BOOK 2
2: PROLOGUE
177. Hugues Salel (ca. 1504-1553) of Cohors, a minor poet in the "school"
of his fellow townsman Clement Marot (1496-1544)
and like him for a time a "valet de chambre" (a sort of secretary) to Kind Francis I, came later to be lthown for his own poems
(1540) and especially for his translation of Books I-10 of Homer's Riad (1545). Beyond this dizain nothing is known of his re-
lations (presumably friendly) with R. The dizain:first appeared only in the third edition (Lyon: Francois Juste) in 1534, the
probable year of the Gargantua. In the Lyon: Juste editions of 1534 and 1537 the dizain was followed by the cry: Long live all
good Pantagruelists!
178. The reference is not (as some once thought) to R's own Gargantua, not
published until after Pantagruel, but to one of sev-
eral popular little storybooks about the legendary giant Gargantua, presumably the one that gave R the excellent idea of writ-
ing a "sequel," his own Pantagruel.
179. This comparison with the oral religous tradition of the Jews is R's earliest
comic suggestion that his book contains pro-
found and abstruse doctrines.
180. The Institutes are Justinian's, in R's day still renowned and important in the law. Raclet is presumably Raimbert Raclet,
a teacher of law at Dole whom R clearly did not admire.
181. Unbaptized children and other blameless nonbelievers were thought to be
held after death in limbo, a dismal region in the
confines of hell. R applies the term to the sweat baths where +poxies (syphilitics)
were put to sweat out the infection. Saints'
lives were one of the few available diversions and highly prized.
182. Latin: exclusively. R's favorite bit of gallows humor, meaning of course:
up to the stake but not into the fire. However,
as Louis de Berquin (1529) and Estienne Dolet (1545) could testify, burning at the stake for heresy was no joke at the time.
183. Prestinators, short for predestinators "believers in predestination" and "impos¬tors" are both added to R's text in the
1542 edition, which was the first shot in a limited but fierce verbal battle between R and Calvin, whom in 4.32 R would brand a
demoniacal impostor and son of Antiphysis (Anti-Nature). Calvin in De scandalis (155o) was no kinder to R.
184. The titles in this paragraph are a grab bag of names of medieval romances,
real and imaginary, by authors known and unknown.
No Fessepinte "Tosspint" is known to exist; Orlando Furioso is Ariosto's popular verse romance (1532) about the madness of the
French hero Roland; Robert the Devil, Fierabras, William the Fearless, and Huon of Bordeaux are the Englished titles of popular
French medieval stories of derring-do. Montevieille probably refers to the popular fourteenth-century French Trav¬els of Sir
John Mandeville. Matabrune was the title of one reworking of The Knight of the Swan.
185. Onocrotary, crotonotary, and crock-notary, are parodic deformations of
French protonotaire "protonotary." The apostolic
protonotaries (notaries in the Roman chancellery) were reputed to be lusty blades.
2.1: OF THE ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE GREAT PANTAGRUEL.
186. The ancient Greeks had a reputation as topers but had no calends. The
Druids reckoned time not by days (as suggested here)
but by months. I do not think they counted forty days in a month.
187. Dative plural of word for debtors, as in the Lord's prayer: " .
as we forgive our debtors."
188. In the story of the Flood and the ensuing years (Genesis 6-9), God chose
Noah to build the ark and thus allow human and an-
imal life on earth to survive; so Noah reintroduced crops of all kinds. His special association with wine and the vine comes from
the sequel when his unmarried daugh-ters, desperate to have children and lacking access to other men, got him drunk one night
and conceived children by him in his sleep. Nearly a century before, Francois Villon had addressed one of his ballades to "Father
Noah, who planted the vine."
189. A phrase of harsh condemnation in Saint Paul, here used as a parody of a bit in the Creed regularly sung in Mass and a clear
allusion to pot-bellied arch-conservative Noel Beda of the Sorbonne, chief persecutor of any who favored Church Reform.
190. French Mardi gras "fat Tuesday," the day before the start of
Lent, hence marked by feasting and merrymaking.
191. Iambus is both an iam and the etymon of French jambe, "leg."
This form could be either nominative singular or nominative plu-
ral, meaning "legs." In prosody, an iambus is a foot made up of one short syllable, then one long: a short head then a long leg.
192. The heraldic term for red.
193. "Naso and Ovid" is an inside joke, since Ovid is Publius Naso.
194. The text, in this case Latin, is Ne reminiscaris "Do not be mindful"
to which must be added "of our sins," an old chant sung
at mass before and after the seven Psalms of Penitence. This jape was already old in R's time, since Latin ne and French nez
"nose" are homonyms, lists of "noses" (phrases beginning in Ne) soon flourished; R's is in this tradition. English knows, also
very common homonym of nose, is our best approximation.
