out the substant-
ific marrow--that is to say what I mean by these Pythagorean symbols, in the certain
hope of being made more astute and brave by the said reading; for in this you will
find quite a different taste and more abstruse doctrine, which will reveal to you
some very lofty sacraments and horrific mysteries, concerning both our political
state and our domestic life.

Do you believe in all good faith that Homer, writing the Iliad and Odyssey, ever
thought of all the allegories with which he has been calked by Plutarch, heraclides
Ponticus, Eustathius, Comutus, and what Poliziano stole from them?

If you believe it, you come nowhere near my opinion by either hand or foot, which
affirms that these were as little thought of by Homer as were the sacraments of the
Gospel by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, as a certain Friar Booby [Frere Lubin], a real
bacon-snatcher, has tried to demonstrate, on the chance that he might meet up with
folk as crazy as he, and, as the proverb says, a cover worthy of the pot.

If you don't believe that, on what grounds will you not do so with these merry new
chronicles, although, while dictating them, I had no more thought of it than you,
who peradventure were drinking as I was? For in the composition of this lordly book,
I neither wasted nor ever employed any more or other time than that which was est-
ablished for taking my bodily refection, that is to say eating and drinking. And
indeed that is the right time for writing these lofty matters and this profound
knowledge, as Homer well knew how to do, paragon of all philologists, and Ennius,
father of the Latin poets, as Horace testifies, although one boor said that his
songs smelled more of wine than of oil!

One no-good says as much of my books; but shit on him! The fra-grance of wine, how
much more appetizing, laughing, inviting, heavenly, and delicious it is than that
of oil! And I shall glory as much in people's saying about me that I have spent
more on wine than on oil as Demosthenes did when they said of him that he spent
more on oil than on wine. To me it is due honor and glory to be called and reputed
a good fellow and jolly companion, and in that name I am welcome in all good com-
panies of Pantagruelists.

Demosthenes was reproached by one sourpuss claiming that his orations smelled like
the cleanup rag of a filthy dirty oil-seller. Therefore interpret all my deeds and
words in the most perfect sense; hold in reverence the cheese-shaped brain that is
stuffing you with these fine idiocies, and, as best you can, always keep merry.

　　　　　　　So now rejoice, my loves, and merrily read the rest, all for
　　　　　　　　　　the ease of your body and advantage of your
　　　　　　　　　　　　kidneys! But listen, you donkeypricks
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　(may boils and blains rack you!),
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　remember to drink to me
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　in return, and I'll
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　drink to you all
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　on the spot.



CHAPTER 1


Of the genealogy
and antiquity of Gargantua.


I refer you to the Pantagrueline chronicle to renew your knowledge of the genealogy
and antiquity from which Gargantua came to us. In this you will hear at greater length
how the giants were born into this world, and how from them, in a direct line, sprang
Gargantua, father of Pantagruel; and you will not be angry if for the present I for-
bear, although the matter is such that the more it was recalled, the more your lord-
ships would like it; for which you have the authority of Plato, in his Philebus and
Gorgias, and of Flaccus, who says that some accounts, no doubt such as these, are
all the more delightful the more they are repeated.

Would God that everyone knew his own genealogy as certainly, from Noah's Ark down
to this day! I think that many today are emperors, kings, dukes, princes, and popes on
earth, who are descended from relic-peddlers and firewood-haulers; just as, conversely,
many are poorhouse beggars, wretched and suffering, who are descended from the blood
and lineage of great kings and emperors, considering the prodigious transfer of reigns
and empires: from the Assyrians to the Medes, from the Medes to the Persians, from
the Persians to the Macedonians, from the Macedonians to the Romans, from the Romans
to the Greeks, from the Greeks to the French.33

And, to give you knowledge of myself who am speaking, I think I am descended from some
rich king or prince of the olden times; for you never saw a man who had more desire
than I do to be a king and rich, so as to live luxuriously, do no work, not worry, and
enrich my friends and all men of worth and learning. But in this I take comfort, that
in the other world I shall in fact be greater than at present I would even dare to wish.
Do you comfort your unhappiness in such a thought, or a better one, and drink cool,
if that can be done.

To return to our sheep,34 I tell you that by a sovereign gift of the heavens there has
been preserved for us the antiquity and genealogy of Gargantua, more complete than any
other except that of the Messiah, which I do not speak of, for I have no right to, also
the devils (that is, the calumniators and hypocrites) oppose it. And it was found by
Jean Audeau in a field he owned near the Gualeau Arch, below the Olive, as you head
for Narsay; in having its ditches cleaned, the diggers with their picks struck a great
bronze tomb, immeasurably long, for they never found the end of it because it went too
far into the mill-dams of the Vienne. Opening this in a certain place stamped on the
outside with a goblet around which was written in Etruscan the letters HIC BIBITUR
[HERE YOU DRINK], they found nine flagons in the order in which they put nine-pins in
Gascony, of which the one in the middle covered a huge, stout, big, gray, pretty lit-
tle moldy little book smelling more but not better than roses.

In this was the said genealogy found, written out at great length in chancery letters,
not on paper, not on parchment, but on elm bark; these, however, so worn with age that
you could hardly make out three in a row.

I, unworthy as I am, was summoned to it, and, with great reinforcement from spectacles,
practicing the art by which one can read invisible letters, as Aristotle teaches,35 I
transcribed it, as you can see by Pantagruelizing, that is to say by drinking your fill
and reading the horrific deeds of Pantagruel.

At the end of the book was a little treatise entitled The Antidoted Frigglefraggles.
The rats and moths, or (lest I tell a lie) other harmful creatures had nibbled off the
beginning; the rest I have inserted here below, out of reverence for antiquity.



CHAPTER 2


The antidoted Frigglefraggles,
found in an ancient monument.


ave?36 ome the man who laid the Cimbrians low,
through the air, fearing the morning dew.
'his coming made the basins overflow,
As butter in his drawers and fell right through.
--hen grandmother was sprinkled with it too.
she cried aloud: "Please, mister, fish him out;
His beard is filthy from that loathsome stew;
Or bring a ladder if there's one about."

To lick his slipper, some folks used to say,
Helped more than the indulgences you buy;
But an affected blackguard passed that way,
Fresh from the hollow where the sunfish lie,
Who said: "Hands off, lords, honor God on high;
The eel is here, and in this hidden spot;
There you will find (if from close up you spy)
Deep down inside his arnice's greatblot."

When time came for the chapter to be read,
Inside, a young calls horns was all they found:
"I feel my miter's depths so cold," he said,
"My brain is freezing there and all around."
They warmed him with the scent of turnip-ground,
And he, contented, stayed home by the fire,
Once a new lime tree on a little mound
We made for shrewish people full of ire.

Their talk was all about Saint Patrick's Hole,
Gibraltar, many other holes as well:
If these as one deep scar could be made whole,
And put an end to every coughing spell.
Since it was thought discourteous, strange to tell,
To see them thus yawning in every breeze;
If haply well closed up. as in a spell,
They could be used as human guarantees.

This verdict left the raven plucked and bald,
By Hercules, of Libya well rid.
"What?" Minos said, "why am I too not called?
Except for me. everyone else is bid.
And then they'd have me keep my wish quite hid
To furnish them oysters and frogs galore!
Damme if ever I (which God forbid!)
Take mercy on their distaff-selling store."

To tame them then Q. B. came limping by;
Trim starlings got him through surrounding foes.
--Kin to great Cyclops of the one round eye,
The sifter slaughtered them. All, blow your nose!
Few buggerings then on this heath arose,
That were not balked in time upon the mill.
Run all, see that the warning bugle blows:
You never did have much, but now you will.

Soon after that, Jupiter's chosen bird the eagle'
Resolved to wager on the weaker side,
But, seeing them so furiously stirred,
Fearing the empire ravaged from outside.
Preferred to steal fire from the heavens wide,
Out of the tree trunk where red herrings' sold.
Than to subject calm air, whate'er betide,
To sayings of the Massoretes of old.

All was agreed, each detail sharp and clear,
In spite of Ate with the heron's thigh.
Who sat there seeing old Pcnthesilea,
Thought to be selling cress for all to buy.
"Aside, vile collier's wife!" was then the cry,
Is it for you to be here in our way?
You tore the Roman banner from on high.
That drew on the old parchment, so they say."

Except that Juno sought the evening dew.
With her great lord, beneath the rainbow's glow,
She'd have had such a hard time to go through,
That wear and tear on all her clothes would show.

It was agreed then that two eggs should go
To her from Hades' queen beneath the ground,
And in case ever she was fettered so,
Upon the hawthorn hill she should be bound.

After seven months (take away twenty-two),
He who destroyed Carthage in olden days
Sat down courteously between the two,
Asking for his bequest, with no delays,
Or that they share the lot in fairer ways,
Heeding the law as by a cobbler sewn.
Serving a little soup in many trays
To his workmen who made the deed his own.

The year will come, signed with a Turkish bow.
Five spindles, and three bottoms-of-the-pot,
When the back of a king too crude to show.
Under a hermit's robe shall be a sot.
Alas! For one pederast you will not,
I trust, let all this acreage go down;
Then stop! Let no one imitate this blot;
Go join the brother of the serpents brown.

This year just past, The One Who Is shall reign.
Together with His good old friends, at peace.
Nor crash nor smash shall dominate again;
Then all good will at last shall find surcease
For heaven-dwellers in its belfry peal'
Then the stud-stallions, idled by caprice,
Shall like a royal palfrey triumph feel.

And so this time of sleight-of-hand shall last,
Until such time as Mars is chained for fair.
Then comes one who all others has surpassed,
Delightful, handsome, nice beyond compare.
Lift up your hearts, and to this feast repair.
My subjects all, for one has passed away.
Whom no reward would lure back here from there,
So high will then be praised the olden day.

At last the man who was of wax shall stay
In the hinge by the hammer-wielder's side.
Petitioners no more "Sire, Sire" shall say
To a mountebank who holds the nightmare tied.
Hoy, give a man a cutlass stout and wide,
Soon the round-headed ringings would be clean,
And one might well with baling twine deride
The storehouse of abuses we have seen.



CHAPTER 3


How Gargantua was carried
eleven months in his mother's belly.


GRAND was a great joker in his time, loving to drink hearty as well as
any man who was then in the world, and fond of eating salty. To this end, he
ordinarily had on hand a good supply of Mainz and Bayonne hams, plenty of smok-
ed ox tongues, an abundance of salted mullets, a provision of sausages (not
those of Bologna, for he feared Lombard mouthfuls), but of Bigorre, of Longaul-
nay, of La Brenne, and of La Rouergue.

In his prime. he married Gargamelle, daughter of the king of the Parpaillons,
a good looking wench, and these two together often played the two-backed beast,
so that she became pregnant with a handsome son and carried him until the el-
eventh month.

For that long, indeed longer, can women bear a belly, especially when it is
some masterpiece and a personage who in his time is to perform great feats,
as Homer says that the child with which Neptune made the nymph big was born
a full year afterward. For as A. Gellius says [Aulus Gellius. Book 31. that
long time befitted the majesty of Neptune, so that in it the child should be
formed to perfection. For a like reason, Jupiter made the night he lay with
Alcmene last forty-eight hours, for in less time he could not have created
Hercules, who cleansed the world of monsters and tyrants. My lords the old
Pantagruelists conformed to what I say and declared not only possible but
also legitimate, the child born to the wife in the eleventh month after her
husband's death.

Hippocrates's book, De alimento, Pliny, li. vi j, cap. v [Book 7, chapter 5],
Plautus, in Cistellaria [The Casket], Marcus Varro, in the satire named The
Testament, alleging the authority of Aristotle on this matter, Ccnsorinus's
book, De die natali [On the birthday], Aristotle, lib. In j, capi iij et iii,
De natura animalium [in Book 7, chapters 3 and 4 On the nature of animals],
Genius, lib. iij, cap xvj [Book 3, chapter '6], Servius in Egl. [On the E-
clogues] in explaining the line of Virgil--Maui longa decem, etc.--and a thou-
sand other madmen, whose number has been increased by the lawmen, ff. De
suis et legit., I. intestate 5 fi., and in Autent. De restitut. et ea quae
pant in xj. mense [On their own and legitimates, the Law on intestates, last
paragraph]. Furthermore, their Robidilardic law has been besmeared with this
Gallus, ff. De lib. et posthu., and I. septimo ff. De stat. Komi. and a few
others whom for the present I dare not name. Thanks to such laws, widowed
wives can freely play clincherupper all they like in their free time, two
months after their husbands' death.

I ask you as a favor, my good fellow topers, if you find any of these who are
worth opening your codpiece for, climb aboard and bring them to me. For if
they are impregnated in their third month, their offspring will be heir to
the deceased; and, once the pregnancy is known, they boldly push on further,
and let 'er rip, since the paunch is full! Julia, daughter of Emperor Octavian,
abandoned herself to her drum beaters only when she felt herself pregnant,
even as the ship takes on its pilot only when it is first calked and loaded.
And if anyone blames them for getting themselves rataconniculated thus during
their pregnancy, considering that the animals never endure the masculating
male upon their big bellies, they will answer that those are animals, but
they are women, fully understanding the fair little rights of superfetation,
as Popilia answered, as reported by Macrobius, lib. ii Satumal [Saturnalia
Book 2].

If the devil doesn't want them to conceive, someone will have to twist the
spigot, and mouth closed.



CHAPTER 4


How Gargamelle, while pregnant with Gargantua,
ate a great abundance of tripes.


THE occasion and manner in which Gargamelle gave birth was this, and, if you
don't believe it, your fundament is escaping you!

Her fundament was escaping her one day after dinner, the third day of February,
for having eaten too many gaudebillaux. Gaudebillaux are fat tripes of coiraux.
Coiraux are oxen fattened in the manger and in pres guimaulx. Pres guimaulx are
those that grow grass twice a year. Of these they had killed three hundred and
sixty-seven thousand and fourteen to be salted on Shrovetide, so that in the
spring they should have beef in season in heaps, so as to have, at the begin-
ning of the meals, a brief commemoration of salty things the better to get
into the wine-drinking.

The tripes were copious, as you understand, and so delicious that everyone was
licking his fingers for them. But the great four-person deviltry37 lay in this,
that they couldn't be kept long, for they would have rotted, which seemed in-
decent. So it was concluded that they should guzzle them without losing time.
To do this they invited all the burghers of Sinay, Scuille, La Roche Clermauld,
and Vaugaudry, without omitting Lc Coudray Montpensier. the Ford of Vede, and
other neighbors, good drinkers all, good company, and good skittle players.38

That good man Grand took very great pleasure in this and ordered to
have everything served in ladlefuls. However, he told his wife to eat the
last, seeing that she was nearing her time, and that all this tripery was
not very recommendable food. "A person," said he, "is very eager to cat shit,
who eats the sack thereof." Notwithstanding these remonstrances, she ate six-
teen hogsheads, two bushels, and six pecks. O what lovely fecal matter must
have been swelling up inside her!

After dinner, they went pell-mell to the Willow Grove. and there, on the
sturdy grass, they danced to the sound of joyous flutes and sweet bagpipes,
so gaily that it was heavenly fun to watch them sport.



CHAPTER 5


The palaver of the potted.


THEN in the same place they started talking about dessert. Then flagons
got going, hams trotting, goblets flying, glasses clinking:

"Draw!"

"Pass it here!"

"Turn it on!"

"Mix it!"

"Let me have it without water...That's it, my friend."

"Toss me off this glass pliantly."

"Come up with some claret for me, a weeping glass."

"A truce on thirst!"

"Ms, false fever, won't you go away?"

"My faith, gammer, I can't get tippling."

"You have a cold, my dear?"

"Yes indeed."

"Saint Quenet's belly! Let's talk about drinking."

"I drink only at my own times.39 like the pope's mule."

"I drink only in my breviary, like a good Father Superior."40

"Which came first, thirst or drinking?"

"Thirst, for who would have drunk without thirst during our time of innocence?"

"Drink, for privario presupponit habitue (privation presupposes habit). I'm a
cleric.

"Fanrundi ratites quern non fear disertum?" [Whom did fertile cups not make
eloquent?'

"We innocents drink only too much without thirst."

"Not I. a sinner, without thirst, and if not present, at least future, anticipating it.
as you understand. I drink for the thirst to come. I drink eternally. For me it's an
eternity of drinking, and drinking for eternity."

"Let's sing. let's sing, let's strike up a motet!"

"Where's my funnel?"

"What! I drink only by proxy [par procuration]!"

"Do you wet your whistle to get dry, or dry yourself to get wet?"

"I don't understand theory; of practice I do make some use."

"Hurry up!"

"I'm wetting, I'm drinking, all for fear of dying. Keep drinking, you'll never die."

"If I don't drink. I'm dry; then I'm dead. My soul will flee away into some frog pond.
In dryness the soul can never dwell."

"You wine stewards, creators of new forms, from not drinking make me drinking!"

"Perenniry of sprinkling through these parched and sinewy innards!"

"He drinks for nothing who gets no feeling from it."

"This stuff is going into my veins; the pissery won't get anything out of it."

"I'd gladly wash off the tripes of that calf I dressed this morning."

"I've ballasted my stomach well."

"If the paper of my bonds and bills drank as well as I do, my creditors would get
their wine well enough when the time came to produce their titles."

"That hand is ruining your nose."

"O how many others will come in before this one goes out!"

"To drink at so shallow a ford is likely to break their breast straps."41

"This is what is called snaring flagons."

"What's the difference between a bottle and a flagon?"

"A big one, for a bottle is closed with a cork, a flagon with a prick."42

"That's a good one!"

"Our fathers drank well and emptied the pots."

"That's well shitten sungen. Let's drink!"43

"This one is going to wash the tripes. Won't you send anything to the river?"

"I drink no more than a sponge."44

"I drink like a Templar."

"And I tanguam sponsus [like a bridegroom]."

"And I gat terra sine aqua [like a land without water]."

"What's a synonym for ham?"

"It's a compeller of drinks; it's a pulley. By means of a pulley you send the wine
down into the cellar, by the ham into the stomach."

"Come on now, drink up now! There isn't a full load. 'Respite personam: pone
pro duos; bus non est in usu [Consider the person; put for two; bus is not in
user].45

"If I went up as well as I put it down. I'd long since have been up in the air."

"Thus did Jacques Coeur his minions gain."

"Thus do forests grow again."

"Thus did Bacchus conquer India."

"Thus philosophized Melinda."46

"A little rain beats down a big wind. Long drinking bouts break up the thunder."47

"But if my prick pissed such urine as that, would you really want to suck it?"

"Pass it here, page; I'll insinuate my nomination to you in my turn."

"Toss it off, Will! There's still another pot."

"I appear as appelant against thirst, even as against abuses. Page, draw up my
appeal in due form."

"This snippet!"

"Once I used to drink it all; now I don't leave any."

"Let's not hurry and let's be sure and pile it all up."

"Here are tripes worth anteing for and gaudebillaux beyond compare from that dun
ox with the black stripe. Oh, for heaven's sake, let's currycomb it to the fullest."48

"Drink, or I'll ..."

"No, no!"

"Sparrows won't eat unless you tap them on the tail; I drink only if you coax me."

"Lagona edatera!"49 There's not a rabbit burrow in all my body where this wine doesn't
ferret out thirst."

"This one whips it out well."

"This one will banish it for me for good."

"Let's proclaim here, to the sound of flagons and bottles, that anyone who has lost
his thirst need not look for it here: long clysters of drinking have driven it out
of doors."

"Great God made the planets [planettes] and we make all the plates clean [platz
nett]."

"I have the Word of God in my mouth: Sitio."50

"The stone called asbestos is not more inextinguishable than my Paternity's
thirst."51

"Appetite comes as you cat, Hangest of Le Mans used to say; thirst goes to see with;
a wine steward needs a hundred hands, like Briarcus, to pour out indefatigably."

"Let's wet, hey-ho, it's no good being dry!"

"Some white! Pour it all, by the devil! Pour it all, fill 'Cr up; my tongue is peel-
ing."

"Lans, trinque!"

"Here's to you, mate! Merrily, merrily!"

"So! So! So! That's really swilled, that is."

"O lachryma Christi!"52

"That's from La Deviniere, its pincau wine!"

"O what a nice white wine!"

"And, 'pon my soul, it's just a taffeta wine."53

"Ho, ho, it's one eared, well wrought, and of good wool."54

"Mate of mine, take heart!"

"For this game we'll not steal, for I've made a raise."55

"Ex hot in hoc! [From this into that!]." There's no magic about it; each one of you
saw it; I'm past master at it."

"Ahum! Ahum! I'm a mast paster."

"O those drinkers! O those thirties!"

"Page my friend, fill it up here and crown the wine, please."

"In cardinal style!"

"Natura abhorrer vacuum [Nature abhors a vacuum]."

"Would you say a fly had drunk of thus?"

"In Breton style!"

"Neat, neat, at this plot!"

"Swallow it, its herb tea!"



CHAPTER 6


How Gargantua was born in a very strange fashion.


WHILE they were carrying on this small talk about drinking, Gargamelle began to feel
bad in her lower body, at which Grand got up off the grass and started com-
forting her honorably, thinking it was childbirth, and telling her that she was out
to grass under the Willow Grove and that soon she would be making new feet; thus it
behooved her to take new courage at the arrival of her baby, and although the pain
was somewhat of an unpleasantness for her, that at all events it would be brief,
and the joy that would soon follow would wipe away all this misery, so that she
would have left only the memory of that.

"Have a sheep's courage," he kept saying, "dispatch this one, and soon let's make
another."

"Hah!" said she, "it's easy for you to talk! All right, by God, I'll try my best,
since you want me to. But would to God you had cut it oft?"

"What?" said Grand.

"Hah!" said she. "You really are a fine one! You know what I mean."

"My member?" said he. "By the nanny-goat's blood! If you see fit, bring me a knife!"

"Ah!" said she, "God forbid! God forgive me! I don't say that in ear-nest, and don't
you do one thing more or less for what I said. But I'll have a tough time on my hands
today, God help me, and all through your member, to make you feel good."

"Courage, courage!" said he. "Don't worry about a thing, and let the four front oxen
do the job. I'm going off to have another drink. If you should have any trouble mean-
while, I'll stay nearby. If you whistle in your palm, I'll come to you."

A little while after this she began to sigh, lament, and cry out. Immediately there
came up midwives in piles from all directions, and, feeling her from below, they found
a few lumps of filthy matter with a rather bad taste, and they thought it was the child;
but it was the fundament escaping her, from the loosening of the right intestine (which
you call the bum-gut) from having eaten too many tripes, as we have declared herein above.

Whereat a dirty old hag in the group who had a reputation as a great medic and had come
here from Brizepaillc near Saint-Genou sixty years before, made her a restringent so hor-
rible that all her sphincters were contracted and tightened up to such a point that you
could hardly have pried them open with your teeth; which is a mighty horrible thing to
think; in the same way that the devil, writing down the yacketyyack of two old French
wenches at Saint Martin's Mass, stretched the parchment just with his teeth.

By this mishap were loosened the cotyledons of the matrix, through which the infant
sprang up into the versa cava; and, climbing up by the diaphragm up above the shoulders,
where the said vein divides in two, took the route to the left, and came out through the
left ear.

As soon as he was born he cried out, not "Wa, Wa!" like other babies, but at the top of
his lungs: "A drink, a drink, a drink!" as if inviting everybody to drink, so well that
he was heard in all the regions of Beussc and Bibarois.

I suspect that you do not firmly believe this strange nativity. If you don't believe it,
I should worry! but a good man, a sensible man, believes what he's told and what he finds
in books. Is it contrary to our law, our faith, contrary to reason, contrary to the Holy
Scripture? For my part, I find nothing written in the Holy Bible that is against it. But
if such had been the will of God, would you say He couldn't have done it? hey, for mercy's
sake, don't ever muddlefuddle your minds with these vain thoughts, for I tell you that to
God nothing is impossible, and, if He wanted, from now on women would have their children
that way through the car.

Was not Bacchus engendered through Jupiter's thigh?

Wasn't Rocquetaillade born out of his mother's heel?

Wasn't Minerva born out of Jupiter's brain, by way of his car? Adonis out of the bark of a
myrtle tree?

Castor and Pollux, out of the shell of an egg laid and hatched by Leda? But you would be
much more amazed and astonished if I now expounded to you the whole chapter in Pliny in
which he talks about strange and unnatural births; however, I am not as barefaced a liar
as he was. Read Book 7 of his Natural History, chapter 3, and stop pounding on my under-
standing.



CHAPTER 7


How the name was given to Gargantua,
and how he inhaled the piot wine.


THAT good man Grand, as he was drinking and kidding with the others, heard the
horrible cry his son had uttered upon entering the daylight of this world, when he roar-
ed and demanded "Drink! Drink!" At which he said: "How big yours is!" (supple, your throat).
Hearing which, those present said that he therefore should really have the name Gargantua,
since such (Quc grand to as!) had been his father's first words at his birth. To which he
[Grand] agreed, and his mother liked it very well, on the example and intimation of
the ancient Hebrews. And, to appease him, they gave him enough to drink to burst his wind-
pipe; then he was carried over the baptismal font and baptized, as is the custom of good
Christians.

And there were assigned for him seventeen thousand nine hundred and thirteen cows from
Pontine and BrTh.mont to give him his ordinary milk. For it was impossible to find an ad-
equate wet nurse in the whole countryside, considering the great quantity of milk required
to feed him, although certain Scotist doctors have asserted that his mother nursed him and
that she could draw from her breasts fourteen hundred and two casks and nine pipes of milk
each time, which is not likely, and the proposition was declared mammalogically scandalous,
offensive to pious ears, and smacking from afar of heresy.56

In that state he spent up to a year and ten months, at which point, on the advice of the
doctors, they began to carry him, and by Jean Denyau's ingenuity a fine ox cart was made.
In this they began to take him merrily here and there; and it was good to see him, for he
had a good mug and almost eighteen chins; and he yelled only a very little; but he beshat
himself all the time, for he was wonderfully phlegmatic in the buttocks, both by his natural
disposition and by the accidental arrangement that had come to him from inhaling too much
September broth. And he inhaled not a drop of it without cause, for if he happened to be
feeling low, angry, or Sony, if he stamped his feet, cried, or yelled, on bringing him a
drink they brought him back to himself; and promptly he stayed quiet and happy.

One of his nurses told me, swearing her faith on it, that he was so accustomed to doing
this, that at the mere sound of pints and flagons he went into ecstasy, as if he were tast-
ing the joys of paradise. With the result that they, considering this heavenly disposition,
to give him some fun in the morning, would make some glasses ring with a knife or some flag-
ons with their stopper, or pintpots with their lids, at which sound, he grew merry, hopped
up and down, and himself rocked himself, nodding his head, playing tunes with his fingers,
and giving the baritone with his tail.



CHAPTER 8


How they dressed Gargantua.


As he was at this age, his father ordered that clothes be made for him of his own colors,
which were white and blue. Indeed, men went to work on it, and they were made, cut, and sewn
in the fashion that was correct then. From the old charts in the Chamber of Accounts in Mont-
sorcau, I find that he was dressed in the following way:

For his shirt were used nine hundred ells of Chastcleraud linen, and two hundred for the
gussets, which were diamond shaped and put under the armpits; and it was not gathered; for
the gathering of shirts was invented only since the seamstresses, when the point of their
needle was broken, began functioning with the tail end.

For his doublet were taken up eight hundred and thirteen ells of white satin, and for the
points fifteen hundred and nine and a half dogskins. Then people began to attach the hose to
the doublet, and not the doublet to the hose; for that is something against nature, as Ockham
fully declared in writing on the Exponibles of Master Haultechaussade [Highhosiery].57

For his hose were taken up eleven hundred and five and a third ells of white worsted. And
they were slashed in the form of columns, chamfered and crenelated in back, so as not to heat
up the kidneys. And within each slash there hung as much blue damask as was needed. And note
that he had very handsome legs, well proportioned to the rest of his build.

