Truly, quoth Epistemon, that is a pretty jolly vow of
thirteen
to a dozen.
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
That hand thus framed and disposed of he laid and posited upon
Panurge's navel, moving withal continually the aforesaid thumb, and bearing
up, supporting, or under-propping that hand upon the above-specified fore
and little fingers, as upon two legs. Thereafter did he make in this
posture his hand by little and little, and by degrees and pauses,
successively to mount from athwart the belly to the stomach, from whence he
made it to ascend to the breast, even upwards to Panurge's neck, still
gaining ground, till, having reached his chin, he had put within the
concave of his mouth his afore-mentioned thumb; then fiercely brandishing
the whole hand, which he made to rub and grate against his nose, he heaved
it further up, and made the fashion as if with the thumb thereof he would
have put out his eyes. With this Panurge grew a little angry, and went
about to withdraw and rid himself from this ruggedly untoward dumb devil.
But Goatsnose in the meantime, prosecuting the intended purpose of his
prognosticatory response, touched very rudely, with the above-mentioned
shaking thumb, now his eyes, then his forehead, and after that the borders
and corners of his cap. At last Panurge cried out, saying, Before God,
master fool, if you do not let me alone, or that you will presume to vex me
any more, you shall receive from the best hand I have a mask wherewith to
cover your rascally scroundrel face, you paltry shitten varlet. Then said
Friar John, He is deaf, and doth not understand what thou sayest unto him.
Bulliballock, make sign to him of a hail of fisticuffs upon the muzzle.
What the devil, quoth Panurge, means this busy restless fellow? What is it
that this polypragmonetic ardelion to all the fiends of hell doth aim at?
He hath almost thrust out mine eyes, as if he had been to poach them in a
skillet with butter and eggs. By God, da jurandi, I will feast you with
flirts and raps on the snout, interlarded with a double row of bobs and
finger-fillipings! Then did he leave him in giving him by way of salvo a
volley of farts for his farewell. Goatsnose, perceiving Panurge thus to
slip away from him, got before him, and, by mere strength enforcing him to
stand, made this sign unto him. He let fall his right arm toward his knee
on the same side as low as he could, and, raising all the fingers of that
hand into a close fist, passed his dexter thumb betwixt the foremost and
mid fingers thereto belonging. Then scrubbing and swingeing a little with
his left hand alongst and upon the uppermost in the very bough of the elbow
of the said dexter arm, the whole cubit thereof, by leisure, fair and
softly, at these thumpatory warnings, did raise and elevate itself even to
the elbow, and above it; on a sudden did he then let it fall down as low as
before, and after that, at certain intervals and such spaces of time,
raising and abasing it, he made a show thereof to Panurge. This so
incensed Panurge that he forthwith lifted his hand to have stricken him the
dumb roister and given him a sound whirret on the ear, but that the respect
and reverence which he carried to the presence of Pantagruel restrained his
choler and kept his fury within bounds and limits. Then said Pantagruel,
If the bare signs now vex and trouble you, how much more grievously will
you be perplexed and disquieted with the real things which by them are
represented and signified! All truths agree and are consonant with one
another. This dumb fellow prophesieth and foretelleth that you will be
married, cuckolded, beaten, and robbed. As for the marriage, quoth
Panurge, I yield thereto, and acknowledge the verity of that point of his
prediction; as for the rest, I utterly abjure and deny it: and believe,
sir, I beseech you, if it may please you so to do, that in the matter of
wives and horses never any man was predestinated to a better fortune than
I.
Chapter 3. XXI.
How Panurge consulteth with an old French poet, named Raminagrobis.
I never thought, said Pantagruel, to have encountered with any man so
headstrong in his apprehensions, or in his opinions so wilful, as I have
found you to be and see you are. Nevertheless, the better to clear and
extricate your doubts, let us try all courses, and leave no stone unturned
nor wind unsailed by. Take good heed to what I am to say unto you. The
swans, which are fowls consecrated to Apollo, never chant but in the hour
of their approaching death, especially in the Meander flood, which is a
river that runneth along some of the territories of Phrygia. This I say,
because Aelianus and Alexander Myndius write that they had seen several
swans in other places die, but never heard any of them sing or chant before
their death. However, it passeth for current that the imminent death of a
swan is presaged by his foregoing song, and that no swan dieth until
preallably he have sung.
After the same manner, poets, who are under the protection of Apollo, when
they are drawing near their latter end do ordinarily become prophets, and
by the inspiration of that god sing sweetly in vaticinating things which
are to come. It hath been likewise told me frequently, that old decrepit
men upon the brinks of Charon's banks do usher their decease with a
disclosure all at ease, to those that are desirous of such informations, of
the determinate and assured truth of future accidents and contingencies. I
remember also that Aristophanes, in a certain comedy of his, calleth the
old folks Sibyls, Eith o geron Zibullia. For as when, being upon a pier by
the shore, we see afar off mariners, seafaring men, and other travellers
alongst the curled waves of azure Thetis within their ships, we then
consider them in silence only, and seldom proceed any further than to wish
them a happy and prosperous arrival; but when they do approach near to the
haven, and come to wet their keels within their harbour, then both with
words and gestures we salute them, and heartily congratulate their access
safe to the port wherein we are ourselves. Just so the angels, heroes, and
good demons, according to the doctrine of the Platonics, when they see
mortals drawing near unto the harbour of the grave, as the most sure and
calmest port of any, full of repose, ease, rest, tranquillity, free from
the troubles and solicitudes of this tumultuous and tempestuous world; then
is it that they with alacrity hail and salute them, cherish and comfort
them, and, speaking to them lovingly, begin even then to bless them with
illuminations, and to communicate unto them the abstrusest mysteries of
divination. I will not offer here to confound your memory by quoting
antique examples of Isaac, of Jacob, of Patroclus towards Hector, of Hector
towards Achilles, of Polymnestor towards Agamemnon, of Hecuba, of the
Rhodian renowned by Posidonius, of Calanus the Indian towards Alexander the
Great, of Orodes towards Mezentius, and of many others. It shall suffice
for the present that I commemorate unto you the learned and valiant knight
and cavalier William of Bellay, late Lord of Langey, who died on the Hill
of Tarara, the 10th of January, in the climacteric year of his age, and of
our supputation 1543, according to the Roman account. The last three or
four hours of his life he did employ in the serious utterance of a very
pithy discourse, whilst with a clear judgment and spirit void of all
trouble he did foretell several important things, whereof a great deal is
come to pass, and the rest we wait for. Howbeit, his prophecies did at
that time seem unto us somewhat strange, absurd, and unlikely, because
there did not then appear any sign of efficacy enough to engage our faith
to the belief of what he did prognosticate. We have here, near to the town
of Villomere, a man that is both old and a poet, to wit, Raminagrobis, who
to his second wife espoused my Lady Broadsow, on whom he begot the fair
Basoche. It hath been told me he is a-dying, and so near unto his latter
end that he is almost upon the very last moment, point, and article thereof.
Repair thither as fast as you can, and be ready to give an attentive ear to
what he shall chant unto you. It may be that you shall obtain from him what
you desire, and that Apollo will be pleased by his means to clear your
scruples. I am content, quoth Panurge. Let us go thither, Epistemon, and
that both instantly and in all haste, lest otherwise his death prevent our
coming. Wilt thou come along with us, Friar John? Yes, that I will, quoth
Friar John, right heartily to do thee a courtesy, my billy-ballocks; for I
love thee with the best of my milt and liver.
Thereupon, incontinently, without any further lingering, to the way they
all three went, and quickly thereafter--for they made good speed--arriving
at the poetical habitation, they found the jolly old man, albeit in the
agony of his departure from this world, looking cheerfully, with an open
countenance, splendid aspect, and behaviour full of alacrity. After that
Panurge had very civilly saluted him, he in a free gift did present him
with a gold ring, which he even then put upon the medical finger of his
left hand, in the collet or bezel whereof was enchased an Oriental
sapphire, very fair and large. Then, in imitation of Socrates, did he make
an oblation unto him of a fair white cock, which was no sooner set upon the
tester of his bed, than that, with a high raised head and crest, lustily
shaking his feather-coat, he crowed stentoriphonically loud. This done,
Panurge very courteously required of him that he would vouchsafe to favour
him with the grant and report of his sense and judgment touching the future
destiny of his intended marriage. For answer hereto, when the honest old
man had forthwith commanded pen, paper, and ink to be brought unto him, and
that he was at the same call conveniently served with all the three, he
wrote these following verses:
Take, or not take her,
Off, or on:
Handy-dandy is your lot.
When her name you write, you blot.
'Tis undone, when all is done,
Ended e'er it was begun:
Hardly gallop, if you trot,
Set not forward when you run,
Nor be single, though alone,
Take, or not take her.
Before you eat, begin to fast;
For what shall be was never past.
Say, unsay, gainsay, save your breath:
Then wish at once her life and death.
Take, or not take her.
These lines he gave out of his own hands unto them, saying unto them, Go,
my lads, in peace! the great God of the highest heavens be your guardian
and preserver! and do not offer any more to trouble or disquiet me with
this or any other business whatsoever. I have this same very day, which is
the last both of May and of me, with a greal deal of labour, toil, and
difficulty, chased out of my house a rabble of filthy, unclean, and
plaguily pestilentious rake-hells, black beasts, dusk, dun, white,
ash-coloured, speckled, and a foul vermin of other hues, whose obtrusive
importunity would not permit me to die at my own ease; for by fraudulent
and deceitful pricklings, ravenous, harpy-like graspings, waspish
stingings, and such-like unwelcome approaches, forged in the shop of I know
not what kind of insatiabilities, they went about to withdraw and call me
out of those sweet thoughts wherein I was already beginning to repose
myself and acquiesce in the contemplation and vision, yea, almost in the
very touch and taste of the happiness and felicity which the good God hath
prepared for his faithful saints and elect in the other life and state of
immortality. Turn out of their courses and eschew them, step forth of
their ways and do not resemble them; meanwhile, let me be no more troubled
by you, but leave me now in silence, I beseech you.
Chapter 3. XXII.
How Panurge patrocinates and defendeth the Order of the Begging Friars.
Panurge, at his issuing forth of Raminagrobis's chamber, said, as if he had
been horribly affrighted, By the virtue of God, I believe that he is an
heretic; the devil take me, if I do not! he doth so villainously rail at
the Mendicant Friars and Jacobins, who are the two hemispheres of the
Christian world; by whose gyronomonic circumbilvaginations, as by two
celivagous filopendulums, all the autonomatic metagrobolism of the Romish
Church, when tottering and emblustricated with the gibble-gabble gibberish
of this odious error and heresy, is homocentrically poised. But what harm,
in the devil's name, have these poor devils the Capuchins and Minims done
unto him? Are not these beggarly devils sufficiently wretched already?
Who can imagine that these poor snakes, the very extracts of ichthyophagy,
are not thoroughly enough besmoked and besmeared with misery, distress, and
calamity? Dost thou think, Friar John, by thy faith, that he is in the
state of salvation? He goeth, before God, as surely damned to thirty
thousand basketsful of devils as a pruning-bill to the lopping of a
vine-branch. To revile with opprobrious speeches the good and courageous
props and pillars of the Church,--is that to be called a poetical fury? I
cannot rest satisfied with him; he sinneth grossly, and blasphemeth against
the true religion. I am very much offended at his scandalizing words and
contumelious obloquy. I do not care a straw, quoth Friar John, for what he
hath said; for although everybody should twit and jerk them, it were but a
just retaliation, seeing all persons are served by them with the like sauce:
therefore do I pretend no interest therein. Let us see, nevertheless, what
he hath written. Panurge very attentively read the paper which the old man
had penned; then said to his two fellow-travellers, The poor drinker doteth.