195. The long genealogy that follows (fifty-odd names) is a parody of the Bible account (Matthew 1.1-17) of the descent of Jesus
from Abraham through David. R draws on almost all conceivable sources (legend, mythology, literature, mainly Biblical, Greco-Roman,
and medieval) and on his own fertile imagination. It was presented in his time as one of his lists, that is, with a new line of
type for each new name. It has seemed preferable here not to follow that practice but to run them on as in ordinary discourse; and,
to avoid a plaguy swarm of notes, many of which would be mere pleas of ignorance, these names, however strange, have been here an-
notated only in clusters. Thus here: Chalbroth, Sarabroth, and Faribroth are purely imaginary.
196. Fracassus is a character in the comic macaronic poem Merlini Coccaii macaronicon
or Baldus (1521) by the Italian monk Teofilo
Folengo ("Merlin Coccai" 1496-1544).
197. Of these thirteen giants (Ferragus-Roboaster) tlie first and last named
are drawn from popular medieval tales; Morgante (a-
bove) is the hero of Luigi Pulci's Morgante maggiore (1483); Galahad is the successful seeker of the Holy Grail in late Arthurian
romances; the others appear to be creatures of R's imagination, as do most of the ones that then follow; but Bruslant de Mornire,
Brehier (Bruyer), and Maubrun (Mabrun) are characters from medieval tales.
198. R's account of Hurtaly, especially later when he returns to him a few lines below, recalls a Hebrew tradition of a giant named
Ha-Palit (the escapee) who escaped the Flood by taking refuge on the roof of the ark, where Noah fed him.
199. French name for the scene, in northern Italy near Milan, of an important
French victory over the Swiss (1515).
200. Source unknown but possibly the tag line of a song or proverb popular
in R's day.
2.2: OF THE NATIVITY OF THE HIGHLY REDOUBTABLE PANTAGRUEL.
201. The verses 1 Kings 17-18 tell how, at the request of the prophet Elijah, God punished the idolatry of the wicked king Ahab by
denying the land rain or even dew for three years. In the summer of 1532, just before Pantagruel appeared, France had suffered a
terrible drought.
202. This term for "dead, dry, or parched," is found not in Homer
himself but in Plutarch, commenting on the Odyssey, in his Table
Talk (Sytnposiaca or Quaestiones conviviales).
203. "Meagerly not eagerly" emulates the wordplay of R's "lichement,
non en lancement." Lichement means "laxly," while en lancement
plays on the sound of German Landsmann "compatriot" used of one another by Swiss soldiers, who, like the Germans, were noted drink-
ers..
204. " ... a tout le poil": suggesting strength, comparable to English "with hair on his chest."
2.3: How GARGANTUA MOURNED FOR THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE BADEBEC.
205. From scholastic logic: acccording to the modes and figures of the syllogism,
here ridiculed for their futility.
206. "Mouse in pitch" is a proverbial provincial French term descended
from Greek via Latin mus in pice "the more he struggles, the
tighter he sticks."
207. Mementos: priests' prayers for the dead, beginning: Memento mon' "Remem¬ber
to die," meaning "Remember that you must
die."
208. "Foy de gentilhommer: the favorite oath of King Francis I.
209. Latin: "Allow my swearing," a way of apologizing for it.
210. Meaning: "I don't believe you are there."
2.4: OF PANTAGRUEL'S CHILDHOOD.
211. The "Giant's Bowl," a stone trough in front of the palace of
the Dukes de Berry, in olden times filled once a year
with wine for the poor.
212. La Grande Francoise (2,000 tons), then the biggest ship yet built in France, completed in 1527, but never got out of
port. The name Francoyse today means Frances; it then might also be the feminine adjective meaning "French" (now Franfaise).
213. The passage here from "What did he do?" through "my hearties?
Listen" began in the first edition (1532) as simply "Here
is what he did." In the 1534 edition R changed this to "What did he do?" Finally in the 1542 definitive edition he kept the
question to the reader but enlarged it further, as we see in our version. These changes in the French are from initial
"Voicy qu'il fist" to "Que fist-il? II essaya" to the final "Qu'il fist, mes bonnes gens? Escoutez." Even as it offers a
glimpse of R's way of compo¬sition, it illustrates nicely his love, and increasing use, of dialogue and an oral style.
2.5: OF THE DEEDS OF THE NOBLE PANTAGRUEL IN HIS YOUTH.
214. Now forgotten, this great long rack-bent crossbow was of the type used
in defense from the ramparts against enemy besieg-
ers. Chantelle (Allier) is a village that had a castle of the Dukes of Bourbon.
215. "Pass-lumpkin": a grotto in a cliff not far from Poitiers.
216. A phrase from Horace's Art of Poetry (vs. 9-1o) on the right of poets and painters to the free exercise of their imagin-
ation.
217. The medical school of the University of Montpellier, then rivaled in France
only by that of Paris, was where R took his
own medical degrees (bachelor, 1530, licentiate and doctor, 1537), and then taught in 1530 or 1531 or both, in 1537, and per-
haps at other times as well.