For the codpiece were taken up sixteen and a quarter ells of this same cloth. And the form of
it was like a flying buttress, most merrily fastened with two beautiful gold buckles, caught
up by two enamel hooks, in each of which was set a big emerald the size of an orange. For--as
Orpheus says, in his book De lapidibus [On stones], and Pliny, in his last book--it has the
virtue of erecting and comforting the natural member

The outlet of the codpiece was of a cane's length, slashed like the hose, with the beautiful
blue damask floating as before. But if you saw the lovely gold embroidery and the attractive
pleating with precious stones, garnished with fine diamonds, fine rubies, fine turquoises,
fine emeralds, and great Persian pearls, you would have compared it to a lovely cornucopia,
such as you see in the antique shops, and such as Rhea gave to the two nymphs Adrastca and
Ida, wet nurses of Jupiter--always gallant, succulent, always verdant, always flourishing,
always fructifying, full of humors, full of fruits, full of delights. I acknowledge God if
it was not good to see it! But I will expound much more about it in the book I have done On
the dignity of codpieces.58 But I will tell you one thing, that if it was very long and very
full, so was it well furnished inside and well victualed, and wholly unlike the hypocritical
codpieces of a bunch of fops, which are full only of wind, to the great disadvantage of the
feminine sex.

For his shoes were taken up four hundred and six ells of blue crimson velvet. And they were
daintily slashed with parallel lines joined in uniform cylinders. For their soles were used
eleven hundred brown cowhides, cut into codtail shape. For his coat were taken up eighteen
hundred ells of blue velvet, dyed in the grain, bordered with fair vine shoots and embroi-
dered in the middle with silver pintpots done in silver thread, intermixed with bands of
gold and many pearls; denoting that he would be a good tosspint in his day. His belt was of
three hundred and one-half ells of silk serge, half white and half blue (or I am badly mis-
taken).

His sword was not Valencian, nor his dagger Saragossan, for his father hated those potted
hidalgos like devils; but he had a beautiful wooden sword and his dagger of boiled leather,
gilded and painted to suit anyone.

His purse was made of an elephant's tool, which was given him by Herr Pracontal, procurator
of Libya.

For his robe were taken up nine thousand six hundred ells less two-thirds of blue velvet as
above, all tinseled with gold thread in a diagonal figure, from which in the right perspective
there came a nameless color such as you see on the neck of a turtledove, which wondrously
delighted the eyes of the spectators.

For his bonnet were taken up three hundred and two and a quarter ells of white velvet. And
the shape of it was wide and round, to fit the head, for his father used to say that these
bonnets Marrabaise [Spanish Jewish] style, made like a pie crust, would some day bring mis-
fortune to their dean shaven wearers.

For his plume he wore a fine big blue feather, taken from a pelican from the country of Hyr-
cania, hanging very daintily over his right ear.

For his cap brooch he had, in a gold plate weighing sixty-eight marks (34 pounds], a suitable
figure in enamel, in which was portrayed a human body having two heads, turned one toward the
other, four arms, four feet, and two rumps, such as Plato in the Symposium said human nature
was in its mystical beginning, and around it was written in Ionic lettering: ArAIIH OT ZHTEI
TA EA TTHE "Love seeketh not her own," [I Cor. 13.5].

To wear around his neck, he had a gold chain weighing twenty-five thousand and sixty-three
gold mares [12,531.5 pounds], made in the shape of great bayberries, between which were work-
ed great green jaspers, engraved and cut into dragons surrounded by rays and sparks, as once
King Necepsos wore; and it came down as far as the navel in his upper stomach, from which all
his life he derived the emolument the Greek doctors know.

For his gloves were put to serve sixteen goblin skins, and three werewolf skins for the border
of them; and they were made for him of such material by order of the Saint-Louand cabalists.

For his rings (which his father wanted him to wear to renew the old sign of nobility, he had,
on the index finger of his left hand, a carbuncle as big as an ostrich egg, very daintily set
in Egyptian gold. On the medical [middle] finger of the same hand he had a ring made of the
four metals welded together in the most marvelous fashion that was ever seen, without the steel
rubbing the gold or the silver crushing the copper; the whole thing was made by Captain Chappuys
and Alcofribas, his good assistant. On the medical finger of his right hand he had a ring in
spiral form, in which were set a perfect Balas-ruby, a pointed diamond, and a Physon emerald of
inestimable value, for Hans Carvel, the great jeweler of the king of Melinda, assessed them at
a value of sixty-nine million eight hundred and ninety-four thousand and eighteen long-woolled
sheep; and such was the estimate of the Fuggers of Augsburg.


CHAPTER 9


Of the colors and livery of Gargantua.


GARGANTUA'S colors were white and blue, as you could have read above, and by these his father
wanted people to understand that this was a celestial joy to him; for white to him meant joy,
pleasure, delights, and rejoicing and blue, celestial things.

I understand very well that as you read these words, you are laughing at the old toper and
saying that white means faith and blue firmness. But without emotion, heat, or upset (for the
times are dangerous), answer me, if you see fit. I shall use no other constraint toward you
or others, whoever they may be; only I will tell you one word from the bottle.59

Who incites you? Who is stinging you? Who tells you that white means faith and blue firmness?
A paltry book,60 one which is sold by peddlers and book salesmen, with the tide The Blazon of
Colors. Who composed it? Whoever it was, he was prudent in this, that he did not put his name
to it. For the rest, I don't know which I should marvel at first in him, his arrogance or his
stupidity: his arrogance, which without reason, cause, or likelihood, dared to prescribe by
his personal authority what things would be denoted by the colors, which is the practice of
tyrants wanting their will to take the place of reason, not of the wise and learned who by
reason satisfy the readers; his stupidity, which considered that, without other demonstrations
and worthwhile arguments, people would regulate their devices by his doltish propositions.

Indeed (as the proverb says, there's always plenty of shit in a crapper's ass) he found some
leftover imbeciles from the time of the high bonnets, who put faith in his writings and cut
out their sayings according to these, harnessed their mules by them, dressed their pages,
bordered their gloves, fringed their beds, painted their signs, composed songs, and (what
is worse) perpetrated impostures and cowardly tricks secretly against modest matrons.61

In similar darkness are engulfed those court show-offs and name-changers who, wanting their
mottoes to signify espoir [hope; then pronounced "espwere"), have depicted a sphere [sphere],
birds' feathers [pennes] for pains [poines, then pronounced "pwenes"], ancholie for melancholy
[melancholie]. the two-horned moon for "to live in growth" [vivre en croissant, meaning "to
live in growing" or "in a crescent"], a broken bench for bankruptcy [banc rompu pour bancque
roupte], non and a corslet for non durhabit [either "not a sturdy costume" or "it will not
last"], a bed without a canopy [lict sans ciel, with that l then silent) for a licentiate
[licencie], which are homonyms so stale, so uncouth and barbaric, that someone should attach
a foxtail to the collar of, and make a cow turd mask for each and every one who would hence-
forth try to use them in France, since the restoration of good letters.62

For the same reasons (if I am to call them reasons and not daydreams), I would have a penier
[panier, "basket"] painted to denote that I am being made to suffer [pener] and a mustard-pot
[pot a moustarde] to show that it moult tarde [is getting very late...for my heart] and a
piss-pot, that's an official [either an ecclesiastical judge or a chamber-pot]; and the depths
of my breeches, that's a vaisseau de petz [farts, homonym of paix "peace"]; and my codpiece
is the greffe des arrestz [either "bulletin board for sentences, etc.," or "stem subject
to hardening"]; an estront de chien [dog turd] for the tronc de ceans [inner sactuary] where
lies the love of my lady.

Very differently did the Egyptian sages act once upon a time, when they wrote with letters
they called hieroglyphics, which no one understood who did not understand, and everyone un-
derstood who understood, the virtue, property, and nature of the things represented by these;
on which Orus Apollo has composed two books in Greek, and you have a bit of it in the motto
of My Lord the Admiral,63 which Octavian Augustus first wore.

But my little skiff will go no further between these unpleasant gulfs and fords; I return to
come ashore at the port from which I set out. I do indeed hope to write about this more fully
some day,64 and demonstrate, by both philosophical reasons and authorities accepted and ap-
proved from all antiquity. what colors and how many there are in nature, and what may be
designated by each one--if God saves me the mold of my bonnet: that is, my wine pot, as my
grandmother used to say.


CHAPTER 10


Of what is signed
by the colors white and blue.


So white signifies joy. solace, and blitheness and signifies it not wrongly but in good right
and by just claim, which you can verify if, putting your prejudices behind you, you want to hear
what I shall now explain to you. Aristotle says that assuming two things contrary in their spe-
cies, like good and evil, virtue and vice, cold and hot, white and black, pleasure and pain,
joy and sorrow, and so forth, if you couple them in such a way that one contrary of one spe-
cies goes reasonably well with one contrary of another, it follows that the other contrary
goes suitably with the other residue. Example: virtue and vice are contraries of one species;
so are good and evil, if one of the contraries of the first species goes with one of the
second--like virtue and good; for it is known that virtue is good--so will the two residues,
which are evil and vice, for vice is bad. This rule of logic being considered, take these two
opposites, joy and sadness, then these two, white and black, for they are physically contrary;
and so thus it is that black means sorrow, and righdy white means joy.

And this significance is not instituted by human imposition but received by universal consent,
which the philosophers call jus gentium, universal law valid in all countries. As you know well
enough, all peoples, all nations (I except the Syracusans and a few Argives whose souls were as-
kew), all languages, wanting to show their sadness externally, wear black clothes, and all mourn-
ing is done in black, which universal consent is not realized unless nature gives some argument
and reason, which each and every man can understand immediately without being taught by anyone,
which we call natural law.

By white, by the same natural deduction, everyone has understood joy, blitheness, solace, plea-
sure, and delectation.

In past time, the Thracians and Cretans marked the very fortunate and joyful dates with white
stones, the sad and unfortunate with black.

Is not night sinister, sad, and melancholy? It is black and obscure by privation. Does not
brightness rejoice all nature? It is whiter than anything there is. To prove which I could re-
fer you to Lorenzo Valla's book against Bartolus; but the testimony of the Gospel will content
you: in Matthew 17 it is said that at the Transfiguration of Our Lord. His clothes were made
"white as the light," by which luminous brightness He gave His three apostles to understand the
idea and picture of the eternal joys. For by brightness are all humans delighted, as you have
the remark of an old hag who had no teeth left in her head, but still said: "Light is good."
And Tobit (chapter s), when he had lost his sight and Raphael greeted him, replied: "What joy
could I have, who do not see the light of heaven?" In such color the angels attested the joy
of the whole universe at the Resurrection of the Savior (John zo) and at His Ascension (Acts
1). In like raiment Saint John the Evangelist (Revelation 4 and 7) saw the faithful dressed
in the heavenly, beatified Jerusalem.

Read the old histories, Greek as well as Roman. You will find that the town of Alba (first
model of Rome) was both built and named for the discovery of a white sow.65

You will find that if it was decreed that anyone, after gaining victory over the enemy,
should enter Rome in a triumphant state, he entered in a chariot drawn by white horses; the
same for one who entered in ovation;66 for by no sign or color could they more certainly ex-
press joy at their coming than by whiteness.

You will find that Pericles, leader of the Athenians, wanted to have that part of his sol-
diers who by lot had drawn white beans, spend the whole day in joy, solace, and rest, while
those of the other part fought.67 I could expound to you a thousand other examples and in-
stances in this connection, but this is not the place.

By means of this knowledge you can solve a problem that Alexander of Aphrodisias pronounced
insoluble: why the lion, who by his mere cry and roar terrifies all animals, fears and re-
veres only a white rooster. For, as Proclus says, in his book De sanifioo et magus because
the presence of the virtue of the sun, which is the organ and storehouse of all earthly and
sidereal light, is more symbolized by, and related to. the white rooster as much for this
color as for its specific property and order, than to the lion. He says further that devils
have often been seen in leonine form, which in the presence of a white rooster have suddenly
disappeared!

This is the reason why the Galli (that is the French. so called because they are naturally
as white as milk which the Greeks called gala) are fond of wearing white plumes on their
bonnets; for by nature they are joyous, candid, gracious, and well liked, and for their sym-
bol they have the flower whiter than any other, that is, the lily.

If you ask how by the color white nature leads us to understand joy and cheer, I reply that
the analogy and conformity is this. For--as white externally divides and disperses the sight,
manifestly dissolving the visive spirits, according to Aristotle in his Problems and his
Perspectives (and you see this by experience when you pass snow covered mountains, so that
you complain that you cannot look at them well, as Xenophon says happened to his men, and
as Galen explains fully in Book to, De usu partium)--just so the heart is internally dis-
persed by surpassing joy and suffers manifest dissolution of the vital spirits68 which can
be so increased that the heart would remain despoiled of its sustenance and consequently
life would be extinguished from this excess of joy, as Galen says in Book 2 of Method (On
prattled, Book s De locis offeetis [On the locations of illnesses), and Book 2 De sympto-
maton causis [On the causes of symptoms), and as has been attested to happen in times past,
by Marcus Tullius (Cicero), Book t of Quaestio. Tumid. [Tusculan disputations), Verrius,
Aristotle, Livy, after the batttle of Cannac, Pliny, Book 7, chapters 32 and s3, Aulus
Genius, Books 3 and Is, and others, to Diagoras of Rhodes, Chilon, Sophocles, Dionysius,
tyrant of Sicily, Philippides, Philemon, Polycrata, Philistion, M. Juventus, and others
who died ofjoy; and as Avicenna says (in iy canons and lib. de viribus cordis) of saffron,
which so rejoices the heart that it robs it of life, if one takes it in excessive doses,
by dissolution and excessive dilation. Here, see Alexander of Aphrodisias, Book t of the
Problems, chapter 19, and for cause.69

But what's this? I'm getting further into this matter than I planned at the start. So here
I'll take down my sails, putting off the rest to the book dealing with this, and I will
say in a word that blue certainly signifies heaven and celestial things, by the same token
as white signified joy and pleasure.



CHAPTER 11


Of the childhood of Gargantua.


GARGANTUA, from the age of three to five years, was brought up and taught in every appro-
priate branch of learning by his father's order, and spent that time like the little chil-
dren of the region: to wit, drinking, eating, and sleeping; eating, sleeping, and drinking;
eating, sleeping, and drinking; sleeping, drinking, and eating.

He was always wallowing in the mud, getting his nose dirty, messing up his face, wearing
down his shoes at the heel, gaping after flies,70 and running happily after butterflies,
over whom his father held sway. He pissed on his shoes, shat in his shirt, blew his nose
on his sleeves, sniveled in his soup, and made a mess everywhere, and drank out of his slip-
per, rubbed his stomach with a basket. He sharpened his teeth with a clog, washed his hands
with soup, combed his hair with a goblet, sat between two saddles with his tail on the
ground, covered himself with a wet sack, drank while he ate his dips, ate his fouace with-
out bread, bit while laughing, laughed while biting, often spat in the basin, farted for
fat, pissed against the sun, hid in the water for rain, struck while the iron was cold,
had empty thoughts, gave himself airs and graces, flayed the fox, said the monkey's pater-
noster, returned to his sheep, turned the sows out to hay, beat the dog in front of the
lion,71 put the can before the oxen, scratched himself where he did not itch, drew worms
from his nose, bit off more than he could chew, ate his white bread first, shod grasshop-
pers, tickled himself to make himself laugh, ate heartily in the kitchen, offered the gods
straw for wheat, had the Magnificat sung at matins and found it most appropriate, ate cab-
bage and shat leeks, could tell flies in milk, pulled the legs off flies, scraped paper
smooth, besmeared the parchment, made his getaway on foot, pulled on the goatskin (of wine),
counted without his host, beat the bushes without catching any lisle birds, thought that
clouds were brass skillets and bladders lanterns, took two grindings out of one bag. played
the donkey to get some bran, made a mallet of his fist, caught cranes at the first leap,
wanted to have coats of mail made link by link, always looked a gift horse in the mouth,
jumped from rooster to donkey, put one ripe [grape) between two greens, made a ditch out
of earth, kept the moon from the wolves, hoped to catch larks if the skies fell, made a
virtue of necessity, made a dip to match his bread, cared as little about the shaven as
the clipped, every morning flayed the fox. His father's little dogs ate out of his dish;
he likewise would bite their ears, and they would scratch his nose; he would blow in their
rump, and they would lick his jowls.

And you know what, lads? May barrel fever shake you! That little rascal was always feeling
up his nurses, from top to bottom and from front to rear--giddap, burro--and already begin-
ning to exercise his codpiece, which each and every day his nurses would adorn with lovely
bouquets, fine ribbons, beautiful flowers, pretty tufts, and they spent their rime bringing
it back and forth between their hands like a cylinder of salve, then they laughed their
heads off when it raised its ears, as if they liked the game.

One would call it my little spigot, another my ninepin. another my coral branch, another
my stopper, my cork, my gimlet, my ramrod, my awl, my pendant, my rude esbat roidde et bas
[near homonyms meaning "my sturdy sport stiff and low"), my erector, my little red sausage,
my little rogue of a prick.

"It's mine," one would say.

"No, mine," would say another.

"And I," another would say, "shan't I get anything? My word, then, cut it off."

"Huh, cut it off!" said another. "You'd hurt him, Madam; do you go cutting their things off
children? He'd be Sir No'tail."

And, for him to play with like the children hereabouts, they nude him a fine windmill with
the sails of a windmill of Mirebalais.



CHAPTER 12


Of Gargantua's hobbyhorses.


THEN so that he should be a good horseman all his life, they made him a fine big hobbyhorse,
which he would make to prance, curvet. kick, and dance all together, walk, pace, trot, rack
(go at a fast pace). gallop, amble, go the pace of a hobby, a hackney, a camel. or a wild ass,
and had the color of his hair changed (as the monks do with Dalmatians according to the feast
days), bay, sorrel, dappled grey, rat-dun, roan, cow, speckled, skewbald, piebald, white.

He himself made a horse for the hunt of a big post on wheels, another from a winepress beam,
for everyday use, and from a great oak, a mule with a blanket for his chamber.

Besides these, we had ten or twelve for relays and seven for the post. And he put them all to
bed right near him.

One day, the Lord of Breadinsack came to visit his father in great pomp and a fine retinue,
on which day there had also come to him the Duke of Freclunch and the Count of Wetwind. 'Pon
my word, the lodging was a little tight for so many people, and particularly the stables; so
the chief steward and the furrier of the said Lord Breadinsack, to find out if there were em-
pty stables anywhere else in the house, addressed Gargantua, a young lad, asking him secretly
where the stables were for the big horses, thinking that children are prone to disclose every-
thing.

Then he led them up the great steps of the château, passing through the second hall, into a
great gallery by which they entered a great tower, and, as they climbed up by other steps, the
furrier said to the chief steward:

"This child is playing a trick on us, for the stables are never at the top of the house."

"That's your misunderstanding," said the chief steward, "for I know places, at Lyon, at La Bau-
mette, and elsewhere, where the stables were at the highest point of the house; so perhaps in
back there's an exit to the upper level."

"But I'll ask for it more firmly."

Then he asked Gargantua: "My little dandy, where are you taking us?"

"To the stable," he replied, "of my big horses. We'll be right there, let's just go up these steps."

Then, passing them through another big room, he took them into his room, and said, closing the
door:

"Here are the stables you're asking for, here's my gennet, my gelding, my courser, my hackney."

And, leading them to a great lever: "I give you," said he, "this Frieslander; I got him from
Frankfurt, but he shall be yours; he's a good little horse, and a hard worker. With a goshawk
tercel, a half dozen spaniels, and two greyhounds, you're king of the partridges and hares all
this winter."

"By Saint John!" said they. "we sure have had it! At this point we've got the monk."

"I say you're wrong on that," said he, "he hasn't been here for three days.

Now guess which of the two they had more occasion for, to hide for shame, or to laugh for the
fun.

At this point, as they were going down all confounded, he asked: "Would you like a whimwham?"

"What's that?" say they.

"That," he replied, "is five turds to make you a muzzle."

"For today," said the chief steward, "if we're roasted--never will we burn in the fire. for
were larded to a turn. O you little cutcy, you've decked our horns with straw; I'll see you
pope Ipapel some day."

"So I mean to be," said he; "but then you'll be a butterfly [papaIon], and this nice little
popinjay (papeguay] will be a perfect hypocrite (papelard]."

"Well, well," said the furrier.

"But," said Gargantua, "guess how many stitches there are on my mother's blouse."

"Sixteen," said the furrier.

"You're not speaking Gospel," said Gargantua; "for there are a hundred in front (cent for
sens dayant] and a hundred behind [cent for sens derriere]. and you miscounted them extreme-
ly badly."

"When?" said the furrier.

"When," said Gargantua, "they made a spigot of your nose to draw a hogshead of shit, and a
funnel of your throat to put it into another vessel, for the bottoms were blown out."

" 'Odsbody!" said the chief steward, "we've found a smart talker. Mister pratdcr. God keep
you from harm, you have such a fresh mouth!"

Coming down thus in great haste, under the stairway they dropped the big lever he had loaded
them with; at which Gargantua said: "Devil take it, what bad horsemen you arc! Your curtal
fails you in case of need. If you had to go from here to Cahusac, which would you prefer, to
ride horseback on a gosling, or to lead a sow on a leash?"

"I'd rather drink" said the furrier.

And so saying, they went into the downstairs hall where were the whole crew, and, telling this
novel story, made everybody laugh like a pile of flies.


CHAPTER 13


How Grand recognized
the marvelous mind of Gargantua
by the invention of an ass-wipe.


TOWARD the end of the fifth year. Grand, returning from defeating the Canarrians, went to
see his son Gargantua. There he was delighted. as such a father might be, seeing such a child of
his, and, as he embraced him, he questioned him in various ways on little childish matters.

And he drank his fill with him and his nurses, of whom with great care he asked, among other
things, whether they kept him white and clean. To this Gargantua made reply that he had so ar-
ranged it that in the whole kingdom there was no boy cleaner than he. "How's that?" said Grand-
gousier.

"I discovered," said Gargantua, "by long and painstaking experiments a way to wipe my ass, the
most lordly, the most excellent, the most expedient that was ever seen."

"What's that?" said Grand.

"As," said Gargantua, "I shall relate to you presently."

"I wiped myself with a lady's velvet mask, and found it good, for the softness of the silk part
gave me a most pleasant feeling in my fundament; another time with one of their hoods, and it
was just the same; another time with a neckerchief.

"Another time with ear-flaps of crimson satin, but the gilding of a batch of shitty spheres that
were on it scratched my behind; may Saint Anthony's fire burn the bum-gut of' the goldsmith who
made them and the lady who wore them!

"That pain passed when I wiped myself with a page's bonnet, well plumed, Swiss fashion. Then,
shitting behind a bush, I found a March-born cat; I wiped myself on him but his claws ulcerated
my whole perincum.

"I cured myself of that by wiping myself with my mother's gloves, well perfumed with malzoin.72

"Then I wiped myself with sage, fennel, anise, marjoram, roses, gourd leaves, cabbages, beets,
vine leaves, mallows, mullein (which is rump
scarlet), lettuce, and spinach leaves--much good they did to my leg--with dog's mercury, persi-
caria, with nettles, with comfrey; but from it I got the Lombard bloody flux, of which I was
cured by wiping myself with my codpiece.

"Then I wiped myself with the bed linen, the blanket, the curtains, a cushion, a rug, a green
carpet, a rag, a napkin, a handkerchief, a dressing gown. In all I found more pleasure than do
many people when they scrape them."

"All right." said Grandgousier, "which ass-wipe did you find the best?"

"I was just getting there," said Gargantua, "and soon you'll have the tu autem.73 I wiped myself
with hay, with straw, with rushes, with litter, with wool, with paper. But

　　　　　　　　The ballocks always get a smear,
　　　　　　　　When paper's used to wipe the rear."

"What!" said Grand, "my little ballock, have you gotten stuck to the pot,74 that you're
rhyming already?"

"Yes indeed," said Gargantua, "my king, I'm rhyming that and much more, and in rhyming I often
catch cold len rimant...nienrimel. Listen to what our privy says to the crappers:

　　　　　　　　　　　　　Shithard,
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Squirthard,
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Farthard,
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Turd spray,
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Your bum
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Has flung
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Some dung
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Our way.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　May you burn in Saint Anton's fire!
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Unless
　　　　　　　　　　　　　You dress
　　　　　　　　　　　　　Your mess,
　　　　　　　　　　　　　And wipe it clean ere you retire!

"Would you like some more of it?"

"Yes indeed," replied Grandgousier.

"Then," said Gargantua:

　　　　　　　　　　　　　RONDEAU

　　　　　　　While shitting th'other day
　　　　　　　I felt The tax I'm owing to my tail;
　　　　　　　Then did another scent prevail:
　　　　　　　From rip to toe I foully smelt;
　　　　　　　For this boon then
　　　　　　　I would have knelt:
　　　　　　　To have a girl I could impale
　　　　　　　While shitting.
　　　　　　　Soon in her pee-hole she'd have felt,
　　　　　　　Crudely or not, my trusty nail;
　　　　　　　This while her fingers formed a belt
　　　　　　　To guard my bunghole and my tail,
　　　　　　　While shitting.

"Now tell me I don't know anything about it! Mother o' God [Par la mcr Del!] I didn't actually
compose them, but, on hearing them recited by Grandma [dame grand] whom you see there. I've
retained them in the game-pouch of my memory."

"Let's get back," said Grandgousier, "to our subject."

"Which one?" said Gargantua, "shitting?"

"No," said Grandgousier, "wiping your ass."

"But," said Gargantua, "will you pay for a puncheon of Breton wine if I make a monkey out of
you on this subject?"

"Yes, indeed," said Grandgousier.

"There's no need," said Gargantua, "to wipe your ass unless there is filth; filth can't be there
unless you shit; so shit you must before wiping your ass."

"Oh!" said Grandgousier, "what good sense you have, my little lad! In these next few days I'll
make you a doctor in merry learning, by heaven! For you have more reason than years. So go on with
your ass-wipative discourse, I pray you. And, by my beard! For one puncheon you shall have sixty
casks. I mean of that good Breton wine, which does not grow in Brittany, but in that good Verron
region."

"Afterward I wiped myself," said Gargantua, "with a kerchief, with a pillow, with a slipper, with
a game-pouch, with a basket, but oh what an unpleasant ass-wipe! Thcn with a hat. And note that
among hats, some are smooth, some shaggy, others velvety, others taffeta, others satin. The
best of all is the hairy kind, for it gives a very good abstersion of the fecal matter.

"Then I wiped myself with a hen, with a rooster, with a chicken, with a calf's skin, with a pigeon,
with a cormorant, with a lawyer's pouch, with a riding hood, with a coif, with a lure.

"But, to conclude, I say and maintain that there is no ass-wipe like a good downy gosling, provided
you hold his had between your legs. And believe me on this, on my honor. For you feel in your ass-
hole a mirific pleasure both from the softness of the said down and from the temperate warmth of
the gosling, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and other intestines, until it reaches the
region of the heart and brain. And don't think that the beatitude of the heroes and demigods, who
are around the Elysian Fields, lies in their asphodel or nectar, as these old women say. It lies, in my
opinion, in that they wipe their asses with a gosling, and such is the opinion of Master John of Scot-
land."



CHAPTER 14


How Gargantua was instructed
by a sophist in Latin letters.


HAVING heard these remarks, that good fellow Grandgousier was trans-ported with wonder, consider-
ing the lofty sense and marvelous understanding of his son Gargantua. And he said to his nurses:

"Philip, king of Macedon, recognized the good sense of his son Alexander from his adroitly managing
a horse; for the said horse was so terrible and unruly that no one dared get on him, because he threw
all his riders hard, breaking the neck of one, another's legs, another's brains. another's jaws. Con-
sidering which, in the hippodrome (which was the place where they walked the horses and did tricks on
them), he noted that the horse's frenzy came only from the fright he took at his shadow. So climbing
up on him, he had him run heading into the sun, so that the shadow fell behind, and by that means he
made the horse gentle to his will. At which the father recognized the divine understanding there was
in him, and had him very well tutored by Aristotle, who at the time was above all philosophers of
Greece.

