No More Learning

To have a wife is to have the use of her
in such a way as nature hath ordained, which is for the aid, society, and
solace of man, and propagating of his race. To have no wife is not to be
uxorious, play the coward, and be lazy about her, and not for her sake to
distain the lustre of that affection which man owes to God, or yet for her
to leave those offices and duties which he owes unto his country, unto his
friends and kindred, or for her to abandon and forsake his precious
studies, and other businesses of account, to wait still on her will, her
beck, and her buttocks. If we be pleased in this sense to take having and
not having of a wife, we shall indeed find no repugnancy nor contradiction
in the terms at all.



Chapter 3. XXXVI.

A continuation of the answer of the Ephectic and Pyrrhonian philosopher
Trouillogan.

You speak wisely, quoth Panurge, if the moon were green cheese. Such a
tale once pissed my goose. I do not think but that I am let down into that
dark pit in the lowermost bottom whereof the truth was hid, according to
the saying of Heraclitus. I see no whit at all, I hear nothing, understand
as little, my senses are altogether dulled and blunted; truly I do very
shrewdly suspect that I am enchanted. I will now alter the former style of
my discourse, and talk to him in another strain. Our trusty friend, stir
not, nor imburse any; but let us vary the chance, and speak without
disjunctives. I see already that these loose and ill-joined members of an
enunciation do vex, trouble, and perplex you.

Now go on, in the name of God! Should I marry?

Trouillogan. There is some likelihood therein.

Panurge. But if I do not marry?

Trouil. I see in that no inconvenience.

Pan. You do not?

Trouil. None, truly, if my eyes deceive me not.

Pan. Yea, but I find more than five hundred.

Trouil. Reckon them.

Pan. This is an impropriety of speech, I confess; for I do no more
thereby but take a certain for an uncertain number, and posit the
determinate term for what is indeterminate. When I say, therefore, five
hundred, my meaning is many.

Trouil. I hear you.

Pan. Is it possible for me to live without a wife, in the name of all the
subterranean devils?

Trouil. Away with these filthy beasts.

Pan. Let it be, then, in the name of God; for my Salmigondinish people
use to say, To lie alone, without a wife, is certainly a brutish life. And
such a life also was it assevered to be by Dido in her lamentations.

Trouil. At your command.

Pan. By the pody cody, I have fished fair; where are we now? But will
you tell me? Shall I marry?

Trouil. Perhaps.

Pan. Shall I thrive or speed well withal?

Trouil. According to the encounter.

Pan. But if in my adventure I encounter aright, as I hope I will, shall
I be fortunate?

Trouil. Enough.

Pan. Let us turn the clean contrary way, and brush our former words
against the wool: what if I encounter ill?

Trouil. Then blame not me.

Pan. But, of courtesy, be pleased to give me some advice. I heartily
beseech you, what must I do?

Trouil. Even what thou wilt.

Pan. Wishy, washy; trolly, trolly.

Trouil. Do not invocate the name of anything, I pray you.

Pan. In the name of God, let it be so! My actions shall be regulated by
the rule and square of your counsel. What is it that you advise and
counsel me to do?

Trouil. Nothing.

Pan. Shall I marry?

Trouil. I have no hand in it.

Pan. Then shall I not marry?

Trouil. I cannot help it.

Pan. If I never marry, I shall never be a cuckold.

Trouil. I thought so.

Pan. But put the case that I be married.

Trouil. Where shall we put it?

Pan. Admit it be so, then, and take my meaning in that sense.

Trouil. I am otherwise employed.

Pan. By the death of a hog, and mother of a toad, O Lord! if I durst
hazard upon a little fling at the swearing game, though privily and under
thumb, it would lighten the burden of my heart and ease my lights and reins
exceedingly. A little patience nevertheless is requisite. Well then, if I
marry, I shall be a cuckold.

Trouil. One would say so.

Pan. Yet if my wife prove a virtuous, wise, discreet, and chaste woman,
I shall never be cuckolded.

Trouil. I think you speak congruously.

Pan. Hearken.

Trouil. As much as you will.

Pan. Will she be discreet and chaste? This is the only point I would be
resolved in.

Trouil. I question it.

Pan. You never saw her?

Trouil. Not that I know of.

Pan. Why do you then doubt of that which you know not?

Trouil. For a cause.

Pan. And if you should know her.

Trouil. Yet more.