Howsoever, I excuse him, for that I believe he is now drawing near to the
end and final closure of his life. Let us go make his epitaph. By the
answer which he hath given us, I am not, I protest, one jot wiser than I
was. Hearken here, Epistemon, my little bully, dost not thou hold him to be
very resolute in his responsory verdicts? He is a witty, quick, and subtle
sophister. I will lay an even wager that he is a miscreant apostate. By
the belly of a stalled ox, how careful he is not to be mistaken in his
words. He answered but by disjunctives, therefore can it not be true which
he saith; for the verity of such-like propositions is inherent only in one
of its two members. O the cozening prattler that he is! I wonder if
Santiago of Bressure be one of these cogging shirks. Such was of old, quoth
Epistemon, the custom of the grand vaticinator and prophet Tiresias, who
used always, by way of a preface, to say openly and plainly at the beginning
of his divinations and predictions that what he was to tell would either
come to pass or not. And such is truly the style of all prudently presaging
prognosticators. He was nevertheless, quoth Panurge, so unfortunately
misadventurous in the lot of his own destiny, that Juno thrust out both his
eyes.
Yes, answered Epistemon, and that merely out of a spite and spleen for
having pronounced his award more veritable than she, upon the question
which was merrily proposed by Jupiter. But, quoth Panurge, what archdevil
is it that hath possessed this Master Raminagrobis, that so unreasonably,
and without any occasion, he should have so snappishly and bitterly
inveighed against these poor honest fathers, Jacobins, Minors, and Minims?
It vexeth me grievously, I assure you; nor am I able to conceal my
indignation. He hath transgressed most enormously; his soul goeth
infallibly to thirty thousand panniersful of devils. I understand you not,
quoth Epistemon, and it disliketh me very much that you should so absurdly
and perversely interpret that of the Friar Mendicants which by the harmless
poet was spoken of black beasts, dun, and other sorts of other coloured
animals. He is not in my opinion guilty of such a sophistical and
fantastic allegory as by that phrase of his to have meant the Begging
Brothers. He in downright terms speaketh absolutely and properly of fleas,
punies, hand worms, flies, gnats, and other such-like scurvy vermin,
whereof some are black, some dun, some ash-coloured, some tawny, and some
brown and dusky, all noisome, molesting, tyrannous, cumbersome, and
unpleasant creatures, not only to sick and diseased folks, but to those
also who are of a sound, vigorous, and healthful temperament and
constitution. It is not unlikely that he may have the ascarids, and the
lumbrics, and worms within the entrails of his body. Possibly doth he
suffer, as it is frequent and usual amongst the Egyptians, together with
all those who inhabit the Erythraean confines, and dwell along the shores
and coasts of the Red Sea, some sour prickings and smart stingings in his
arms and legs of those little speckled dragons which the Arabians call
meden. You are to blame for offering to expound his words otherwise, and
wrong the ingenuous poet, and outrageously abuse and miscall the said
fraters, by an imputation of baseness undeservedly laid to their charge.
We still should, in such like discourses of fatiloquent soothsayers,
interpret all things to the best. Will you teach me, quoth Panurge, how to
discern flies among milk, or show your father the way how to beget
children? He is, by the virtue of God, an arrant heretic, a resolute,
formal heretic; I say, a rooted, combustible heretic, one as fit to burn as
the little wooden clock at Rochelle. His soul goeth to thirty thousand
cartsful of devils. Would you know whither? Cocks-body, my friend,
straight under Proserpina's close-stool, to the very middle of the
self-same infernal pan within which she, by an excrementitious evacuation,
voideth the faecal stuff of her stinking clysters, and that just upon the
left side of the great cauldron of three fathom height, hard by the claws
and talons of Lucifer, in the very darkest of the passage which leadeth
towards the black chamber of Demogorgon. O the villain!
Chapter 3. XXIII.
How Panurge maketh the motion of a return to Raminagrobis.
Let us return, quoth Panurge, not ceasing, to the uttermost of our
abilities, to ply him with wholesome admonitions for the furtherance of his
salvation. Let us go back, for God's sake; let us go, in the name of God.
It will be a very meritorious work, and of great charity in us to deal so
in the matter, and provide so well for him that, albeit he come to lose
both body and life, he may at least escape the risk and danger of the
eternal damnation of his soul. We will by our holy persuasions bring him
to a sense and feeling of his escapes, induce him to acknowledge his
faults, move him to a cordial repentance of his errors, and stir up in him
such a sincere contrition of heart for his offences, as will prompt him
with all earnestness to cry mercy, and to beg pardon at the hands of the
good fathers, as well of the absent as of such as are present. Whereupon
we will take instrument formally and authentically extended, to the end he
be not, after his decease, declared an heretic, and condemned, as were the
hobgoblins of the provost's wife of Orleans, to the undergoing of such
punishments, pains, and tortures as are due to and inflicted on those that
inhabit the horrid cells of the infernal regions; and withal incline,
instigate, and persuade him to bequeath and leave in legacy (by way of an
amends and satisfaction for the outrage and injury done to those good
religious fathers throughout all the convents, cloisters, and monasteries
of this province), many bribes, a great deal of mass-singing, store of
obits, and that sempiternally, on the anniversary day of his decease, every
one of them all be furnished with a quintuple allowance, and that the great
borachio replenished with the best liquor trudge apace along the tables, as
well of the young duckling monkitoes, lay brothers, and lowermost degree of
the abbey lubbards, as of the learned priests and reverend clerks,--the
very meanest of the novices and mitiants unto the order being equally
admitted to the benefit of those funerary and obsequial festivals with the
aged rectors and professed fathers. This is the surest ordinary means
whereby from God he may obtain forgiveness. Ho, ho, I am quite mistaken; I
digress from the purpose, and fly out of my discourse, as if my spirits
were a-wool-gathering. The devil take me, if I go thither! Virtue God!
The chamber is already full of devils. O what a swinging, thwacking noise
is now amongst them! O the terrible coil that they keep! Hearken, do you
not hear the rustling, thumping bustle of their strokes and blows, as they
scuffle with one another, like true devils indeed, who shall gulp up the
Raminagrobis soul, and be the first bringer of it, whilst it is hot, to
Monsieur Lucifer? Beware, and get you hence! for my part, I will not go
thither. The devil roast me if I go! Who knows but that these hungry mad
devils may in the haste of their rage and fury of their impatience take a
qui for a quo, and instead of Raminagrobis snatch up poor Panurge frank and
free? Though formerly, when I was deep in debt, they always failed. Get
you hence! I will not go thither. Before God, the very bare apprehension
thereof is like to kill me. To be in a place where there are greedy,
famished, and hunger-starved devils; amongst factious devils--amidst
trading and trafficking devils--O the Lord preserve me! Get you hence! I
dare pawn my credit on it, that no Jacobin, Cordelier, Carmelite, Capuchin,
Theatin, or Minim will bestow any personal presence at his interment. The
wiser they, because he hath ordained nothing for them in his latter will
and testament. The devil take me, if I go thither. If he be damned, to
his own loss and hindrance be it. What the deuce moved him to be so
snappish and depravedly bent against the good fathers of the true religion?
Why did he cast them off, reject them, and drive them quite out of his
chamber, even in that very nick of time when he stood in greatest need of
the aid, suffrage, and assistance of their devout prayers and holy
admonitions? Why did not he by testament leave them, at least, some jolly
lumps and cantles of substantial meat, a parcel of cheek-puffing victuals,
and a little belly-timber and provision for the guts of these poor folks,
who have nothing but their life in this world? Let him go thither who
will, the devil take me if I go; for, if I should, the devil would not fail
to snatch me up. Cancro. Ho, the pox! Get you hence, Friar John! Art
thou content that thirty thousand wainload of devils should get away with
thee at this same very instant? If thou be, at my request do these three
things. First, give me thy purse; for besides that thy money is marked
with crosses, and the cross is an enemy to charms, the same may befall to
thee which not long ago happened to John Dodin, collector of the excise of
Coudray, at the ford of Vede, when the soldiers broke the planks. This
moneyed fellow, meeting at the very brink of the bank of the ford with
Friar Adam Crankcod, a Franciscan observantin of Mirebeau, promised him a
new frock, provided that in the transporting of him over the water he would
bear him upon his neck and shoulders, after the manner of carrying dead
goats; for he was a lusty, strong-limbed, sturdy rogue. The condition
being agreed upon, Friar Crankcod trusseth himself up to his very ballocks,
and layeth upon his back, like a fair little Saint Christopher, the load of
the said supplicant Dodin, and so carried him gaily and with a good will,
as Aeneas bore his father Anchises through the conflagration of Troy,
singing in the meanwhile a pretty Ave Maris Stella. When they were in the
very deepest place of all the ford, a little above the master-wheel of the
water-mill, he asked if he had any coin about him. Yes, quoth Dodin, a
whole bagful; and that he needed not to mistrust his ability in the
performance of the promise which he had made unto him concerning a new
frock. How! quoth Friar Crankcod, thou knowest well enough that by the
express rules, canons, and injunctions of our order we are forbidden to
carry on us any kind of money. Thou art truly unhappy, for having made me
in this point to commit a heinous trespass. Why didst thou not leave thy
purse with the miller? Without fail thou shalt presently receive thy
reward for it; and if ever hereafter I may but lay hold upon thee within
the limits of our chancel at Mirebeau, thou shalt have the Miserere even to
the Vitulos. With this, suddenly discharging himself of his burden, he
throws me down your Dodin headlong. Take example by this Dodin, my dear
friend Friar John, to the end that the devils may the better carry thee
away at thine own ease. Give me thy purse. Carry no manner of cross upon
thee. Therein lieth an evident and manifestly apparent danger. For if you
have any silver coined with a cross upon it, they will cast thee down
headlong upon some rocks, as the eagles use to do with the tortoises for
the breaking of their shells, as the bald pate of the poet Aeschylus can
sufficiently bear witness. Such a fall would hurt thee very sore, my sweet
bully, and I would be sorry for it. Or otherwise they will let thee fall
and tumble down into the high swollen waves of some capacious sea, I know
not where; but, I warrant thee, far enough hence, as Icarus fell, which
from thy name would afterwards get the denomination of the Funnelian Sea.
Secondly, be out of debt. For the devils carry a great liking to those
that are out of debt. I have sore felt the experience thereof in mine own
particular; for now the lecherous varlets are always wooing me, courting
me, and making much of me, which they never did when I was all to pieces.
The soul of one in debt is insipid, dry, and heretical altogether.