"But I tell you that in this sole talk I've had before you with my son Gargantua I recognize that
his understanding partakes of some divinity, so keen, so subtle, profound, and serene do I find him;
and he will attain the supreme summit of wisdom, if he is well taught. So I want to turn him over
to some learned man to indoctrinate him according to his capacity, and I want to spare no effort or
expense."

As a result, they assigned him to a great sophist named Master Thubal Holofernes. who taught him
his alphabet so well that he could say it by heart backward; and he was at it five years and three
months. Then he read him the Donatus, Facetus, Theodokt, and Alarms in Parabolis, and he was at it
thirteen years six months and two weeks.

But note that meanwhile he was teaching him to write Gothic style,75 and he wrote all his books, for
the art of printing was not yet in use.

And he ordinarily carried around a great writing desk weighing more than seven thousand hundred-
weights, of which the pen case was as big and stout as the great pillars of Ainay;76 and the inkwell
hung from it on great iron chains that would bear a ton of merchandise.

Then he read him De modis significandi,77 with the commentaries of Windbucker [Heurtebize], Rascal
[Fasquin], Too-many-of-'em [Tropditeubc), Galahad. John-calf [jean le Veau], No 'count [Billonio),
Vaginatus [Brelinguandusk],78 and a pile of others; and he was at it over eighteen years and eleven months.
And he knew it so well that on a test he could give it by heart, and he proved to his mother on his
fingers that "De moths significandi non eat scientia [there was no science of the modes of signify-
ing)." Then he read him the Compostum, on which he was fully sixteen years and two months, when his
said tutor died; and it was in the year one thousand four hundred and twenty, from the pox that hit
him.79

Afterward, he had another old wheezer named Jobelin Bride, who read him Hugutio. Eberard's Graismus,
the nominal, the Pant of speech, the Quid est, the Supplemention, MiTMOtrallS, De moribus in ?tient-
O servandis [On the etiquette for the dinner table], Seneca, De guatuor virtutibus cardinalibus [On
the four cardinal virtues], Passes anus rum comment° [Passavent with commentary], and Dormi secure
[Sleep right] for the feasts, and a few others of the same kidney. By reading which he became as
wise as any man we ever baked.80


CHAPTER 15


HOW Gargantua was put under other teachers.


FROM all this his father perceived that he was really studying very well and putting all his time
into it; nevertheless, he was getting nothing out of it, and, what was worse, he was getting crazy,
stupid, all dreamy and idiotic.

On complaining of this to Don Philip Des Marais, viceroy of Papeligosse;81 he gathered that it would
be better for him to learn nothing than such books under such teachers, for their learning was no-
thing but stupidity and their wisdom was nothing but trash, bastardizing the good and noble minds
and corrupting all flower of youth.

"To prove that this is so," said he, "take one of these young men of the present day, who has stud-
ied just two years. In case he doesn't have better judgment, better command of words, better speech
than your son, and better bearing and civility in society, consider me forever a bacon trimmer from
La Brenne." Which Grandgousier liked very well, and ordered that it be done thus.

In the evening, at supper, the said Des Marais brought in a young page of his from Villegongys named
Eudhnon, so well combed, well dressed, well brushed, that he looked much more like a little cherub
than a man. Then he said to Grandgousier: "Do you see this young lad? He's not yet twelve; let's see,
if you think fit, what a difference there is between the learning of your daydreaming theologians82
of the old days and the young folk of today."

Grandgousier was pleased with the test, and he ordered the young page to speak his piece. Then Eud-
knion, asking permission to do so of the said viceroy, his master, cap in hand, open face, red mouth,
eyes steadfast, and his gaze fixed on Gargantua with youthful modesty, got to his feet and began to
praise him and exalt him, first for his virtues and good behavior. secondly for his learning, third-
ly for his nobility, fourthly for his bodily beauty, and, for the fifth part, gently exhorted him to
revere his father in every observance, who was going to such lengths to have him well educated; fin-
ally he asked him to be willing to take him on as the least of his servants, for he asked for the
present no other gift of the heavens than to be granted the favor of pleasing him by some agreable
service. He set forth all this with such appropriate gestures, such distinct pronunciation, such an
eloquent voice, and a speech so richly ornate and truly Latin, that he seemed more like a Gracchus,
a Cicero, or an Emilius of bygone days than a youngster of this century.

On the contrary, Gargantua's whole reaction was that he started crying like a cow and hid his face
in his bonnet, and it was not possible to draw a word out of him any more than a fart from a dead
donkey. At which his Esther was so wrathful that he wanted and tried to kill Master Jobehn. But the
said Des Marais kept him from it by a fine remonstrance he made him, so that his ire was moderated.
Then he ordered him (Jobelin] to be paid his wages and to be set to tippling very sophistically;
and that, that done, he be sent to all the devils.

"At least," he kept saying, "for this day he'll be hardly any expense to his host, if by chance he
should die drunk as an Englishman."

With Master Jobelin gone out of the house, Grandgousier consulted with the said viceroy on what pre-
ceptor they might give him, and it was agreed between them that to that position should be appointed
Ponocrates, preceptor to Eudemon, and that they should all three go to Paris together, to see what
were the studies of young men in France at that time.



CHAPTER 16


How Gargantua was sent to Paris,
and of the enormous mare that bore him,
and how she killed the ox-flies of Beaux.


IN that same season, Fayolles,83 fourth king of Numidia, sent from the land of Africa to Grandgousier
a mare, the greatest and most enormous that was ever seen (you know well that Africa always brings
something new), for she was as big as six elephants, and had feet divided into toes like Julius Cae-
sar's horse, and hanging ears just like Languedoc nannygoats, and a little horn in her ass. For the
rest, her coat was a burnt sorrel spotted with dapple-gray. But above all she had a horrible tail,
for it was, give or take a little, as stout as the pillar of Saint Mars near Langeais,84 and just as
square, with locks no more nor less interwoven than ears of wheat. If you wonder at this, wonder
even more at the tails of the Scythian rams, which weighed more than thirty pounds, and the Syrian
sheep, to whose tail (if Thenaud is telling the truth) they have to attach a cart to carry it, it's
so heavy. You don't have that kind, you flatland lechers.

And it was brought by sea, in three carracks and a brigantine, as far as the port of Olonne in the
Talmont country. When Grandgousier saw it: "Here," said he, "is just what I need to take my son to
Paris. Now then, all will go well. He will be a great cleric in the time to come. Were it not for
my lords the beasts, we would all live like clerics."85

The next day, after drinking (you understand). Gargantua hit the road with his tutor Ponocrates,
and with them Eudemon, the young page. And because it was fair weather and quite temperate, his
father had tawny boots made for him; Babin calls them buskins.

Thus they went joyously on their long road, and always had a good time, until above Orleans. In
the said area was a huge forest about thirty-five leagues long and seventeen or thereabouts wide
let de largeur dix et Sept, ou environ]. It was so horribly fertile and abounding in ox-flies and
hornets that it was a real den of brigands for the poor mares, donkeys, and horses. But Gargantua's
mare honorably avenged all the outrages perpetrated against the animals of its kind, by a trick
the insects did not in the least suspect. For as soon as they had entered the said forest and the
hornets had gone on the attack, she unsheathed her tail, and, skirmishing, shoo-flied them so well
that in so doing she knocked down the whole wood. Striking out in all directions, right and wrong,
hither and yon, here and there, above, below, she knocked down woods as a reaper does grass, so
that since then there have been neither woods nor hornets, but the whole region was reduced to
open country.

Seeing which, Gargantua took great pleasure without otherwise boasting of it, and said to his men:
"I think this is beautiful Ue trouvc beau eel," wherefore this region has since been called La
Beaucc. But their whole lunch was just yawning;86 in memory of which today the gentlemen from Beauce
lunch by yawning,' and are very well off for it, and spit only the better for it.

Finally they arrived in Paris, in which place he refreshed himself for two or three days, living
it up with his men, and inquiring what learned men were then in town and what kind of wine they
were drinking.



CHAPTER 17


How Gargantua paid his welcome to the Parisians
and how he took the great bells of
Notre Dame Church.


A few days after they had refreshed themselves, he looked over the town and was seen by everybody
in great astonishment, for the populace of Paris is so stupid, so silly, and so inept by nature
that a juggler, an indulgence peddler, a mule with its cymbals, a fiddler in the middle of a cross-
roads, will draw more people than would a good Evangelical preacher.

And they followed him so annoyingly that he was constrained to take a rest upon the towers of
Notre Dame. Being in that place and seeing so many people around him, he said clearly: "I think
these louts want me to pay my welcome and my proficiat.87 That makes sense. I'm going to give them
their wine, but it will be only par rys [for a laugh; homonym of Paris].

Then, with a smile, he undid his fine codpiece and, brandishing his tool in the air, he bepissed
them so ferociously that he thereby drowned two hundred and sixty thousand four hundred and eight-
een of them, not counting the women and little children. A certain number avoided this piss-flood
by speed of foot, and, when they were at the topmost point of the University, sweating, coughing,
spitting, and out of breath, they began to curse and swear, some in anger, others par rys: "Cari-
mary, carimara! Holy Ladylove,88 we are bathed par rys!" Wherefore since then the city has been
called Paris, which theretofore was called "Lcucccia," as Strabo says, Book Four, that is to say
in Greek "Whitey," for the white thighs of the ladies of the said place. And because at this new
imposition of the name everyone present swore by all the saints of his parish, the Parisians, who
are made up of all peoples and all types, are by nature both good swearers and good jurists and
just a bit arrogant; therefore Joaninus de Bamnco, in his book De copiositate twerentianstn [On
the abundance of scrapes and bows], judges that they are called "Parrhesiens" in Greek, that is
to say proud in their manner of speaking.

That done, he considered the great bells that were in the said towers and made them ring most
harmoniously. As he did, the thought came to him that they would make a very fine jingles for
the neck of his mare, which he wanted to send back to his father loaded with Brie cheeses and
fresh herring. In fact, he took them to his lodging. Meanwhile, there came by a master mendicant
of the Order of Saint Anthony, questing for hog meat, who, to make himself heard from far off
and make the bacon tremble in the larder, tried to carry these off furtively, but honorably kept
them, not because they were too hot, but because they were somewhat too heavy to carry. He was
not the one from Bourg, for he's too good a friend of mine.

The whole town was stirred to an uproar, as you know they are so prone to be that foreign na-
tions are amazed at the patience of the kings of France, who do not check them otherwise than
by good justice, considering the disadvantages that come out of it from day to day. Would God
I knew the workshop in which these schisms and plots are fabricated, so as to place them in
evidence for the brotherhood of my parish!

Believe me the place where the people assembled, all befooled and upset, was Nesle,89 where then
was, now no longer is, the oracle of Lcucccia. There the cast was set forth and the mishap of
the bells announced. After thorough ergoing pro and contra, it was concluded in Baralipton that
they would send the oldest and ablest member of the Faculty [of Theology] to remonstrate to him
the horrible inconvenience of the loss of these bells; and, notwithstanding the remonstrances
of some members of the University that this task befitted an orator better than a sophist, for
this assignment was chosen our Master Janotus de Bragmardo.



CHAPTER 18


How Janotus de Bragmardo was sent
to recover the great bells from Gargantua.


MASTER Janotus, hair cropped Cacsarine fashion,90 wrapped in his old-style liripipion [Sorbonne
doctoral hood] and his stomach well fortified with quince pastries and holy water from the cellar;91
betook himself to Gargantua's lodging, driving in front of him three red muzzled beadles, and
dragging after him five or six Masters Inerts.92 well befouled inside and out.

At their cntry Ponocrates met them and was inwardly fearful at seeing them so strangely accou-
tered and supposed they were some sort of mummers out of their wits. Then he inquired of one of
the said masters inerts of the band what was the purpose of this mummery. The answer was that
they were asking to have the bells returned to them.

As soon as he heard this statement, Ponocrates ran to tell Gargantua the news, so that he should
be ready with his response and deliberate on the spot on what was to be done. Gargantua, advised
of the case, called aside Ponocrates his tutor, Philotomie his steward, Gymnasts his squire, and
Eudemon, and conferred briefly with them on both what was to be done and to be said in reply.
All agreed that they should be taken to the buttery and there made to drink like fish, and, so
that this wheezer should not get vainglorious over his returning the bells at his request,
while he was toping they should summon the city provost, the rector of the Faculty, the vicar
of the church, to whom, before the sophist had stated his commission, they would deliver the
bells. After that, with these people present, they would hear his fine harangue, which was done.
And when the aforementioned had arrived, the sophist was brought into the main hall and began
as follows, coughing:



CHAPTER 19


The harangue of Master Janotus de Bragmardo
to Gargantua to recover the bells.


AHEM, ahem, ahem! Mna dies,93 Sir, et vobis, Gentlemen [Good day... and to you]. It would only
be fair that you should return our bells to us, for we need them badly. Ahem, ahem, harrumph!
We had once turned down good money for them from the people of London in Cahors, so had we
from those of Bordeaux in Brie,94 who wanted to buy them for the substantific quality of the ele-
mentary disposition that is enthronificated, in the terrestcrity of their quidditative nature to ex-
traneize the hot blasting mists and the whirlwinds from over our vines--not really ours, but
close by here, for if we lose the plot, we lose everything, both sense and law.

"If you return them to us at my request, I'll get out of it six strings of sausages and a good
pair of hose that will do my legs much good, unless they don't keep their promise. Ho! By God,
Domine [Lord), a pair of hose is good, 'et vir sapiens non abhorrebit earn [and a man of sense
will not be averse to it).' Ha ha! Not everyone who wants a pair of hose gets one, well I know
that as regards myself! Think of it, Domine: I've been matagrobolizing this fine harangue for
eighteen days: 'Reddite que sunt Cesaris Cesari, et que sunt Dei Deo' (Render unto Caesar the
things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's, Luke ao.25]. There lies the
hare [i.e., the gist of the problem).

"By my faith, Domine, if you want to sup in my rooms, 'Odsbody! 'charitatis nos faciemus bonum
cherubin' [barbaric Latin for "nous fcrons bonne chore (ubin)," which means "we'll have our-
selves a time!") 'Ego occidi unum porcum, et ego habet bon vino' (Again butchered Latin: "I've
killed a hog, and I have good wine"]. But of good wine you can't make bad Latin. Come now, 'de
parte Dei, date nobis clochas nostras (For the Lord's sake, give us our bells).' Look, on be-
half of the Faculty I am giving you a Sermones de Utino 95 so that, utinam, you will give us our
bells. 'Vultis CD2111 pardonos? Per Diem, vos habebitis et nihil poyabitis' [Per Diem, for Per
Deum, "By God, you shall have pardons and not pay a cent"). O. Sir. Domine, dodudonnaminor
nobis! My word, est bonum urbis (for: est bona urbs, "it's a good city"). Everybody uses them.
If your mare enjoys having them, so does our Faculty, 'quae comparata est jumentis insipienti-
bus et ninths facts est cis, psalmo nescio quo' (which has been compared to silly mares and
has become like them, in I don't know what Psalm). I had noted it well in my notebook, 'et est
unum bonum Achilles' (and it's a good Achilles, i.e., a clincher). Ahem, ahem, harrumph!

"There now! I'm proving to you that you must give them to me. Ego sir argumentor [I adduce
proof of this thus]:

" 'Omnis clocha clochabilis, in clocherio clochando, clochans clochativo clochare facit cloc-
habilitcr clochantes. Parisius habet clochas. Ergo gluc."96

"Ha ha, ha ha, now that's talking! It's in tertio prime, in Darii 97 or elsewhere. 'Pon my soul,
I've seen the time when I was a devil in argument, but now I don't do anything but prattle
any more, and all I need from now on is good wine, good bed, back to the fire, belly to the
table, and a plenty deep ladle. Hey, Domine, please, 'in nominc Patris et Filii et Spiritus
Sancti, amen,' give us back our bells, and God keep you from harm, and Our Lady of Health,98
'qui vivit et regnat per omnia secula seculorum, amen.' Ahem, ahem, hymphymph, harrumph ahem,
hmphhmph!

" 'Verum enim vero, quando quidem, dubio procul, edepol, quoniam, ita certe, mew Deus fidus,'99
a city without bells is like a blind man without a stick, a donkey without a crupper, and a cow
without cymbals. Until you've given them back to us, we won't stop shouting after you like a
blind man who has lost his stick, braying like a donkey without a crupper, and bellowing like
a cow without cymbals.

"Some Latinizer or other, living near the Hotel Dieu, once said, alleg-ing the authority of one
Taponnus--l'm wrong, it was Pontanus, a secular poet--that he wished they were made of feathers
and the clapper was a fox's tail, because they engendered the chronic100 in the tripes of his
brain when he was composing his carminiform verses. But clunk, bingetybang, bangety-bong,
smack, thump, whack, he was declared a heretic; we make them as if out of wax. And further
deponent saith not. `Valete et plaudite. Calepinus recensui."101



CHAPTER 20


How the sophist took home his cloth
and how he had a suit against the other masters.


THE sophist had no sooner finished than Ponocrates and Eudemon broke out laughing so heartily
that they nearly gave up their souls to God, no more nor less than Crassus, seeing a jackass
eating thistles, and Philemon, seeing a donkey eating the figs that had been fixed for his din-
ner, died by dint of laughing. Together with them Master Janotus began to laugh, all three com-
peting, so that tears came to their eyes through the violent concussion of the substance of
the brain, at which were squeezed out these lachrymal humidities and made to flow through
next to the optic nerves. Wherein by them was Democritus shown to be Heraclitizing and Her-
aclitus Democritizing.

When this laughter had completely subsided, Gargantua consulted with his men on what was to be
done. On that Ponocrates advised that they have that fine orator drink again, and, seeing that
he had given them more fin) and made them laugh more than Songecreux [Daydreamer, a jester]
would have done, that they give him the ten strings of sausages mentioned in the jolly harangue,
with a pair of hose, three hundred logs of firewood, twenty-five hogsheads of wine, a bed with
a triple layer of goose down, and a very capacious deep dish, things which he said were nece-
ssary for his old age.

The whole thing was done as they had planned, except that Gargantua, doubting that they would
find hose right away suitable for his legs, also doubting in which style they would suit the
said orator best--the martingale, which is with a drawbridge at the tail the better to crap,
or mariner's style the better to relieve the kidneys, or Swiss style to keep the lower belly
warm, or codtail style for fear of heating up the loins--had him delivered seven ells of black
cloth, and three of white wool for the lining. The wood was carried by the porters; the Masters
of Arts carried the sausages and dishes; Master Janotus insisted on carrying the cloth. One of
the said Masters, named Master Jousse Bandouille, remonstrated to him that this was neither
honorable nor befitting his position and that he should give it to one of them. "Ha!" said
Janotus, "you donkey, you are not concluding in modo et figura [in proper form]. That's how
much use the Suppositions 102 and the Parva logicalia are. Panto pro quo supponit? [To what, or
whom does the cloth relate?]"

"Confuse [Confusedly]," said Bandouille, "et distributive [and distributively]; to each one
his or its share."

"I'm not asking you, you donkey," said Janotus, "quo modo supponit, but pro quo [not in what
way it relates, but to what]; that, you donkey, is pro tibiis meis Ito my shins]. And there-
fore I shall carry it egomel [myself], sins suppositum ponat adpositum [as the substance bears
the accident]."

Thus he carried it off furtively, as Pathelin did his cloth. The best part was when the wheez-
er, triumphantly, right in a plenary session held in the Mathurins, demanded his hose and his
sausages; for they were preremptorily denied him, inasmuch as he had got them from Gargantua,
according to the information reported on this. He remonstrated to them that that had been a
free gift and out of his liberality, by which they were not in the least released from their
promises. This notwithstanding, the reply to him was that he should be content with reason,
and that he would not get one scrap more.

"Reason!" said Janotus, "we use none of that in here. Miserable trai-tors, you're good for
nothing, the earth does not bear any people wickeder than you, I know full well. By God's
spleen! I'll inform the king of the enormous abuses that are fabricated in here by your
doing and by your own hands, and may I be a leper if he doesn't have you all burned alive
as buggers, traitors, heretics, and seducers, enemies of God and of virtue!"

At these words, they brought complaints against him; he, for his part, had them summoned
to appear. In sum, the lawsuit was retained by the court, and there it still is. The mast-
ers, for the time, made a vow never to wash again; Master knot, with his adherents, made
a vow not to blow their noses until the matter was settled by a definitive judgment.

By these vows they have remained down to the present both dirt caked and snotty, for the
court has not yet closely scrutinized all the papers; the verdict will be handed down at
the next Greek Calends, that is to say never, as you know they do more than is natural e-
ven against their own articles. For the articles of Paris chant that God alone can do in-
finite things. Nature makes nothing immortal, for she sets an end and period to all things
produced by her; for (amnia orta tadunt [all that is born dies], etc., but these mist-swal-
lowers make the lawsuits pending before them infinite and immortal. By so doing, they have
given rise to and verified the saying of Chilon the Lacedaemonian, consecrated at Delphi,
that Misery is companion to Lawsuit and people pleading in them miserable. for sooner do
they find an end to their life than to the right they claim.



CHAPTER 21


Gargantua's mode of study according to
the teaching of his sophist tutors.


WITH the first days spent thus and the bells put back in their place, the citizens of Paris,
in gratitude for this consideration, offered to maintain and feed his mare for as long as he
liked (which pleased Gargantua very much) and sent her to live in the forest of Biere [now
Fontainebleau]. I think she is no longer there now.

That done, with all his sense he wanted to study at the discretion of Ponocrates; but he,
for the start, ordered him to do as he was accustomed to, so he might understand by what means,
over such a long time. his former tutors had made him so smug, stupid, and ignorant.

So he arranged his time in such a way that he ordinarily woke up between eight and nine o'clock,
whether it was daylight or not;103 thus had ordained his former tutors, citing what David says:
"Vanum est vobis ante Wean surgcre" ("It is pointless for you to get up before the light,"
Psalms 127.4 Then he waggled his legs as he sat, bounced about and tumbled in the bed for
some time the better to brighten up his animal spirits; and he dressed according to the sea-
son, but he was fond of wearing a great long robe of heavy frieze furred with foxskins; after
that he combed his hair with Almain's comb, that was the four fingers and the thumb, for his
rotors said that to comb one's hair, wash, and clean up any other way, was to waste time in
this world.

Then he crapped, pissed, threw up, belched, yawned, farted, spat, coughed, sobbed, sneezed,
blew his nose like an archdeacon, and ate breakfast to put down the bad air: fine flied tripes,
beautiful carbonadoes, fair hams, fine game stews, and many early morning dips as snacks.

Ponocrates remonstrated to him that he should not eat so soon after getting out of bed without
first taking some exercise. Gargantua replied:

"What? haven't I had enough exercise? I roled around in bed six or seven times before I got up.
Isn't that enough? Pope Alexander did thus on the advice of his Jewish doctor, and he lived un^
til he died in spite of the envious. My first masters got me accustomed to it, saying that
breakfast gave one a good memory; therefore they had their first drink then. I find myself
very well off for it and dine only the better for it; and Master Thubal (who was first in his
year's &ewe in Paris) used to tell me that the whole advantage is not in running very fast but
rather in leaving promptly; likewise the health of our humanity lies not in drinking it down
in huge drafts like ducks but in drinking in the morning; unde versus [whence the verses]:

　　　　Early to rise-a bad idea;
　　　　Early to drink is better cheer.

After eating a hearty breakfast he went to church, and they carried for him a big heavy brev-
iary in a case, weighing, both in grease and in clasps and parchment, give or take a little,
eleven hundredweight six pounds. There, he heard twenty-six of thirty masses. Meanwhile the
prayer reader came to his place, muffled like a hoopoe, having antidoted his breath very
well with a lot of vineyard strup; with him he muttered all those litanies. and thumbed
hidden rosaries so carefully that not one beat of them fell to the ground.

On leaving the church, they brought him on an ox-cart a heap of Saint-Claude rosaries, each
as big as a hat form: and, walking through the cloisters, galleries, or garden, he said more
of them than sixteen hermits.

Then he studied for some paltry half hour, his eyes resting on his book; but (as the comic
poet says) his soul was in the kitchen.

So, pissing a full urinal's worth, he sat down to table, and, because he was naturally phleg-
matic, he began his meal with a few dozen hams, smoked ox tongues, salt mullets, chitterlings,
and other such precursors of wine.

Meanwhile four of his men threw into his mouth, one after the other, continuously, mustard by
the pailful. Then he drank a horrific draft of white wine to relieve his kidneys. Afterward,
he ate according to the season, food to suit his appetite, and he stopped eating when his bel-
ly was dilated.

For drinking he had no end nor rule, for he said that the bounds and limits of drinking were
when, as the person drank, the cork in his slippers swelled upward a half a foot.



CHAPTER 22


Gargantua's games.


THEN, most lazily mumbling a snatch of pace, he washed his hands with fresh wine, cleaned his
teeth with a pig's foot, and chatted joyfully with his men. Then, when the green cloth was
laid out, they brought out plenty of cards, plenty of dice, and enough boards for checkers
or chess. There he played:

Flush. Primiera,
Grand slam, Robber.
Trump, Prick and spare not,
One hundred, The spinet,
Poor Moll, The fib,
Pass ten, Trento et un,
Pair and sequence. Three hundred,
Beggar my neighbor, Odd man out,
The turned card, Take miss,
Lansquenct, Cuckow,
Let him speak that hath it, Teetotum,
Marriage, I have it,
Opinion, Who does one thing does the other,
Sequences. Cockall,
Tarots, Losing Lodam,
Gulls, Torture,
Snorer, Gleek,
Honors, Morra,
Chess, Fox and geese,
The men's morris, Black and white,
Raffles, Mumchance,
Three dice, Tables,
Nick nock, Lurch,
Queen's game, Sbaraglino,
Backgammon, All tables,
Fell down, Copsbody,
Needs must. Draughts,
Mop and mow, Primus, secundus.
Shuffleboard. Keys,
Hopscotch, Odds or evens,
Heads or tails, Huckle-bones.
Spillikins, Lawn billiards,
Hunt the slipper. The moping owl,
Coddling the hare, Tug of war,
Trudge-pig, Magpies,
The horn, The Shrovetide ox,
The madge-owlet, Hinch pinch and laugh not.
Pinpricks, Unshoeing the ass,
Sheep to market, Giddap, Neddy.
I sit down, Gold-beard,
Buskins, Draw the spit,
Chucker-out, Gossip, lend me your sack,
Hamstool, Thrust out.
Marseilles figs, The fly,
Bowman shot, Flay the fox,
Tobogganing, Hold the pass,
Selling oats, Blow the coal,
Hide and seek, Quick and dead judge,
Irons out of the fire, The false clown,
Nine-stones, The hunchback courtier,
The finding of the saint. Hinch-pinch,
Pear tree. Bumbasting.
The Breton jig, Barlibreak,
The sow, Belly to belly,
Cubes. Pushpin,
Quoits, The ball is mine,
Fouquet, Nine-pins,
The return course, Flat bowl,
The dart. Pick-a-back to Rome,
Chaw-turd, Sly Jack,
Short bowls, Shuttlecock,
Dogs' ears, Smash crock.
My desire, Whirlygig.
Rush bundles, Short staff
Hodman blind, Spur away,
Sweepstakes,. The ferret,
The pursuit. Cob-nut,
In a row, The cherry pit,
The humming-top, The whip-top,
The peg-top, The hobgoblin,
Scarred face, Pushball,
Fast and loose, Fatass,
The cock-horse, Saint Cosma, I come to worship you,
The brown beetle. I catch you napping,
Fair and gay goes Lent away, The forked oak,
Leap-frog, The Wolfs tail,
Fart-in-throat, Billy boy, give me my lance.
The swing, The shock of wheat.
The small bowl, Baste the Bear,
Tic-tac-toe, my first go, Cross questions and crooked answers,
Nine hands. Harry-racket,
The fallen bridges, Bridled Nick,
Bull's-eye, Battledore and shuttlecock,
Blindman's bluff. Bob-cherry.
Spy, Frogs and toads.
Cricket. Pestle and mortar,
Cup and ball, The queens,
The trades, Heads and points,
Dot and go one, Wicked death,
Fillips. Lady, I wash your cap,
The bolting cloth, Sowing oats,
The greedy glutton, Windmills,
Defendo, Pirouetting,
Bascule, Hind the plowman,
The madge-owlet,104 Butting rams,
The dead beast, Climb the ladder,
The dead pig, The salt rump.
The pigeon has flown, Twos and threes.
Fagots. Jump in the bush,
Crossing, Hide and seek,
Coin in the tail-pocket. The buzzard's nest,
Hark forward, The fig,
Gunshot crack, Mustard-pounder,
Out of school, The relapse,
The feathered dart, Duck your head.
The bull's eye, Crane-dance,
Slash and cut, Flirts on the nose,
Larks, Flicks.