Pan. Page, my pretty little darling, take here my cap,--I give it thee.
Have a care you do not break the spectacles that are in it. Go down to the
lower court. Swear there half an hour for me, and I shall in compensation
of that favour swear hereafter for thee as much as thou wilt. But who
shall cuckold me?

Trouil. Somebody.

Pan. By the belly of the wooden horse at Troy, Master Somebody, I shall
bang, belam thee, and claw thee well for thy labour.

Trouil. You say so.

Pan. Nay, nay, that Nick in the dark cellar, who hath no white in his
eye, carry me quite away with him if, in that case, whensoever I go abroad
from the palace of my domestic residence, I do not, with as much
circumspection as they use to ring mares in our country to keep them from
being sallied by stoned horses, clap a Bergamasco lock upon my wife.

Trouil. Talk better.

Pan. It is bien chien, chie chante, well cacked and cackled, shitten,
and sung in matter of talk. Let us resolve on somewhat.

Trouil. I do not gainsay it.

Pan. Have a little patience. Seeing I cannot on this side draw any
blood of you, I will try if with the lancet of my judgment I be able to
bleed you in another vein. Are you married, or are you not?

Trouil. Neither the one nor the other, and both together.

Pan. O the good God help us! By the death of a buffle-ox, I sweat with
the toil and travail that I am put to, and find my digestion broke off,
disturbed, and interrupted, for all my phrenes, metaphrenes, and
diaphragms, back, belly, midriff, muscles, veins, and sinews are held in a
suspense and for a while discharged from their proper offices to stretch
forth their several powers and abilities for incornifistibulating and
laying up into the hamper of my understanding your various sayings and
answers.

Trouil. I shall be no hinderer thereof.

Pan. Tush, for shame! Our faithful friend, speak; are you married?

Trouil. I think so.

Pan. You were also married before you had this wife?

Trouil. It is possible.

Pan. Had you good luck in your first marriage?

Trouil. It is not impossible.

Pan. How thrive you with this second wife of yours?

Trouil. Even as it pleaseth my fatal destiny.

Pan. But what, in good earnest? Tell me--do you prosper well with her?

Trouil. It is likely.

Pan. Come on, in the name of God. I vow, by the burden of Saint
Christopher, that I had rather undertake the fetching of a fart forth of
the belly of a dead ass than to draw out of you a positive and determinate
resolution. Yet shall I be sure at this time to have a snatch at you, and
get my claws over you. Our trusty friend, let us shame the devil of hell,
and confess the verity. Were you ever a cuckold? I say, you who are here,
and not that other you who playeth below in the tennis-court?

Trouil. No, if it was not predestinated.

Pan. By the flesh, blood, and body, I swear, reswear, forswear, abjure,
and renounce, he evades and avoids, shifts, and escapes me, and quite slips
and winds himself out of my grips and clutches.

At these words Gargantua arose and said, Praised be the good God in all
things, but especially for bringing the world into that height of
refinedness beyond what it was when I first came to be acquainted
therewith, that now the learnedst and most prudent philosophers are not
ashamed to be seen entering in at the porches and frontispieces of the
schools of the Pyrrhonian, Aporrhetic, Sceptic, and Ephectic sects.
Blessed be the holy name of God! Veritably, it is like henceforth to be
found an enterprise of much more easy undertaking to catch lions by the
neck, horses by the main, oxen by the horns, bulls by the muzzle, wolves by
the tail, goats by the beard, and flying birds by the feet, than to entrap
such philosophers in their words. Farewell, my worthy, dear, and honest
friends.

When he had done thus speaking, he withdrew himself from the company.
Pantagruel and others with him would have followed and accompanied him, but
he would not permit them so to do. No sooner was Gargantua departed out of
the banqueting-hall than that Pantagruel said to the invited guests:
Plato's Timaeus, at the beginning always of a solemn festival convention,
was wont to count those that were called thereto.
We, on the contrary,
shall at the closure and end of this treatment reckon up our number. One,
two, three; where is the fourth? I miss my friend Bridlegoose. Was not he
sent for? Epistemon answered that he had been at his house to bid and
invite him, but could not meet with him; for that a messenger from the
parliament of Mirlingois, in Mirlingues, was come to him with a writ of
summons to cite and warn him personally to appear before the reverend
senators of the high court there, to vindicate and justify himself at the
bar of the crime of prevarication laid to his charge, and to be
peremptorily instanced against him in a certain decree, judgment, or
sentence lately awarded, given, and pronounced by him; and that, therefore,
he had taken horse and departed in great haste from his own house, to the
end that without peril or danger of falling into a default or contumacy he
might be the better able to keep the prefixed and appointed time.