Thirdly, with the cowl and Domino de Grobis, return to Raminagrobis; and in
case, being thus qualified, thirty thousand boatsful of devils forthwith
come not to carry thee quite away, I shall be content to be at the charge
of paying for the pint and faggot. Now, if for the more security thou
wouldst some associate to bear thee company, let not me be the comrade thou
searchest for; think not to get a fellow-traveller of me,--nay, do not. I
advise thee for the best. Get you hence; I will not go thither. The devil
take me if I go. Notwithstanding all the fright that you are in, quoth
Friar John, I would not care so much as might possibly be expected I
should, if I once had but my sword in my hand. Thou hast verily hit the
nail on the head, quoth Panurge, and speakest like a learned doctor, subtle
and well-skilled in the art of devilry. At the time when I was a student
in the University of Toulouse (Tolette), that same reverend father in the
devil, Picatrix, rector of the diabological faculty, was wont to tell us
that the devils did naturally fear the bright glancing of swords as much as
the splendour and light of the sun. In confirmation of the verity whereof
he related this story, that Hercules, at his descent into hell to all the
devils of those regions, did not by half so much terrify them with his club
and lion's skin as afterwards Aeneas did with his clear shining armour upon
him, and his sword in his hand well-furbished and unrusted, by the aid,
counsel, and assistance of the Sybilla Cumana. That was perhaps the reason
why the senior John Jacomo di Trivulcio, whilst he was a-dying at Chartres,
called for his cutlass, and died with a drawn sword in his hand, laying
about him alongst and athwart around the bed and everywhere within his
reach, like a stout, doughty, valorous and knight-like cavalier; by which
resolute manner of fence he scared away and put to flight all the devils
that were then lying in wait for his soul at the passage of his death.
When the Massorets and Cabalists are asked why it is that none of all the
devils do at any time enter into the terrestrial paradise? their answer
hath been, is, and will be still, that there is a cherubin standing at the
gate thereof with a flame-like glistering sword in his hand. Although, to
speak in the true diabological sense or phrase of Toledo, I must needs
confess and acknowledge that veritably the devils cannot be killed or die
by the stroke of a sword, I do nevertheless avow and maintain, according to
the doctrine of the said diabology, that they may suffer a solution of
continuity (as if with thy shable thou shouldst cut athwart the flame of a
burning fire, or the gross opacous exhalations of a thick and obscure
smoke), and cry out like very devils at their sense and feeling of this
dissolution, which in real deed I must aver and affirm is devilishly
painful, smarting, and dolorous.
When thou seest the impetuous shock of two armies, and vehement violence of
the push in their horrid encounter with one another, dost thou think,
Ballockasso, that so horrible a noise as is heard there proceedeth from the
voice and shouts of men, the dashing and jolting of harness, the clattering
and clashing of armies, the hacking and slashing of battle-axes, the
justling and crashing of pikes, the bustling and breaking of lances, the
clamour and shrieks of the wounded, the sound and din of drums, the
clangour and shrillness of trumpets, the neighing and rushing in of horses,
with the fearful claps and thundering of all sorts of guns, from the double
cannon to the pocket pistol inclusively? I cannot goodly deny but that in
these various things which I have rehearsed there may be somewhat
occasionative of the huge yell and tintamarre of the two engaged bodies.
But the most fearful and tumultuous coil and stir, the terriblest and most
boisterous garboil and hurry, the chiefest rustling black santus of all,
and most principal hurlyburly springeth from the grievously plangorous
howling and lowing of devils, who pell-mell, in a hand-over-head confusion,
waiting for the poor souls of the maimed and hurt soldiery, receive
unawares some strokes with swords, and so by those means suffer a solution
of and division in the continuity of their aerial and invisible substances;
as if some lackey, snatching at the lard-slices stuck in a piece of roast
meat on the spit, should get from Mr. Greasyfist a good rap on the knuckles
with a cudgel. They cry out and shout like devils, even as Mars did when
he was hurt by Diomedes at the siege of Troy, who, as Homer testifieth of
him, did then raise his voice more horrifically loud and sonoriferously
high than ten thousand men together would have been able to do. What
maketh all this for our present purpose? I have been speaking here of
well-furbished armour and bright shining swords. But so is it not, Friar
John, with thy weapon; for by a long discontinuance of work, cessation from
labour, desisting from making it officiate, and putting it into that
practice wherein it had been formerly accustomed, and, in a word, for want
of occupation, it is, upon my faith, become more rusty than the key-hole of
an old powdering-tub. Therefore it is expedient that you do one of these
two things: either furbish your weapon bravely, and as it ought to be, or
otherwise have a care that, in the rusty case it is in, you do not presume
to return to the house of Raminagrobis. For my part, I vow I will not go
thither. The devil take me if I go.
Chapter 3. XXIV.
How Panurge consulteth with Epistemon.
Having left the town of Villomere, as they were upon their return towards
Pantagruel, Panurge, in addressing his discourse to Epistemon, spoke thus:
My most ancient friend and gossip, thou seest the perplexity of my
thoughts, and knowest many remedies for the removal thereof; art thou not
able to help and succour me? Epistemon, thereupon taking the speech in
hand, represented unto Panurge how the open voice and common fame of the
whole country did run upon no other discourse but the derision and mockery
of his new disguise; wherefore his counsel unto him was that he would in
the first place be pleased to make use of a little hellebore for the
purging of his brain of that peccant humour which, through that extravagant
and fantastic mummery of his, had furnished the people with a too just
occasion of flouting and gibing, jeering and scoffing him, and that next he
would resume his ordinary fashion of accoutrement, and go apparelled as he
was wont to do. I am, quoth Panurge, my dear gossip Epistemon, of a mind
and resolution to marry, but am afraid of being a cuckold and to be
unfortunate in my wedlock. For this cause have I made a vow to young St.
Francis--who at Plessis-les-Tours is much reverenced of all women,
earnestly cried unto by them, and with great devotion, for he was the first
founder of the confraternity of good men, whom they naturally covet,
affect, and long for--to wear spectacles in my cap, and to carry no
codpiece in my breeches, until the present inquietude and perturbation of
my spirits be fully settled.
Truly, quoth Epistemon, that is a pretty jolly vow of thirteen to a dozen.
It is a shame to you, and I wonder much at it, that you do not return unto
yourself, and recall your senses from this their wild swerving and straying
abroad to that rest and stillness which becomes a virtuous man. This
whimsical conceit of yours brings me to the remembrance of a solemn promise
made by the shag-haired Argives, who, having in their controversy against
the Lacedaemonians for the territory of Thyrea, lost the battle which they
hoped should have decided it for their advantage, vowed to carry never any
hair on their heads till preallably they had recovered the loss of both
their honour and lands. As likewise to the memory of the vow of a pleasant
Spaniard called Michael Doris, who vowed to carry in his hat a piece of the
shin of his leg till he should be revenged of him who had struck it off.
Yet do not I know which of these two deserveth most to wear a green and
yellow hood with a hare's ears tied to it, either the aforesaid
vainglorious champion, or that Enguerrant, who having forgot the art and
manner of writing histories set down by the Samosatian philosopher, maketh
a most tediously long narrative and relation thereof. For, at the first
reading of such a profuse discourse, one would think it had been broached
for the introducing of a story of great importance and moment concerning
the waging of some formidable war, or the notable change and mutation of
potent states and kingdoms; but, in conclusion, the world laugheth at the
capricious champion, at the Englishman who had affronted him, as also at
their scribbler Enguerrant, more drivelling at the mouth than a mustard
pot. The jest and scorn thereof is not unlike to that of the mountain of
Horace, which by the poet was made to cry out and lament most enormously as
a woman in the pangs and labour of child-birth, at which deplorable and
exorbitant cries and lamentations the whole neighbourhood being assembled
in expectation to see some marvellous monstrous production, could at last
perceive no other but the paltry, ridiculous mouse.
Your mousing, quoth Panurge, will not make me leave my musing why folks
should be so frumpishly disposed, seeing I am certainly persuaded that some
flout who merit to be flouted at; yet, as my vow imports, so will I do. It
is now a long time since, by Jupiter Philos (A mistake of the
translator's. --M. ), we did swear faith and amity to one another. Give me
your advice, billy, and tell me your opinion freely, Should I marry or no?
Truly, quoth Epistemon, the case is hazardous, and the danger so eminently
apparent that I find myself too weak and insufficient to give you a
punctual and peremptory resolution therein; and if ever it was true that
judgment is difficult in matters of the medicinal art, what was said by
Hippocrates of Lango, it is certainly so in this case. True it is that in
my brain there are some rolling fancies, by means whereof somewhat may be
pitched upon of a seeming efficacy to the disentangling your mind of those
dubious apprehensions wherewith it is perplexed; but they do not thoroughly
satisfy me. Some of the Platonic sect affirm that whosoever is able to see
his proper genius may know his own destiny. I understand not their
doctrine, nor do I think that you adhere to them; there is a palpable
abuse. I have seen the experience of it in a very curious gentleman of the
country of Estangourre. This is one of the points. There is yet another
not much better. If there were any authority now in the oracles of Jupiter
Ammon; of Apollo in Lebadia, Delphos, Delos, Cyrra, Patara, Tegyres,
Preneste, Lycia, Colophon, or in the Castalian Fountain; near Antiochia in
Syria, between the Branchidians; of Bacchus in Dodona; of Mercury in
Phares, near Patras; of Apis in Egypt; of Serapis in Canope; of Faunus in
Menalia, and Albunea near Tivoli; of Tiresias in Orchomenus; of Mopsus in
Cilicia; of Orpheus in Lesbos, and of Trophonius in Leucadia; I would in
that case advise you, and possibly not, to go thither for their judgment
concerning the design and enterprise you have in hand. But you know that
they are all of them become as dumb as so many fishes since the advent of
that Saviour King whose coming to this world hath made all oracles and
prophecies to cease; as the approach of the sun's radiant beams expelleth
goblins, bugbears, hobthrushes, broams, screech-owl-mates, night-walking
spirits, and tenebrions. These now are gone; but although they were as yet
in continuance and in the same power, rule, and request that formerly they
were, yet would not I counsel you to be too credulous in putting any trust
in their responses. Too many folks have been deceived thereby. It stands
furthermore upon record how Agrippina did charge the fair Lollia with the
crime of having interrogated the oracle of Apollo Clarius, to understand if
she should be at any time married to the Emperor Claudius; for which cause
she was first banished, and thereafter put to a shameful and ignominious
death.
But, saith Panurge, let us do better. The Ogygian Islands are not far
distant from the haven of Sammalo. Let us, after that we shall have spoken
to our king, make a voyage thither. In one of these four isles, to wit,
that which hath its primest aspect towards the sun setting, it is reported,
and I have read in good antique and authentic authors, that there reside
many soothsayers, fortune-tellers, vaticinators, prophets, and diviners of
things to come; that Saturn inhabiteth that place, bound with fair chains
of gold and within the concavity of a golden rock, being nourished with
divine ambrosia and nectar, which are daily in great store and abundance
transmitted to him from the heavens, by I do not well know what kind of
fowls,--it may be that they are the same ravens which in the deserts are
said to have fed St. Paul, the first hermit,--he very clearly foretelleth
unto everyone who is desirous to be certified of the condition of his lot
what his destiny will be, and what future chance the Fates have ordained
for him; for the Parcae, or Weird Sisters, do not twist, spin, or draw out
a thread, nor yet doth Jupiter perpend, project, or deliberate anything
which the good old celestial father knoweth not to the full, even whilst he
is asleep. This will be a very summary abbreviation of our labour, if we
but hearken unto him a little upon the serious debate and canvassing of
this my perplexity. That is, answered Epistemon, a gullery too evident, a
plain abuse and fib too fabulous. I will not go, not I; I will not go.
Chapter 3. XXV.
How Panurge consulteth with Herr Trippa.