After playing well, sifted, passed, and bolted the time, it was time to have a little
drink—that was eleven gallons [peguadz] per man—and, right after banqueting, to stretch
out and sleep two or three hours on a nice bench or a nice big bed, meanwhile to think
no evil and speak no evil.

Ponocrates would point out to him that it was a bad regimen to drink that way after
sleeping.

"That," Garpntua replied, "is the real life of the [holy] Fathers, for by nature I drink
salty, and sleeping was worth that much ham."

Then he would start to study a bit, and Paternosters forward march! The better to expe-
dite, and more by the book, he would climb on an old mule that had served nine kings.
So, mouth mumbling and head nodding, he would go and see some rabbit caught in the nets.

Once back, he hied himself into the kitchen to see what roast was on the spit.

And he had a very good supper, on my conscience! and liked to invite a few neighborhood
topers with whom, drinking their fill, they would tell tales old and new. Among others
he had as domestics Lords du Fou, dc Gourvillc, dc Grignault, and dc Marigny.

After supper there came into place the nice wooden Gospels, that is to say plenty of
gameboards, or nice cards for flush. One-two-three, or "I'll take my chances" to make i
t short, or else went to see the wenches thereabout; then little banquets amid collations
and after-collations, then he would sleep without a break until eight o'clock the next
morning.



CHAPTER 23


How Gargantua was taught
by Ponocrates in such a regimen
that he did not waste an hour of the day.


WHEN Ponocrates learned of Gargantua's loose mode of life, he de cided to teach him let-
ters in a different way, but he put up with it for the first few days, knowing that na-
ture does not endure sudden mutations without great violence.

So in order to begin his task better, he requested a learned doctor of that time named
Master Theodore, to consider whether it was possible to put Gargantua back on a better
track; and he purged him canonically with hellebore of Anticyra, and by that medicament
scoured out all the alteration and perverse habit of his brain. By that means also Pon-
ocrates had him forget everything he had learned under his former tutors, as Timotheus
used to do with his pupils who had been taught under other musicians.

The better to do this, he introduced him into the companies of learned men who were there,
in emulation of whom there grew in him the spirit and the desire to study in a very dif-
ferent way and make something of himself.

Afterward, he put him in such a regimen of study that he didn't waste any hour whatever
of the day but used all his time in letters and honor able learning.

So Gargantua woke up about four o'clock in the morning. While they were rubbing him down,105
there was read to him loud and clear some page of the Holy Scripture, with a delivery ap-
propriate to the matter, and assigned to that was a young page, a native of Basche, named
Anagnostes. According to the gist and argument of this lesson, he often gave himself up
to revering, adoring, praying, and beseeching the good God, whose majesty and marvelous
judgments the reading demonstrated.

Then he went to the private places to make an excretion of natural digestions. There his
preceptor repeated what had been read, expounding to him the most obscure and difficult
points.

As they were returning, they considered the state of the sky: whether it was such as they
had noted it to be the evening before, and into what signs106 was entering the sun, also the
moon, for that day.

This done, he was dressed, combed, tidied up, accoutered and perfumed, during which time
they repeated to him the lessons of the day before. He himself would say them by heart
and found on them a few practical cases concerning the human estate, which they sometimes
extended up to two or three hours, but ordinarily they stopped when he was fully dressed.

Then for three full hours he was read to.

That done, they went out, still discussing the subjects of the reading, and disported them-
selves in the Bracque, or the fields, and played ball, or tennis, or the triangular ball
game, gallantly exercising their bodies as they had their souls.

Their entire play was solely in liberty, for they left off the game when they pleased,
and ordinarily stopped when their bodies were sweating or they were in any other way tired.
So when they were well dried and rubbed down, they changed their shirts, and, strolling gen-
tly, went to see whether the dinner was ready. Waiting there, they clearly and eloquently
recited a few sayings from the lesson.

Meanwhile, Sir Appetite came, and at an opportune moment they sat down to table. At the be-
ginning of the meal was read some amusing story of ancient exploits, until he had taken his
wine.

Then (if it seemed good) they continued the reading or began to converse joyously together,
speaking, for the first months, of the virtues, properties. effectiveness, and nature of ev-
erything they were served at table: of bread, water, salt, the meats, fish, fruits, herbs,
roots, and the preparation thereof. Doing which he learned in a short time the passage pert-
inent to this in Pliny, Athenaeus, Dioscorides, Julius Pollux, Galen, Porphyry, Oppian, Pol-
ybius, heliodorus, Aristotle, Aelian, and others.

These discussions held, often, to be more assured about them, they had the aforesaid books
brought to table. And he retained in his memory so well and entirely the things said, that
for that time there was no doctor who knew half as much about it as he did.

Afterward, they talked about the lessons read in the morning, and. completing their meal with
some quince confection, he picked his teeth with a pick from a mastic tree, he washed his hands
and eyes with fine fresh water, and they gave thanks to God with some nice canticles composed
in praise of the divine munificence and benignity. That done, they brought cards, not to play,
but to learn a thousand nice little tricks and novel inventions, which came out of arithmetic.

In that way he came to be very fond of this numerical knowledge, and every day, after dinner
and supper, he spent time on it as entertainingly as he used to do on dice or cards. So much
so that he learned of it both theory and practice, so well that Tunstal, the Englishman, who
had written amply on it, confessed that really, in comparison with him, he understood nothing
but High German.

And not only of this one, but also of all the other mathematical sciences, such as geometry,
astronomy, and music;107 or, while awaiting the natural concoction and digestion of his meal,
they formed a thousand joyous geometric instruments and figures, and likewise they practiced
the laws of astronomy. Afierward, they delighted themselves in singing musically in four or
five parts, or on a set theme, to their throats' content_ As regards musical instruments, he
learned to play the lute, the spinet, the harp, the German flute and the one with nine holes,
the viola, the sackbut.

This hour thus employed and digestion completed, he purged himself of natural excrements, then
set himself to his principal study for three hours or more, both in the morning's reading and
in pursuing the book undertaken, and also in drawing and forming well the ancient Roman letters.108

This done, they went out of their house, and with them a young gentleman from Touraine named
Squire Gymnaste, who was showing him the arts of chivalry.

So, changing his clothes, he climbed on a courser, a cob, a genet, an Arabian, a light horse,
and he gave him a hundred laps, having him leap in the air, jump the ditch and the fence, turn
short in a circle, both to the right and to the left.

There he did not break a lance—for it's the silliest thing to say: "I broke ten lances in a tour-
ney or in a battle": a carpenter would do it as well—but it is praiseworthy glory with one lance
to have broken ten of one's enemies. So with his steel-tipped lance, sturdy and stiff he would
break open a door, pierce a harness, uproot a tree, spit a ring, carry off an armed saddle, a
halberd, a gauntlet. All this he did armed from tip to toe. As regards riding his horse to keep
time with the trumpets, and making little clicking sounds to urge on his horse, no one could do
them better than he. The horse jumper from Ferrara was just a monkey by comparison. He was sing-
ularly expert in jumping rapidly from one horse to another with-out touching the ground—and these
horses were called desultory [Latin for "to jump from"; cf., French descriers]—and in mounting
from either side, lance in fist, without stirrups, guiding his horse at will without a bridle, for
such thing are useful for military training.

Mother day he would practice with the battle-ax, which he wielded so well, so vigorously recov-
ered it from every thrust, so adroitly lowered it to strike out in a circle, that he was passed as
a knight-at-arms in the field and in all trials. Then he brandished the pike, swung the two-handed
sword, the hack sword, the Spanish rapier, the dagger, and the poniard, both armed and unarmed,
with a buckler, with a cape, with a tiny round buckler. He hunted the stag, the roebuck, the bear,
the fallow deer, the wild boar, the hare, the partridge, the pheasant, the bustard. He played with
the big ball, and, with both foot and fist, sent it flying through the air. He wrestled, he ran, he
jumped—not with a hop, not with the German leap; for, said Gymnaste, such jumps are useless
and no good in war—but with one jump broke a window at the height of a lance.

He swam in deep water, right side up, on his back, sidestroke, using his whole body, just his
feet, one hand in the air, and holding a book in it crossed the whole river Seine without wet-
ting it, as Julius Caesar used to do. Then with one hand by main force he got into the boat;
then threw himself back into the water, head first, sounding the depth, explored the hollows
of the rocks, dived into the abysses and the gulfs. Then he turned the boat about, stirred it,
took it swiftly, slowly, with the current, against it, held it fast in the sluice, guided it
with one hand, with the other, laid about him with a great oar, hoisted the sail, climbed up
the mast by the shrouds, ran along the rigging, adjusted the compass, took down the bowlines,
handled the rudder.

Emerging from the water, he vigorously climbed up the mountainside and came down as readily;
went up the trees like a cat, jumped from one to the other like a squirrel, and took down great
branches like another Milo. With two well-steeled poniards and teated bodkins he climbed to the
top of a house like a rat, and came down from top to bottom with such adroitness of limb that
he was not in the least hurt by the fall.

He threw the dart, put the stone,109 threw the javelin, the boar-spear, the halberd, drew the bow
full out, bent over his chest the powerful siege crossbows, took aim with the harquebus by eye,
set up the cannon, shot at the mark, at the popinjay, uphill, downhill, straight ahead, to one
side, and to the rear like the Parthians.

They fastened a cable for him around some lofty tower, with one end on the ground; by this with
both hands he climbed it, then came down so fast and surely that you could do no better on a
level plain.

They suspended a great pole for him between two trees; he hung from this by his hands, and moved
back and forth on it so fast without his feet touching, that you could not catch him, even run-
ning at full speed.

And to exercise his chest and lungs, he shouted like all the devils. I once heard him calling
Eudemon all the way from the Saint-Victor Gate to Montmartre. Stentor at the battle of Troy never
had such a voice. And to toughen his muscles, they had made him two great lead weights, each
weighing eight thousand seven hundredweights, which he called alteres (dumbbells]; and he picked
these up off the ground in each hand, lifted them in the air over his head and held them thus,
without budging, for three quarters of an hour or more, which took inimitable strength.

He played at barriers with the strongest, and when the tussle came, he kept his feet so sturdily
that he would let the most venturesome see if they could budge him from his place, all this as
Milo used to do, in imitation of whom he would also hold a pomegranate in his hand and give it
to anyone who could take it away from him.

Having thus spent his time, and been rubbed down, cleaned up. and refreshed with a change of
clothing, he went back at a gentle pace, and, as they passed by certain fields or other grassy
places, they inspected the trees and plants, comparing them with the books of the ancients who
had written about them, such as Theophrastus, Dioscoridcs, Marinus, Pliny. Nicander, Macer, and
Galen; and they brought back whole handfuls to their lodgings, which were put in the care of a
young page named Rhizotome, together with some little mattocks, pickaxes, grubbing forks, spades,
pruning knives, and other instruments needed for good botanizing.

When they had arrived at the house, while supper was being prepared, they repeated certain pass-
ages of what had been read, and sat down at table.

Note here that the supper was copius and ample, for he took as much as he needed to sustain and
nourish himself, which is the true diet prescribed by the art of good and sure medicine, although a
pile of imbecile doctors, harassed in the workshop of the sophists, advise the contrary.

During this meal was continued the reading from dinner as long as seemed good; the rest was taken
up with good conversation, all lettered and profitable.

After saying grace, they set themselves to singing musically, playing harmonious instruments, or
those little tricks they do with cards, dice, or goblets, and stayed there, having a wonderful
time and sometimes disporting until time for sleep; sometimes they would go and join in the com-
panies of lettered folk, or of people who had seen foreign countries.

In full nighttime, before retiring, they would go into the most open space in their house to see
the countenance of the sky, and they noted the comets, if there were any, and the figures, posi-
tions, oppositions, and conjunctions of the stars. Then with his tutor he briefly recapitulated, in
the manner of the Pythagorean, all he had read, seen, learned, done, and understood, in the course
of the entire day.

So they prayed to God the Creator, worshiping Him and reaffirming their faith in Him, glorifying
Him for His immense goodness, and giving Him thanks for all the time past, they commended thems-
elves to His divine clemency for the whole future.

That done, they entered upon their rest.



CHAPTER 24


How Gargantua used his time
when the air was rainy.


IF it happened that the air was rainy and intemperate, the entire time before dinner was spent
as usual, except that he had a fine bright fire lit to correct the intemperateness of the air. But
after dinner, instead of the exercises, they stayed in the house and, as a kind of recreation,
played at baling hay, splitting and sawing wood, and threshing sheaves of wheat in the barn; then
they studied the art of painting and sculpture, or called into use the ancient practice of the game
of tables, as Leonicus has written about it and as our good friend Lascaris plays it. As they played,
they rehearsed the passages of the ancient authors in which is taken or mentioned some meta-
phor on the said game.

Likewise, they either went to see how metals were drawn or how artillery was cast; or they went
to watch the lapidaries. goldsmiths, and cutters of precious stones; or the alchemists and coin
minters, or the makers of great tapestries, the weavers, the velvet makers, watchmakers, minor
makers, printers, organists, dyers, and other such kinds of work men; and, always treating to
wine, they learned and observed the skill and inventiveness of the trades.

They went to hear public readings, solemn acts, rehearsals, declamations, the pleading of the
nice lawyers, the sermons of the Evangelical preachers.

He passed through the halls and places assigned for fencing, and there, against the masters, tried
his hand with all weapons, and taught them by evidence that he knew as much about it as they,
if not more.

Instead of botanizing, they visited the shops of the druggists, herb sellers, and apothecaries,
and considered attentively the fruits, roots, leaves. gums, seeds, exotic unguents. also at the
same time how they were adulterated.

He went to watch the jugglers, conjurers, and sellers of quack medicines, considered their
moves, their tricks, their somersaults and spiels, especially those of Chauny110 in Picardy, for
by nature they are great prattlers and fine jokers in the matter of green monkeys.111

When they had returned after supper, they ate more soberly than on other days and foods more des-
iccative and attenuating, so that the intemperate humidity of the air, communicated to the body
by necessary proximity, might by this means be corrected, and should not be harmful to them be-
cause they had not exercised as was their custom.

Thus was Gargantua governed, and he continued this procedure from day to day, profiting as you
understand a young man may who has good sense, according to his age, in such practice thus cont-
inued, which, al though at the beginning it seemed difficult, in its continuation was so sweet,
mild, and delightful, that it was more like a king's pastime than a schoolboy's study.

However, Ponocrates, to give him a respite from this vehement contention of spirits, once a
month selected a bright serene day, on which they moved out from town in the morning either to
Gentilly, or Boulogne, or Montrougc, or the Charanton Bridge, or Vanves, or Saint-Cloud. And
there they spent the whole day having the most fun they could think of. mocking, jesting, drink-
ing their fill, playing, singing, dancing, rolling about in some lovely meadow, robbing sparrows'
nests, catching quail, fishing for frogs or crayfish.

But even though the day was spent without books and readings, spent without profit it was not,
for in the lovely meadow they recited some beautiful verses of Virgil's Agriculture [Georgics],
of Hesiod. of Politian's Rustitus, quoted a few pleasing epigrams in Latin, then turned them
into rondcaus and ballades in French.

As they feasted, they separated the water from diluted wine, as Cato teaches, in De re rust [On
agriculture, chap. III], and Pliny, with a goblet made of ivy; washed the wine in a basin full
of water, then drew it off with a tube; ran the water from one glass into another; and built
several little automatic machines. that is to say which moved by themselves.



CHAPTER 25


How there was aroused
between the fouaciers of Leme
and the men of Gargantua's country
a great dispute front which were built up great wars.


AT that time, which was the vintage season, and the beginning of the autumn, the shepherds of
the region were busy guarding the vines and keeping the starlings from eating the grapes.

At which time the fouaciers of Lerne were passing by the great highway, taking ten or twelve
loads of fouaes to town.

The shepherds asked them courteously to let them have some for their money, at the market price.
For note that grapes with fresh fouace are a heavenly food to eat for breakfast, especially the
pinaux grapes, fig grapes, muscadines, vetjuice grapes, the loosencrs for those who are consti-
pated in the belly, for they make them go off the length of a boat spear, and often, thinking
to fart, they beshit themselves, wherefore these are known as vintage tricksters.

Not in the least inclined to grant their request were the fouciers, but what is worse, they bad-
ly insulted them, calling them112 expendable, straggle-teeth, carrot-top clowns, roisterers, shit-
in-beds, drunks, sly knaves, ne'er-do-wells, guzzlers, potbellies, swaggerers, good-for-nothings,
ruffians. paltry customers, sycophant varlets. slovenly louts, strutting coxcombs, jeering jolt-
heads, jobbcmol goosecaps, coddipol loggerheads, codshead loobies, ninnyhammer flycatchers. boobs,
wiseacres, swell-heads, teeth-rattlers, turd-herders, shitten shepherds, and other such defamatory
epithets, adding that it was not for them to eat fine ferrates, but they should be content with
coarse lumpy bread and rye-loaf.

To this outrage one of them named Frogier, personally a very honorable man and a notable young
fellow, replied mildly:

"How long ago did you grow horns, that you've got so high-and-mighty? My word, you used to sell
it to us, and now you refuse. That's not the way to treat good neighbors, and we don't treat you
that way when you come here to buy our fine wheat from which you make your cakes and fouaces.
Moreover, we would have thrown in some of our grapes into the bargain; but Holy Mother of God,113
you might well repent of this and some day you'll have to deal with us. Then we'll do the same to
you; and keep that in mind!"

Whereupon Marquee, chief standard-bearer of the confraternity of the founders, said to him:

"Really, you're mighty cocky this morning; you ate too much millet last evening. Come here, come
here, I'll give you some of my fouace."

Then Frogier in all simplicity approached, pulling out of his baldric an eleven-denier piece, think-
ing that Marquct was going to bring out some of his fouaces for him; but he struck him across the
legs with his whip so hard that the welts showed. Then he tried to get out of there in flight; but
Frogier shouted "Help!" "Murder!" all he could, and also threw at him a stout cudgel that he carried
under his arm, and hit him on the coronal (frontal-parietal ]suture of the head, over the crototaphic
[temporal] artery of the right side, in such a way that Marquct fell off his num he seemed more a
dead man than alive.

Meanwhile the farmers, who were shelling walnuts nearby, came run ning up with their big staffs
and banged on these fouaciers as on green rye. The other shepherds and shepherdesses, hearing Frog-
ier's cry, came on with their slings and cudgels, and pursued them with hard-thrown stones so small
that it seemed they w ere hail. Finally they caught up with them and took about four or five dozen
of their fouaces; nevertheless, they paid for them at the customary price, and gave them also a hun-
dred walnuts and three basketfuls of white grapes. Then the founders helped Marquct, who was terrib-
ly wounded, to rcmount, and they went back to Lem& without continuing on the road to uttering strong
and sturdy threats against the ox-herds, shepherds, and farmers of Scuffle and Sinays.

That done, both the shepherds and the shepherdesses made a great feast of these same furores and
fine grapes, and had a hearty laugh together to the sound of the bagpipe, making fun of the high-
and-mighty fouaders, who had come to grief for not having crossed themselves with the right hand114
that morning; and with great chenin115 grapes they neatly dressed Frogicr's legs, so that he soon
healed.



CHAPTER 26


How the inhabitants of Leine,
at the command of Piandtok, their king,
made an unexpected attack on Gawantua's shepherds.


THE fouaciers, back in Lune, before eating or drinking, immediately betook themselves to the capitol
[their capitol], and there, before their king, Picrocholc, third of that name, set forth their com-
plaint, showing their baskets broken, their caps mussed, their robes torn, their fouaces taken, and
above all Marquet grievously wounded, saying that it had all been done by the shepherds and farmers
of Grandgousier, near the great highway, beyond Scuille.

He instantly flew into a frenzied rage, and, without asking himself what or how, he had the ban and
the arriere-ban proclaimed throughout his country, summoning each and every man, on pain of the halt-
er, to as semble under arms in the great square in front of the château, at the stroke of noon.

The better to support his endeavor, he sent to have the drum beaten around the town. He himself,
while his dinner was being prepared, went to get his artillery placed, his ensign and standard un-
furled, and to have loaded up plenty of munitions, both of arms and of victuals.

As he dined, he issued his assignments, and by his edict Lord Paltry (Trepelui was put in charge of
the vanguard, in which were numbered sixteen thousand and fourteen harquebusiers, thirty-five thou-
sand and eleven mercenaries.

In charge of the artillery was Grand Master of the Horse Blowhard [Toucquedillonl; in this were numb-
ered nine hundred and fourteen great bronze guns in the form of cannons, basilisks, serpentines. cul-
verins, bombards, falcons, bases,116 spiroles117 and other pieces. The rearguard was entrusted to Duke
Scrapepenny [Raquedenare]; in the main body stayed the king and the princes of his kingdom.

Thus summarily accoutered, before setting out, they sent three hundred light horses, under the lead-
ership of Captain Windswallowcr lEngouleventi, to reconnoiter the countryside, but, after searching
dili gently, they found all the surrounding country in peace and quiet, with out any sort of gath-
ering.

Learning this. Picrocholc ordered each and every man to march under his own ensign in haste. There-
upon without order or measure they took to the fields one after the other, wasting and pillaging
everything wher ever they passed, without sparing poor man or rich, or place sacred or profane;
they took away oxen, cows, bulls, calves, heifers, ewes, sheep, lambs, nannygoats, rams, hens. cap-
ons, chickens, goslings. ganders, geese, pigs, sows, piglets; knocking down walnuts, harvesting
vines, carrying off the vinestoclo, shaking down all the fruits from the trees. It was an incompa-
rable disorder that they wrought, and they found no one to resist them; but each and every one threw
himself at their mercy, beseeching them to be treated more humanely, considering that they had for
all time been good and amiable neighbors, and against them they never commited any excess or outrage
to be ill-used by them so suddenly, and saying that God would punish them for it shortly. To which
remonstrances they made no other answer except that they would teach them to eat fouac.



CHAPTER 27


How a monk of Scuffle saved the abbey dose
from being sacked by the enemy.


So much did they do and wreck, pillaging and thieving, that they arrived at Seuille, and despoiled
men and women alike, and took what they could; nothing was too hot or too heavy for them. Although
the plague was there throughout most of the houses, they went in every where, plundered all that
was inside, and never did one of them run any danger, which is a pretty marvelous thing; for the
curates, vicars, preachers, physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries who went to examine, bind up,
cure, preach to. and admonish the sick had all died of the infection. and these pillaging and mur-
derous devils never got ill. How does that come about? Think about it, I beg you.

The town thus pillaged, they betook themselves to the abbey with horrible tumult but found it well
locked and closed, wherefore the bulk of the army marched beyond it toward the Ford of Vede, ex-
cept seven companies of foot and two hundred lances118 that remained there and broke down the walls
of the close so as to ruin the whole vintage.

The monks, poor devils, didn't know which one of their saints to offer their prayers to. At all
events, they had ad capitulum capitulantes 'the call to the chapter] rung. There it was decreed
that they would form a beautiful procession with nice preachings, and litanies contra hoslium
insidias [against the snares of the enemy], and fine responces pro pate [for peace].

In the abbey at the time there was a claustral monk named Frerc Jean des Entonuneures ]Friar John
of the Hashes],119 young, gallant, frisky, cheerful, very deft, bold, adventurous, resolute, tall,
thin, with a wide open throat, well fixed for a nose, a great dispatcher of hours, a great un-
bridler of masses, a fine polisher-off of vigils, to sum it all up briefly a real monk if ever
there was one since the monking world first monked in monkery; for the rest a cleric to the
teeth in breviary matter.

This man, hearing the noise the enemies were making around the close of their vineyard, went out
to see what they were doing, and, noting that they were harvesting their close, on which was
based their drink for the whole year. he returns to the church choir, where the other monks were
as stunned as bell-founders,120 and, seeing them singing Int, nim, pe, ne, ne, ne, ne, ne, ne, turn,
ne, num, nuns, Inl, i, ml, I, ml, co, O, ne, no, O, O, ne, no, ne, no, no, no, rum, ne, num, num.121
"That," said he. "is well shitten sungen!122 Power of God, why don't you sing

Baskets farewell, vintage is done?

"Devil take me if they aren't inside our close and cutting both vine stocks and grapes so well
that. 'Odsbody! it'll be four years with nothing to glean in there. Saint James's belly! what
will we poor devils drink meantime? Lord God, da mihi potum 'give me drinkj!"

Then said the claustral prior: "What is this drunkard going to do here? Take him away to prison
for me. To disturb so the divine service [service divin]!

"But," said the monk. "the wine service [service du vin], let's see to it that it is not disturb-
ed; for you yourself, My Lord Prior, love to drink of the best. So does every good man; never
does a noble man hate good wine: that's a monastic precept. But these responses you re singing,
by God are not in season."

"Why are our hours short in harvest and vintage times, and long all winter? The late Friar Mace
Pelosse, of happy memory, a real zealot (or devil take me) of our religion, told me. I remember,
that the reason was so that in that season we should get the wine well pressed and made, and that
in winter we should inhale it.

"Listen, gentlemen, you who love wine: 'Odsbody, now follow me! For boldly, may Saint Anthony
burn me if those men are to taste the plot who didn't rescue the wine! God's belly, the goods of
the Church! Ha, no, no, devil take it! Saint Thomas the Englishman was certainly willing to die
for them; if I died at it, wouldn't I likewise be a saint? I'll never die at it, however, for I
make that happen to the others."

So saying, he took off his great monk's habit and seized a staff of the cross, which was of the
heart of the sorb apple tree, as long as a lance, round to fit the fist, and a little decorated
with fleurs-de-lis, all almost obliterated. Thus he went forth in a fine cassock, put his frock
scarfwise, and with his staff of the cross fell so lustily upon his enemies, who were gathering
grapes without order, or ensign, or trumpet, or drum, amid the close—for the standard—and ensign-
bearers had put down their standards and ensigns by the walls, the drummers had knocked in their
drums on one side to fill them with grapes, the trumpeters were loaded down with bunches of
grapes, everyone was in disarray—so he charged down upon them so hard, without a word of warning,
that he bowled them over like pip, striking out right and left, in the old fencing style.

For some, he beat their brains out, for others he broke arms and legs, for others he dislocated
the vertebrae of the neck, for others demolished the kidneys, beat down the nose, blackened the
eyes, split open the jaws, knocked teeth down their throat, shattered the shoulderblades, mort-
ified the shins, blasted out the thighbones, crushed the forearms.

If anyone tried to hide among the thicker vine stocks, he battered his entire spine and dashed
his loins like a dog.

If anyone tried to get away in flight, he made that one's head fly into pieces by rupturing the
lambdoidal loccipitoparictall suture.

If anyone climbed a tree, thinking to be in safety there, with his staff he impaled him by the
fundament.

If some old acquaintance of his called out to him: "Ah, Frere Jean, my old friend, I give up!"

"Indeed you certainly must." he would say; "but also you shall give up your soul to all the
devils."

And immediately he would blast him. And if anyone was so seized by rashness that he tried to re-
sist him face to face, there he showed the strength of his muscles, for he pierced right through
his chest through the interior mediastine and the heart. To others, hitting them under the hollow
of the ribs, he wrought havoc on their stomach, and they promptly died. Others he struck so fierce-
ly on the navel that he made their tripes come out. To others, passing between the ballocks, he
pierced the bum-gut. Believe me, it was the most horrible sight you ever saw.

Some cried out: "Saint Barber

Others: "Saint George!"

Others: "Sainte Nytouche [Saint Touch-me-nog!"

Others: "Our Lady of Cunault of Loreto! of Good Tidings! of La Lenou! of Riviere!"