I will, quoth Pantagruel, understand how that matter goeth. It is now
above forty years that he hath been constantly the judge of Fonsbeton,
during which space of time he hath given four thousand definitive
sentences, of two thousand three hundred and nine whereof, although appeal
was made by the parties whom he had judicially condemned from his inferior
judicatory to the supreme court of the parliament of Mirlingois, in
Mirlingues, they were all of them nevertheless confirmed, ratified, and
approved of by an order, decree, and final sentence of the said sovereign
court, to the casting of the appellants, and utter overthrow of the suits
wherein they had been foiled at law, for ever and a day. That now in his
old age he should be personally summoned, who in all the foregoing time of
his life hath demeaned himself so unblamably in the discharge of the office
and vocation he had been called unto, it cannot assuredly be that such a
change hath happened without some notorious misfortune and disaster. I am
resolved to help and assist him in equity and justice to the uttermost
extent of my power and ability. I know the malice, despite, and wickedness
of the world to be so much more nowadays exasperated, increased, and
aggravated by what it was not long since, that the best cause that is, how
just and equitable soever it be, standeth in great need to be succoured,
aided, and supported. Therefore presently, from this very instant forth,
do I purpose, till I see the event and closure thereof, most heedfully to
attend and wait upon it, for fear of some underhand tricky surprisal,
cavilling pettifoggery, or fallacious quirks in law, to his detriment,
hurt, or disadvantage.

Then dinner being done, and the tables drawn and removed, when Pantagruel
had very cordially and affectionately thanked his invited guests for the
favour which he had enjoyed of their company, he presented them with
several rich and costly gifts, such as jewels, rings set with precious
stones, gold and silver vessels, with a great deal of other sort of plate
besides, and lastly, taking of them all his leave, retired himself into an
inner chamber.



Chapter 3. XXXVII.

How Pantagruel persuaded Panurge to take counsel of a fool.

When Pantagruel had withdrawn himself, he, by a little sloping window in
one of the galleries, perceived Panurge in a lobby not far from thence,
walking alone, with the gesture, carriage, and garb of a fond dotard,
raving, wagging, and shaking his hands, dandling, lolling, and nodding with
his head, like a cow bellowing for her calf; and, having then called him
nearer, spoke unto him thus: You are at this present, as I think, not
unlike to a mouse entangled in a snare, who the more that she goeth about
to rid and unwind herself out of the gin wherein she is caught, by
endeavouring to clear and deliver her feet from the pitch whereto they
stick, the foulier she is bewrayed with it, and the more strongly pestered
therein. Even so is it with you. For the more that you labour, strive,
and enforce yourself to disencumber and extricate your thoughts out of the
implicating involutions and fetterings of the grievous and lamentable gins
and springs of anguish and perplexity, the greater difficulty there is in
the relieving of you, and you remain faster bound than ever. Nor do I know
for the removal of this inconveniency any remedy but one.

Take heed, I have often heard it said in a vulgar proverb, The wise may be
instructed by a fool. Seeing the answers and responses of sage and
judicious men have in no manner of way satisfied you, take advice of some
fool, and possibly by so doing you may come to get that counsel which will
be agreeable to your own heart's desire and contentment. You know how by
the advice and counsel and prediction of fools, many kings, princes,
states, and commonwealths have been preserved, several battles gained, and
divers doubts of a most perplexed intricacy resolved. I am not so
diffident of your memory as to hold it needful to refresh it with a
quotation of examples, nor do I so far undervalue your judgment but that I
think it will acquiesce in the reason of this my subsequent discourse. As
he who narrowly takes heed to what concerns the dexterous management of his
private affairs, domestic businesses, and those adoes which are confined
within the strait-laced compass of one family, who is attentive, vigilant,
and active in the economic rule of his own house, whose frugal spirit never
strays from home, who loseth no occasion whereby he may purchase to himself
more riches, and build up new heaps of treasure on his former wealth, and
who knows warily how to prevent the inconveniences of poverty, is called a
worldly wise man, though perhaps in the second judgment of the
intelligences which are above he be esteemed a fool,--so, on the contrary,
is he most like, even in the thoughts of all celestial spirits, to be not
only sage, but to presage events to come by divine inspiration, who laying
quite aside those cares which are conducible to his body or his fortunes,
and, as it were, departing from himself, rids all his senses of terrene
affections, and clears his fancies of those plodding studies which harbour
in the minds of thriving men. All which neglects of sublunary things are
vulgarily imputed folly. After this manner, the son of Picus, King of the
Latins, the great soothsayer Faunus, was called Fatuus by the witless
rabble of the common people. The like we daily see practised amongst the
comic players, whose dramatic roles, in distribution of the personages,
appoint the acting of the fool to him who is the wisest of the troop. In
approbation also of this fashion the mathematicians allow the very same
horoscope to princes and to sots. Whereof a right pregnant instance by
them is given in the nativities of Aeneas and Choroebus; the latter of
which two is by Euphorion said to have been a fool, and yet had with the
former the same aspects and heavenly genethliac influences.