218. The University of Valence in Dauphin& founded in 1452 and now no longer
in existence, was notorious for bad town-and-gown
relations.
219. In R's time there was still an underground passage beneath the Eglise Saint-Pierre just outside the town that was said
to run underneath the Rhone.
220. A more literal version would go like this:
A tennis ball in your codpiece,
In your hand a racket,
A law in your corvette [an item rather like a doctor's hood],
A slow-paced dance in your heel,
Now you've passed your doctor's hood.
This quatrain seeks to render five verses of R:
Un esteuf en la braguette
En la main une raquette,
Une loy en la corvette,
Une basse dance au talon,
Vous voyla passé coquillon...
2.6: How PANTAGRUEL MET A LIMOUSIN.
221. Person coming from Limoges or the surrounding region (le Limousin) in central
France.
222. The opening part of this speech is borrowed from Geoffroy Tory's book
Le Champfleury (1529), a treatise mainly on elegant
printing. (A nineteenth-century American analogue is the poem "Aestivation, by my late Latin tutor," in Oliver Wendell Holmes's
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.)
The sense of it up to this point is roughly this: "We cross the Seine at dawn and dusk; we stroll through the squares and streets
of the city; we 'skim off Latin, and, as if really in love, we gain the good graces of the all-joining, all-formed, and all-bearing
feminine sex. On some days we visit the broth¬els and, in sexual transport, plunge our penises into the depths of the pudenda of
these most pleasant little whores."
223. Translation: "then we feast in the fine inns of the Pomme de Pin,
the Chateau, the Madeleine, and the Mule, on lovely shoul-
ders of lamb larded with parsley; and if by bad luck we are broke (we have no money or coins in our purses), we leave our books
and clothes as pledges, counting on the arrival of messengers to come from home."
Laires and penates are Roman gods of house and cupboard of each family's home.
224. Translation from "No, signor": "No, My Lord," said the student; "for most freely, as soon as the slightest glimmer of day
breaks, I go into one of these well-built churches, and there, sprinkling myself with fair holy water, I mumble a snatch of some
prayer from the mass in our rituals. And, mutter-ing my prayers from the hours, I wash and clean my soul of its night's stains.
I revere the Gods of Olympus, I worshipfully venerate the Almighty on high who rules the stars. I obey the Ten Commandments, and,
according to my feeble powers, do not stray one nail's breadth from them. It's true that since I have no money coming in, I rare-
ly give alms to the poor who seek their bread from door to door."
This student goes through the motions of a truly pious believer but makes no offering or alms, saving up for uses closer to his
heart, while scrupulous in ritual. His smug hypocrisy doubtless helps explain Pantagruel's harshness with him.
225. Translation from "Signor Missayre": "My Lord and master,
my nature is not suited to what this insulting knave says, to flay
our French vernacular, but I labor diligently in the opposite cause, and strive with sails and oars to fill it out from the abun-
dance of Latin."
226. Translation of the student's speech: "My ancestors came originally
from the region of Limoges, where lies the body of
the most holy Saint Martial."
227. Ironic antiphrasis for "what a foul odor!" much as Panurge's will be at the end of Book 4. Saint Alipentin is a comic
name perhaps drawn from the medieval mystery plays.
2.7: How PANTAGRUEL CAME TO PARIS.
228. Although this is probably not historical fact, in R's time this cemetery
was grievously overcrowded, so that skeletons
were constantly being dug up and piled in charnel houses nearby, where some people set up shops and others used to come by
for a stroll.
229. This is the library of the Abbey of Saint-Victor, noted for its richness
in theological works. The list of some seven-
score titles that follows and fills the chapter is a mixed bag that includes even a few actual titles, but most are imagi-
nary: about one-third Latin; two-thirds French; perhaps one-quarter mainly comic with no clear satiric intent; the majority
are satiric. Principal butts of the satire and sources of the comic are the standard monastic shortcomings of the flesh and
the unending contrast between the portentous-sounding Latin of the titles or of the author's name and creden-tials, or both,
and the unwavering triviality, more often than not obscene, of the subjects of the books.
In attempting to render these as well as I could, I have always given an English version, trying in it to convey usually the
sense, and when possible also the sound and the imagery-not to mention something of the comic effect. Beyond this I have not
seen as desirable any consistency but that of intent, and so have simply used my judgment to decide when, and when not, to
offer the original text as well as the translation.
The first item in the "catalogue" illustrates the usual styling when both translation and original are given.
230. The French for saltpeter is hanebane, then considered an aphrodisiac.
231. The name was Mamotret, a Biblical commentator. R added the "r" to create an analogy with marmot, a monkey, about which
the treatise was written.
232. Comical parody of the scholastic habit of giving leading theologians honorific
epithets to modify "Doctor" such as "An-
gelic, Subtle, Cherubic," etc. For example, Aquinas was called "angelic"; Bonaventure, "seraphic"; Duns Scotus, "subtle";
Occam, "invincible"; see below note 26. Pasquin's here is well deserved, since he (and Marforio below) are facing marble
statues in Rome where lampoons and the like were posted.