Some made vows to Saint James.

Others to the Holy Shroud of Charnbery, but it burned up three months later, so completely that
they couldn't save a single shred of it. Others to Cadouin.

Others to Saint-Jean-d'Angely.

Others to Saint Eutropius of Saints, to Saint-Mcsmcs of Chinon, to Saint Martin of Candes, to
Saint Clouaud of Sinays, to the relics of Javerzay, and a thousand other little saints.

Some died without speaking, others spoke without dying. Some died speaking, others spoke dying.

Others cried aloud: "Confession! Confession! Con fiteor [I confess] Miserere [Lord have mercy]!
In manus! [Into Thy hands ... I commit my spirit; according to St. Luke 23.46, the dying words
of Christ on the Cross]."

So loud was the cry of the wounded that the prior of the abbey came out with all his monks, and
they, when they perceived these poor folk tossed thus amid the vines and mortally wounded, con-
fessed a few of them. But while the priests were busy confessing them, the little monklets ran
up to where Rem Jean was and asked him how he wanted them to help him. To which he replied that
they should slit the throats of those he had already wounded. So you know with what weapons?
With fine whittles, which are little half-knives, with which the little children of our region
shell walnuts.

Then, with his staff of the cross, he reached the breach the enemy had made. Some of the monk-
lets had carried off the ensigns and standards to their rooms to make garters of them. But when
those who had confessed tried to get through the breach, the monk knocked them senseless, saying:

"These are confessed and repentant, and have got pardons; they're going to Paradise, straight
as a sickle,123 and as the road to Faye."

Thus, by his prowess, were defeated all those of the army who had entered the close, up to the
number of thirteen thousand six hundred and twenty-two, not counting the women and little child-
ren, that's always understood.

Never did Maugis the Hermit bear himself so valiantly with his pilgrim's staff against the Sar-
acens. he of whom it is written in the exploits of the four sons of Aymon, as did the monk a-
gainst the enemy with the staff of the cross.



CHAPTER 28


How Picrochole took by storm
La Roche Clermauld,
and the regret and difficulty that
Grandgousier felt
about undertaking war.


WHILE the Monk was skirmishing as we have said against those who had entered the close, Picro-
cholc in great haste crossed the Ford of Vede with his men, and attacked La Roche Clermauld,
at which place he was offered no resistance whatever, and, because it was already night, he de-
cided to put up with his men in that town and cool the stinging of his wrath.

In the morning he stormed the bulwarks and chiteau, and fortified it very well, and stocked it
with the necessary munitions, thinking to make that his retreat if he attacked elsewhere, for
the place was strong both by art and by nature because of its situation and site.

Now let's leave them there and return to our good Gargantua, who is in Paris. fully intent on
the study of good letters and on athletic exercises. and good old Grandgousier, his father,
who after supper is warming his balls by a fine big bright fire, and, while waiting for some
chestnuts to roast, writing on the hearth with a stick burnt at one end with which you stir
up the fire, and telling his wife and family fine tales of olden times.

One of the shepherds who was guarding the vineyards, named Pillot [diminutive of Pierre:
Petcy], came before him at that moment and told him in full of the excesses and pillage that
Picrochole, king of Leme, was perpetrating in his lands and domains, and how he had pillaged,
devas tated, and sacked the entire country, except for the close of Seuille, which Frere
Jean des Entommeures had saved, to his honor, and at present the said king was at La Roche
Clermauld and was there fortifying himself, he and his men, with great urgency.

"Alas! Alas!" said Grandgousier, "what is this my good people? Am I dreaming, or is it true
what they tell me? Is Picrochole, my good old friend from all time, wholly bound to me by
race and alliance, coming and attacking me? What prompts him? What pricks him on? Who has
given him such advice? Oh. oh, oh! My God, my Savior, help me, inspire mc, advise me on what
is to be done! I protest, I swear before Thee, so mayest Thou be favorable to me! If ever I
did any displeasure or harm to him or his people, or pillage in his lands; but, quite on the
contrary, I have helped him with men, money, favor, and counsel in every case where I could
discern his advantage. So his having outraged me to such a point can be only through the
Evil Spirit. Good God, Thou knowest my heart, for from Thee nothing can be hidden; if by
chance he had gone mad, and, to restore his brain to him, Thou hadst sent him here, give
me both the power and the knowledge to return him to good teaching by the yoke of Thy holy
Will.

"Oh! oh! oh! my good people, my good friends and loyal servants, shall I be obliged to sum-
mon you to help me? Alas! my old age required henceforth nothing but repose, and all my
life I have striven for nothing so much as peace; but I must, as I clearly sec, burden my
weary enfeebled shoulders with armor, and take into my trembling hand the mace to help and
safeguard my poor subjects. Reason so wills it, for by their labor I am supported and by
their sweat I am fed. I. my children, and my family. This notwithstanding, I shall not un-
dertake war until I have tried all the arts of peace. On that I am resolved."

Thereupon he had his council summoned, and set forth the affair just as it was, and it was
decided that they should send some prudent man to Picrocholc to find out why he had so sud-
denly abandoned his repose and invaded lands to which he had no claim whatever; furthermore,
they should send for Gargantua and his men, to support the country and defend it in its need.
All this suited Grandgousier, and he ordered that it be done thus. So he immediately sent
his lackey, Basque, to seek out Gargantua at top speed, and he wrote to him as follows:



CHAPTER 29


The tenor of the letter
that Grandgousier wrote to Gargantua.


THE fervor of your studies obliged me for a long time not to recall you from that philoso-
phical repose, if my trust in our friends and former confederates had not now spoiled the
security of my old age. But since such is this fated destiny that I should be troubled by
those in whom I trusted most, I am forced to recall you to the aid of the people and pro-
perty which are entrusted to you by natural law.

"For, even as arms are feeble outside if good counsel is not in the house, so is the en-
deavor and counsel vain which at the opportune time is not carried out and put into effect
by valor.

"My intention is not to provoke, but to appease; not to attack, but to defend; not to con-
quer, but to protect my loyal subjects and hereditary lands, which Picrochole has invaded
without cause or occasion, and from day to day pursues his mad enterprise with excesses
intolerable to free men.

"I have made it my duty to moderate his tyrannical anger, offering him everything I thought
might content him, and several times have sent an envoy in friendly manner to him to learn
in what way, by whom, and how, he felt himself outraged; but from him I have had no reply
but willful defiance and that in my lands he claimed simply to rule by right.

"From which I have recognized that eternal God has abandoned him to the rudder of his own
free will and sense, which cannot but be wicked if it is not continually guided by divine
Grace,124 and, to confine him in his duty and bring him back to his senses by painful exper-
ience, has sent him here to me.

"Therefore, my well-beloved son, as soon as you can, when you have read this letter, come
in haste to my aid, not so much to aid mc (which nevertheless you should do by nature out
of pity) as your people, whom by reason you should save and preserve. The exploit shall be
accomplished with the least possible bloodshed and, if it is possible, by more expedient
devices, stratagems, and ruses of war we shall save all the souls and send them back joy-
fully to their homes.

"Very dear son, the peace of Christ our Redeemer be with you. "Give Ponocrates, Gynuiaste,
and Eudemon my greetings. "The twentieth of September.125

Your father, GRANDGOUSIER."



CHAPTER 30


How Ulrich Callet was sent to Picrochole.


Thus letter dictated and signed, Grandgousier ordered Ulrich Gam, his Master of Requests, a
wise and discreet man whose valor and good counsel he had tested in varied and contentious
affairs, to go to Picrochole and remonstrate to him what had been decreed by them.

At that very hour that good man Geller left, and, having crossed the ford, he asked the mil-
ler about Picrocholc's situation; who answered that his men had left him neither rooster nor
hen, and that they had barricaded themselves in La Roche Clemuuld, and that he advised him
to go no further, for fear of the watch, for their frenzy was enormous. He readily believed
this, and for that night put up at the miller's.

The next morning he betook himself with the trumpeter to the gate of the château, and asked
the guards to have him speak to the king for his sake.

When these words were announced to the king, he in no way consented to have them open the
gate to him, but he went up onto the bulwark and said to the ambassador:

"What's new? What do you want to say?"

Thereupon the ambassador spoke as follows:


CHAPTER 31


The speech made by Ulrich Callet to Picrodtole.


"No more just cause for grief can arise between men than if, from the source from which they
expected favor and good will, they receive harm and damage. And not without cause (although
without reason), many, having suffered such an accident, have considered this indignity to
be less tolerable than their very life, and, in case they have been unable to correct it ei-
ther by force or by other device, they themselves have robbed themselves of that light.

"Thus it is no wonder if King Grandgousier, my master, is by your frenzied and hostile ar-
rival seized with great displeasure and perturbed in his understanding. A marvel it would
be if he had not been moved by the incomparable excesses which have been perpetrated upon
his lands and subjects by you and your men, from which has been omitted no example whatever
of inhumanity, which is such a great grievance in itself, for the cordial affection with
which he has always cherished his subjects, that it could not be more so to any mortal man.
However, it is grievous to him beyond human estimation, inasmuch as those grievances and
wrongs have been committed by you and your men, who from all memory and antiquity had, you
and your forefathers, formed a friendship with him and all his ancestors, which until now
you had together kept as inviolably sacred, guarded and maintained it, so well that not
only he and his men, but the barbarian nations, Poitevins, Bretons, Manceaux, and those
who live beyond the Canary Islands and Isabella. considered it as easy to demolish the
firmament and to raise the abysses above the clouds as to sever your alliance, and they
dreaded it so in their enterprises that they never dared provoke, irritate, or damage
one for fear of the other.

"There is more. That sacred friendship so filled this clime that few people dwell today
anywhere on the continent and the isles of the Ocean who have not ambitiously hoped to
be received into it by pacts drawn up by you, esteeming your confederation as highly as
their own lands and domains; so that in all memory there has not been a prince or a league
so mad or so haughty as to have dared attack, I do not say just your lands, but those of
your confederates; and if by headstrong counsel they have undertaken some new enterprise
against them, once the name and title of your alliance was understood, they immediately
left off their undertakings.

"Then what frenzy stirs you, breaking all alliance, treading underfoot all friendship,
transgressing all right, to invade his lands as an enemy, without having in any way been
harmed, or irritated or provoked by him or his men? Where is good faith? Where is law?
Where is reason? Where is humanity? Where is the fear of God? Do you think that these
outrages are hidden from the eternal spirits and from sovereign God, Who is the just
recompenser of our enterprises? If you think so, you are wrong, for all things will come
before His Judgment. Is it fated destinies or influences of the stars that will make an
end of your peace and repose? Thus all things have their end and their period, and, when
they have come to that highest point, they are thrown down in ruins, or they cannot re-
main long in such a state. That is the end of those who cannot moderate their fortunes
and prosperities by reason and temperance.

"But, if it were thus fated that your happiness and repose were thus due now to come to
an end, did it have to be by troubling my king, the man by whom you were established? If
your house had to fall into ruin, was it necessary that in its ruin it should fall upon
the hearth of the man who adorned it? The thing is so far outside the bounds of reason,
so abhorrent to common sense, that it can hardly be conceived by human understanding,
and until it is it will remain incredible among foreigners that the certain and attest-
ed effect gives them to understand that nothing is holy or sacred to those who have e-
mancipated themselves from God and reason to follow their perverse affections.

"If some wrong had been done by us to your subjects and domains, if favor had been shown
by us to those to whom you with ill, if in your affairs we had not always succored you,
if by us your name and honor had been wounded, or, to put it better, if the Calumniating
Spirit, trying to lead you into evil, by fallacious appearances and delusory fantasies
fixed it in your understanding, that we had done to you things unworthy of our ancient
friendship, you should first have inquired into the truth, then admonished us of it; and
we would have satisfied your heart's desire so that you would have had occasion to be
content. But (O eternal God!) what is your undertaking? Would you wish, like a perfidious
tyrant, thus to pillage and dissipate my master's kingdom? Have you found him so slothful
and stupid that he would not, or so destitute of men, money, counsel, and military skill
that he could not resist your unjust attacks?

"Leave these lands immediately, and tomorrow for the entire day be back in your lands,
without committing any disorder or violence along the way; and pay a thousand gold besants
for the damages you have done in these lands. You will hand over half of it tomorrow, the
other half at the coming Ides of May next, leaving us meanwhile as hostage Dukes TUITHINB
[Toumemoule], Droopytail [Basdefesses], and Smallfiy [Menuail], also Prince Bugscratcher
[Grades], and Viscount Guzzler [Morpiaille]."



CHAPTER 32


How Grandgousier, to buy peace,
had the fouaces returned.


WITH this that good man Gallet was silent; but Picrochole makes no answer to his whole dis-
course except: "Come and get 'em, come and get 'em! They've got fine bollocks and soft ones,126
they'll knead some fouact for you."

Then Gallet returns to Grandgousier, whom he found on his knees, head bare, bent over a little
nook of his study, praying God to be willing to soften Picrochole's choler and bring him back
to the path of reason, without going about it by force. When he saw the good nun back, he ask-
ed him:

"Ha! my friend, what news do you bring me?"

"There is no order," said Gallet; "this man is completely out of his mind and abandoned by
God."

"Yes, but," said Grandgousier, "my friend, what cause does he claim for this excess?"

"He exposed no cause to me," said Gam "except that he said to me in anger a few words about
fouaces. I don't know whether some outrage may have been committed against his fouaciers."

"I want," said Grandgousier, "to understand him well before deciding anything about what is
to be done."

Then he sent him to find out about his affair, and found it to be true that a few fouaces had
been taken by force from Picrochole's men and that he said Marquet had first wounded Frogier
in the legs with his whip. And it seemed to his whole council that he should defend himself
with all his might. This notwithstanding, Gargantua said:

"Since all that's at stake is a few fouaces, I'll try to satisfy him, for I'm too reluctant
to wage war."

So he inquired how many fouaces had been taken, and, learning it was four or five dozen, he
ordered that five cartfuls be made that night, and that one of them be fouaces with fine but-
ter, fine egg yokes, fine saffron, and fine spices, to be distributed to Marquet, and that
for his hurt he would give him seven thousand and three philippuses [gold coins] to pay the
barbers127 who had bandaged him, and besides gave him the farm of La Pomarditre in perpetuity,
in freehold for him and his heirs. To conduct the whole thing and pass it through he sent
Gallet, who along the road near the Willow Grove had great bunches of canes and reeds pluck-
ed, and had these decked around each of the carts and each of the carters; he himself held
one in his hand, trying thereby to make it known that they were asking for nothing but peace
and were coming to buy it.

Having come to the gate, they asked to speak to Picrochole on behalf of Grandgousier. Picro-
cholr never would let them enter, and sent word to them that he was busy, but that they should
say what they wanted to Captain Blowhard [Toucquedillon], who was setting up some artillery
piece or other on the walls. Then that good man said to him:

"My Lord, to draw you out of this dispute and take away any excuse for not returning to our
former alliance, we now return to you the fotrares over which there is the dispute. Our men
took five dozen; they were very well paid for; we so love peace that we now return to you
five cartfuls, of which this one shall be for Marquet, who is complaining the most. Besides,
to make him wholly content, here are seven thousand and three philippuses that I deliver to
him, and for the harm that he might claim, I give up to him the farm of La Pomardkre, in per-
petuity, in freehold for him and his heirs. See, there is the deed of conveyance. And for
God's sake, let us henceforth live in peace, and you withdraw merrily into your lands, giv-
ing place here, where you have no right whatever, as you fully confess, and friends as be-
fore."

Blowhard told the whole story to Picrochole, and envenomed his heart the more, so he said
to him:

"These clowns are really scared. By God, Grandgousier is shitting in his pants, the poor to-
per. It's not his thing to go to war, but rather to empty flagons. 1 think we should keep
these fawns and the money, and for the rest hasten to fortify ourselves here and pursue our
fortunes. Do they think they're dealing with a gull, to feed us these formes? Here's how it
is: the good treatment and the great familiarity you offered them have made you contemptible
to them: pat a lout, and he'll bat you; bat a lout, and he'll pat you."128

"Sa. sa, sa," said Picrochole, "by Saint James, they'll catch it! Do as I have said."

"One thing." said Blowhard. "I want to warn you about. We're rather badly victualed here and
meagerly provided with belly armor. If Grandgousier laid siege right now I'd go and have
all my teeth yanked out except for leaving three, and as many to your men as to me: with
these we'll still be only too quick to eat up our provisions."

"We," said Picrochole, "have only too much victuals. Are we here to at or to give battle?"

"To give bade, yes indeed," said Blowhard, "but the dance comes from the paunch, and where
hunger mles, strength is exiled."129

"All this chatter!" said Picrochole. "Seize what they brought."

At that they took money and Purim and oxen and carts, and sent them [the men] back without
saying a word, except that they should not come so near again for the cause that they would
tell them tomorrow. So with nothing accomplished they returned to Grandgousier and told him
the whole thing, adding that there was no hope of inducing them to peace unless by strong
live war.



CHAPTER 33


How certain counselors of Pierochole,
by rash advice, placed him in the utmost peril.


WHEN the fouaces had been ransacked, there appeared before Picrochole the Duke of Smallfry
[Menuail], Count Swashbuckler [Spadassin], and Captain Crapham [Merdaille], and they said to
him:

"Sire, today we're making you the most fortunate, most knightly prince there has ever been
since the death of Alexander of Macedon."

"Put your hats on," said Picrochole.130

"Many thanks, Sire," said they, "we're only doing our humble duty. The plan is this:

"You will leave some captain in garrison with a small band of men, to guard the place, which
seems pretty strong, both by nature and by the ramparts set up by your devising. Your army
you will divide in two, as you understand only too well. One part will go and fall upon Grand-
gousier and his men. By it he will be easily defeated at the first attack. There you will re-
cover heaps of money, for the lout has plenty of cash; lout, we say, because a noble prince
never has a penny. To lay up treasure is a loutish act.

"The other part, meanwhile, will drive toward Aunis, Saintongc, Angoumois, and Gascony, like-
wise Perigord, Medoc, and the Landes. Without resistance they will take towns, chateaux, and
fortresses. At Bayonne, at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and Fontarabie, you will seize all the ships,
and, skirting the coast toward Galicia and Portugal, you will pillage all the seaports as far
as Lisbon. where you will get a fresh store of all the supplies needed by a conqueror. 'Odsbody,
Spain will surrender, for they're nothing but clowns! You'll pass through the Strait of the
Sibyl [of Seville, or Strait of Gibraltar', and there you will erect two columns more magni-
ficent than those of Hercules in perpetual memory of your name, and that strait shall be call-
ed the Picrocholine Sea. When you've passed the Picrocholine Sea, here is Barbarossa surren-
dering as your slave."

"I," said Picrochole, "shall grant him mercy."

"Yes indeed," said they, "provided he has himself baptized. And you will attack the kingdoms
of Tunis, Hippo, Algiers, Bona, Cyrcne, and, boldly, all Barbary. Passing on beyond, you will
hold in your hands Majorca. Minorca. Sardinia, Corsica. and other islands of the Ligurian and
Balearic Sea. Skirting the coast on your left, you will dominate all Gallia Narbonensis (Nar-
bonic Gaul, or Languedoc], Provence, and the Allobrogians, Genoa, Florence, Lucca, and fare-
well Rome! Poor Mister de Pope is already dying of fear."

"I' faith," said Picrochole, "I'll never kiss his slipper."

"Italy taken, here are Naples, Calabria, Apulia. and Sicily all sacked, and Malta too. I'd
just like to see those comical knights, formerly of Rhodes, resist you, to see what they're
made of."131

"I'd like," said Picrochole, "to go to see Loreto."

"Not at all, not at all," said they; "that will be on the way back. From there we shall take
Candia, Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades Islands, and fall back upon the Morea. We have it.
By Saint Ninian, Lord protect Jerusalem, for the Sultan doesn't compare with you in power."

"Then I." said he, "will have the temple of Solomon rebuilt."

"Not yet," said they, "wait a bit. Don't ever be so hasty in your enterprises. Do you know
what Octavian Augustus used to say? Festiva lente [Make haste slowly]. You had better
first have Asia Minor, Caria, Lycia, Cilicia, Lydia, Phrygia, Mysia, Bithynia, Camsia, Satalia,
Sarnagria, Castamena. Luga, Sebaste, all as far as the Euphrates."

"Shall we," said Picrochole, "see Babylon and Mount Sinai?"

"There's no need to." said they, "at this time. Really. hasn't that been ranging enough, to
have crossed the Caspian Sea and ridden over the two Armenias and the three Arabias?"132

"By my faith," said he, "we're ruined! Ah, poor souls!"

"What is it?" said they.

"What shall we have to drink in those deserts? For Julian Augustus and all his army died of
thirst there, so they say."

"We," said they, "have already arranged for everything. In the Syrian Sea you have nine thou-
sand and fourteen great ships loaded with the best wines in the world; they've arrived in
Jaffa. There, there were twenty-two hundred thousand camels and sixteen hundred elephants,
which you will have captured in a hunt near Sigeilmes, when you entered Libya, and further-
more you had the whole caravan to Mecca. Didn't they supply you with wine aplenty?"

"True," said he, "but we didn't have it cool to drink."

"By the virtue," said they, "not of any little fish! A hero, a conqueror, an aspirant and
claimant to universal empire cannot always have his comforts. God be praised that you have
come safe and sound, you and your men, all the way to the river Tigris!"

"But," said he, "meanwhile what is the part of our army doing that defeated that swilling
clown Grandgousier?"

"They're not idling." said they; "we'll meet them shortly. They have taken for you Brittany,
Normandy, Flanders. Hainault, Brabant, Artois, Holland, and Zeeland. They've crossed the
Rhine over the bellies of the Swiss and the Lansquencts, and a part of them have conquered
Luxembourg, Lorraine, Champagne. Savoy as far as Lyon, at which place they found your gar-
risons returning from the naval conquests in the Mediterranean Sea; and they reassembled
in Bohemia. after sacking Swabia, Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Austria, Moravia, and Styrie; then
together they fell fiercely upon Lubeck, Norway, Sweden. Dacia (Denmark], Gothia [southern
Sweden], Greenland, the Easterlings, as far as the Glacial [Arctic] Sea. That done, they
conquered the Orkney Islands and subjugated Scotland. England, and Ireland. From there,
sailing through the Sandy Sea, and past the Sarmatians, they have vanquished and dominated
Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Wallachia, Transylvania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey,
and they are in Constantinople."

"Let's go join them," said Picrochole, "as soon as possible, for I want to be emperor of
Trebizond. Shan't we kill all those Turk and Mohammedan dogs?"

"What the devil," said they, "shall we do then? And you'll give their goods and lands to
those who have served you honorably."

"Reason," said he, "wills it. That's equity. I give you Carmania, Syria, and all Palestine."

"Ah!" said they, "Sire, that's good of you. Many thanks. God prosper you always!"

Presently there was an old gentleman experienced in many hazards and a real campaigner,
named Echephron [Greek "Sensible"), who, hearing these remarks, said:

"I'm much afraid that this whole undertaking will be like the farce about the milk jug, over
which a shoemaker was dreaming himself rich; then, when the jug broke, he had nothing for
dinner. What is your objective in all these fine conquests? What shall be the goal of so many
travails and excursions?"

It will be," said Picrochole, "that when we're back, we'll rest at our ease."

Then says Echephron: "And if by chance you don't come back, for the trip is long and peri-
lous, isn't it better for us to rest now, without putting ourselves into all these dangers?"

"Oh," said Swashbuckler [SpadassinJ, "here's a fine dotard! Why, let's go hide in the chim-
ney corner, and spend our time there with the ladies stringing pearls or spinning, like Sar-
danapalus. He who ventures nothing has neither horse nor mule, as Solomon said."

"He who ventures too much," said Echephron, "loses horse and mule," replied Malcon.133

"Enough!" said Picrochole; "let's go on. All I fear is those devilish legions of Grandgou-
sier's. While we're in Mesopotamia, if he should fall upon our rear, what's the remedy?"

"A very good one," said Crapham [Merdaillej. "A nice little order that you will send the
Muscovites will put in your camp in a moment four hundred and fifty thousand picked fight-
ers. Oh! If you'll make me your lieutenant general in this, I renounce flesh, death, and
blood! I'd kill a comb for a haberdasher!134 I'll strike, I'll catch. I'll kill, I'll abjure!"

"Onward, onward!" said Picrochole, "and let him who loves me follow me!"


CHAPTER 34


How Gargantua left the city of Paris
to succor his country,
and how Gymnaste met the enemy.


AT this time, Garguitua, who had left Paris immediately on reading his father's letter, rid-
ing on his great mare, had already passed the Pont de la Nonnain [Nun's Bridge), he, Pono-
crates, Gymnaste, and Eudemon, who to follow him had all taken post horses. The rest of his
retinue was coming by regular day's journeys, bringing all his books and philosophic appar-
atus.

When he arrived at Parilly, he was informed by Gouguet135 how Picrochole had fortified himself
at La Roche Clennauld and had sent Captain Tripet with a great army to attack the Wood of
Vede and Vaugaudry and that they had ravaged everything, down to the last hen, all the way
to the winepress at Billard, and that it was a strange thing and difficult to believe the ex-
cesses they were committing all over the region. So much so that he frightened him, and he
didn't quite know what to say or do. But Ponocrates advised him that they should betake them-
selves to the Lord of Vauguyon, who for all time had been their friend and confederate, and
by him they would be better informed on all matters, which they promptly did, and found him
well decided to help them; and his opinion was that he should send one of his men to recon-
noiter the country and find out what condition the enemy was in, so as to proceed by a plan
made according to the status of the moment. Gymnaste offered to go; but it was decided that
for a better plan he should take with him someone who knew the ways and the wrong turns and
the streams thereabouts.

So he and Prelingand [Sprightly], a squire of' Vauguyon, set out, and without fear scouted
around in all directions. Meanwhile Gargantua took a little rest and food with his men, and
had his mare given a peck of oats, that is, seventy-four hogsheads and three bushels. Gymn-
aste and his companion rode so far that they encountered the enemy scattered and in bad or-
der pillaging and robbing everything they could; and, from as far off as they spied him,
they came running up in a crowd and tried to rob him. At that he shouted to them:

"Gentlemen. I'm a poor devil; I ask you to have merry on me. I still have a crown or so left;
we'll drink with it, for it's alum potabile [potable gold]; and this horse shall be sold to pay my
welcome fee; that done. retain me as one of your own, for never did a man know better how
to take, lard, roast, and dress--indeed, Pardy! dismember and season a hen--than I right
here; and for my profteiat [initiation], I drink to all good companions."

Then he uncovered his leather canteen, and, without putting his nose into it. took a pretty
decent drink. The ruffians kept looking at him, opening their jaws a whole foot with their
tongues hanging out like greyhounds, waiting to drink afterward; but Tripet, the captain, at
that point an up to see what was up. To him Gymnasts offered his container, saying:

"Here, captain, be bold and have a drink. I've tried it, it's La Foye Monjault wine."

"What?" said Tripet, "is this rascal mocking us? Who are you?"

"I'm a poor devil," said Gymnaste.

"Ha!" said Tripet, "since you're a poor devil, it's right that you should pass on your way,
for every poor devil passes without toll or duty; but it is not customary that poor devils
should be so well mounted.

Therefore. Sir Devil, get off so I can have the horse, and if he doesn't carry me wen,
you, Master Devil, shall carry me, for I very much like having a devil carry me off"



CHAPTER 35


How Gymnaste killed Captain Tripe:
and others of Piaochole's army.


HEARING these words, some of them began to take fright and kept crossing themselves
with might and main, thinking he was a devil in disguise. And one of them, named Good
John, a captain of the FrancsTaupins, pulled out his prayerbook from his codpiece and
shouted rather loud: "Agiot ho Theos [Greek: "God is holy"]. If you are of God, speak
up! if you are of the Other, then go away!" And he wasn't leaving, which several of the
band heard, and left the company, while Gymnaste noted and considered it all.

Therefore he made as if to get off his horse, and when he was hanging on the side you
mount on [the left], he nimbly did the stirrup-trick,136 with his short sword at his side,
and, having passed underneath his horse, flung himself into the air and stood with his
feet on the saddle, his tail turned toward the horse's head. Then he said: "My case is
going backward."