Nevertheless, quoth Epistemon, continuing his discourse, I will tell you
what you may do, if you believe me, before we return to our king. Hard by
here, in the Brown-wheat (Bouchart) Island, dwelleth Herr Trippa. You know
how by the arts of astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, metopomancy, and others
of a like stuff and nature, he foretelleth all things to come; let us talk
a little, and confer with him about your business. Of that, answered
Panurge, I know nothing; but of this much concerning him I am assured, that
one day, and that not long since, whilst he was prating to the great king
of celestial, sublime, and transcendent things, the lacqueys and footboys
of the court, upon the upper steps of stairs between two doors, jumbled,
one after another, as often as they listed, his wife, who is passable fair,
and a pretty snug hussy. Thus he who seemed very clearly to see all
heavenly and terrestrial things without spectacles, who discoursed boldly
of adventures past, with great confidence opened up present cases and
accidents, and stoutly professed the presaging of all future events and
contingencies, was not able, with all the skill and cunning that he had, to
perceive the bumbasting of his wife, whom he reputed to be very chaste, and
hath not till this hour got notice of anything to the contrary. Yet let us
go to him, seeing you will have it so; for surely we can never learn too
much. They on the very next ensuing day came to Herr Trippa's lodging.
Panurge, by way of donative, presented him with a long gown lined all
through with wolf-skins, with a short sword mounted with a gilded hilt and
covered with a velvet scabbard, and with fifty good single angels; then in
a familiar and friendly way did he ask of him his opinion touching the
affair. At the very first Herr Trippa, looking on him very wistly in the
face, said unto him: Thou hast the metoposcopy and physiognomy of a
cuckold,--I say, of a notorious and infamous cuckold. With this, casting
an eye upon Panurge's right hand in all the parts thereof, he said, This
rugged draught which I see here, just under the mount of Jove, was never
yet but in the hand of a cuckold. Afterwards, he with a white lead pen
swiftly and hastily drew a certain number of diverse kinds of points, which
by rules of geomancy he coupled and joined together; then said: Truth
itself is not truer than that it is certain thou wilt be a cuckold a little
after thy marriage. That being done, he asked of Panurge the horoscope of
his nativity, which was no sooner by Panurge tendered unto him, than that,
erecting a figure, he very promptly and speedily formed and fashioned a
complete fabric of the houses of heaven in all their parts, whereof when he
had considered the situation and the aspects in their triplicities, he
fetched a deep sigh, and said: I have clearly enough already discovered
unto you the fate of your cuckoldry, which is unavoidable, you cannot
escape it. And here have I got of new a further assurance thereof, so that
I may now hardily pronounce and affirm, without any scruple or hesitation
at all, that thou wilt be a cuckold; that furthermore, thou wilt be beaten
by thine own wife, and that she will purloin, filch and steal of thy goods
from thee; for I find the seventh house, in all its aspects, of a malignant
influence, and every one of the planets threatening thee with disgrace,
according as they stand seated towards one another, in relation to the
horned signs of Aries, Taurus, and Capricorn. In the fourth house I find
Jupiter in a decadence, as also in a tetragonal aspect to Saturn,
associated with Mercury. Thou wilt be soundly peppered, my good, honest
fellow, I warrant thee. I will be? answered Panurge. A plague rot thee,
thou old fool and doting sot, how graceless and unpleasant thou art! When
all cuckolds shall be at a general rendezvous, thou shouldst be their
standard-bearer. But whence comes this ciron-worm betwixt these two
fingers? This Panurge said, putting the forefinger of his left hand
betwixt the fore and mid finger of the right, which he thrust out towards
Herr Trippa, holding them open after the manner of two horns, and shutting
into his fist his thumb with the other fingers. Then, in turning to
Epistemon, he said: Lo here the true Olus of Martial, who addicted and
devoted himself wholly to the observing the miseries, crosses, and
calamities of others, whilst his own wife, in the interim, did keep an open
bawdy-house. This varlet is poorer than ever was Irus, and yet he is
proud, vaunting, arrogant, self-conceited, overweening, and more
insupportable than seventeen devils; in one word, Ptochalazon, which term
of old was applied to the like beggarly strutting coxcombs. Come, let us
leave this madpash bedlam, this hairbrained fop, and give him leave to rave
and dose his bellyful with his private and intimately acquainted devils,
who, if they were not the very worst of all infernal fiends, would never
have deigned to serve such a knavish barking cur as this is. He hath not
learnt the first precept of philosophy, which is, Know thyself; for whilst
he braggeth and boasteth that he can discern the least mote in the eye of
another, he is not able to see the huge block that puts out the sight of
both his eyes. This is such another Polypragmon as is by Plutarch
described. He is of the nature of the Lamian witches, who in foreign
places, in the houses of strangers, in public, and amongst the common
people, had a sharper and more piercing inspection into their affairs than
any lynx, but at home in their own proper dwelling-mansions were blinder
than moldwarps, and saw nothing at all. For their custom was, at their
return from abroad, when they were by themselves in private, to take their
eyes out of their head, from whence they were as easily removable as a pair
of spectacles from their nose, and to lay them up into a wooden slipper
which for that purpose did hang behind the door of their lodging.
Panurge had no sooner done speaking, when Herr Trippa took into his hand a
tamarisk branch. In this, quoth Epistemon, he doth very well, right, and
like an artist, for Nicander calleth it the divinatory tree. Have you a
mind, quoth Herr Trippa, to have the truth of the matter yet more fully and
amply disclosed unto you by pyromancy, by aeromancy, whereof Aristophanes
in his Clouds maketh great estimation, by hydromancy, by lecanomancy, of
old in prime request amongst the Assyrians, and thoroughly tried by
Hermolaus Barbarus. Come hither, and I will show thee in this platterful
of fair fountain-water thy future wife lechering and sercroupierizing it
with two swaggering ruffians, one after another. Yea, but have a special
care, quoth Panurge, when thou comest to put thy nose within mine arse,
that thou forget not to pull off thy spectacles. Herr Trippa, going on in
his discourse, said, By catoptromancy, likewise held in such account by the
Emperor Didius Julianus, that by means thereof he ever and anon foresaw all
that which at any time did happen or befall unto him. Thou shalt not need
to put on thy spectacles, for in a mirror thou wilt see her as clearly and
manifestly nebrundiated and billibodring it, as if I should show it in the
fountain of the temple of Minerva near Patras. By coscinomancy, most
religiously observed of old amidst the ceremonies of the ancient Romans.
Let us have a sieve and shears, and thou shalt see devils. By
alphitomancy, cried up by Theocritus in his Pharmaceutria. By alentomancy,
mixing the flour of wheat with oatmeal. By astragalomancy, whereof I have
the plots and models all at hand ready for the purpose. By tyromancy,
whereof we make some proof in a great Brehemont cheese which I here keep by
me. By giromancy, if thou shouldst turn round circles, thou mightest
assure thyself from me that they would fall always on the wrong side. By
sternomancy, which maketh nothing for thy advantage, for thou hast an
ill-proportioned stomach. By libanomancy, for the which we shall need but
a little frankincense. By gastromancy, which kind of ventral fatiloquency
was for a long time together used in Ferrara by Lady Giacoma Rodogina, the
Engastrimythian prophetess. By cephalomancy, often practised amongst the
High Germans in their boiling of an ass's head upon burning coals. By
ceromancy, where, by the means of wax dissolved into water, thou shalt see
the figure, portrait, and lively representation of thy future wife, and of
her fredin fredaliatory belly-thumping blades. By capnomancy. O the
gallantest and most excellent of all secrets! By axionomancy; we want only
a hatchet and a jet-stone to be laid together upon a quick fire of hot
embers. O how bravely Homer was versed in the practice hereof towards
Penelope's suitors! By onymancy; for that we have oil and wax. By
tephromancy. Thou wilt see the ashes thus aloft dispersed exhibiting thy
wife in a fine posture. By botanomancy; for the nonce I have some few
leaves in reserve. By sicomancy; O divine art in fig-tree leaves! By
icthiomancy, in ancient times so celebrated, and put in use by Tiresias and
Polydamas, with the like certainty of event as was tried of old at the
Dina-ditch within that grove consecrated to Apollo which is in the
territory of the Lycians. By choiromancy; let us have a great many hogs,
and thou shalt have the bladder of one of them. By cheromancy, as the bean
is found in the cake at the Epiphany vigil. By anthropomancy, practised by
the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus. It is somewhat irksome, but thou wilt
endure it well enough, seeing thou art destinated to be a cuckold. By a
sibylline stichomancy. By onomatomancy. How do they call thee?
Chaw-turd, quoth Panurge. Or yet by alectryomancy. If I should here with
a compass draw a round, and in looking upon thee, and considering thy lot,
divide the circumference thereof into four-and-twenty equal parts, then
form a several letter of the alphabet upon every one of them; and, lastly,
posit a barleycorn or two upon each of these so disposed letters, I durst
promise upon my faith and honesty that, if a young virgin cock be permitted
to range alongst and athwart them, he should only eat the grains which are
set and placed upon these letters, A. C. U. C. K. O. L. D. T. H. O. U. S. H. A. L. T.
B. E. And that as fatidically as, under the Emperor Valens, most
perplexedly desirous to know the name of him who should be his successor to
the empire, the cock vacticinating and alectryomantic ate up the pickles
that were posited on the letters T. H. E. O. D. Or, for the more certainty,
will you have a trial of your fortune by the art of aruspiciny, by augury,
or by extispiciny? By turdispiciny, quoth Panurge. Or yet by the mystery
of necromancy? I will, if you please, suddenly set up again and revive
someone lately deceased, as Apollonius of Tyane did to Achilles, and the
Pythoness in the presence of Saul; which body, so raised up and
requickened, will tell us the sum of all you shall require of him: no more
nor less than, at the invocation of Erictho, a certain defunct person
foretold to Pompey the whole progress and issue of the fatal battle fought
in the Pharsalian fields. Or, if you be afraid of the dead, as commonly
all cuckolds are, I will make use of the faculty of sciomancy.
Go, get thee gone, quoth Panurge, thou frantic ass, to the devil, and be
buggered, filthy Bardachio that thou art, by some Albanian, for a
steeple-crowned hat. Why the devil didst not thou counsel me as well to
hold an emerald or the stone of a hyaena under my tongue, or to furnish and
provide myself with tongues of whoops, and hearts of green frogs, or to eat
of the liver and milt of some dragon, to the end that by those means I
might, at the chanting and chirping of swans and other fowls, understand the
substance of my future lot and destiny, as did of old the Arabians in the
country of Mesopotamia? Fifteen brace of devils seize upon the body and
soul of this horned renegado, miscreant cuckold, the enchanter, witch, and
sorcerer of Antichrist to all the devils of hell! Let us return towards our
king. I am sure he will not be well pleased with us if he once come to get
notice that we have been in the kennel of this muffled devil. I repent my
being come hither. I would willingly dispense with a hundred nobles and
fourteen yeomans, on condition that he who not long since did blow in the
bottom of my breeches should instantly with his squirting spittle inluminate
his moustaches. O Lord God now! how the villain hath besmoked me with
vexation and anger, with charms and witchcraft, and with a terrible coil and
stir of infernal and Tartarian devils! The devil take him! Say Amen, and
let us go drink. I shall not have any appetite for my victuals, how good
cheer soever I make, these two days to come,--hardly these four.
Chapter 3. XXVI.
How Panurge consulteth with Friar John of the Funnels.
Panurge was indeed very much troubled in mind and disquieted at the words
of Herr Trippa, and therefore, as he passed by the little village of
Huymes, after he had made his address to Friar John, in pecking at,
rubbing, and scratching his own left ear, he said unto him, Keep me a
little jovial and merry, my dear and sweet bully, for I find my brains
altogether metagrabolized and confounded, and my spirits in a most dunsical
puzzle at the bitter talk of this devilish, hellish, damned fool. Hearken,
my dainty cod.