233. Apparently a mystery play on the manufacture of crown coins stamped with
the cross, hence counterfeit, by unscrupulous
clerics.
234. Noel Beda, professor of theology at the College de Montaigu and syndic of the arch-conservative Sorbonne (Faculty of
Theology of the University of Paris), was the enthusiastic persecutor of heresy (which he found all around) and consequently
bete noire of the Erasmians and other humanist Evangeliques. Besides hi's humped back, Beda was deformed by a famous, enor-
mous paunch, which explains this title and most other allusions to him by R.
235. These dragees, like the judges' epices were bribes, a notorious abuse.
236. 41 traditional comic figure of the cowardly soldier given literary form
by the fifteenth-century poet Francois Villon.
237. "Mustard after dinner" was a proverbial saying," later
used by Montaigne; see Essais 3.10, Pleiade ed. p. 987 (Montaigne,
Oeuvres completes, ed. by Albert Thibaudet and Maurice Rat [Paris: Gallimard, 1962]) for the futility caused by bad timing;
cf., our "lock the barn after the horse is stolen."
238. Apparently an allusion (not in the first edition) to the invasion of Provence
and burning of it to a crisp (the red of
Bresil) in 1542 by the Imperial army under Leiva.
239. Marforio was the name of an ancient statue facing that of Pasquin. See
above note 5.
240. "Coqueluche" also means "whooping cough," but I doubt that that matters here.
241. Brother (Frai) Inigo has not been identified with anyone.
242. Estienne Brillefer (Ironburner) was a Scotist professor at the Sorbonne.
243. "Callibistratorium Caffardie, actore M. Jacobo Hoctratem hereticometra."
Callibistratorum means "a woman's genitals";
caffardie, "of hypocrisy." Jacob Hochstraten, a Cologne Dominican, was
Grand Inquisitor for Germany.
244. Johann Maier von Eck (Eccium, 1486-1543) strongly opposed Luther, ob-tained
a papal bull condemning him and continued
opposition to Reform. R's ascription on sweeping out flues may well aim at an erotic connotation.
245. A medley of Greek prepositions serving as a nonsense book title.
246. Bishops in partibus were also known as portatifs; hence the irresistible pun potatifs "hard-drinking," here, potative.
247. A cause célèbre in the early sixteenth century was the fierce opposition
of conservative obscurantists to Professor
Johann Reuchlin, led by Johann Pfefferkorn and centered in Cologne for a time, because Reuchlin, a Greek and Hebrew scholar,
wanted to spread the knowledge of Hebrew in Ger-many. Humanists, led by Erasmus, backed Reuchlin.
248. "To play the cymbals" here could also mean to have sexual intercourse.
249. Martingale here means "long underpants that open at the bottom."
250. The actual title of a book (i414) by the eminent theologian Jean Gerson,
onetime chancellor of the University of Paris,
a leader in restoring the unity of the Church after the Western Great Schism (I 3 78-1417).
251. In the full title a little later of the book by Dytebrodius, the libellus acephalos may go back to Plato's phrase mythos
akephalos in Phaedrus 264.
252. Master Guingolfus is unknown to all scholarly editors and to this translator.
He may well be a creature of R's fertile
imagination.
253. See above, note 5 on this chapter. "Moillegroin, Doctoris cherubici, De origine patepelutarum." The name "Cherubic Doc-
tor" was one of those given to Aquinas. "Hairypaws," rather
like our "gumshoes," meant spies, observers, or especially snoop-
ers.
254. Godemarre is also a partial homophone of Gaude Maria "Hail Mary."
255. Aquinas is "the Angelic Doctor" and the Summa his master work.
256. This is the actual title of a book by Dr. Symphorien Champier (1528)
of Lyon against Arab medicine and Arab doctors.
257. Tubingen was indeed a center for printing; otherwise this statement is fantasy and fun.
2.8: How PANTAGRUEL, WHILE IN PARIS, RECEIVED A LETTER FROM HIS FATHER GARGANTUA.
258. Much of this idea is from Aquinas. For this sense of "period"
as "revolu tion, conclusion, end of a sentence," see for
example 4.13D.
259. The contemptuous French Renaissance humanists referred to everything medieval,
including their own ancestors, as Goths
and Gothic.
260. Dissections of the human body were still rare in R's day and anathema to the Sorbonne conservatives. R performed some
publicly, both at Montpellier and at Lyon, and was praised in verse for it by Estienne Dolet (Carmina, Book 4).
261. A commonplace of the time was the contrasting but complementary pairing
of the macrocosm (the universe) and microcosm
(man); the fine Lyon poet Maurice Sceve (1500-1564) used the title The Microcosm for his longest poem, an encyclopedic hist-
ory of man since the Fall.