Then, in the position he was in, he made a leap on one foot, and, turning to the left,
never failed to regain his former posture without varying in any way. At which said
Tripet: "Ha! I won't do that one for the moment, and for cause."

"A turd!" said Gymnaste, "I missed; I'm going to undo that leap."

Then by great strength and agility he did the leap as before but turning to the right.
That done, he put the thumb of his right hand on the pommel of his saddle and raised
his whole body in the air, supporting his whole body on the muscle and sinew of the
said thumb, and thus turned himself around three times. On the fourth, twisting his
whole body backward without touching anything, he gathered himself up stiff and straight
between his horse's cars, holding his whole body in the air on the thumb of his left
hand, and in that posture he did the windmill flourish; then, striking with the flat of his
right hand in the middle of the saddle, he gave himself such a fling that he alighted on
the crupper, as the ladies do.

That done, quite at ease he passed his right leg over the saddle and put himself in pos-
ition to ride on the crupper.

"But," said he. "I'd better get myself between the saddlebows."

So, leaning both thumbs on the crupper in front of him, he threw himself back in the air
head over heels and landed in good shape between the saddlebows, and there he made
over a hundred turns with his arms outstretched in a cross, and, so doing, he kept shout-
ing in a loud voice:

"I'm raging, devils, I'm raging, I'm raging! Hold me, devils, hold me, hold!"

While he was swinging around thus on this horse, the ruffians in great consternation were
saying to one another: "Mother of God, he's a goblin or a devil in this disguise. 'Ab horse
malign libera nos, Domine [From the wicked enemy deliver us, Lord].' " And they fled along
the road, looking behind them like a dog making off with a goose wing.

Then Gymnaste, seeing his advantage, got off his horse, unsheathed his sword, and charged
the haughtiest of them with mighty blows, and threw them down in great heaps, hurt, wound-
ed, and slain, without meeting any resistance; they thinking that he was a famished devil, both
for the marvelous stunts he had performed and for the things Tripet had said to him, calling
him "poor devil"; except that Tripet treacherously tried to split his skull with a lansquenees
sword; but he was well protected, and of that blow felt only the weight; and promptly turn-
ing about, he made a feint thrust at the said Tripe. and while he was protecting himself
above, with one blow he sliced him through the stomach, the colon, and half the liver; from
which he fell to the ground, and, in falling, he gave up more than four potfuls of dips, and
his soul mixed in amid the dips.

That done. Gymnaste draws back, mindful that cases of chance must never be carried to their
last extreme, and that all good knights do well to treat their good fortune reverently,
without pressing it or straining it; and, climbing on his horse, he gives him the spur, mak-
ing straight toward Vauguyon. and Prelingand with him.



CHAPTER 36


Now Carganeua demolished
the chateau of the Ford of Vide,
and how they crossed the ford.


WHEN he had come, he related the mate he had found the enemy in, and told of the stratagem
he had used, alone against their whole troop, affirming that they were nothing but ruffians,
pillagers. and brigands. ismorant of all military discipline, and that they should set out
boldly. for it would be very easy to knock them over like animal.

Whereupon Cargantua climbed on his great mare, accompanied as we have said before, and,
finding on his way a great call tree (which they commonly called Saint Martin's Tree became
thus had grown a pilgrim's staff that Saint Martin had planted there), he said:

"Here's what I needed: this tree will serve me as a staff and a lance." And he easily yanked
it out of the ground, stripped off the boughs, and trimmed it to suit his pleasure.

Meanwhile his mare had pissed to relieve her belly and it was in such abundance that she
made a flood for seven leagues around, while the piss-stream drained down in the Ford of
Vade; and it swelled so against the current that the whole band of the enemy was drowned
in great horror, except for some who had taken the road toward the hillsides on the left.

Gargantua, arrived at the Wood of Vede, was notified by Eudemon that inside the chateau
there was some remnant of the enemy; and to find out about this matter Gargantua shouted
as loud as he could:

"Are you there or aren't you? If you are there, be there no more; if you aren't there, I have
nothing to say."

But a ruffian cannoneer who was at the machicolations fired a cannon shot at him and hit
him fiercely on the right temple; however, for all that, he did him no more harm than if he had
thrown a plum at him.

"What's that?" said Gargantua. "Are you throwing grape seeds at us now? The harvest will
cost you dear," actually thinking the cannonball was a grapeseed.

Those who were inside the chateau busy with pillage (amuzez a la pine), hearing the noise,
ran to the towers and fortresses, and fired at him over nine thousand and twenty-five falcons
and harquebus shots, all aiming at his head, and they came so thick and fast that he exclaimed:
"Friend Ponocrates, these flies around here are blinding me; give me some branch from those
willows to drive them away," thinking that those artillery stones and lead cannonballs were gad-
flies. Ponocrates informed him that they were no other kind of flies than artillery shots they
were firing from the castle. Then he banged his great tree against the castle, and with mighty
blows he knocked down both towers and fortresses and dashed it all down to the ground. By
this means were shattered and smashed to pieces all those who were therein.

Leaving there, they reached the mill bridge and found the ford covered with dead bodies in
such a crowd that they had choked up the millstream, and these were the ones who had per-
ished in the mare's urinary deluge.

There they had to deliberate how they could cross in view of the obstacle of the corpses. But
Gymnaste said:

"If the devils have crossed, I'll cross perfectly well."

"The devils," said Eudemon, "crossed to carry off damned souls."

"Saint Ninian!" said Ponocrates, "then by a necessary consequence he'll cross over."

"Right, right," said Gymnaste, "or else I'll remain on the way."

And, giving the spurs to his horse, he freely crossed over beyond without his horse ever
taking fright at the dead bodies; for he had accustomed him (according to Aeian's teaching)
not to fear dead souls or bodies --not by killing people, as Diomedes killed the Thracian:, and
Ulysses put his enemies' bodies in front of his horses' feet, as Homer tells us [Iliad io.488-
5OO1--but by putting a scarecrow amid his hay and having him ordinarily pass over it when
he gave him his oats.

The three others followed him without fail, except Eudemon, whose horse plunged his right
foot up to the knee in the paunch of a great fat oaf who was there on his back drowned and
he couldn't pull it out; so he remained stuck until Gargantua with the end of his stick dug a
hole in the rest of the oaf's tripes in the water, while the hone lifted his foot; and (what is
a marvelous thing in hippiatry) the said horse was cured of a ring-bone he had on that foot
by the touch of that fat ruffian's bowels.



CHAPTER 37


How Gargantua, in combing his hair,
made artillery shells fall out of it.


ON leaving the bank of the Vide, a short time afterward they came to the chiteau of Grand-
gousier, who was waiting for them most eagerly. On Gargantua's arrival, they feasted with
might and main; never did you see people merrier, for the Supplementum Suppkmenti Chrot-
tkomm [Supplement to the Supplement to the Chronicles] says that Gargamelle died of joy
there. For my part, I don't know a thing about it, and mighty little I are about her or anybody
else.137

The truth was that Gargantua. changing his clothes and sprucing himself up with his comb
(which was a hundred canes long, set with great whole elephants' tusks), with each stroke
made to fall out more than seven artillery shells, which had remained amid his hair at the
demolition of the Wood of Vede. Seeing which, his father Grandgousier thought they were
lice, and said to him:

"Gracious, my good son, have you brought all the way here some Montaigu sparrowhawlu?
I didn't know you were in residence there."

To which Ponocrates replied: "My Lord, don't think that I put him into that louse-ridden
school they call Montaigu. Better I had wanted to put him among the beggars of Saint-Inno-
cent, in view of the enormous cruelty and villainy I have known there. For far better treated
are the galleyslaves among the Moors and Tartars, the murderers in criminal prison, indeed
even the dogs in your house, than are these poor wights in the said school; and if I were
king of Paris, devil take me if I didn't set fire to it and bum up the principal and regents who
permit this inhumanity to be practiced in front of their eyes!"

Then, lifting one of those artillery shells, he said: "These are artillery shells your son Gar-
gantua received a while ago while passing before the Wood of Vide, by the treachery of your
enemies. But they got such a reward for it that they all perished in the ruin of the chiteau,
like the Philistines by Samson's device, and those who were crushed by the tower of Siloam,
of whom it is written in Luke a 3. These men in my opinion we should pursue while luck is
with us, for opportunity has all its hair on the forehead; when it has passed you by, you can
no longer call it back; it is bald in the back of the had and never turns around."

"Indeed," said Grandgousier, "but it shall not be at this time, for I mean to regale you for
this evening, and pray be most welcome."

That said, they prepared supper, and as extras were roasted: sixteen oxen, three heifers,
thirty-two calves, sixty-three fat kids, ninety-five sheep, three hundred suckling pigs stew-
ed in must, eleven score partridges, seven hundred woodcocks, four hundred capons from
Loudun and Cornouaille.138 six thousand chickens and as many pigeons, six hundred Guinea
hens, fourteen hundred young hares, three hundred and three bustards, and seven hundred
cockerels. Of venison they could not get any so promptly, except eleven wild boars sent by
the Abbot of Turpenay,139 and eighteen fallow deer given by the Lord de Grammont, as well as
seven score pheasants sent by the Lord des Essars,140 and a few dozen ring-doves, teal, bit-
terns. curlews, plovers, grouse, young lapwings, sheldrakes, black and white waterfowl, spoon-
bills, herons, young and grown coots, egrets, storks, arbennes [a land fowl'', orange flaming-
oes (which are phenicopters), land-rails, turkeys, lots of buckwheat porridge, and a store of
broths.

No mistake, there was no lack of victuals aplenty, and they were handsomely prepared by
Dishlicker [Fripesaulce], Hodgepodge [Hoschepot], and Verjuicesacker [Pilleverjus], cooks to
Grandgousicr.

Johnny [Jana], Michael [Miguel], and Cleanglass [or Emptyglass; Verrenet] fixed the drinks
very well.



CHAPTER 38


How Gargantua in a salad are six pilgrims.


THE story requires us to relate what happened to six pilgrims coming from Saint-Sebastien,
near Nantes, who, to get lodging that night, for fear of the enemy had hidden in the garden
upon the pea-straw, between the cabbages and the lettuce.

Gargantua found himself a bit thirsty, and asked if someone could find him some lettuce to
make a salad, and, hearing that there was some of the finest and biggest in the country, for
the heads were as big as plum trees or walnut trees, decided to go there himself, and carried
off in his hand what seemed good to him. With it he carried off the six pilgrims, who were
so afraid that they dared neither speak nor cough.

So, as he was washing it in the fountain, the pilgrims were whispering to one another:
"What's to be done? We're drowning here, amid the lettuce. Shall we speak? But if we speak,
he'll kill us as spies."

And as they were deliberating thus, Gargantua put them with the lettuce on one of the dishes
of the house, as big as the cask of Cisteaux,141 and, with oil and vinegar and salt, was eating
them as a pick-me-up before supper, and had already swallowed five of the pilgrims. The sixth
was in the dish, hidden under a lettuce leaf, except for his staff, which showed above it.
Seeing it, Grandgousier said to Gargantua:

"That's a snail's horn there; don't eat it."

"Why not?" said Gargantua. "They're all good all this month."

And, pulling out his staff, he picked up the pilgrim with it. and was eating him nicely;
then he drank a horrific draft of pineau, and they waited for supper to be ready.

The pilgrims, eaten thus, pulled thentselves as best they could out away from the grinders
of his teeth, and thought they had been put in some deep dungeon in the prisons, and, when
Gargantua drank the great draft, thought they would drown in his mouth, and the torrent near-
ly carried them off into the gulf of his stomach; however, jumping with the help of their
staffs as the Michelots do. they got to safety in the shelter of his teeth. But by bad luck
one of them, feeling the surroundings with his staff to find out if they were in safety,
landed it roughly in the cavity of a hollow tooth and struck a nerve in the jawbone, by
which he caused Gargantua very sharp pain, and he started to cry out with the torment he
endured.

So, to relieve himself of the pain, he had his toothpick brought, and, going out toward the
young walnut tree, he dislodged milords the pil-grims. For he caught one by the legs, another
by the shoulders, another by the knapsack, another by the pouch, another by the scarf; and
the poor wretch who had hit him with the staff he hooked by the codpiece; however, this was
a great piece of luck for him, for he pierced open for him a cancerous tumor that had been
tormenting him since they had passed Ancenis.

So the dislodged pilgrims fled through the vineyard at a fine trot, and the pain subsided.
At which time he was called to supper by Eudemon, for everything was ready.

"Then," said he, "I'm going to piss off my trouble."

Then he pissed so copiously that the urine cut the road for the pilgrims, and they were
forced to cross the great drink. Passing from there by the edge of the wood, in the middle
of the road, they all fell, except Fournillier, into a great trap made to catch wolves in
the net, from which they escaped thanks to the resourcefulness of the said Foumillicr, who
snapped all the snares and ropes. Having got out of there, for the rest of that night they
slept in a shack near lc Couldray, and there were comforted for their misfortune by the
kind words of their companion called Trudgealong (Lasdallerl, who demonstrated to them that
this adventure had been foretold by David in the Psalms I1241: "Cum exurgerent homines in
nos, forte vivos deglutissent nos," when we were eaten in a salad with a grain of salt;
"cum irasceretur furor eorum in not forsitan aqua absorbuisset nos," when he drank a great
draft; "torrentem pertransivit anima nostra," when we crossed the great drink; "forsitan
pertransisset anima nostra aquam intolerabilem" of his urine, with which he cut our road.
"Benedictus Dominus, qui non dedit not in captioncm dentibus eorum. Anima rostra, sicut
passer crcpta cst de laquco venantium," when we fell into the trap; "laqueus contritus
cst," by Foumillier, "et not liberati sumus. Adjutorium nostrum. etc."142



CHAPTER 39


How the monk was feasted by Gargantua,
and his fine talk at supper.


WIEN Gargantua was at table and the first course of the morsek was wolfed down, Grandgou-
sier began to relate the source and cause of the war between him and Picrochole, and he
came to the point of narrating how Frere Jean des Entommeures had triumphed in the defense
of the abbey close, and praised him above the exploits of Camillus, Scipio, Pompey, Caesar,
and Themistocles.

Then Gargantua asked that he be sent for right away, so they might consult with him on what
was to be done. By their will his majordomo went to fetch him, and brought him back merrily,
with his staff of the cross, on Grandgousier's mule. When he had arrived, myriad caresses,
myriad hugs, myriad good-days were given: "Hey there, Frere Jean. my great cousin, by the
devil, I want an embrace, my friend! Give me a hug!"

"Here, my ballock I want to crush you with embraces!"

And Frere Jean kept chuckling. Never was a man so courteous and gracious.

"Here, now, here!" said Gargantua, "a stool near me, at this end." "Suits me," said the
monk, "since you wish it so. Pour, my child, pour; it will refresh my liver. Pass me some
to gargle with."

"Deposita cappa [Robe off]," said Gymnaste; "let's take off that gown." "Ho, pardy!" said
the monk. "My gentleman, there's a chapter in strands Ordinis tin my chapter's statutes]
that would not like that."

"A turd," said Gymnaste, "for your chapter! That robe is breaking your shoulders; take it
off."

"My friend," said the monk, "let me keep it, for, by God, I drink only the better for it;
it makes my body all joyful. If I leave it off, milords the pages will make garters of it,
as was done to me once at Coulaines. Furthermore, I'll have no appetite. But if in this
costume I sit down to table, I'll drink, by God, both to you and to your horse, and merrily.
God save the company from hams! I had supped; but for all that I shall not eat any less,
for I have a stomach well paved, hollow as Saint Benedict's Boot, always open like an ad-
vocate's pouch. Of all fish except tench,143 take a partridge's wing or a nun's thigh. Isn't
it a merry way to die when you die with a stiff prick? Our prior is very fond of white
capon meat."

"In that," said Gymnaste, "he's not like the foxes, for of the capons, hens, and chickens
they snatch, they never eat the white."

"Because," said Gymnaste, "they have no cooks to cook them, and, if they're not competently
cooked, they stay red, not white. The redness of meat is a sign that it's not cooked enough,
except for lobsters and crayfish, which are cardinalized in cooking."

"Holy God's Day, as Bayard used to say," said the monk, "then the Hospitaler of our abbey
has his head undercooked, for he has eyes as red as an alderwood bowl. This young hare's
drumstick is good for the gouties. Speaking of trowels,144 why is it that a lady's thighs are
always cool?"

"That problem," said Gargantua, "is neither in Aristotle, nor in Alexander of Aphrodisias,
nor in Plutarch."

"It's for three reasons," said the monk, "why a place is naturally cooled: prima, because
water always runs all the way down; secundo, because it's a dark, obscure, and shadowy place,
where the sun never shines; thirdly, because it is continually ventilated by winds from the
northern breeze hole, the smock, and, besides, the codpiece. And merrily! Page, to our tip-
pling! Smack, smack, smack! How good is God, Who gives us this good plot! I swear to the Al-
mighty, if I'd lived in the time of Jesus Christ, I'd certainly have kept the Jews from tak-
ing Him at the Garden of Olivet [Gethsemane]! Also Devil take me if I would have failed to
cut the hamstrings of Milords the Apostles, who fled like such cowards after supping well,
and left their good Master in His need! I hate worse than poison a man who flees when it's
time for knife-play.

"Hah, why am I not king of France for eighty or a hundred years? By God, I'd make curtal
[short-tail] dogs of those runaways at Pavia! An ague strike them! Why didn't they die ra-
ther than leave their good prince in his plight? Isn't it better and more honorable to die
battling valiantly than to flee despicably? ... We'll have hardly any goslings to eat this
year ... Ha, my friend, give me some of that pork. The devil! There's no more must! germi-
navit radix Jesse.145 I renounce my life, I'm dying of thirst. This wine is not all that bad.
What wine were you drinking in Paris? Devil take me if I didn't keep a house there over
six months open to all comers!

"Do you know Friar Claude des Hauts-Barrois? O what a good companion he is! But what's
got into him? He's been doing nothing but study since I don't know when. For my part, I don't
study. In our abbey we never study, for fear of the mumps. Our late abbot used to say that
it's a monstrous thing to see a learned monk. By God, my friend, sir 'magis magnos clericos
non suns magj.s magnos sapientes [broken Latin: the most learned clerics are not the wisest):
...You never saw so many hares as there are this year. I haven't been able to get a goshawk
or a tassel anywhere in the world. Monsieur dc la Belonniere had promised me a lanner, but
he wrote me not long ago that it had got short-winded. The partridges will eat our ears off'146
this year. I get no pleasure fowling with a tunnel-net, for I catch cold at it. If I don't run, if I
don't raise a rumpus, I'm not at all comfortable. True it is that when I jump over the hedges
and bushes, my robe leaves some of its hair behind. Go to the devil if a single hare escapes
him. A lackey was taking him to My Lord de Maulevrier, and I
robbed him. Am I doing wrong?"

"Frere Jean," said Gymnastc, "by all the devils, no!"

"So," said the monk, "here's to all those devils, while they last! Power of God! what would
that limper147 have done with it? 'Odsbody! He gets more pleasure when someone presents him
with a pair of good oxen!"

"How's that?" said Ponocrates. "you're swearing. Frere Jean?"

"That's only," said the monk, "to adorn my speech. Those are colors of Ciceronian rhetoric."



CHAPTER 40


Why monks are shunned by everyone
and why some people have bigger noses
than others.


"By my faith as a Christian!" said Eudemon. "It sets me wondering, considering how nice this
monk is, for he delights us all. And so how is it that monks are driven from all good companies,
which call them spoil-sports, just as bees drive the drones from around their hives?"

"Ignavum fiicos pecus," (dist Maro)
"a praescepibus arcent."
["The drones, lazy cattle," says Maro
"they drive from their stables.")
[Virgil Georgia 4.168]


To which Gargantua replied:

"There is nothing so true as that the robe and the cowl bring on themselves the opprobria, in-
sults, and maledictions of the people, just as the wind called Caecias attracts the clouds.148
The determining reason is that they eat the shit of the world, that is to say the sins, and as
shit-eaters, they are cast back into their privies of a house. But if you understand why a monkey
in a family is always mocked and harried, you will understand why monks are avoided by all, both
old and young. A monkey does not guard the house, like a dog; he does not haul the plow, like an
ox; he produces neither milk nor wool, like the sheep; he does not carry a burden, like the horse.
What he does is to beshit and mess up everything, which is why from everyone he receives mocker-
ies and beatings. Like¬wise, a monk (I mean one of these idle monks) does not toil like the pea-
sant, does not guard the country like the warrior, does not cure the sick like the physician,
does not preach or instruct people like the good Evangelicalist teaching doctor, does not trans-
port the commodities and things necessary to the commonwealth like the merchant. That is why by
everyone they are hooted at and loathed."

"True," said Grandgousier, "but they pray to God for us."

"Nothing less," replied Gargantua.149 'True it is that they bother their entire neighborhood by dint
of incessantly jangling their bells."

"True," said the monk, "a mass, a matins, and a vesper well rung are half said."

"They mutter a great plenty of legends and psalms not in the least understood by them; they re-
cite plenty of paternosters interlarded with long Ave Minas, without thinking about them or un-
derstanding them; and that I call God-mock, not prayer. But God help them if they pray for us,
and not for fear of losing their bread and thick dips. All real Christians, of all ranks, places,
times, pray to God, and the Spirit prays and intercedes for them, and God takes them into His
mercy. Now such is our good Frere Jean. Therefore everyone wants him in their company. He's
no bigot; he's no ragamuffin; he's honorable, cheerful, determined, good company; he works; he
toils; he defends the oppressed; he comforts the afflicted; he succors the wretched; he guards
the abbey close."

"I do much more," said the monk, "for while dispatching our matins and anniversaries in the
choir, I also make crossbow strings, I polish bolts and quarrels,150 I make nets and pouches to
catch rabbits. Never am I idle. But here now, some drink! Some drink here!

"Bring the fruit; its chestnuts from Estroc Wood, with good new wine, there you are a composer
of farts. You're not yet drunk in here. By God, I drink at an fords, like a Proctor's horse!"151

Gymnaste said to him: "Frere Jean, wipe off that drop that's hanging from your nose."

"Ha ha!" said the monk, "could I be in danger of drowning, seeing that I'm in the water up to
my nose? No, no. Quare? (Why?) Quia (Because) it comes out of me all right, but none goes in,
for it's well medicated with vine leaves. O my friend, if anyone had winter boots of such leath-
er, he might boldly fish for oysters, for they would never let in water."

"Why." said Gargantua, "does Frere Jean have such a fine nose?"

"Because," said Grandgousier, "God so willed it. Who has made us in such form and for such an
end as a potter makes his vessels."

"Because," said Ponocrates, "he was one of the first at the nose-fair. He took one of the big-
gest and finest."

"Giddap! (Trut avant)" said the monk. "According to true monastic philosophy, its because my
wet nurses had soft teats; in suckling her, my nose went in as into butter, and it rose and grew
like dough in the kneading trough. Hard teats of wet nurses make children snubnosed. But merrily,
merrily! 'Ad fomum nasi cognoscitur ad to levavi [By the form of the nose is known, I raised
unto Thee]."152 I never eat sweetmeats. Page, to the tippling! Item, toasted snacks!"




CHAPTER 41


How the monk put Gargantua to sleep,
and of his hours and breviary.


WHEN supper was over, they consulted about the matter in hand, and it was agreed that around
midnight they should go out scouting to find out what watch and ward the enemy was keeping; and
meanwhile they would rest a bit to be fresher. But Gargantua could not get to sleep by any means
whatever. So the monk said to him:

"I never sleep really comfortably except when I'm at the sermon or when I'm praying to God. I
beseech you, let's you and me begin the seven psalms (of penitence: nos. 6, 32, 37, 51, 101, 129,
142] to WC if you won't soon be asleep."

The device suited Gargantua very well, and, beginning the first psalm (6), on the point of the
Beati quorum ("Blessed are those." in NEB 32.5: "Happy the man whose..." ), they both fell asleep.
But the monk never failed to wake up before midnight. he was so accustomed to the time of claust-
ral matins. Once he was awake, he waked all the others, singing at the top of his lungs the song:

O, Regnault, awake now, wake;
O, Regnault, awake.

When they were all awake he said: "Gentlemen, they say matins begin with coughing153 and supper
with drinking. Let's do the converse; let's now begin our matins with drinking; and this evening,
to start supper, we'll see who can cough the best."

Then said Gargantua: "To drink so soon after sleeping is not living on a medical regimen. We
should first scour our stomach of superfluities and excrements."

"That," said the monk, "is nicely medicated! May a hundred devils jump on my body if there aren't
more old drunkards than there are old doctors! I've reached agreement with my appetite on such a
pact that it always goes to bed with me, and I see to it well during the day; also it gets up with
me. You can look after your castings154 if you like, I'm going after my tiring."

"What tiring do you mean?" said Gargantua.

"My breviary," said the monk; "for, just as the falconers, before feeding their birds, make them
tire [tyrer, "tug and prey"] on some hen's foot to purge their brain of rheum and whet their appe-
tite, so, taking my little breviary in the morning, I scour my lungs, and there I am ready to drink."

"After what use,"155 said Gargantua, "do you say these fine hours?"

"After the use of Fecamp," said the monk, "with three Psalms and three lessons, or nothing at all
for any who want none. I never subject myself to hours: hours are made for man, not man for hours.
Therefore I do mine in stirrup style: I shorten or lengthen them when I see fit: 'brevis oratio
penetrat celos, longa potatio evacuat cyphos [A short prayer penetrates the heavens, a long drinking-
bout exhausts the cups]: Where is that written?"

"'Pon my word." said Ponocrates, "I don't know, my little pillicock, but you're too much!"

"In that," said the monk. "I'm like you. But venite apotemus."156

Then they prepared carbonadoes aplenty and fine prime dips, and the monk drank his fill. Some kept
him company, the others forbore. Afterward every man began to arm and accouter himself, and they
armed the monk against his will, for he wanted no other armor than his robe in front of his sto-
mach and the staff of the cross in his fist. At all events, to please them he was armed cap-a-pie
and mounted on a good Naples charger, and a stout short sword at his side, and with Gargantua.
Ponocrates, Gymnaste, Eudemon, and twenty-five of the most venturesome of Grandgousier's household.
all armed to advantage, lance in fist, mounted like Saint George, each with a harquebusier on his
crupper.



CHAPTER 42


How the monk encourages his companions
and how he hanged from a tree.


Now the valiant champions are on their way to their adventure, fully determined to find out what
encounter they must seek and what they must guard against when the day comes for the great horrible
battle. And the monk encourages them, saying:

"Lads, have no fear or doubt, I'll lead you safely. God and Saint Benedict be with you! If I had
the strength to match my courage. 'sdeath! I'd pluck them for you like a duck! I fear nothing ex-
cept artillery. However, my staff of the cross shall play the devil. By God, any one of you who
ducks, devil take me if I don't make a monk of him in my place and wrap him in my robe! Its good
medicine for men's cowardice. Haven't you heard of Monsieur de Meurles's greyhound, who was no
good in the field? He put a robe over his head. 'Odsbody! Not a hare or a fox got away from him;
and what is more, he covered all the bitches in the area, he who before was impotent and de frigidis
et maleficiatis [one of the frigid and bewitched]."

The monk, speaking these words in anger, passed under a walnut tree, heading toward the Willow
Grove, and caught the visor of his helm in the stump of a big branch of the walnut tree. Neverthe-
less, he gave the spur fiercely to his horse, who was touchy under the spur, so that the horse
bounded forward, and the monk, trying to unfasten his visor from the stump, lets go the bridle
and hangs by his hand from the branches, while the horse slips out from under him. In this way
the monk remained hanging from the walnut tree and shouting "Help!" "Murder!" also protesting
about treachery.

Eudemon was the first to see him, and said, calling Gargantua:

"Sire, come and see Absalom hanged!" Gargantua, coming up, considered the countenance of the monk
and the posture in which he was hanging, said to Eudemon:

"You've hit it wrong, comparing him to Absalom, for Absalom hanged himself by the hair; but the
monk, clean shaven, hanged himself by the ears."