Mellow C. Varnished C. Resolute C.
Lead-coloured C. Renowned C. Cabbage-like C.
Knurled C. Matted C. Courteous C.
Suborned C. Genitive C. Fertile C.
Desired C. Gigantal C. Whizzing C.
Stuffed C. Oval C. Neat C.
Speckled C. Claustral C. Common C.
Finely metalled C. Virile C. Brisk C.
Arabian-like C. Stayed C. Quick C.
Trussed-up Grey- Massive C. Bearlike C.
hound-like C. Manual C. Partitional C.
Mounted C. Absolute C. Patronymic C.
Sleeked C. Well-set C. Cockney C.
Diapered C. Gemel C. Auromercuriated C.
Spotted C. Turkish C. Robust C.
Master C. Burning C. Appetizing C.
Seeded C. Thwacking C. Succourable C.
Lusty C. Urgent C. Redoubtable C.
Jupped C.
Panurge's navel, moving withal continually the aforesaid thumb, and bearing
up, supporting, or under-propping that hand upon the above-specified fore
and little fingers, as upon two legs. Thereafter did he make in this
posture his hand by little and little, and by degrees and pauses,
successively to mount from athwart the belly to the stomach, from whence he
made it to ascend to the breast, even upwards to Panurge's neck, still
gaining ground, till, having reached his chin, he had put within the
concave of his mouth his afore-mentioned thumb; then fiercely brandishing
the whole hand, which he made to rub and grate against his nose, he heaved
it further up, and made the fashion as if with the thumb thereof he would
have put out his eyes. With this Panurge grew a little angry, and went
about to withdraw and rid himself from this ruggedly untoward dumb devil.
But Goatsnose in the meantime, prosecuting the intended purpose of his
prognosticatory response, touched very rudely, with the above-mentioned
shaking thumb, now his eyes, then his forehead, and after that the borders
and corners of his cap. At last Panurge cried out, saying, Before God,
master fool, if you do not let me alone, or that you will presume to vex me
any more, you shall receive from the best hand I have a mask wherewith to
cover your rascally scroundrel face, you paltry shitten varlet. Then said
Friar John, He is deaf, and doth not understand what thou sayest unto him.
Bulliballock, make sign to him of a hail of fisticuffs upon the muzzle.
What the devil, quoth Panurge, means this busy restless fellow? What is it
that this polypragmonetic ardelion to all the fiends of hell doth aim at?
He hath almost thrust out mine eyes, as if he had been to poach them in a
skillet with butter and eggs. By God, da jurandi, I will feast you with
flirts and raps on the snout, interlarded with a double row of bobs and
finger-fillipings! Then did he leave him in giving him by way of salvo a
volley of farts for his farewell. Goatsnose, perceiving Panurge thus to
slip away from him, got before him, and, by mere strength enforcing him to
stand, made this sign unto him. He let fall his right arm toward his knee
on the same side as low as he could, and, raising all the fingers of that
hand into a close fist, passed his dexter thumb betwixt the foremost and
mid fingers thereto belonging. Then scrubbing and swingeing a little with
his left hand alongst and upon the uppermost in the very bough of the elbow
of the said dexter arm, the whole cubit thereof, by leisure, fair and
softly, at these thumpatory warnings, did raise and elevate itself even to
the elbow, and above it; on a sudden did he then let it fall down as low as
before, and after that, at certain intervals and such spaces of time,
raising and abasing it, he made a show thereof to Panurge. This so
incensed Panurge that he forthwith lifted his hand to have stricken him the
dumb roister and given him a sound whirret on the ear, but that the respect
and reverence which he carried to the presence of Pantagruel restrained his
choler and kept his fury within bounds and limits. Then said Pantagruel,
If the bare signs now vex and trouble you, how much more grievously will
you be perplexed and disquieted with the real things which by them are
represented and signified! All truths agree and are consonant with one
another. This dumb fellow prophesieth and foretelleth that you will be
married, cuckolded, beaten, and robbed. As for the marriage, quoth
Panurge, I yield thereto, and acknowledge the verity of that point of his
prediction; as for the rest, I utterly abjure and deny it: and believe,
sir, I beseech you, if it may please you so to do, that in the matter of
wives and horses never any man was predestinated to a better fortune than
I.
Chapter 3. XXI.
How Panurge consulteth with an old French poet, named Raminagrobis.
I never thought, said Pantagruel, to have encountered with any man so
headstrong in his apprehensions, or in his opinions so wilful, as I have
found you to be and see you are. Nevertheless, the better to clear and
extricate your doubts, let us try all courses, and leave no stone unturned
nor wind unsailed by. Take good heed to what I am to say unto you. The
swans, which are fowls consecrated to Apollo, never chant but in the hour
of their approaching death, especially in the Meander flood, which is a
river that runneth along some of the territories of Phrygia. This I say,
because Aelianus and Alexander Myndius write that they had seen several
swans in other places die, but never heard any of them sing or chant before
their death. However, it passeth for current that the imminent death of a
swan is presaged by his foregoing song, and that no swan dieth until
preallably he have sung.
After the same manner, poets, who are under the protection of Apollo, when
they are drawing near their latter end do ordinarily become prophets, and
by the inspiration of that god sing sweetly in vaticinating things which
are to come. It hath been likewise told me frequently, that old decrepit
men upon the brinks of Charon's banks do usher their decease with a
disclosure all at ease, to those that are desirous of such informations, of
the determinate and assured truth of future accidents and contingencies. I
remember also that Aristophanes, in a certain comedy of his, calleth the
old folks Sibyls, Eith o geron Zibullia. For as when, being upon a pier by
the shore, we see afar off mariners, seafaring men, and other travellers
alongst the curled waves of azure Thetis within their ships, we then
consider them in silence only, and seldom proceed any further than to wish
them a happy and prosperous arrival; but when they do approach near to the
haven, and come to wet their keels within their harbour, then both with
words and gestures we salute them, and heartily congratulate their access
safe to the port wherein we are ourselves. Just so the angels, heroes, and
good demons, according to the doctrine of the Platonics, when they see
mortals drawing near unto the harbour of the grave, as the most sure and
calmest port of any, full of repose, ease, rest, tranquillity, free from
the troubles and solicitudes of this tumultuous and tempestuous world; then
is it that they with alacrity hail and salute them, cherish and comfort
them, and, speaking to them lovingly, begin even then to bless them with
illuminations, and to communicate unto them the abstrusest mysteries of
divination. I will not offer here to confound your memory by quoting
antique examples of Isaac, of Jacob, of Patroclus towards Hector, of Hector
towards Achilles, of Polymnestor towards Agamemnon, of Hecuba, of the
Rhodian renowned by Posidonius, of Calanus the Indian towards Alexander the
Great, of Orodes towards Mezentius, and of many others. It shall suffice
for the present that I commemorate unto you the learned and valiant knight
and cavalier William of Bellay, late Lord of Langey, who died on the Hill
of Tarara, the 10th of January, in the climacteric year of his age, and of
our supputation 1543, according to the Roman account. The last three or
four hours of his life he did employ in the serious utterance of a very
pithy discourse, whilst with a clear judgment and spirit void of all
trouble he did foretell several important things, whereof a great deal is
come to pass, and the rest we wait for. Howbeit, his prophecies did at
that time seem unto us somewhat strange, absurd, and unlikely, because
there did not then appear any sign of efficacy enough to engage our faith
to the belief of what he did prognosticate. We have here, near to the town
of Villomere, a man that is both old and a poet, to wit, Raminagrobis, who
to his second wife espoused my Lady Broadsow, on whom he begot the fair
Basoche. It hath been told me he is a-dying, and so near unto his latter
end that he is almost upon the very last moment, point, and article thereof.
Repair thither as fast as you can, and be ready to give an attentive ear to
what he shall chant unto you. It may be that you shall obtain from him what
you desire, and that Apollo will be pleased by his means to clear your
scruples. I am content, quoth Panurge. Let us go thither, Epistemon, and
that both instantly and in all haste, lest otherwise his death prevent our
coming. Wilt thou come along with us, Friar John? Yes, that I will, quoth
Friar John, right heartily to do thee a courtesy, my billy-ballocks; for I
love thee with the best of my milt and liver.
Thereupon, incontinently, without any further lingering, to the way they
all three went, and quickly thereafter--for they made good speed--arriving
at the poetical habitation, they found the jolly old man, albeit in the
agony of his departure from this world, looking cheerfully, with an open
countenance, splendid aspect, and behaviour full of alacrity. After that
Panurge had very civilly saluted him, he in a free gift did present him
with a gold ring, which he even then put upon the medical finger of his
left hand, in the collet or bezel whereof was enchased an Oriental
sapphire, very fair and large. Then, in imitation of Socrates, did he make
an oblation unto him of a fair white cock, which was no sooner set upon the
tester of his bed, than that, with a high raised head and crest, lustily
shaking his feather-coat, he crowed stentoriphonically loud. This done,
Panurge very courteously required of him that he would vouchsafe to favour
him with the grant and report of his sense and judgment touching the future
destiny of his intended marriage. For answer hereto, when the honest old
man had forthwith commanded pen, paper, and ink to be brought unto him, and
that he was at the same call conveniently served with all the three, he
wrote these following verses:
Take, or not take her,
Off, or on:
Handy-dandy is your lot.
When her name you write, you blot.
'Tis undone, when all is done,
Ended e'er it was begun:
Hardly gallop, if you trot,
Set not forward when you run,
Nor be single, though alone,
Take, or not take her.
Before you eat, begin to fast;
For what shall be was never past.
Say, unsay, gainsay, save your breath:
Then wish at once her life and death.
Take, or not take her.
These lines he gave out of his own hands unto them, saying unto them, Go,
my lads, in peace! the great God of the highest heavens be your guardian
and preserver! and do not offer any more to trouble or disquiet me with
this or any other business whatsoever. I have this same very day, which is
the last both of May and of me, with a greal deal of labour, toil, and
difficulty, chased out of my house a rabble of filthy, unclean, and
plaguily pestilentious rake-hells, black beasts, dusk, dun, white,
ash-coloured, speckled, and a foul vermin of other hues, whose obtrusive
importunity would not permit me to die at my own ease; for by fraudulent
and deceitful pricklings, ravenous, harpy-like graspings, waspish
stingings, and such-like unwelcome approaches, forged in the shop of I know
not what kind of insatiabilities, they went about to withdraw and call me
out of those sweet thoughts wherein I was already beginning to repose
myself and acquiesce in the contemplation and vision, yea, almost in the
very touch and taste of the happiness and felicity which the good God hath
prepared for his faithful saints and elect in the other life and state of
immortality. Turn out of their courses and eschew them, step forth of
their ways and do not resemble them; meanwhile, let me be no more troubled
by you, but leave me now in silence, I beseech you.
Chapter 3. XXII.
How Panurge patrocinates and defendeth the Order of the Begging Friars.
Panurge, at his issuing forth of Raminagrobis's chamber, said, as if he had
been horribly affrighted, By the virtue of God, I believe that he is an
heretic; the devil take me, if I do not! he doth so villainously rail at
the Mendicant Friars and Jacobins, who are the two hemispheres of the
Christian world; by whose gyronomonic circumbilvaginations, as by two
celivagous filopendulums, all the autonomatic metagrobolism of the Romish
Church, when tottering and emblustricated with the gibble-gabble gibberish
of this odious error and heresy, is homocentrically poised. But what harm,
in the devil's name, have these poor devils the Capuchins and Minims done
unto him? Are not these beggarly devils sufficiently wretched already?