262. The phrase "against all corners" is a curious, disputatious,
seemingly late scholastic touch, but typical of the time,
and preparing for what follows in 2.10 and 2.18-20. In R's day this was how you made a name and proved yourself in higher
knowledge.
263. To Evangelicalists such as R, lovers of Paul and of i Corinthians 13, this was a key phrase and concept at the heart of
true Christianity.
2.9: How PANTAGRUEL FOUND PANURGE.
264. The comic device basic to this whole chapter is that the new character
Panurge, though nearly starving and quite broke,
persists in answering all Pantagruel's normal well-meant questions (who he is, from where, doing and seeking what?) in thir-
teen languages (four of these imaginary) unintel ligible to most of his listeners, as well as to most of R's readers then
and now. A few inconsistencies need bother us no more than they did R: the listeners' apparent ignorance of Latin, and that
neither Pantagruel nor Epistemon (elsewhere said to know all languages) seem to make any sense of any but French. This first
piece, rather pompous and antiquated, in a German with a touch or two of Latin, means approximately this: "My Lord, God give
you happiness and good fortune. First, my dear Lord, you must know that what you are asking me about is a sad and unfortunate
thing, which it would be unpleasant for you to hear and for me to tell, even though poets and orators in other times have
said that the recollection of poverty and misery in the past is a great pleasure."
265. If not a fictive Antipodean (East Indian) piece at times it recalls Arabic
and near the end in the name of R's hometown
Chinon. Jourda (in G) calls it untranslatable; Demesson (LI), with thanks to Emile Pons, summa rizes the gist of it thus:,
a language colored with Oriental images,
Panurge demands cakes aid stew; or else he will sodomize Pantagruel in Scottish style._
266. Italian: f"Sir, you see by example that a bagpipe will not play unless its belly is full. 5o I likewise cannot possibly
tell you about my adventures unless first my ill-treated belly has its wonted food, for which it thinks my hands and teeth
have lost their natural function and are totally annihilated.""1
267. The weatherbeaten Scottish conveys approximately this meaning: Panurge
hopes that the giant's spirit is as lofty as his
build but fears that the equality of the giant's and his own nature may not be recognized, since virtue is often misprized.
In editions after 1542 an English text replaced the Scottish.
268. In a very vulgar Basque, presumably picked up from a lackey: "Sir,
for all troubles a remedy is needed. To do exactly
as we should is hard. I have implored you so! Arrange it so that we can have an orderly talk; that will be, with no hard feel-
ing, if you have me brought enough to eat. After that, ask me whatever you wish. You could even ask a double share of ques-
tions, if God please."
269. As LI suggests a Lanternese might have gathered from this gibberish that
Panurge asks the Lord of La Deviniere to give
him a drink; God will pay him back doubly in wine from the Cordeliers's stock.
270. Now, in a kind of Dutch, Panurge protests that he is speaking Christian
talk; but why must he? His rags eloquently be-
speak what he wants.
271. In Spanish: "Lord, I am tired from talking so much. So I beseech
Your Reverence to consider the evangelical precepts so
that You may be moved to what conscience requires; if these do not suffice to move Your Rever ence, I beseech you to consider
natural pity, which, I believe, will touch you as it is only right. And I say no more."
272. In Danish: "Sir, even in case I, like infants and animals, were not to speak any language, my clothes and the emaciation
of my body would clearly show what I need: to eat and drink. Have pity on me and have someone give me enough to calm my baying
stomach, as they place a sop before Cerberus. Thus you will live a long happy life."
273. As Epistemon recognizes, this is Hebrew: "Lord, peace be with you.
If you wish your servant well, give me a scrap of
bread right away, as it is written: `He lends to the Lord who has pity on the poor man.' "
274. In ancient Greek: "Excellent master, why don't you give me some
bread? You see me miserably pale with hunger, and yet you
have no pity and keep asking me things beside the point. Nevertheless, all who love letters agree that words and speeches are
superfluous when the facts are evident. Speeches are necessary only where the facts under discussion do not appear clearly."
275. This is one more of R's imaginary languages.
276. Latin at last: "Several times already I have implored you by all
that is holy, all the gods and all the goddesses, if you
have any pity, to relieve my poverty; but my cries and lamentations have had no effect. Permit me, permit me, impious men, to
go off to where the Fates call me, and weary me no longer with your vain interrogations, remembering the old proverb that says
that an empty belly has no ears." Although "whither the Fates call me" (quo me fata vacant) strongly recalls phrases in both
Lucan and Ovid, I think it likeliest to be a conflation of two pieces from Virgil, the fata vacant of Georgics 4.49 and the
more evident quo fata trahunt /sequamur of Aeneid 5.709.
277. In 1502 the French, at the pope's request, tried to besiege Mytilene,
chief city of Lesbos, in the Aegean near Asia Minor;
but they were beaten off and lost some men as prisoners to the Turks.
2.10: How PANTAGRUEL EQUITABLY JUDGED A MARVELOUSLY DIFFICULT AND OBSCURE CONTROVERSY.