"Help me!" said the monk, "in the devil's name! Isn't this a fine time for chitchat? You remind
me of the Decretalist preachers, who say that anyone who sees his neighbor in danger must, on pain
of three-pronged excommunication, rather admonish him to make confession and put himself in a
state of grace than help him.

"So when I see them fallen into a stream and about to be drowned, instead of going to fetch them
and giving them a hand. I'll preach them a fine long sermon de contemptu mundi et fuga seculi
[on contempt for the world and flight from the secular],157 and, when they're stone dead, I'll go fish
for them"

"Don't move, my cutey," said Gymnaste, "I'm coming to get you, for you're a nice little monachus:

Monachus in claustro
Non valet ova duo:
Sed quando est extra,
Bene valet triginta.

[A monk, cloistered from view,
Is worth one egg, not two;
But once outside the door,
He's worth thirty or more.]

"I've seen more than five hundred hanged men, but I never saw one who had better grace in dangl-
ing, and if I could match it, I'd want to hang all my life."

"Will you," said the monk, "have preached enough soon? Help me, by God, since by the Other you
won't. By the robe I wear, you'll repent of this tempore et loco prelibatus in due time and place]."

Then Gymnaste got down off his horse, and, climbing up the walnut tree, with one hand he lifted
the monk by the gussets, and with the other freed his visor from the stump of the branch, and thus
let him fall to the ground, and himself after. When he was down, the monk rid himself of all his
armor and threw one piece after another about the field, and, picking up his staff of the cross
again, got back on his horse, which EudFmon had kept from running away.

Thus they joyously go their way, taking the road to the Willow Grove.



CHAPTER 43


How Picrochole's scouting party
was met by Gargantua,
and how the monk killed
Captain Tiravant [Forward March],
and then was taken prisoner
by the enemy.


PICROCHOLE, on the report of those who had escaped the rout when Tripet was untriped, was seized
with great anger, hearing that the devils had attacked his men, so he held his council all night,
at which Hastycalf and Blowhard concluded that he could defeat all the devils in hell, if they came;
at which Picrochole did not wholly believe nor did he mistrust it.

Therefore he sent sixteen hundred knights led by Count Tiravant to reconnoiter the country, all
mounted on light horses, as a scouting party, all well sprinkled with holy water, and each having
as his insignia a stole worn like a scarf, against all hazards, if they should meet the devils, so
that by virtue of this Gringorian158 water and of the stoles they should make them disappear and van-
ish. So they ran to the outskirts of La Vauguyon and La Maladerie but never found a soul to talk
to; whereupon they went back to the upper road, and in the shepherd's but near Le Couldray they
found the pilgrims alive, whom, tied and manacled, they carried off as if they were spies, in spite
of their exclamations, adjurations, and requests. When they had come down from there toward Scuille,
they were heard by Gargantua, who said to his men:

"Comrades, here is an encounter, and in number they are ten times more numerous than we. Shall we
charge them?"

"What the devil else shall we do then?" said the monk. "Do you value men by their number, not by
their valor and boldness?" Then he shouted: "Let's charge the devils, let's charge!"

Hearing which, the enemy thought they surely were real devils, so they began to Bee with bridle
down, except Tiravant who set his lance at the ready and with it struck the monk with full force
in the middle of his chest; but, meeting the horrific frock, the lance was blunted at the point as
if you were striking a little candle against an anvil. Then the monk with his staff of the cross
hit him between the neck and collar on the acrimion bone so hard that he stunned him and made
him lose all sense and movement, and he fell at the horse's feet. And, seeing the stole that he
was wearing like a scarf, he said to Gargantua:

"These are just priests; that's only the beginning of a monk. By Saint John, I'm a complete monk;
I'll kill them for you like flies."

Then he ran after them at full gallop, so that he caught the last of them, and beat them down like
rye, striking out at random.

Gymnaste immediately asked Gargantua whether they should pursue them, to which Gargantua said:
"Not at all, not at all; for according to true military discipline one must never reduce his enemy
to the point of despair; for such necessity multiplies his strength and increases his courage,
which was almost downcast and failed; and there is no better way out to safety for stunned and ex-
hausted men than to have no hope of safety. How many victories have been snatched from the hands
of victors by the vanquished when they have not been content with reason but have tried to put all
to the sword and destroy their enemy totally, without being willing to leave a single one to bear
the news. Always open to your enemy all gates and roads, and rather make a bridge of silver to send
them away."

"True," said Gymnaste, "but they have the monk."

"Do they have the monk?" said Gargantua, " 'Pon my honor it shall be to their hurt!"

"But so as to provide for all hazards, let's not pull back yet; let's wait here in silence, for I
think I know enough about our enemies' resourcefulness. They are guided by chance, not by plan."

While they were waiting thus under the walnut trees, meanwhile the monk kept on in pursuit, charg-
ing everyone he met without having mercy on anyone, until he encountered a knight carrying on his
crupper one of the pilgrims. And there, as he wanted to sack him, the pilgrim cried out: "Ha, Sir
Prior, my friend, Sir Prior, save me, please!"

Hearing this call, the enemies turned about to the rear, and, seeing that it was only the monk that
was causing this trouble, belabored him with blows as you load on an ass with wood. But of all this
he felt nothing, especially when they struck his robe, such tough skin he had. Then they gave him
two archers to guard him, and, turning around, saw no one opposing them; therefore they thought Gar-
gantua had fled with his band. So then they ran toward the young walnut trees as vigorously as they
could to meet them, and left there the monk alone with two archers on guard.

Gargantua heard the noise and the horses' neighing and said to his men:

"Comrades, I hear the sound of our enemies, and already I perceive some of them coming against us
in a crowd. Let's close in tight together here and hold the road in good order. By that means we can
receive them to their ruin and to our honor."



CHAPTER 44


How the monk got rid of his guards,
and how Picrochole's scouting party
was defeated.


THE monk, seeing them leave in disorder, conjectured that they were going to charge on Gargantua and
his men, and was extremely unhappy that he couldn't help them. Then he noticed the bearing of his two
archers on guard, who would gladly have run after the troop to pillage something there, and kept look-
ing toward the valley into which they were going down. Moreover he was reasoning, saying:

"These people are very inexperienced in feats of arms, for they never asked for my word and did not
take away my sword."

Immediately after, he drew his sword and struck the archer holding him on his right, cutting right
through his jugular veins and the sphagitid arteries of his neck, with the uvula, as far as the two
glands (the adenoids), and, drawing the blow back, opened up the spinal marrow between the second
vertebra and the third; there the archer fell stone dead. And the monk, turning aside his horse to
the left, ran upon the other, who, seeing his companion dead and the monk with the advantage over
him, cried in a loud voice:

"Ah, Sir Prior, I surrender! Sir Prior, my good friend, Sir Prior!" And the monk was likewise shout-
ing: "Sir Posterior, my friend, Sir Posterior, you're going to get some on your posteriors!"

"Ah!" the archer kept saying, "Sir Prior, my sweetheart, Sir Prior, God make you abbot!"

"By the habit I wear," said the monk, "here I'm going to nuke you a cardinal. Do you ransom people
in religious orders? You shall have a red hat today by my hand."

And the archer kept shouting: "Sir Prior, Sir Prior, Sir future abbot, Sir Cardinal, Sr Everything!
Ha ha! Hey, hey, No, Sir Prior, my good Sir Prior. I give myself up to you!"

"And I give you up," said the monk, "to all the devils."

Then with one blow he cut off his head, slicing his scalp over the os pelt= [stony bones, the lower
part of the temporal bonel, and taking off the two parietal bones and the parietal suture with a
large part of the frontal bone, in doing which he cut through the two meninges and deeply opened up
the two posterior ventricles of the brain; and the brain remained hanging over the shoulders by the
skin of the pericranium to the rear, in the form of a doctoral cap, black on top, red on the inside.
So he fell to the ground stone dead.

That done, the monk gives the spur to his horse and continues on the way the enemy was going, who
had encountered Gargantua and his comrades on the highroad and were so diminished in number, because
of the enormous slaughter Gargantua had done with his great thrcc, Gymnaste, Ponocrates, Eudemon, and
the others, that they were begin-ning to retreat in haste, all frightened and perturbed in sense and
mind, as if they saw the very semblance and form of death before their eyes.

And--as you see a donkey, when he has a junonic gadfly at his tail, or a fly that is stinging him, run
hither and yon without road or path, casting his load on the ground, breaking his bridle and reins,
without breathing at all or taking a rest, and you don't know what's driving him, for you see nothing
touching him--so fled these men, robbed of their sense, without knowing the cause for fleeing; they
were merely pursued by a panic terror that they had conceived in their souls.

When the monk saw that their whole thought was nothing but to take to their heels, he gets off his
horse and climbs on a big rock that was on the road, and with his great sword kept striking on these
fugitives with all his might, without holding back or sparing himself. So many did he kill and bring
down that his sword broke into two pieces. At that the thought struck him that this was enough massac-
ring and killing, and that the rest of them should escape to bear the news of this.

Therefore he seized in his fist an axe from those who lay three dead, and went back onto the rock,
spending his time watching the enemy flee and tumble down among the dead bodies, except that he made
them all leave their pikes, swords, lances, and harquebuses; and those who were carrying the bound pil-
grims he would put on foot and deliver their horses to the said pilgrims, keeping them with him in the
shelter of the hedge, also Blowhard [Toucquedillonl, whom he held prisoner.



CHAPTER 45


How the monk brought the pilgrims,
and the kind words that Grandgousier spoke
to them.


This scouting party completed, Gargantua withdrew with his men, except the monk, and at daybreak they
came to Grandgousier, who, in his bed, was praying to God for their safety and victory, and, seeing
them safe and sound, embraced them with much love and asked for news of the monk. Gargantua answered
him that no doubt their enemies had the monk. "Then," said Grandgousier, "they'll have an unhappy sur-
Thereupon he ordered a very good breakfast prepared to refresh them. With the whole thing prepared,
they called Gargantua; but he was so depressed because the monk did not appear that he would neither
eat nor drink.

All of a sudden the monk arrives, and, from the poultry-yard gate, he shouted: "Fresh wine, fresh wine,
Gymnaste, my friend!"

Gymnaste went out and saw it was Fare jean bringing five pilgrims and Blowhard prisoner. Whereat Gar-
gantua went out to meet him, and they gave him the best welcome they could and brought him before
Grandgousier, who questioned him about his whole adventure. The monk told him everything, both how
they had taken him, how he had recovered the pilgrims and brought Captain Blowhard. Then they fell to
banqueting merrily all together.

Meanwhile Grandgousicr was questioning the pilgrims about what re-gion they were from and where they
were going. Trudgealong replied for all; "Lord, I am from Saint-Genou in Berry; this one is from Pal-
uau; this one is from Onzay; this one is from Argy; this one is from Villebrenin. We're coming from
Saint-Sebastien near Names, and are returning thence by little day's journeys."

"All tight," said Grandgousier, "but what were you going to Saint-Sebastien to do?"

"We were going," said Trudgealong. "to offer our prayers against the plague."

"O, you poor folk." said Grandgousier, "do you think the plague comes from Saint-Sebastien?"

"Yes indeed." said Trudgealong, "and our preachers assert it."

"Really," said Grandgousier, "do the false prophets announce such abuses to you? Do they in this way
so blaspheme God's just men and saints that they make them out like those devils who do nothing but
harm among humans, as Homer writes [Iliad 1.9 ff.) that the plague was sent into the Greek host by
Apollo, and as the poets invent a pile of Vedioves [Vejoves or Anti-Joves] and other maleficent divinities?
Thus one hypocrite at Sinay was preaching that Saint Anthony set fire to legs, Saint Eutropius made
people dropsical [hydropich] Saint Gildas made people mad, Saint Genou brought on the gout. But I made
such an example of his punishment, al-though he called me a heretic, that from that time on not one
hypocrite has dared to enter my lands; and I am amazed if your king lets them preach such scandal in
his kingdom; for they are more to be punished than those who by magical art or other device would
have spread the plague around the country. The plague kills only the body, but such impostors poison
souls."

As he was saying these words, the monk came in, very purposeful, and asked them: "Where are you from,
you poor wretches?"

"From Saint-Genou," said they.

"And," said the monk, "how is Abbe Tranchelion, that good toper? And the monks, what kind of life are
they leading? 'Odsbody, they're corking your wives while you're out roaming as pilgrims [cependent que
ester en romivage]!"

"Heh heh heh!" said Trudgealong, "I have no fear about mine, for anyone who sees her by day will never
break his neck to go visit her by night."

"That's hitting the nail right on the thumb!" said the monk. She could be as ugly as Proserpina. by God,
she'll get the tumble, seeing there are monks around, for a good workman puts all pieces of material to
work indiscriminately. Even the shadow of an abbey steeple is fertile."

"It," said Gargantua, "is like the water of the Nile in Egypt if you believe Strabo; and Pliny, Book 7,
chapter 3. opines that it comes from leaves, from clothes, and from bodies."

Then said Grandgousier: "Go your way, poor folk, in the name of God the Creator; may He be a perpetual
guide to you, and henceforth don't be easy marks for these otiose and useless trips. Look after your
families. each man work in his vocation, bring up your children, and live as the good Apostle Saint Paul
teaches you to do. So doing, you will have the protection of God, the angels, and the saints with you,
and there will be neither plague nor trouble that will do you harm!"

Then Gargantua took them to have their refection in the dining hall; but the pilgrims did nothing but
sigh, and said to Gargantua: "O how happy is the country that has such a man as its lord! We are more
edified and instructed by these words than by all the sermons ever preached to us in our town."

"That," said Gargantua, "is what Plato says, Book 3 of the Republic 14734 that commonwealths would be
happy when the kings would philosophize or the philosophers would reign."

Then he had their wallets filled with victuals and their bottles with wine, and to each one he gave a
horse to relieve him the rest of the way, and a few crowns to live on.



CHAPTER 46


How Grandgousier humanely treated
his prisoner Blowhard.


BLOWHARD was presented to Grandgousier and questioned by him on Picrochole's enterprise and affairs,
what his aim was in this tumultuous disturbance. To which he replied that his aim was to conquer the
whole country, if he could for the injury done to his fouariers.

"That," said Grandgousier, "is undertaking too much; he who bites off too much cannot chew [qui trop
embrasse peu estrainct]. It is no longer the time to conquer kingdoms thus with damage to our own Christ-
ian neighbor and brother. This imitation of the ancient Herculescs, Alexanders, Hannibal:, Scipios, Cae-
sars, and others like them is contrary to the Gospel's profession, by which we are commanded to guard,
save, rule, and administer each man his own lands and countries, not hostilely to invade the others;
and what the Saracens and barbarians once called exploits are now called brigandages and wicked deeds.
He would have done better to restrain himself within his own house, governing it royally, than to come
invading in mine, hostilely pillaging it; for by governing it he would have augmented it; and by pil-
laging me he shall be destroyed.

"Go your way in the name of God. follow good undertaking; remonstrate to your king the errors that you
recognize, and never advise him having regard for your individual profit, for with the commonweal the
individual is also lost. As for your ransom, I give it entirely to you and intend that your horse and
arms be returned to you.

"Thus should we do between neighbors and old friends, seeing that this difference of ours is not prop-
erly war; as Plato, Book $ of the Republic [47Ocl, wanted it called not war but sedition when some
Greeks moved against others, which, if by bad fortune it comes to pass, he orders that we use with all
modesty. If war you call it, it is merely superficial; it does not enter the deep recess of our hearts,
for no one is outraged in honor, and, all in all, it is only a question of repairing some mistake com-
mitted by our men, I mean both yours and ours, which, although you took cognizance of it, you should
have let pass, for the people quarreling were more to be condemned than remembered, especially with me
satisfying their grievances, as I offered to do. God will be just assessor of our conflict, Whom I be-
seech rather to remove me by death from this life and have my goods perish before my eyes, than that He
be in any way offended."

These words completed, he called the monk, and in front of them all asked him: "Frere Jean, my good
friend, are you, who took Captain Blowhard, here present?"

"Sire," said the monk, "he is of age and discretion; I would rather have you know this by his confes-
sion than by my word."

Then said Blowhard: "Lord, it is truly he who took me. and I give myself up freely as his prisoner."

"Did you," said Grandgousier, "put him to ransom?"

"No," said the monk. "That's no concern of mine."

"How much," said Grandgousicr, "would you like for his capture?"

"Nothing, nothing," said the monk; "that's not my motive."

Then Grandgousier ordered that, in Blowhard's presence, there be counted out to the monk sixty-two
thousand saluts for his capture, which was done while they prepared the collation for the said Blow-
hard, whom Grandgousier asked whether he wanted to stay with him or if he preferred to return to his
king. Blowhard answered that he would take the course that he would advise him to.

"Then," said Grandgousier, "go back to your king, and God be with you." Then he gave him a handsome
sword from Vienne, with its gold scabbard made with fine vine-leaf ornaments in worked gold and a gold
collar weighing seven hundred and two thousand marts [half-pounds], and ten thousand crowns, as an hon-
orable present.

Aker these words, Blowhard climbed on his horse. Gargantua, for his security, gave him thirty men-at-
arms and six score archers under Gymnaste's leadership to conduct him as far as the gates of La Roche
Clermauld if necessary.

When he had left, the monk returned to Grandgousicr the sixty-two thousand saluts he had received, say-
ing: "Sire, it is not now that you should be making such gifts. Wait for the end of this war, for one
never knows what matters may come up, and war waged without a good supply of money has only a short
breath of vigor. Funds are the sinews of battle."

"Then" said Grandgousier, "at the end of it I'll content you with some honorable reward, you and all
those who have served me well."



CHAPTER 47


How Grandgousier sent for his legions,
and how Blowhard killed Hastycalf,
then was killed by order of Picrochole.


IN these days. the people of Besse, of the Marche Vieux [Old Market', the Bourg Saint-Jacques, Trainneau,
Parilly, Riviere, Roches Saint-Paul, Vaubreton, Pautille. le Brehemont, Pont-de-Clam, Cravant, Grandmont,
Les Bourdes, Chose. Varennes, Bourgueil, the Isle-Bouchard, le Croullay, Narsay, Cande, Montsoreau, and
other neighboring places, sent envoys to Grandgousicr to tell him that they were informed of the wrongs
that Picrocholc was doing him, and, because of their old alliance, they offered him all their power,
both in men and money and in other munitions of war.

The money from them all amounted, by the pacts they had with him, to six score and fourteen [134] mil-
lions and two crowns and a half of gold. The men were fificn thousand men-at-arms, thirty-two thousand
light horses, eighty-nine thousand harquebusiers, a hundred and forty thousand mercenaries, eleven
thousand two hundred cannons, double cannons, basilisks, and spiroles, of pioneers forty-seven thousand;
the whole force victualed and paid up for six months and four days. This offer

Grandgousier neither refused nor accepted completely; but, thanking them greatly, he said he would wind
up this war by such tactics that there would be no need to tie up to many honorable men.

Only he sent a nun to bring, in order, the legions he ordinarily maintained in his places of La Devi-
nierc, Chavigny, Gravot, and Ouinquenais, in number amounting to two thousand five hundred men-at-arms,
sixty-six thousand foot soldiers, twenty-six thousand harqucbusiers, two hundred large pieces of artil-
lery, twenty-two thousand pioneers, six thousand light horses, all in companies, so well furnished with
their paymasters, quartermasters, marshals, armorers, and other men necessary to provision for battle,
so well trained in military art, so good at recognizing and following their ensigns, so prompt to hear
and obey their captains, so ready to run, so adept in striking, so prudent in adventure, that they
seemed more like a harmony of pipe organs and arrangement of clockwork than an army or militia.

Blowhard. on arriving, presented himself to Picrocholeand told him what he had seen and done. In the
end he advised, in strong words, that they reach agreement with Grandgousier, whom he had found to be
the best man of honor in the world, adding that there was neither profit nor reason in thus molesting
his neighbors, from whom they had never had any but good treatment, and, in regard to the main point,
that they would never come out of this enterprise except to their great harm and misfortune, for the
power of Picrochole was such that Grandgousier could easily destroy them. He had not finished these
words when Hastycalf said very loudly:

"Very unfortunate is the prince who is served by such men, who are so easily corrupted as I find Blow-
hard to be; for I see that his heart is so changed that he would gladly have joined our enemies to fight
against us and betray us, if they had been willing to keep him; but since valor is praised and esteemed
by all, both friends and enemies, so is wickedness soon recognized and suspected, and, even supposing
the enemy use this for their advantage, still they always hold traitors and the wicked in abomination."

At these words, Blowhard, impatient, drew his sword and with it ran Hastycalf through a little above
the left nipple, from which he immediately died, and pulling his sword out of his body, he said roundly:

"So perish anyone who blames loyal servitors!"

Picrochole, immediately flew into a rage and, seeing the sword and scabbard thus stained, said: "Had
this weapon been given you for you, in my presence, to kill feloniously my good friend Hastycalf?"

Then he ordered his archers to cut him to pieces, which was done on the spot so cruelly that the whole
room was covered with blood; then he had Hastycalfs body honorably buried and Blowhard's thrown over
the walls into the valley.

The news of these outrages spread throughout the army, whereat many began to murmur against Picrochole,
so much that Clutchpuss prippeminault] said to him: "Lord, I don't know what will be the outcome of
this undertaking. I see that your men are ill-assured in their hearts. They are considering that we
are ill-provided with victuals and already reduced in number by two or three sorties. However, there
is a great reinforcement of manpower coming to your enemy. If we are once besieged, I don't see how it
can be but to our total ruin."

"Shit, shit!" said Picrochole. "You're like Melun eels, you scream before you're skinned. Just let 'em
come!"



CHAPTER 48


How Gargantua attacked Picrochole
in La Roche Clemmuld, and defeated
the said Picrochole's army.


GARGANTUA had entire charge of the army. His father stayed in his stronghold, and, encouraging them by
kind words, he promised great gifts for those who should perform a few exploits. Then they reached the
Ford of Vede, and, by boats and bridges lightly nude, they crossed over in one move. Then, considering
the site of the town, which was high and advantageous, he deliberated that night on what was to be done.
But Gymnaste said to him:

"Lord, the nature and temperament of the French is such that they are good for nothing except at the
first rush. Then they are worse than devils; but if they delay they are worse than women. My view is
that at the present time, after your men have had a breather and a little food, you make the assault."

This advice was found good. So then he sets out the whole army right into the field, putting the re-
serves on the side of the rising ground. The
monk took with him six companies of footsoldiers and two hundred men-at-arms, and with great dispatch
crossed the marshes, and got just above Puy on the highway to Loudun.

Meanwhile the assault continued. Picrochole's men didn't know whether the better course was to come out
and receive them or to guard the town without budging. But he sortied furiously with some band of men-at-
arms of his house, and he was received and saluted with cannon shots that hailed down toward the slopes,
whereupon the Gargantuisra pulled back to the valley the better to give place to the artillery.

Those of the town defended the best they could, but their shots passed overhead and beyond without hit-
ting anyone. Some of the band, saved from the artillery, proudly bore down on our men, but to little ad-
vantage, for they were all received between the ranks, and were thrown to the ground. Seeing this, they
wanted to pull back; but meanwhile the monk had occupied the passage, wherefore they took to flight
without order or discipline. Some wanted to give chase to them, but the monk held them back, fearing
that in following the fugitives they would lose their ranks and that at that point those of the town
would charge upon them. Then, waiting for a time and seeing no one appear against them, he sent Phron-
tiste to advise Gargantua to come forward to reach the hillside on the left, to block Picrochole's re-
treat by that gateway. Gargantua did this with all dispatch and sent there four legions of Sebaste's
company; but they could not reach the top without meeting face to face Picrochole and those who had
scattered with him. Then they charged hard upon them, but were greatly harmed, however, by those who
were on the walls, with arrow and artillery shots. Seeing which, Gargantua went in great force to succor
them, and his artillery began to beat on this section of the walls, so much that the whole strength of
the town was pulled back there.

The monk, seeing this side, which he held besieged, snipped of men and guards, courageously headed to-
ward the fort, and did so well that he got a foothold on it, and so did some of his men, thinking that
those who come up during a conflict cause more fear and dread than those who fight them. At all events
he caused no fright at all until all his men had reached the wall, except the two hundred men-at-arms
that he left outside for any mischance.

Then he shouted horribly, and his men with him, and in all fierceness they ran together toward the east
(read; west] gate, where the disarray was, and from the rear they overthrew all their force. The besieg-
ed, looking in all directions and seeing that the Gargantuists had won the town, surrendered to the monk
at his mercy. The monk made them give up weapons and armor and all pull back and shut themselves in the
churches, and seized all the staffs of the cross and assigned men to the doors to keep them from coming
out; then, opening the east [read; west' gate, he went out to help Gargantua.

But Picrochole thought that help was coming to him from the town. and in arrogant rashness ventured out
more than before, until Gargantua shouted: "Frere Jean, my friend, Here Jean, welcome in good time."

Then Picrochole and his men, knowing that everything was desperate, took flight everywhere. Gargantua
pursued them as far as Vaugaudry, killing and massacring, then sounded the retreat.



CHAPTER 49


How Picrochole in flight
was surprised by ill fortune,
and what Gargantua did after the battle.


PICROCHOLE, thus in despair, fled toward L'Isle-Bouchard, and at the Riviere road his horse, which stumb-
led and fell, at which he was so indignant that with his sword he killed him in his choler. Then, finding
no one to give him a new mount, he tried to take a donkey from the mill that was nearby; but the millers
thumped him all over and snipped him of his clothes, and gave him a wretched peasant blouse to cover him-
self with.

Thus the poor choleric went his way; then, crossing the water at PortHuault and relating his ill fortunes,
he was informed by an old hag that his kingdom would be returned to him at the coming of the cocklicranes.
Since then no one knows what has become of him. However, I was told that at present he is a poor porter
in Lyon. choleric as before, and always inquiring of strangers about the coming of the cocklicranes, hop-
ing certainly, according to the old woman's prophecy, to be restored to his kingdom at their coming.

After their retreat, Gargantua first called the muster-roll of his men and found that few of them had
perished in battle, to wit a few footsoldiers of Captain Tolmtre's band and Ponoctates, who had got a
harquebus shot on his doublet. Then he had them given refreshment, each in his company, and ordered
the paymasters to have the meal defrayed and paid for, and for no one to commit any outrage in the town,
seeing that it was his, and that after their meal they should appear in the square in front of the chateau,
and there they would be paid for six months, which was done. Then he had assembled before him in the
said square all those who there remained of Picrochole's side, to whom, in the presence of all his princes
and captains, he spoke as follows:



CHAPTER 50


The speech that Garganrua made to the vanquished.


Our fathers, forefathers, and ancestors in all memory have been of this sense and nature, that for the
battles accomplished by them they have been more prone to erect, as memorial signs of the triumphs and
victories, trophies and monuments in the hearts of the vanquished by mercy, than on the lands they con-
quered, by architecture; for they rated higher the living memory of humans acquired by liberality than
the mute inscriptions on arches, columns, and pyramids, subject to the calamities of the weather and to
each and every man's envy. Well enough you may remember the mildness they used to the Bretons at the
battle of SaintAubin du Cormier, and at the demolition of Parthenay. You have heard, and hearing admir-
ed, the good treatment they gave to the barbarians of Hispaniola, who had pillaged, depopulated, and
sacked the maritime borders of Olonne and Talmondais.

"All this hemisphere has been filled with the praise and congratulations that you and your fathers of-
fered when Alpharbal, king of Canarre, not sated with his good fortunes, furiously invaded the region
of Aunis, practicing piracy in all the Armorican Islands and adjacent regions. He was captured and van-
quished in a set naval battle by my father, whom God keep and protect. But what then? Whereas other
kings and emperors, indeed those who have themselves called Catholics, would have treated him courte-
ously, lodged him amiably with him in his palace, and with incredible kindliness sent him back with
a safe-conduct, laden with gifts, laden with favors, laden with all the services of friendship. What
came of it?