I shall not, I suppose, swerve much from the purpose in hand, if I relate
unto you what John Andrew said upon the return of a papal writ, which was
directed to the mayor and burgesses of Rochelle, and after him by Panorme,
upon the same pontifical canon; Barbatias on the Pandects, and recently by
Jason in his Councils, concerning Seyny John, the noted fool of Paris, and
Caillet's fore great-grandfather. The case is this.

At Paris, in the roastmeat cookery of the Petit Chastelet, before the
cookshop of one of the roastmeat sellers of that lane, a certain hungry
porter was eating his bread, after he had by parcels kept it a while above
the reek and steam of a fat goose on the spit, turning at a great fire, and
found it, so besmoked with the vapour, to be savoury; which the cook
observing, took no notice, till after having ravined his penny loaf,
whereof no morsel had been unsmokified, he was about decamping and going
away. But, by your leave, as the fellow thought to have departed thence
shot-free, the master-cook laid hold upon him by the gorget, and demanded
payment for the smoke of his roast meat. The porter answered, that he had
sustained no loss at all; that by what he had done there was no diminution
made of the flesh; that he had taken nothing of his, and that therefore he
was not indebted to him in anything. As for the smoke in question, that,
although he had not been there, it would howsoever have been evaporated;
besides, that before that time it had never been seen nor heard that
roastmeat smoke was sold upon the streets of Paris. The cook hereto
replied, that he was not obliged nor any way bound to feed and nourish for
nought a porter whom he had never seen before with the smoke of his roast
meat, and thereupon swore that if he would not forthwith content and
satisfy him with present payment for the repast which he had thereby got,
that he would take his crooked staves from off his back; which, instead of
having loads thereafter laid upon them, should serve for fuel to his
kitchen fires. Whilst he was going about so to do, and to have pulled them
to him by one of the bottom rungs which he had caught in his hand, the
sturdy porter got out of his grip, drew forth the knotty cudgel, and stood
to his own defence. The altercation waxed hot in words, which moved the
gaping hoidens of the sottish Parisians to run from all parts thereabouts,
to see what the issue would be of that babbling strife and contention. In
the interim of this dispute, to very good purpose Seyny John, the fool and
citizen of Paris, happened to be there, whom the cook perceiving, said to
the porter, Wilt thou refer and submit unto the noble Seyny John the
decision of the difference and controversy which is betwixt us? Yes, by
the blood of a goose, answered the porter, I am content. Seyny John the
fool, finding that the cook and porter had compromised the determination of
their variance and debate to the discretion of his award and arbitrament,
after that the reasons on either side whereupon was grounded the mutual
fierceness of their brawling jar had been to the full displayed and laid
open before him, commanded the porter to draw out of the fob of his belt a
piece of money, if he had it. Whereupon the porter immediately without
delay, in reverence to the authority of such a judicious umpire, put the
tenth part of a silver Philip into his hand. This little Philip Seyny John
took; then set it on his left shoulder, to try by feeling if it was of a
sufficient weight. After that, laying it on the palm of his hand, he made
it ring and tingle, to understand by the ear if it was of a good alloy in
the metal whereof it was composed. Thereafter he put it to the ball or
apple of his left eye, to explore by the sight if it was well stamped and
marked; all which being done, in a profound silence of the whole doltish
people who were there spectators of this pageantry, to the great hope of
the cook's and despair of the porter's prevalency in the suit that was in
agitation, he finally caused the porter to make it sound several times upon
the stall of the cook's shop. Then with a presidential majesty holding his
bauble sceptre-like in his hand, muffling his head with a hood of marten
skins, each side whereof had the resemblance of an ape's face sprucified up
with ears of pasted paper, and having about his neck a bucked ruff, raised,
furrowed, and ridged with pointing sticks of the shape and fashion of small
organ pipes, he first with all the force of his lungs coughed two or three
times, and then with an audible voice pronounced this following sentence:
The court declareth that the porter who ate his bread at the smoke of the
roast, hath civilly paid the cook with the sound of his money. And the
said court ordaineth that everyone return to his own home, and attend his
proper business, without cost and charges, and for a cause. This verdict,
award, and arbitrament of the Parisian fool did appear so equitable, yea,
so admirable to the aforesaid doctors, that they very much doubted if the
matter had been brought before the sessions for justice of the said place,
or that the judges of the Rota at Rome had been umpires therein, or yet
that the Areopagites themselves had been the deciders thereof, if by any
one part, or all of them together, it had been so judicially sententiated
and awarded. Therefore advise, if you will be counselled by a fool.