278. In a standard university practice, one might present, by posting them in advance, conclusions (theses or propositions)
that one was prepared to dis cuss and defend in debate against all corners. Near the end of chapter 8 above, Gargantua had
instructed his son to do this soon to demonstrate his knowledge.
279. The French ergotz "spurs of a cock" implies cockiness (monter
or estre sur ses ergots means "to get up," or "be on one's
high horse"), and is also the homophone of Latin ergo "therefore," a favorite word of disputants.
2.11: How LORDS KISSASS AND SNIFFSHIT PLEADED.
280. An invitation showing great politeness on Pantagruel's part. Many men
wore hats then indoors as well as out, but never a
social inferior in the presence of a superior, unless with such permission as this. In the three chapters that follow (is-13)
relating the pleas and Pantagruel's decision in this lawsuit, any cogency or coherence is of course strictly coincidental.
281. "A kind of British daunce" (Cotgrave).
282. Scene of a severe defeat (April 29, 1522) of Lautrec and his French army
by the Imperials. A bicoque is "a small insigni-
ficant stronghold."
283. The French original of this quatrain was this:
La Penthecoste
Ne vient foys qu'elle ne me
May hay avant,
Peu de pluye abat grand vent.
284. "Sa, Dieu gard de mat Thibault Mitaine!" He is an unidentified man in a song.
285. Opening words of two anthems, here presumably automatically muttered:
Hail Mary's and Hear us's.
286. Presumably terms from an unidentified game perhaps (Cotgrave) like "Whirlebone."
287. R has of course inverted a verse proverb that said: "He who walks wisely does not fall from the bridge."
288. A didactic allegory in verse (1493) by the Rhetonqueur Jean Meschinot.
These spectacles should have Prudence and Justice as
lenses, Force as mounting, Temperance as joining-pin.
289. Inversion of in verbo sacerdotis "on the word of a priest"
(presumably Gospel).
2.12: How LORD SNIFFSHIT PLEADED BEFORE PANTAGRUEL.
290. Proverbial (Villon and before) for an easy distinction to make.
291. A euphemism aiming to avoid but skirt swearing, much like corbleu, for
boeufs, like bleu, rhymes with Dieu. Quatre boeufs
means "four oxen"; these oxen will return later in the chapter.
292. The French original goes as follows:
Qui bait en mangeant sa souppe
Quand it est mom it n'y voit goutte?
293. A term designating one figure of the syllogism.
294. The French ambesace means "two aces" (cards) or "two ones"
(dice).
295. Charles VIII, who died in 1498.
296. The French original is this:
Incontinent les lettres veues,
Les vaches luy furent rendues.
297. Probably a fantasy name of R's invention.
2.13: How PANTAGRUEL GAVE HIS DECISION.
298. A paragraph from the Digest (q.v.) dealing with indivisibility.
299. " ... et autant pour le brodeur"; this seems to mean "as
much again for good measure."
300. The Flood. This prediction was proverbial in R's day.
2.14: How PANURGE RELATES THE WAY IN WHICH HE ESCAPED.
301. Lords and scholars.
302. Of these names, Astaroth and Rappallus appear in medieval mystery plays;
Grilgoth and Gribouillis are inventions of R.
303. This Christian invocation in Greek, surprising among Turks, is less so
as suming this takes place still near Mytilene in
Greek-speaking Lesbos.
304. Francois Villon (1431-?) used this line as the refrain of his "Ballade of the Ladies of Yesteryear" (Ballade des dames du
temps jades), probably his best-known poem.
305. Proverbial for smelling strong (from underarm sweat?) for fear; the leg
of mutton is clearly overripe, gamy, or higher yet.
306. Corinthian women included many prostitutes and were considered notori
ously free.
307. A very popular expression at this time.
2.16: OF THE WAYS AND DISPOSITIONS OF PANURGE.
308. Lead being ill-suited for daggers, the effect of this phrase is much
like English "like a lead balloon," i.e., futile, point-
less.
309. " au demourant, le meilleur filz du monde": probably the most
famous
line by R's friend the poet Marot, ending the introductory stanza of his "Epistle to the King, for having been robbed."
310. Formula for saying Grace after a meal.
311. Pierre d'Ailly (1350-1420), Chancellor of the University of Paris and
later Bishop of Cambrai and cardinal, was indeed the
author of a book entitled Suppositions, which formed a section of the logic of the scholastics. Beyond that we have R.
312. " courir les rues": the French equivalent of English "street
walking."
2.17: How PANURGE GOT PARDONS.
313. The authorized open selling of pardons and indulgences by the Church was a main trigger of revolutionary reform in the early
sixteenth century by Luther and others.
314. Formed from the formula for "thanks," grates vobis do "I
give you thanks," to give you a comically incorrect form of dominos,
"Lord or Master." "Thank you, my lords" would be grates vobis, domini.