"He, back in his lands, assembled all the princes and estates of his kingdom, expounded to them the
humanity he had found in us, and asked them to deliberate on this in such a way that the world would
find it an example, as in us it had been of honorable graciousness, so in them it would be of gracious
honorability. There it was decreed by unanimous consent that they would offer up entire their lands,
domains, and kingdoms, to do with at our free will.

"Alpharbal in person immediately went back with nine thousand and thirty-eight great cargo ships,
bringing not only the treasures of his house and kingly line but almost the whole country; for, as
he was embarking to set sail to the northeast wind,159 every man, in a crowd, threw into his ship gold,
silver, rings, jewels, spices, drugs, and aromatic perfumes, popinjays, pelicans, monkeys, civet-cats,
spotted weasels, porcupines. There was no son reputedly of a good mother who did not throw in
whatever extraordinary thing he had.

"Once arrived, he wanted to kiss my said father's feet; the act was judged unworthy and was not tol-
erated, but he was embraced sociably. He offered his presents, which were not accepted, for not seem-
ing equitable. He yielded, by the decree of the estate, his lands and kingdom, offering the transact-
ion signed, sealed, and ratified by all those who should perform it; this was totally refused, and
the contracts cast into the fire. The end was that my said father began to lament for pity and weep
copiously, considering the free good will and simplicity of the Canarrians, and, by exquisite words
and fitting sayings, he played down the good turn he had done them, saying he had done them no good
that was worth even a button, and, if he had shown them any decency, he was bound to do so. But all
the more did Alpharbal exaggerate it.

"What was the outcome? Whereas for his ransom, taken at its most extreme, we could have tyrannically
demanded twenty times a hundred thousand crowns and retained as hostages his eldest children, they
have made themselves perpetual tributaries, obliged themselves to give us each year two millions of
refined gold at twenty-four carats. These are paid to us here the first year; in the second, by
their free will, they paid of it twenty-three thousand crowns, the third twenty-six thousand, the
fourth three million, and thus always increasing, by their good pleasure, we shall be constrained to
forbid them to bring us anything more. That is the nature of gratuity, for a good turn freely done
to the man of reason continually grows by noble thought and remembrance.

"Not wanting therefore to degenerate in any way from the hereditary kindliness of my parents. I now
absolve and deliver you, and make you free and clear as before. Moreover, on leaving the gate you
will be paid, each for three months, to let you retire to your homes and families; and conducting
you to safety will be six hundred men-at-arms and eight thousand foot soldiers, under the command
of my squire Alexander, so that you may not be injured by the peasants. God be with you!

"I regret with all my heart that Picrochole is not here, for I would have given him to understand
that without my wish, without any hope of aggrandizing either my property or my name, this war was
waged. But since he is lost, and no one knows where or how he has vanished, I want his kingdom to
remain entire for his son, who, because he is too young in age (for he is not yet quite five years
old), he will be governed and taught by the ancient princes and learned men of the kingdom. And,
inasmuch as a kingdom thus left desolate would be easily mined if someone did not check the covet-
ousness of its administrators, I order and will that Ponocrates be superintendent over all his tu-
tors, with the authority requi-site for this, and assiduous with the child until he knows him to
be fit and able to govern by himself.

"I consider that overly weak and lax facility in pardoning evildoers is an occasion for them thence-
forth to do evil out of this pernicious confidence in mercy. I consider that Julius Caesar, an emp-
eror so kindly that Cicero said of him that his fortune had nothing more sovereign about it but
that he could, and his virtue nothing better about it but that he always would, save and pardon
each and every one; he nevertheless, this notwithstanding, at certain points rigorously punished
the authors of rebellion.

"Following these examples. I want you to deliver up to me before leaving:

"First, that fine Marquet, who was the source and first cause of this war by his vain arrogance;
second his fouaaer companions, who were negligent in correcting his headstrong madness on the spot;
and finally all the councilors, captains, officers, and domestics of Picrochole, who must have in-
cited, praised, or advised him to burst out of his limits in order thus to disturb us."



CHAPTER 51


How the Gargantuist victors
were rewarded after the battle.


WHEN this speech had been made by Gargantua, the seditious men requested by him were delivered, ex-
cept Spadassin, Merdaille, and Menuail, who had fled six hours before the battle, one as far as the
Col d'Agnello, without a halt, one as far as the Val de Vire, one as far as Logrono,160 without taking
a look behind them or catching their breath on the road, and two fouaciers, who perished in the bat-
tle. No other harm did Gargantua do them but to order them to work the presses at his printing house,
which he had just established.

Then he had those of them who had died there buried honorably in the Vallee des Noirettes and the
Champ de Bmslevielle.161 The wounded he had bandaged and treated in his great hospital. Afterward he
gave thought to the damage done in the town and to its inhabitants, and had them reimbursed for all
their losses on their declaration and oath, and had a strong castle built there, assigning to it men
and watch to defend it better in future against sudden uprisings.

On leaving, he graciously thanked all the soldiers of his legions who had been present at this de-
feat, and sent them back to winter in their stations and garrisons, except certain of the decuman
whom on that day he had seen to perform certain exploits, and the company captains, whom he brought
with him to Grandgousicr.

On seeing them coming, that good man was so joyful it would be impossible to describe it. So he of-
fered them a feast, the most magnificent and most delicious since the time of King Ahasuerus. When
they left the table, he distributed to each of them the whole ornamentation of his sideboard, with
a weight of eighteen hundred thousand and fourteen gold besants in great antique vases, great pots,
great basins, great cups, goblets, candelabra, bows, boats, flowerpots, comfit boxes, and other such
plate, all in massive gold, besides the precious stones, enamel, and workmanship, which, in the es-
timation of all, exceeded their matter in value. Besides, he counted out from his coffers to each
one twelve hundred thousand crowns in cash, and fuithennore to each of them he gave in perpetuity
(except if they died without heirs) his chateaux and neighboring lands, according as these were
suited to them. To Ponocrates he gave La Roche Clermauld, to Gymnaste Le Couldray, to Eudemon
Montpensier, Le Rivau to Tolmerc, to Ithybole Montsorcau, to Acamas Cande, Varennes to Chronactc,
Gravot to Scbaste, Quinqucnais to Alexandre, Ligre to Sophrone, and thus with his other places.



CHAPTER 52


How Gargantua built for the monk
the abbey of Theleme.


THERE remained only the monk to provide for, and Gargantua wanted to make him abbot of Scuffle, but
he refused it. He tried to give him the abbey of Bourgueil, or of Saint-Florent, whichever one would
suit him better, or both if he liked the idea; but the monk gave him the decisive answer that he
wanted no charge or government:

"For how," said he, "could I govern others, who cannot possibly govern myself?162 If it seems to you
that I have done, or might do in future, service pleasing to you, grant me this, to found an abbey
of my own devising."

Gargantua liked this request and offered all his property of Theleme. next to the Loire River, two
leagues from the great forest of Port-Huault (or of Chinon]; and he asked Gargantua to institute his
religious order in the opposite way from all the others.

"Then first of all," said Gargantua, "there must never be walls built around it, for all other ab-
beys are proudly walled."

"Yes indeed," said the monk, "and not without cause; where wall [mur] is, front and rear, there is
abundant murmur Imur-murl, envy, and mutual conspiracy."

Furthermore, seeing that in certain monasteries in this world, it is a practice that, if any woman
enters (I mean of the decent modest ones), they scour the place where they passed; it was ordained
that, if a monk or a nun entered there by chance, they would painstakingly scour all the places
where they had passed. And because in the monasteries of this world everything is compassed, limit-
ed, and regulated by hours, it was decreed that there should never be any clock or sundial whatever,
but all works would be dispensed according to the occasions and opportunities; for, Gargantua used
to say, the greatest waste of time he knew of was to count the hours--what good comes of that? And
the greatest folly in the world was to govern oneself by the ring of a bell and not at the dicta-
tion of good sense and understanding.

Item, because at that time no women were put into convents except those who were one-eyed, lame,
hunchbacked, ugly, ill-made, mad, senseless, bewitched, and blemished, nor men [into monasteries]
unless rheumatic, ill-born, dumb, and household pests.

"By the way," said the monk, "a woman who is neither fair nor good, what is she good for?"163

"To put into a convent." said Gargantua.

"True," said the monk, "and to make shirts."

It was ordained that none should be received there but the fair, well-formed and well-natured wom-
en,164 and the handsome, well-formed and well-natured men.

Item, because in the convents of women men did not enter unless furtively and clandestinely, it was
decreed that never would women be there unless men were there also, nor men there unless women were
there too.

Item, because both men and women, once received into orders, after the year of probation, were forc-
ed and constrained to remain in them perpetually for all their life, it was decreed that both men
and women received there should leave them when they saw fit, freely and wholly.

Item, because ordinarily the religious made three vows, to wit of chastity, poverty, and obedience,
it was constituted that they could honorably be married, that each one should be rich and live at
liberty.

As regards the lawful age, women were received there from age ten to age fifteen, men from age twelve
to age eighteen.



CHAPTER 53


How the abbey of the Thiletnites
was built and endowed.


FOR the building and furnishing of the abbey, Gargantua had delivered in cash twenty-seven thou-
sand eight hundred and thirty-one long-woofed sheep; and for each year, until the whole thing was
completed, he assigned from the receipts of La Dive sixteen hundred and sixty-nine thousand sun-
crowns, and as many crowns of the Pleiades.165 For its founding and maintenance he gave in perpetuity
twenty-three hundred and sixty-nine thousand five hundred and fourteen rose nobles as a freehold
endowment, exempt from all burdens and services, and payable each year at the abbey gate; and to
this he gave them fine letters-patent.

The building was hexagonal in shape in such a way that at each angle was built a stout round tow-
er, sixty paces in diameter, and they were all alike in width and appearance. The River Loire flow-
ed on the northerly side. On its bank was situated one of the towers, named Artice [Arctic]; and
heading toward the orient was another named Calaer [Greek Kola + aer, cf., English Beloit.); the
other then following, Anatole (Greek: western land, from anatole "sunrise," d, Anatolia]; the one
after that, Mesembrine [Greek: southern, or relating to noon]; the one after that Hesperia [Greek:
western land, used of Italy]; the last, Cryere [Greek Kryeros, "icy"]. The whole was built in six
stories, counting as one the cellars underground. The second was vaulted in the form of a basket
handle; the rest had ceilings of Flanders plaster in the form of lamp bases, the roof covered with
lead backing with figures of little manikins and animals well garnished and gilded, with the gut-
ters that came out of the wall between windows painted in a diagonal figure in gold and azure down
to the ground, where it ended in great eaves-gutters that led into the river below the lodging.

The said building was a hundred times more magnificent than is Bonnivet,166 or Chambord, or Chantilly,
for in it were nine thousand three hundred and thirty-two rooms, each one furnished with an inner
chamber. study, garde-robe [either wardrobe, or, more probably, privy], chapelle [either kitchen
or, more probably. chapel],167 and opening into a great hall. Between each tower and the next, in
the middle of the said building, was a winding staircase, inside the said building, whose steps
were in part porphyry, in part Numidian stone [red marble], in part serpentine marble [green, with
red and white spots], twenty-two feet long, three fingers thick, the arrangement in the number of
ten between each landing. On each landing were two fine antique arches, by which the light was ad-
mitted, and by them one entered a cabinet made with lattice windows, of the width of said stair-
case. And it went up above the roof, and there ended in a pavilion. By this staircase you entered
from each side into a great hall, and from the halls into the chambers.

From the Articc tower to the Cryere were the fine big libraries, in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French,
Tuscan, and Spanish, divided among different floors according to the languages. In the middle was
a marvelous staircase, whose entryway was from outside the building symmetrically made six fathoms
wide and accommodating six men-at-arms, who, with lance on thigh, could ride up together abreast
all the way up on top of the entire building.

From the Anatole Tower to the Mesembrine were fine big galleries, painted all over with ancient ex-
ploits, histories, and descriptions of the earth. In the middle was a similar way up and a gate
such as we told of on the river side. Over that gate was written, in antique letters, what follows:



CHAPTER 54


Inscription placed over the great gate of Theleme.


Hypocrites, bigots, do not enter here,
Blanched sepulchers, who ape the good and true,168
Idiot wrynecks, worse than Goths to fear,
Or Ostrogoths, who brought the monkeys near;
Imbecile sneaks, slippered impostors too169
Furred bellybumpers, all, away with you!
Flouted and bloated, skilled in raising hell:
Go elsewhere your abusive wares to sell.

Your wicked ways
Would fill my days
With evil strife;
By your false life
Would mar my lays
Your wicked ways.

Here enter not, shysters athirst for fees,
Clerks, lawyers, who devour the common folk,
Bishops' officials, scribes and pharisees.
Doddering judges, binding at your ease
God-fearing people to a common yoke;
Your salary waits on the hangman's stroke.
Go there and bray; here no excessive loot
Should in your courts occasion any suit.

No suits or jangles,
No legal wrangles,
Are here in play.
We come for fun today.
If law must have its say,
You've bags full of tangles,
Jingles and jangles.

Enter not, misers, userers, this hall,
Gluttons for money, piling up the stuff,
Gold-grabbers, quick to swallow mist and all,
Hunchbacked, flatnosed, your coffers full, you bawl
For more; a thousand marks is not enough,
Your stomachs never fill, for they're too tough;
Go on, scrawny-faced dastard:. pile away:
I hope death strikes you down this very day.

Their inhuman face
Herein has no place;
Let it take the air
And get shaved elsewhere.
Quickly then displace
Their inhuman face.

Here enter not, you sottish mastiff curs,
You troublemakers. filll of jealous spite,
And you. fomenters of seditious stirs.
Goblins and sprites, whom Dangier170 ever spurs;
Latin or Greek, no wolf should cause such fright;
And poxies rotted with your noisome blight
Take hence your wolfish sores to feed at case,
The crusted stigmas of a foul disease.

Honor, praise, delight,
Herein find their site,
Always merrily,
All well bodily,
So we claim aright
Honor, praise, delight.

Here enter, you, and very welcome be,
And doubly so, each goodly gentle knight,
This is the place where taxes all are free,
And incomes fit for living merrily.
Come thousands, from great lord to puny wight;
You shall be as my family in my sight,
Sprightly and jolly, cheery, always mellow,
Each one of us a very pleasant fellow.

Companions clean,
Witty, serene,
Sans avarice;
For civil bliss
These tools are keen.
Companions clean.

Here enter too, all you who preach and teach
The Gospel live and true, though many hound;
You'll find a refuge here beyond their reach
Against the hostile error you impeach,
Whose false style spreads its poison all around:
Enter, we'll found herein a faith profound,
And then confound, aloud or penned unheard,
The foemen who oppose the Holy Word.

The Word of grace
We'll not efface
From this God's shrine;
Let each entwine
In close embrace
The word of grace.

Here too, ladies of high degree,
With a free heart come and be happy here.
Flowers of beauty, faces heavenly,
Of upright bearing, gracious modesty.
This is the place where honor is most dear.
Gift of the high Lord whom we all revere.
Our patron, who established it for you,
And gave much gold to make it all come true.

Gold given by gift
Gives a golden shrift,
For the giver stored.
And makes rich reward
As a wise nun's shift,
Gold given by gift.



CHAPTER 55


How the manor of the Iltelemites ran.


IN the middle of the inner court was a magnificent fountain of fine alabaster; above it, the three
Graces with comucopias, and they spouted water from their nipples, mouth, ears, eyes and other open
-ings of the body.

The inside of the lodging on the said inner court was set on great pillars of chalcedony and porphyry,
with fine antique arches, within which were fair galleries, long and ample, adorned with paintings
and horns of stags, unicorns, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, elephants' tusks, and other sights to see.

The ladies' lodging comprised the part from the Artice tower as far as the Mesembrinc Gate. In front
of the said ladies' lodging, to provide them with entertainment, between the first two towers, on the
outside, were the lists, the hippodrome, the theater, and the swimming pools, with the marvelous baths
in three stages,171 well furnished with all accommodations, and myrtle water aplenty.

Next to the river was the beautiful pleasure garden; in the middle of this, the fine labyrinth between
the other two towers were the tennis courts and the court for the big ball. On the side of the Cryere
was the orchard, full of all fruit trees, all ranged in quincuncial order. At the end was the great
park, abounding in all kinds of game.

Between the third towers were the butts for the harquebus, the bow, and the crossbow; the offices,
outside the Hesperia Tower, one storey high; the stables beyond the offices; the falconry in front of
them, run by falconers most expert in the art, was supplied annually by the Candiots. Venetians. and
Sarmatian with all sorts of specimen birds: eagles, gerfalcons, goshawks, great falcons, lanners, fal-
cons. sparrowhawks, merlins, and others, so well trained that, leaving the chiteau to play in the
fields, they took everything they encountered. The kennel for the hounds was a little farther on,
heading for the park.

All the rooms, public and private, and studies, were hung with tapestries of various sorts, according
to the seasons of the year. All the pavement was covered with green cloth. The beds were all embroider-
ed. In each back room was a mirror of crystal set in a frame of fine gold, garnished all around with
pearls, and it was of such a size that it really could represent the whole person. At the exits of the
public rooms of the ladies' lodgings were the perfumers and hairdressers, through whose hands the men
passed when they went to visit the ladies. Each morning these furnished the chambers with rose water,
orange-flower water, and myrtle water, and each lady with a precious casket breathing forth every kind
of aromatic drugs.



CHAPTER 56


How the religious of 17rNme,
men and women, were dressed.


THE ladies, at the time of the first founding, dressed at their own pleasure and fancy. Later they re-
formed themselves of their own free will in the following fashion.

They wore scarlet or purple hose up above the knee, by just three fingers' breadth, and that border was
adorned with fine embroidery and slashes. The garters were of the color of their bracelets, and covered
the knee above and below. The shoes, pumps, and slippers were of crimson, red, or violet velvet, slash-
ed like lobster wattles.

Over the smock they put on a lovely kink of some fine silk camblet. Over this they put the farthingale
of taffeta, white, red, tawny, gray, etc., over it, the frock of silver taffeta made of embroidery of
fine gold, and interlaced with needlework, or, as they saw fit and depending on how the weather looked,
of satin, damask, or velvet: orange, tawny, green, ashen, blue, bright yellow, crimson, white, cloth of
gold, cloth of silver, gold or silver purl, or embroidery, according to the feast days.

The gowns, according to the season, were of cloth of gold with silver fringe, of red satin covered with
gold purl, of white, blue, black, or tawny taffeta, silk serge, silk camblet, velvet, silver broadcloth
or cambrick, gold tissue, or purfled with gold in various portraits.

In summer, on some days, instead of gowns they wore flowing robes with the aforesaid adornments, or some
Moorish style burnouses, of violet velvet with gold fringe over silver purl, or with a golden cord, stud-
ded the crossings with little Indian pearls. And always the handsome panache, according to the colors of
the cuffs, and well garnished with gold spangles. In winter, gowns of taffeta of colors as above, fur
trimmed with lynx, black weasel, Calabrian marten, sable, and other precious fins.

Their rosaries, rings, chain necklaces, carcanets, were of fine precious stones, carbuncles, rubies,
Balas rubies, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, turquoises, garnets, pearls and excellent margarites.

The headgear was according to the season: in winter, French style; in spring, Spanish style; in summer,
Tuscan; except for Sundays, on which they wore French accouterments, because that is more honorable and
smacks more of matronly modesty.

The men were dressed in their fashion: below, hose of worsted or serge cloth, scarlet, purple, white, or
black; the breeches, of velvet in these colors or very nearly matching, embroidered and slashed as they
designed; the doublet in cloth of gold or silver, in velvet, satin, damask, taffeta, in the same colors,
slashed, embroidered, and decked out to their taste; their points, in silk of the same colors; the tags,
of well-enameled gold; the coats and jerkins of cloth of gold, cloth of silver, or velvet purfled to
taste; the gowns as precious as the ladies; the silk belts of the color of the doublets; each man with a
handsome sword at his side, its handle gilt, its scabbard of velvet, decked with many gold rings and but-
tons; a white plume above, neatly divided by gold spangles at the end of which dangled lovely rubies,
emeralds, etc.

But such sympathy was there between the men and the women that on each day they were dressed with similar
adornment, and, so as not to fail in this, certain gentlemen were appointed to tell the men each morning
what livery the ladies wanted to wear that day, for that was all at the ladies' decision.

In readying such neat clothes and rich adornments as these do not suppose that the men or the women waste-
d any time at all; for the wardrobe masters had each morning everything ready to put on, and the chamber
ladies were so well trained, that in a moment they were accoutered from tip to toe. And to have these ac-
couterments more readily available, around the Thileme wood was a great block of houses a half a league
long, well lit and varied, where the goldsmiths lodged, thc lapidaries, embroiderers, tailors, makers of
gold thread, weavers of velvet, tapestry makers, and upholsterers; and there they each worked at his craft,
and everything for the aforesaid men and women religious. These [craftsmen] were furnished with material
and cloth by the hands of Lord Nausiclete, who for each year brought them seven shiploads from the islands
of Perlis and the CannnibaLs, laden with gold ingots, raw silk, pearls, and precious stones. If a few
union pearls were getting too old and losing their whiteness, these [craftsmen] renewed them by their art
by giving them a few handsome roosters to eat, as they give castings {purges} to falcons.



CHAPTER 57


How the Thelemites were regulated
in their way of life.


All their life was laid out not by laws, statutes, or rules but according to their will and free choice.
They got up out of bed when they saw fit, drank, ate, worked. slept when they came to feel like doing so;
no one waked them, no one forced them either to drink or to eat or to do anvthrng else whatever. Thus Gar-
gantua had established it. In their rule was only this clause:

DO WHAT YOU WILL [FAY CE QUE VOULDRASL]172

because people who are free, well born, well bred, moving in honorable soda) circles, have by nature an in-
stinct and goad which always impels them to virtuous deeds and holds them back from vice, which they called
honor. These people, when by vile subjection and constraint they are oppressed and enslaved, turn aside this
noble affection by which they freely tended toward virtue, to throw off and infringe this yoke of servitude:
for we always undertake forbidden things and covet that which is denied us.

By this freedom they were moved to laudable emulation all to do what, they saw a single one liked. If some
man or woman said: "Let's drink, it they all drank; done said: "Let's go play in the fields," they all went.
If was to fly a bird or to hunt, the ladies, mounted on fine hackneys, with their proud palfrey, each carried
on her. daintily gauntleted fist either a sparrowhawk, or a lanner, or a merlin. The men carried the other
kinds of hawks.

So nobly were they taught that there was none among them, man or woman who could not read, write, sing, play,
harmonious instruments, speak five or six languages, and comose in these in both verse and prose.

Never were there seen such brave gentlemen, so noble and worthy, so dextrous and skilful both on foot and
mounted, more brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better able to handle any kind of weapon than were
there. Never were there seen ladies so fair, so dainty, less tiresome, more skilled with their hands, with
the needle, for every honorable and free womanly act, as were there.

For this reason, when the time had come when anyone in this abbey, either at the parents request or for other
reasons, wanted to leave there, be took along one of these ladies, the one who had taken him for her devoted
suitor, and they were married, and, if they had lived well at Theleme in devotion and friendship, they con-
tinued still better in marriage; moreover, they loved each other at the end of their days as on the first
day of their wedding.

I do not want to forget to set down for you a riddle which was found in the foundations of the abbey on a
great bronze plate. It was as follows:



CHAPTER 58


A prophetic riddle.


Poor mortal men, awaiting happiness,
Lift up your hearts and hear this my address:
If it is licit firmly to opine
That by the bodies which above us shine,
The human mind may of itself win through
Thus to announce the things that will come true,
Or if somehow by divine power one may
Have knowledge of the fate to come some day,
So as we judge by reason and good sense
The course and destiny of years long hence,
I make it known, for him who wants to hear,
That in this coming winter will appear,
Or sooner yet, right in this very space,
A kind of men, as if a certain race,
Weary of rest and fretful of delay,
Who frankly will proceed, in open day,
To suborn men in every walk of life
To disputation and to outright strife.
And he who listens and believes them true
(Whatever harm or damage they may do),
Will soon inflame to conflict past amends
Friends and close kinfolk against kin and friends;
The brazen will shamelessly conspire
And pit himself against his proper sire;
Even the great, sprung from a noble race,
From their own subjects shall rebellion face.
The duty then of honor and of awe
No longer shall enjoy the force of law,
For they, will say that all in turn should go
Right to the top and then return below,
And on this point such melees shall ensue
Comings and goings, discord, much ado,
That in no history of marvels old
Was such a tale of troubles ever told
Then we shall see that many men of merit,
Pricked by the goad of hot and lusty spirit,
And over trustful in their thirst for strife,
Die in their flower after too short a life.
And no one then can leave this course behind,
Once he has set on it his heart and mind,
Until he fills, by violence and heat,
Heaven with noise and earth with marching feet.
Then just as much authority will rest
With faithless men as with the trusty best;
For all will follow the belief and mood
Of the untaught and stupid multitude,
Whose thickest dolt their chosen judge shall be.
O what a baneful deluge all shall see!
Deluge, I say indeed, and with good reason,
For this travail will not be out of season,
Nor Mother Earth delivered from her course,
Until she spurts waters with sudden force,
So that the soberest and least extreme,
Still fighting, shall be watered in this stream,
And rightly, for their part, wrapped in this fight,
Will not have pardoned, in its bitter spite,
Even dumb animals and harmless fowls,
Till it has used their muscles and their bowels,
Not with sacrifice to the gods in mind,
But for the common service of mankind
I leave you now to ponder in your soul
How best to order and arrange the whole,
And what repose, amid this fearful din,
The round machine173 may hide its body in:
The happiest, who most of it possess,
To spoil and ruin it will forbear less,
And in more ways than one will labor still
To make it slave and prisoner to their will,
Till the poor thing sees all recourse evade her
Except to the Creator God Who made her;
And, for the worst of her sad accident,
The sun, before it seeks the occident,
Will let pitch darkness quite obscure the light,
More than would an eclipse or natural night,
Whence at one blow its freedom will be gone,
And Heaven's grace and light, which on it shone;
Or at least desolate will remain.
But she, before this ruin, loss, and pain,
Will long have shown, as token of her state,
A vast tremor, so violent and great,
That even Etna was not so harassed
When it upon a Titan's son was cast,174
And no less sharp and sudden was the quake
That poor Inarime175 was felt to make
When huge Typhoeus, mad for all to see,
Flung down entire mountains into the sea
Thus all too soon it shall be disarranged,
Much for the worse, and then so often changed
That those who held it long will step aside,
Leave it to others to be occupied.
Then will be near the good and proper day
This exercise to end and put away;
For the great floods that all this talk inspire
Will lead each man to think he should retire;
And nonetheless, ere everyone depart,
A purpose will appear in every heart,
A giant flame whose bitter heat is bent
On finishing these floods and the event.
In fine, when all these incidents are past.
Then the elect shall be refreshed at last,
Filled with all goods and manna from the Lord.
And furthermore, by honorable reward
Enriched; finally, let the others go
Stripped and denuded. That is reason, so
That when this work is done in such a state,
Each man may have his own predestined fate.
Such was the pact. O how we should revere
Whoever to the end can persevere!


The reading of this document completed. Gargantua sighed deeply and said to the company: "It is not just
from today that people brought back to the Evangclicalist belief are persecuted; but blessed is he who is
not scandalized and who will always aim at that mark that God, by His dear Son, has set before us, without
being distracted or led astray by his carnal appetites."

The monk said: "What, in your understanding, do you think is designated by this riddle?"

"How's that?" said Gargantua. "The continuance and upholding of divine truth."

"By Saint Goderan," said the monk, "such is not my explanation: the style is that of Merlin the Prophet.
Give it allegories and interpretations as ponderous as you like, and speculate about it, you and everybody
else, just as you please. For my part, I think there is no other sense to it than a description of the game
of tennis176 hidden under obscure words. The suborners are the men who get up games, who are ordinarily
friends; and after two chases, the one who was in the service court goes out of it and the other goes in.
They believe the first person who says whether the ball goes over or under the cord. The waters arc the
sweats; the racket strings are nude of lamb or goat guts; the round machine is the pelota or ball. After
the game, the players refresh themselves before a bright fire and change their shirts, and gladly they
feast, but most joyfully the winners. And so good cheer!"

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