Who can imagine that these poor snakes, the very extracts of ichthyophagy,
are not thoroughly enough besmoked and besmeared with misery, distress, and
calamity? Dost thou think, Friar John, by thy faith, that he is in the
state of salvation? He goeth, before God, as surely damned to thirty
thousand basketsful of devils as a pruning-bill to the lopping of a
vine-branch. To revile with opprobrious speeches the good and courageous
props and pillars of the Church,--is that to be called a poetical fury? I
cannot rest satisfied with him; he sinneth grossly, and blasphemeth against
the true religion. I am very much offended at his scandalizing words and
contumelious obloquy. I do not care a straw, quoth Friar John, for what he
hath said; for although everybody should twit and jerk them, it were but a
just retaliation, seeing all persons are served by them with the like sauce:
therefore do I pretend no interest therein. Let us see, nevertheless, what
he hath written. Panurge very attentively read the paper which the old man
had penned; then said to his two fellow-travellers, The poor drinker doteth.
Howsoever, I excuse him, for that I believe he is now drawing near to the
end and final closure of his life. Let us go make his epitaph. By the
answer which he hath given us, I am not, I protest, one jot wiser than I
was. Hearken here, Epistemon, my little bully, dost not thou hold him to be
very resolute in his responsory verdicts? He is a witty, quick, and subtle
sophister. I will lay an even wager that he is a miscreant apostate. By
the belly of a stalled ox, how careful he is not to be mistaken in his
words. He answered but by disjunctives, therefore can it not be true which
he saith; for the verity of such-like propositions is inherent only in one
of its two members. O the cozening prattler that he is! I wonder if
Santiago of Bressure be one of these cogging shirks. Such was of old, quoth
Epistemon, the custom of the grand vaticinator and prophet Tiresias, who
used always, by way of a preface, to say openly and plainly at the beginning
of his divinations and predictions that what he was to tell would either
come to pass or not. And such is truly the style of all prudently presaging
prognosticators. He was nevertheless, quoth Panurge, so unfortunately
misadventurous in the lot of his own destiny, that Juno thrust out both his
eyes.
Yes, answered Epistemon, and that merely out of a spite and spleen for
having pronounced his award more veritable than she, upon the question
which was merrily proposed by Jupiter. But, quoth Panurge, what archdevil
is it that hath possessed this Master Raminagrobis, that so unreasonably,
and without any occasion, he should have so snappishly and bitterly
inveighed against these poor honest fathers, Jacobins, Minors, and Minims?
It vexeth me grievously, I assure you; nor am I able to conceal my
indignation. He hath transgressed most enormously; his soul goeth
infallibly to thirty thousand panniersful of devils. I understand you not,
quoth Epistemon, and it disliketh me very much that you should so absurdly
and perversely interpret that of the Friar Mendicants which by the harmless
poet was spoken of black beasts, dun, and other sorts of other coloured
animals. He is not in my opinion guilty of such a sophistical and
fantastic allegory as by that phrase of his to have meant the Begging
Brothers. He in downright terms speaketh absolutely and properly of fleas,
punies, hand worms, flies, gnats, and other such-like scurvy vermin,
whereof some are black, some dun, some ash-coloured, some tawny, and some
brown and dusky, all noisome, molesting, tyrannous, cumbersome, and
unpleasant creatures, not only to sick and diseased folks, but to those
also who are of a sound, vigorous, and healthful temperament and
constitution. It is not unlikely that he may have the ascarids, and the
lumbrics, and worms within the entrails of his body. Possibly doth he
suffer, as it is frequent and usual amongst the Egyptians, together with
all those who inhabit the Erythraean confines, and dwell along the shores
and coasts of the Red Sea, some sour prickings and smart stingings in his
arms and legs of those little speckled dragons which the Arabians call
meden. You are to blame for offering to expound his words otherwise, and
wrong the ingenuous poet, and outrageously abuse and miscall the said
fraters, by an imputation of baseness undeservedly laid to their charge.
We still should, in such like discourses of fatiloquent soothsayers,
interpret all things to the best. Will you teach me, quoth Panurge, how to
discern flies among milk, or show your father the way how to beget
children? He is, by the virtue of God, an arrant heretic, a resolute,
formal heretic; I say, a rooted, combustible heretic, one as fit to burn as
the little wooden clock at Rochelle. His soul goeth to thirty thousand
cartsful of devils. Would you know whither? Cocks-body, my friend,
straight under Proserpina's close-stool, to the very middle of the
self-same infernal pan within which she, by an excrementitious evacuation,
voideth the faecal stuff of her stinking clysters, and that just upon the
left side of the great cauldron of three fathom height, hard by the claws
and talons of Lucifer, in the very darkest of the passage which leadeth
towards the black chamber of Demogorgon. O the villain!
Chapter 3. XXIII.
How Panurge maketh the motion of a return to Raminagrobis.
Let us return, quoth Panurge, not ceasing, to the uttermost of our
abilities, to ply him with wholesome admonitions for the furtherance of his
salvation. Let us go back, for God's sake; let us go, in the name of God.
It will be a very meritorious work, and of great charity in us to deal so
in the matter, and provide so well for him that, albeit he come to lose
both body and life, he may at least escape the risk and danger of the
eternal damnation of his soul. We will by our holy persuasions bring him
to a sense and feeling of his escapes, induce him to acknowledge his
faults, move him to a cordial repentance of his errors, and stir up in him
such a sincere contrition of heart for his offences, as will prompt him
with all earnestness to cry mercy, and to beg pardon at the hands of the
good fathers, as well of the absent as of such as are present. Whereupon
we will take instrument formally and authentically extended, to the end he
be not, after his decease, declared an heretic, and condemned, as were the
hobgoblins of the provost's wife of Orleans, to the undergoing of such
punishments, pains, and tortures as are due to and inflicted on those that
inhabit the horrid cells of the infernal regions; and withal incline,
instigate, and persuade him to bequeath and leave in legacy (by way of an
amends and satisfaction for the outrage and injury done to those good
religious fathers throughout all the convents, cloisters, and monasteries
of this province), many bribes, a great deal of mass-singing, store of
obits, and that sempiternally, on the anniversary day of his decease, every
one of them all be furnished with a quintuple allowance, and that the great
borachio replenished with the best liquor trudge apace along the tables, as
well of the young duckling monkitoes, lay brothers, and lowermost degree of
the abbey lubbards, as of the learned priests and reverend clerks,--the
very meanest of the novices and mitiants unto the order being equally
admitted to the benefit of those funerary and obsequial festivals with the
aged rectors and professed fathers. This is the surest ordinary means
whereby from God he may obtain forgiveness. Ho, ho, I am quite mistaken; I
digress from the purpose, and fly out of my discourse, as if my spirits
were a-wool-gathering. The devil take me, if I go thither! Virtue God!
The chamber is already full of devils. O what a swinging, thwacking noise
is now amongst them! O the terrible coil that they keep! Hearken, do you
not hear the rustling, thumping bustle of their strokes and blows, as they
scuffle with one another, like true devils indeed, who shall gulp up the
Raminagrobis soul, and be the first bringer of it, whilst it is hot, to
Monsieur Lucifer? Beware, and get you hence! for my part, I will not go
thither. The devil roast me if I go! Who knows but that these hungry mad
devils may in the haste of their rage and fury of their impatience take a
qui for a quo, and instead of Raminagrobis snatch up poor Panurge frank and
free? Though formerly, when I was deep in debt, they always failed. Get
you hence! I will not go thither. Before God, the very bare apprehension
thereof is like to kill me. To be in a place where there are greedy,
famished, and hunger-starved devils; amongst factious devils--amidst
trading and trafficking devils--O the Lord preserve me! Get you hence! I
dare pawn my credit on it, that no Jacobin, Cordelier, Carmelite, Capuchin,
Theatin, or Minim will bestow any personal presence at his interment. The
wiser they, because he hath ordained nothing for them in his latter will
and testament. The devil take me, if I go thither. If he be damned, to
his own loss and hindrance be it. What the deuce moved him to be so
snappish and depravedly bent against the good fathers of the true religion?
Why did he cast them off, reject them, and drive them quite out of his
chamber, even in that very nick of time when he stood in greatest need of
the aid, suffrage, and assistance of their devout prayers and holy
admonitions? Why did not he by testament leave them, at least, some jolly
lumps and cantles of substantial meat, a parcel of cheek-puffing victuals,
and a little belly-timber and provision for the guts of these poor folks,
who have nothing but their life in this world? Let him go thither who
will, the devil take me if I go; for, if I should, the devil would not fail
to snatch me up. Cancro. Ho, the pox! Get you hence, Friar John! Art
thou content that thirty thousand wainload of devils should get away with
thee at this same very instant? If thou be, at my request do these three
things. First, give me thy purse; for besides that thy money is marked
with crosses, and the cross is an enemy to charms, the same may befall to
thee which not long ago happened to John Dodin, collector of the excise of
Coudray, at the ford of Vede, when the soldiers broke the planks. This
moneyed fellow, meeting at the very brink of the bank of the ford with
Friar Adam Crankcod, a Franciscan observantin of Mirebeau, promised him a
new frock, provided that in the transporting of him over the water he would
bear him upon his neck and shoulders, after the manner of carrying dead
goats; for he was a lusty, strong-limbed, sturdy rogue. The condition
being agreed upon, Friar Crankcod trusseth himself up to his very ballocks,
and layeth upon his back, like a fair little Saint Christopher, the load of
the said supplicant Dodin, and so carried him gaily and with a good will,
as Aeneas bore his father Anchises through the conflagration of Troy,
singing in the meanwhile a pretty Ave Maris Stella. When they were in the
very deepest place of all the ford, a little above the master-wheel of the
water-mill, he asked if he had any coin about him. Yes, quoth Dodin, a
whole bagful; and that he needed not to mistrust his ability in the
performance of the promise which he had made unto him concerning a new
frock. How! quoth Friar Crankcod, thou knowest well enough that by the
express rules, canons, and injunctions of our order we are forbidden to
carry on us any kind of money. Thou art truly unhappy, for having made me
in this point to commit a heinous trespass. Why didst thou not leave thy
purse with the miller? Without fail thou shalt presently receive thy
reward for it; and if ever hereafter I may but lay hold upon thee within
the limits of our chancel at Mirebeau, thou shalt have the Miserere even to
the Vitulos. With this, suddenly discharging himself of his burden, he
throws me down your Dodin headlong. Take example by this Dodin, my dear
friend Friar John, to the end that the devils may the better carry thee
away at thine own ease. Give me thy purse. Carry no manner of cross upon
thee. Therein lieth an evident and manifestly apparent danger. For if you
have any silver coined with a cross upon it, they will cast thee down
headlong upon some rocks, as the eagles use to do with the tortoises for
the breaking of their shells, as the bald pate of the poet Aeschylus can
sufficiently bear witness. Such a fall would hurt thee very sore, my sweet
bully, and I would be sorry for it. Or otherwise they will let thee fall
and tumble down into the high swollen waves of some capacious sea, I know
not where; but, I warrant thee, far enough hence, as Icarus fell, which
from thy name would afterwards get the denomination of the Funnelian Sea.