Chapter 3. XXXVIII.

How Triboulet is set forth and blazed by Pantagruel and Panurge.

By my soul, quoth Panurge, that overture pleaseth me exceedingly well. I
will therefore lay hold thereon, and embrace it. At the very motioning
thereof my very right entrail seemeth to be widened and enlarged, which was
but just now hard-bound, contracted, and costive. But as we have hitherto
made choice of the purest and most refined cream of wisdom and sapience for
our counsel, so would I now have to preside and bear the prime sway in our
consultation as very a fool in the supreme degree. Triboulet, quoth
Pantagruel, is completely foolish, as I conceive. Yes, truly, answered
Panurge, he is properly and totally a fool, a


Pantagruel. Panurge.
Fatal f. Jovial f.
Natural f. Mercurial f.
Celestial f. Lunatic f.
Erratic f. Ducal f.
Eccentric f. Common f.
Aethereal and Junonian f. Lordly f.
Arctic f. Palatine f.
Heroic f. Principal f.
Genial f. Pretorian f.
Inconstant f. Elected f.
Earthly f. Courtly f.
Salacious and sporting f. Primipilary f.
Jocund and wanton f. Triumphant f.
Pimpled f. Vulgar f.
Freckled f. Domestic f.
Bell-tinging f. Exemplary f.
Laughing and lecherous f. Rare outlandish f.
Nimming and filching f. Satrapal f.
Unpressed f. Civil f.
First broached f. Popular f.
Augustal f. Familiar f.
Caesarine f. Notable f.
Imperial f. Favourized f.
Royal f. Latinized f.
Patriarchal f. Ordinary f.
Original f. Transcendent f.
Loyal f. Rising f.
Episcopal f. Papal f.
Doctoral f. Consistorian f.
Monachal f. Conclavist f.
Fiscal f. Bullist f.
Extravagant f. Synodal f.
Writhed f. Doting and raving f.
Canonical f. Singular and surpassing f.
Such another f. Special and excelling f.
Graduated f. Metaphysical f.
Commensal f. Scatical f.
Primolicentiated f. Predicamental and categoric f.
Train-bearing f. Predicable and enunciatory f.
Supererogating f. Decumane and superlative f.
Collateral f. Dutiful and officious f.
Haunch and side f. Optical and perspective f.
Nestling, ninny, and youngling f. Algoristic f.
Flitting, giddy, and unsteady f. Algebraical f.
Brancher, novice, and cockney f. Cabalistical and Massoretical f.
Haggard, cross, and froward f. Talmudical f.
Gentle, mild, and tractable f. Algamalized f.
Mail-coated f. Compendious f.
Pilfering and purloining f. Abbreviated f.
Tail-grown f. Hyperbolical f.
Grey peckled f. Anatomastical f.
Pleonasmical f. Allegorical f.
Capital f. Tropological f.
Hair-brained f. Micher pincrust f.
Cordial f. Heteroclit f.
Intimate f. Summist f.
Hepatic f. Abridging f.
Cupshotten and swilling f. Morrish f.
Splenetic f. Leaden-sealed f.
Windy f. Mandatory f.
Legitimate f. Compassionate f.
Azymathal f. Titulary f.
Almicantarized f. Crouching, showking, ducking f.
Proportioned f. Grim, stern, harsh, and wayward f.
Chinnified f. Well-hung and timbered f.
Swollen and puffed up f. Ill-clawed, pounced, and pawed f.
Overcockrifedlid and lified f. Well-stoned f.
Corallory f. Crabbed and unpleasing f.
Eastern f. Winded and untainted f.
Sublime f. Kitchen haunting f.
Crimson f. Lofty and stately f.