315. Urquhart's term for French le reniguebieu (euphemism for renie-Dieu).
OED and Cotgrave offer no help. Lefranc suggests: "Sans
doute jeu de Cassette [puzzle game] qui fait jurer."
316. An unknown saint, possibly of R's invention. Sainean has suggested as a source Latin ad auras "in the air."
2.18: How A GREAT SCHOLAR FROM ENGLAND WANTED TO DEBATE AGAINST PANTAGRUEL.
317. Onetime residence of abbots of Saint-Denis, in R's day a college for
Benedictines, where R, as a Benedictine monk, may have
stayed.
318. The verse 2 Chronicles 9.1-12; see also Matthew 12.42.
319. Meaning "of Memphis" in. Egypt but resembling and suggesting mephitic, "stinking and possibly poisonous." ?
320. A saying of Democritus, not of Heraclitus.
321. Editions from 1.534 through 1537 added here the following fearsome and
impresssive list; to express R's loathing for the mon-
sters infesting the Sorbonne: Sorbillans, Sorbonagres, Sorbonigenes, Sorbonicoles, Sorboniformes, Sorbonisecques, Niborcisans,
Borsdnisans, Saniborsans.
2.19: HOW PANURGE MADE A MONKEY OF THE ENGLISHMAN.
322. "Vous avez parle, masque!": i.e., you broke your own rules for this debate. Panurge's signs range from merely making faces
to elaborate nose-thumb ing and on to the sign of the fig and the other without a name I know of but expressing English "Screw
you!" or words to that effect, these last two of course expressing obscene, insolent contempt.
2.21: How PANURGE WAS SMITTEN BY A GREAT LADY OF PARIS.
323. Apparently a common errand for children, freeing parents for other jobs.
324. "...venir au dessus de": means "get the better of, dominate,"
but literally
"come over" or "come on top of," as is clearly meant here.
325. Here used by R in the sense of what in animals we call "cover" (sexually).
326. This and the "antic dance" a bit later refer of course to sexual
intercourse.
327. "...bouttepoussenjambions": the bit on Panurge's predestination
for this is from the 1542 edition and may be an early swipe at
Calvin. In the first (1532) edition, the sentence had read: "By God, that will be me, I see it clearly: for already you are madly in love
with me, I know it. So, to save time, let's do it."
328. Our imitation of the equivoque making "A Beaumont le Vicomte" into "A beau con le vit monte" or "a creek rises for a handsome
punt" into "the prick rises at a lovely cunt."
329. By this pun ("on my youth" for "on my oath"), I have
tried perhaps vainly to approximate the French: "par mon sergent"
for "par
mon serment."
2.22: How PANURGE PLAYED A TRICK ON THE PARISIAN LADY.
330. R uses a French learned creation, lycisque orgoose, which I see no way
to approximate in English. Ordinary French, Latin, and
Greek seem to offer no help; Cotgrave gives, for licisque alone, "A dog engendered between a wolf and a dog" (cf., Greek lukos "wolf,"
Latin lycus), nothing for orgoose alone; and for licisque orgoose "a sault bitch" or "a bitch in heat."
331. Here is the French original of this rondeau:
Pour ceste foys que a vous, dame tees belle,
Mon cas disoys, par trop feustes rebelle
De me chasser sans espoir de retour,
Veu que a vous oncq ne feis austere tour
En dict ny faict, en soubson ny libelle.
Si tant a vous deplaisoit ma querelle,
Vous pouviez par vous, sans maquerelle,
Me dire: "Amy, partez d'icy entour
Pour ceste foys."
Tort ne vous lays, si mon cueur vous decelle,
En remonstrant comment l'ard l'estincelle
De la beaulte que couvre vostre tour;
Car rien n'y quiers, sinon qu'en vostre tour
Me faciez de hait la combrecelle
Pour ceste foys.
2.24: A LETTER THAT A MESSENGER BROUGHT TO PANTAGRUEL.
332. " . . . du sel ammoniac destrempe en eau." This is diluted
ammonium chloride. The list, which begins here, of de-
vices for secret writing, mainly in invisible ink, comes to R from many sources, this one from the Polygraphia (1518) of
Trithernius; the next from Pliny, Natural History 25.8. The works and many of the authors cited further on are apocryphal,
and "Francesco di Nianto" is literally "Francis of Nothing."
333. Christ's last words on the cross (Matthew 27.46 and Mark 15.34, but not in Luke or John; cf., Psalms 22.1) usually
rendered "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" and translated "Lord, Lord, why has thou forsaken me?"
334. "Dy, arrant faulx": for its homonym "diamant faulx"
(fake diamond).
335. All these places up to and including Melinda are in or off Africa on
the route Spanish and Portuguese explorers took
around Africa at the Cape of Good Hope from western Europe to the Indies: down south along the African west coast, around
the Cape, and back up north along its eastern coast. Melinda is a special case: there was a real one in modern Zanzibar,
won over with wine by the Portuguese, but how closely identifiable with the town and kingdom of fantasy, home of Hans Car-
vel, is not fully clear. For it and the following fantasy ports on this trip, see the Glossary.