Secondly, be out of debt. For the devils carry a great liking to those
that are out of debt. I have sore felt the experience thereof in mine own
particular; for now the lecherous varlets are always wooing me, courting
me, and making much of me, which they never did when I was all to pieces.
The soul of one in debt is insipid, dry, and heretical altogether.
Thirdly, with the cowl and Domino de Grobis, return to Raminagrobis; and in
case, being thus qualified, thirty thousand boatsful of devils forthwith
come not to carry thee quite away, I shall be content to be at the charge
of paying for the pint and faggot. Now, if for the more security thou
wouldst some associate to bear thee company, let not me be the comrade thou
searchest for; think not to get a fellow-traveller of me,--nay, do not. I
advise thee for the best. Get you hence; I will not go thither. The devil
take me if I go. Notwithstanding all the fright that you are in, quoth
Friar John, I would not care so much as might possibly be expected I
should, if I once had but my sword in my hand. Thou hast verily hit the
nail on the head, quoth Panurge, and speakest like a learned doctor, subtle
and well-skilled in the art of devilry. At the time when I was a student
in the University of Toulouse (Tolette), that same reverend father in the
devil, Picatrix, rector of the diabological faculty, was wont to tell us
that the devils did naturally fear the bright glancing of swords as much as
the splendour and light of the sun. In confirmation of the verity whereof
he related this story, that Hercules, at his descent into hell to all the
devils of those regions, did not by half so much terrify them with his club
and lion's skin as afterwards Aeneas did with his clear shining armour upon
him, and his sword in his hand well-furbished and unrusted, by the aid,
counsel, and assistance of the Sybilla Cumana. That was perhaps the reason
why the senior John Jacomo di Trivulcio, whilst he was a-dying at Chartres,
called for his cutlass, and died with a drawn sword in his hand, laying
about him alongst and athwart around the bed and everywhere within his
reach, like a stout, doughty, valorous and knight-like cavalier; by which
resolute manner of fence he scared away and put to flight all the devils
that were then lying in wait for his soul at the passage of his death.
When the Massorets and Cabalists are asked why it is that none of all the
devils do at any time enter into the terrestrial paradise? their answer
hath been, is, and will be still, that there is a cherubin standing at the
gate thereof with a flame-like glistering sword in his hand. Although, to
speak in the true diabological sense or phrase of Toledo, I must needs
confess and acknowledge that veritably the devils cannot be killed or die
by the stroke of a sword, I do nevertheless avow and maintain, according to
the doctrine of the said diabology, that they may suffer a solution of
continuity (as if with thy shable thou shouldst cut athwart the flame of a
burning fire, or the gross opacous exhalations of a thick and obscure
smoke), and cry out like very devils at their sense and feeling of this
dissolution, which in real deed I must aver and affirm is devilishly
painful, smarting, and dolorous.
When thou seest the impetuous shock of two armies, and vehement violence of
the push in their horrid encounter with one another, dost thou think,
Ballockasso, that so horrible a noise as is heard there proceedeth from the
voice and shouts of men, the dashing and jolting of harness, the clattering
and clashing of armies, the hacking and slashing of battle-axes, the
justling and crashing of pikes, the bustling and breaking of lances, the
clamour and shrieks of the wounded, the sound and din of drums, the
clangour and shrillness of trumpets, the neighing and rushing in of horses,
with the fearful claps and thundering of all sorts of guns, from the double
cannon to the pocket pistol inclusively? I cannot goodly deny but that in
these various things which I have rehearsed there may be somewhat
occasionative of the huge yell and tintamarre of the two engaged bodies.
But the most fearful and tumultuous coil and stir, the terriblest and most
boisterous garboil and hurry, the chiefest rustling black santus of all,
and most principal hurlyburly springeth from the grievously plangorous
howling and lowing of devils, who pell-mell, in a hand-over-head confusion,
waiting for the poor souls of the maimed and hurt soldiery, receive
unawares some strokes with swords, and so by those means suffer a solution
of and division in the continuity of their aerial and invisible substances;
as if some lackey, snatching at the lard-slices stuck in a piece of roast
meat on the spit, should get from Mr. Greasyfist a good rap on the knuckles
with a cudgel. They cry out and shout like devils, even as Mars did when
he was hurt by Diomedes at the siege of Troy, who, as Homer testifieth of
him, did then raise his voice more horrifically loud and sonoriferously
high than ten thousand men together would have been able to do. What
maketh all this for our present purpose? I have been speaking here of
well-furbished armour and bright shining swords. But so is it not, Friar
John, with thy weapon; for by a long discontinuance of work, cessation from
labour, desisting from making it officiate, and putting it into that
practice wherein it had been formerly accustomed, and, in a word, for want
of occupation, it is, upon my faith, become more rusty than the key-hole of
an old powdering-tub. Therefore it is expedient that you do one of these
two things: either furbish your weapon bravely, and as it ought to be, or
otherwise have a care that, in the rusty case it is in, you do not presume
to return to the house of Raminagrobis. For my part, I vow I will not go
thither. The devil take me if I go.
Chapter 3. XXIV.
How Panurge consulteth with Epistemon.
Having left the town of Villomere, as they were upon their return towards
Pantagruel, Panurge, in addressing his discourse to Epistemon, spoke thus:
My most ancient friend and gossip, thou seest the perplexity of my
thoughts, and knowest many remedies for the removal thereof; art thou not
able to help and succour me? Epistemon, thereupon taking the speech in
hand, represented unto Panurge how the open voice and common fame of the
whole country did run upon no other discourse but the derision and mockery
of his new disguise; wherefore his counsel unto him was that he would in
the first place be pleased to make use of a little hellebore for the
purging of his brain of that peccant humour which, through that extravagant
and fantastic mummery of his, had furnished the people with a too just
occasion of flouting and gibing, jeering and scoffing him, and that next he
would resume his ordinary fashion of accoutrement, and go apparelled as he
was wont to do. I am, quoth Panurge, my dear gossip Epistemon, of a mind
and resolution to marry, but am afraid of being a cuckold and to be
unfortunate in my wedlock. For this cause have I made a vow to young St.
Francis--who at Plessis-les-Tours is much reverenced of all women,
earnestly cried unto by them, and with great devotion, for he was the first
founder of the confraternity of good men, whom they naturally covet,
affect, and long for--to wear spectacles in my cap, and to carry no
codpiece in my breeches, until the present inquietude and perturbation of
my spirits be fully settled.
Truly, quoth Epistemon, that is a pretty jolly vow of thirteen to a dozen.
It is a shame to you, and I wonder much at it, that you do not return unto
yourself, and recall your senses from this their wild swerving and straying
abroad to that rest and stillness which becomes a virtuous man. This
whimsical conceit of yours brings me to the remembrance of a solemn promise
made by the shag-haired Argives, who, having in their controversy against
the Lacedaemonians for the territory of Thyrea, lost the battle which they
hoped should have decided it for their advantage, vowed to carry never any
hair on their heads till preallably they had recovered the loss of both
their honour and lands. As likewise to the memory of the vow of a pleasant
Spaniard called Michael Doris, who vowed to carry in his hat a piece of the
shin of his leg till he should be revenged of him who had struck it off.
Yet do not I know which of these two deserveth most to wear a green and
yellow hood with a hare's ears tied to it, either the aforesaid
vainglorious champion, or that Enguerrant, who having forgot the art and
manner of writing histories set down by the Samosatian philosopher, maketh
a most tediously long narrative and relation thereof. For, at the first
reading of such a profuse discourse, one would think it had been broached
for the introducing of a story of great importance and moment concerning
the waging of some formidable war, or the notable change and mutation of
potent states and kingdoms; but, in conclusion, the world laugheth at the
capricious champion, at the Englishman who had affronted him, as also at
their scribbler Enguerrant, more drivelling at the mouth than a mustard
pot. The jest and scorn thereof is not unlike to that of the mountain of
Horace, which by the poet was made to cry out and lament most enormously as
a woman in the pangs and labour of child-birth, at which deplorable and
exorbitant cries and lamentations the whole neighbourhood being assembled
in expectation to see some marvellous monstrous production, could at last
perceive no other but the paltry, ridiculous mouse.
Your mousing, quoth Panurge, will not make me leave my musing why folks
should be so frumpishly disposed, seeing I am certainly persuaded that some
flout who merit to be flouted at; yet, as my vow imports, so will I do. It
is now a long time since, by Jupiter Philos (A mistake of the
translator's. --M. ), we did swear faith and amity to one another. Give me
your advice, billy, and tell me your opinion freely, Should I marry or no?
Truly, quoth Epistemon, the case is hazardous, and the danger so eminently
apparent that I find myself too weak and insufficient to give you a
punctual and peremptory resolution therein; and if ever it was true that
judgment is difficult in matters of the medicinal art, what was said by
Hippocrates of Lango, it is certainly so in this case. True it is that in
my brain there are some rolling fancies, by means whereof somewhat may be
pitched upon of a seeming efficacy to the disentangling your mind of those
dubious apprehensions wherewith it is perplexed; but they do not thoroughly
satisfy me. Some of the Platonic sect affirm that whosoever is able to see
his proper genius may know his own destiny. I understand not their
doctrine, nor do I think that you adhere to them; there is a palpable
abuse. I have seen the experience of it in a very curious gentleman of the
country of Estangourre. This is one of the points. There is yet another
not much better. If there were any authority now in the oracles of Jupiter
Ammon; of Apollo in Lebadia, Delphos, Delos, Cyrra, Patara, Tegyres,
Preneste, Lycia, Colophon, or in the Castalian Fountain; near Antiochia in
Syria, between the Branchidians; of Bacchus in Dodona; of Mercury in
Phares, near Patras; of Apis in Egypt; of Serapis in Canope; of Faunus in
Menalia, and Albunea near Tivoli; of Tiresias in Orchomenus; of Mopsus in
Cilicia; of Orpheus in Lesbos, and of Trophonius in Leucadia; I would in
that case advise you, and possibly not, to go thither for their judgment
concerning the design and enterprise you have in hand. But you know that
they are all of them become as dumb as so many fishes since the advent of
that Saviour King whose coming to this world hath made all oracles and
prophecies to cease; as the approach of the sun's radiant beams expelleth
goblins, bugbears, hobthrushes, broams, screech-owl-mates, night-walking
spirits, and tenebrions. These now are gone; but although they were as yet
in continuance and in the same power, rule, and request that formerly they
were, yet would not I counsel you to be too credulous in putting any trust
in their responses. Too many folks have been deceived thereby. It stands
furthermore upon record how Agrippina did charge the fair Lollia with the
crime of having interrogated the oracle of Apollo Clarius, to understand if
she should be at any time married to the Emperor Claudius; for which cause
she was first banished, and thereafter put to a shameful and ignominious
death.
But, saith Panurge, let us do better. The Ogygian Islands are not far
distant from the haven of Sammalo. Let us, after that we shall have spoken
to our king, make a voyage thither. In one of these four isles, to wit,
that which hath its primest aspect towards the sun setting, it is reported,
and I have read in good antique and authentic authors, that there reside
many soothsayers, fortune-tellers, vaticinators, prophets, and diviners of
things to come; that Saturn inhabiteth that place, bound with fair chains
of gold and within the concavity of a golden rock, being nourished with
divine ambrosia and nectar, which are daily in great store and abundance
transmitted to him from the heavens, by I do not well know what kind of
fowls,--it may be that they are the same ravens which in the deserts are
said to have fed St. Paul, the first hermit,--he very clearly foretelleth
unto everyone who is desirous to be certified of the condition of his lot
what his destiny will be, and what future chance the Fates have ordained
for him; for the Parcae, or Weird Sisters, do not twist, spin, or draw out
a thread, nor yet doth Jupiter perpend, project, or deliberate anything
which the good old celestial father knoweth not to the full, even whilst he
is asleep. This will be a very summary abbreviation of our labour, if we
but hearken unto him a little upon the serious debate and canvassing of
this my perplexity. That is, answered Epistemon, a gullery too evident, a
plain abuse and fib too fabulous. I will not go, not I; I will not go.