336. In Herodotus's History of the Persian Wars (Book 3), a Persian noble under Darius who cut off his own nose and ears
to persuade the besieged Babylonians that he was a deserter to their side and ultimately to give him full authority over
their army; whereupon he opened the gates of the city to be taken and sacked by the Persians. Erasmus tells the story in
his Adages 2.10; but R had long been a devotee of Herodotus and already in i 524 had been busy translating Book a of the
History into Latin.
337. In Aeneas's account of the fall of Troy (Aeneid 2.56 ff.), the treacherous
Greek who, by a similar though less dra-
stic ruse, persuaded the Trojans to drag the great Trojan horse into the city, where later the Greeks, hidden inside the
horse, came out and opened the gates to their army.
2.26: How PANTAGRUEL ANO HIS COMPANIONS WERE FED UP WITH EATING SALT MEAT.
338. Suppposed to confer invulnerability on the wearer; cf., Gargantua, chap.
8.
2.29: How PANTAGRUEL DEFEATED THE THREE HUNDRED GIANTS.
339. These are all three popular tales in medieval France: a long poem attributed to Bishop Turpin the fighting churchman
of the Song of Roland; the be-loved story of Saint Nicholas, subject of Jean Bodel's early miracle play (thirteenth cen-
tury) Le jeu de Saint Nicolas; and the ancestors of the Mother Goose Tales, in France called contes de la cgogne (Stork's
Tales) or contes au vieux Loup.
340. A combination or conflation of Constantine's motto, Hoc signo vinces "with
this sign thou shalt conquer," which he is
said to have seen in the sky over Christ's monogram (ICHTHUS) after his great victory of Saxa Rubra (3'2) over Maxentius,
and Jesus' command to the lawyer (Luke 10.28) who, to test him, asked him what he must do to inherit eternal life: Hoc
facet vives "This do, and thou shalt live."
341. When he breaks the mold and finds the bell defective: a proverbial mishap.
342. Riflandouille: a name that appears in medieval drama, the mysteres; R will use this name for a captain sent to fight
the Andouilles (4.37).
2.30: How EPISTEMON HAD HIS CHOP HEADED OFF, AND WAS CLEVERLY CURED BY PANLTRGE.
343. "La couppe testee" instead of "la teste coup?e":
one of R's favorite forms of his beloved inversions.
344. The French word, lantemier, like the verb Ianterner, suggests sexual
inter-course.
345. Like Artaxerxes two spaces below, Achilles is here given a second posthu-mous vocation.
346. The original French, "de pain et de souppe," parodies the pardoner's
for-mula, "de peine et de coulpe," or "of pen-
alty and guilt or sin."
347. Prototype of the cowardly medieval free-lance bowman, of whom Francois
Villon wrote, and whose Stratagems we encoun-
tered in the Library of St. Victor (above, chap. 7).
348. Ergotism, a common disease of the time, was marked by cramps and spasms, one of those invoked as threats to unbeliev-
ing readers in the Prologue (see above). It was represented in painting on hospitals where patients ill with it were
treated. Present opinion is that the disease was contracted by eating spoiled rye flour.
2.31: How PANTAGRUEL ENTERED THE CITY OF THE AMAUROTS.
349. Pervers, homophone of pens "blue" plus vert "green."
350. "Monsieur du roy de troys cuittes": sugar was then sold as
once, twice, and thrice cooked; and the thrice cooked "de
troys cuittes" was considered much the best.
2.32: How PANTAGRUEL WITH HIS TONGUE COVERED A WHOLE ARMY.
351. Gorgias was a noted fifth-century B.C. Greek sophist, who figures in
Plato's dialogue of that name, where Socrates'
doctrine of rhetoric is contrasted with that of the sophists. Les Gorgias, in French, then meant the "sumptuous, the
wealthy and swanky."
2.33: How PANTAGRUEL WAS SICK.
352. Here follows a list of leading hot mineral baths of France and Italy,
their origin at last correctly explained by R
or Alcofribas Nasier.
353. Roman goddess who personified the sulphur dioxide fumes that came out of the ground in some spots, and whose name
is preserved in mephitic, "stinking" and sometimes also "poisonous." The marsh of Camarina was in Sicily near the city
of that name. Strabo (Geography Book 16) writes of a stinking lake Serbonis whose name gave comfort to R's fellow human-
ists.
2.34: THE CONCLUSION OF THE PRESENT BOOK.
354. Wine, generally harvested in September.
355. This, the book's original conclusion, seems a sort of apology to his potential
literate and discriminating readers
for writing a book aimed lower, and seems to me a prediction or preparation for the more outspoken Gargantua and more dis-
cursive and learned later books.
356. Such as the space between robe and the hood in a monk's cowl. For R such people are the wrynecks or hypocrites, whom
above all others he detests.