Chapter 3. XXV.
How Panurge consulteth with Herr Trippa.
Nevertheless, quoth Epistemon, continuing his discourse, I will tell you
what you may do, if you believe me, before we return to our king. Hard by
here, in the Brown-wheat (Bouchart) Island, dwelleth Herr Trippa. You know
how by the arts of astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, metopomancy, and others
of a like stuff and nature, he foretelleth all things to come; let us talk
a little, and confer with him about your business. Of that, answered
Panurge, I know nothing; but of this much concerning him I am assured, that
one day, and that not long since, whilst he was prating to the great king
of celestial, sublime, and transcendent things, the lacqueys and footboys
of the court, upon the upper steps of stairs between two doors, jumbled,
one after another, as often as they listed, his wife, who is passable fair,
and a pretty snug hussy. Thus he who seemed very clearly to see all
heavenly and terrestrial things without spectacles, who discoursed boldly
of adventures past, with great confidence opened up present cases and
accidents, and stoutly professed the presaging of all future events and
contingencies, was not able, with all the skill and cunning that he had, to
perceive the bumbasting of his wife, whom he reputed to be very chaste, and
hath not till this hour got notice of anything to the contrary. Yet let us
go to him, seeing you will have it so; for surely we can never learn too
much. They on the very next ensuing day came to Herr Trippa's lodging.
Panurge, by way of donative, presented him with a long gown lined all
through with wolf-skins, with a short sword mounted with a gilded hilt and
covered with a velvet scabbard, and with fifty good single angels; then in
a familiar and friendly way did he ask of him his opinion touching the
affair. At the very first Herr Trippa, looking on him very wistly in the
face, said unto him: Thou hast the metoposcopy and physiognomy of a
cuckold,--I say, of a notorious and infamous cuckold. With this, casting
an eye upon Panurge's right hand in all the parts thereof, he said, This
rugged draught which I see here, just under the mount of Jove, was never
yet but in the hand of a cuckold. Afterwards, he with a white lead pen
swiftly and hastily drew a certain number of diverse kinds of points, which
by rules of geomancy he coupled and joined together; then said: Truth
itself is not truer than that it is certain thou wilt be a cuckold a little
after thy marriage. That being done, he asked of Panurge the horoscope of
his nativity, which was no sooner by Panurge tendered unto him, than that,
erecting a figure, he very promptly and speedily formed and fashioned a
complete fabric of the houses of heaven in all their parts, whereof when he
had considered the situation and the aspects in their triplicities, he
fetched a deep sigh, and said: I have clearly enough already discovered
unto you the fate of your cuckoldry, which is unavoidable, you cannot
escape it. And here have I got of new a further assurance thereof, so that
I may now hardily pronounce and affirm, without any scruple or hesitation
at all, that thou wilt be a cuckold; that furthermore, thou wilt be beaten
by thine own wife, and that she will purloin, filch and steal of thy goods
from thee; for I find the seventh house, in all its aspects, of a malignant
influence, and every one of the planets threatening thee with disgrace,
according as they stand seated towards one another, in relation to the
horned signs of Aries, Taurus, and Capricorn. In the fourth house I find
Jupiter in a decadence, as also in a tetragonal aspect to Saturn,
associated with Mercury. Thou wilt be soundly peppered, my good, honest
fellow, I warrant thee. I will be? answered Panurge. A plague rot thee,
thou old fool and doting sot, how graceless and unpleasant thou art! When
all cuckolds shall be at a general rendezvous, thou shouldst be their
standard-bearer. But whence comes this ciron-worm betwixt these two
fingers? This Panurge said, putting the forefinger of his left hand
betwixt the fore and mid finger of the right, which he thrust out towards
Herr Trippa, holding them open after the manner of two horns, and shutting
into his fist his thumb with the other fingers. Then, in turning to
Epistemon, he said: Lo here the true Olus of Martial, who addicted and
devoted himself wholly to the observing the miseries, crosses, and
calamities of others, whilst his own wife, in the interim, did keep an open
bawdy-house. This varlet is poorer than ever was Irus, and yet he is
proud, vaunting, arrogant, self-conceited, overweening, and more
insupportable than seventeen devils; in one word, Ptochalazon, which term
of old was applied to the like beggarly strutting coxcombs. Come, let us
leave this madpash bedlam, this hairbrained fop, and give him leave to rave
and dose his bellyful with his private and intimately acquainted devils,
who, if they were not the very worst of all infernal fiends, would never
have deigned to serve such a knavish barking cur as this is. He hath not
learnt the first precept of philosophy, which is, Know thyself; for whilst
he braggeth and boasteth that he can discern the least mote in the eye of
another, he is not able to see the huge block that puts out the sight of
both his eyes. This is such another Polypragmon as is by Plutarch
described. He is of the nature of the Lamian witches, who in foreign
places, in the houses of strangers, in public, and amongst the common
people, had a sharper and more piercing inspection into their affairs than
any lynx, but at home in their own proper dwelling-mansions were blinder
than moldwarps, and saw nothing at all. For their custom was, at their
return from abroad, when they were by themselves in private, to take their
eyes out of their head, from whence they were as easily removable as a pair
of spectacles from their nose, and to lay them up into a wooden slipper
which for that purpose did hang behind the door of their lodging.
Panurge had no sooner done speaking, when Herr Trippa took into his hand a
tamarisk branch. In this, quoth Epistemon, he doth very well, right, and
like an artist, for Nicander calleth it the divinatory tree. Have you a
mind, quoth Herr Trippa, to have the truth of the matter yet more fully and
amply disclosed unto you by pyromancy, by aeromancy, whereof Aristophanes
in his Clouds maketh great estimation, by hydromancy, by lecanomancy, of
old in prime request amongst the Assyrians, and thoroughly tried by
Hermolaus Barbarus. Come hither, and I will show thee in this platterful
of fair fountain-water thy future wife lechering and sercroupierizing it
with two swaggering ruffians, one after another. Yea, but have a special
care, quoth Panurge, when thou comest to put thy nose within mine arse,
that thou forget not to pull off thy spectacles. Herr Trippa, going on in
his discourse, said, By catoptromancy, likewise held in such account by the
Emperor Didius Julianus, that by means thereof he ever and anon foresaw all
that which at any time did happen or befall unto him. Thou shalt not need
to put on thy spectacles, for in a mirror thou wilt see her as clearly and
manifestly nebrundiated and billibodring it, as if I should show it in the
fountain of the temple of Minerva near Patras. By coscinomancy, most
religiously observed of old amidst the ceremonies of the ancient Romans.
Let us have a sieve and shears, and thou shalt see devils. By
alphitomancy, cried up by Theocritus in his Pharmaceutria. By alentomancy,
mixing the flour of wheat with oatmeal. By astragalomancy, whereof I have
the plots and models all at hand ready for the purpose. By tyromancy,
whereof we make some proof in a great Brehemont cheese which I here keep by
me. By giromancy, if thou shouldst turn round circles, thou mightest
assure thyself from me that they would fall always on the wrong side. By
sternomancy, which maketh nothing for thy advantage, for thou hast an
ill-proportioned stomach. By libanomancy, for the which we shall need but
a little frankincense. By gastromancy, which kind of ventral fatiloquency
was for a long time together used in Ferrara by Lady Giacoma Rodogina, the
Engastrimythian prophetess. By cephalomancy, often practised amongst the
High Germans in their boiling of an ass's head upon burning coals. By
ceromancy, where, by the means of wax dissolved into water, thou shalt see
the figure, portrait, and lively representation of thy future wife, and of
her fredin fredaliatory belly-thumping blades. By capnomancy. O the
gallantest and most excellent of all secrets! By axionomancy; we want only
a hatchet and a jet-stone to be laid together upon a quick fire of hot
embers. O how bravely Homer was versed in the practice hereof towards
Penelope's suitors! By onymancy; for that we have oil and wax. By
tephromancy. Thou wilt see the ashes thus aloft dispersed exhibiting thy
wife in a fine posture. By botanomancy; for the nonce I have some few
leaves in reserve. By sicomancy; O divine art in fig-tree leaves! By
icthiomancy, in ancient times so celebrated, and put in use by Tiresias and
Polydamas, with the like certainty of event as was tried of old at the
Dina-ditch within that grove consecrated to Apollo which is in the
territory of the Lycians. By choiromancy; let us have a great many hogs,
and thou shalt have the bladder of one of them. By cheromancy, as the bean
is found in the cake at the Epiphany vigil. By anthropomancy, practised by
the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus. It is somewhat irksome, but thou wilt
endure it well enough, seeing thou art destinated to be a cuckold. By a
sibylline stichomancy. By onomatomancy. How do they call thee?
Chaw-turd, quoth Panurge. Or yet by alectryomancy. If I should here with
a compass draw a round, and in looking upon thee, and considering thy lot,
divide the circumference thereof into four-and-twenty equal parts, then
form a several letter of the alphabet upon every one of them; and, lastly,
posit a barleycorn or two upon each of these so disposed letters, I durst
promise upon my faith and honesty that, if a young virgin cock be permitted
to range alongst and athwart them, he should only eat the grains which are
set and placed upon these letters, A. C. U. C. K. O. L. D. T. H. O. U. S. H. A. L. T.
B. E. And that as fatidically as, under the Emperor Valens, most
perplexedly desirous to know the name of him who should be his successor to
the empire, the cock vacticinating and alectryomantic ate up the pickles
that were posited on the letters T. H. E. O. D. Or, for the more certainty,
will you have a trial of your fortune by the art of aruspiciny, by augury,
or by extispiciny? By turdispiciny, quoth Panurge. Or yet by the mystery
of necromancy? I will, if you please, suddenly set up again and revive
someone lately deceased, as Apollonius of Tyane did to Achilles, and the
Pythoness in the presence of Saul; which body, so raised up and
requickened, will tell us the sum of all you shall require of him: no more
nor less than, at the invocation of Erictho, a certain defunct person
foretold to Pompey the whole progress and issue of the fatal battle fought
in the Pharsalian fields. Or, if you be afraid of the dead, as commonly
all cuckolds are, I will make use of the faculty of sciomancy.
Go, get thee gone, quoth Panurge, thou frantic ass, to the devil, and be
buggered, filthy Bardachio that thou art, by some Albanian, for a
steeple-crowned hat. Why the devil didst not thou counsel me as well to
hold an emerald or the stone of a hyaena under my tongue, or to furnish and
provide myself with tongues of whoops, and hearts of green frogs, or to eat
of the liver and milt of some dragon, to the end that by those means I
might, at the chanting and chirping of swans and other fowls, understand the
substance of my future lot and destiny, as did of old the Arabians in the
country of Mesopotamia? Fifteen brace of devils seize upon the body and
soul of this horned renegado, miscreant cuckold, the enchanter, witch, and
sorcerer of Antichrist to all the devils of hell! Let us return towards our
king. I am sure he will not be well pleased with us if he once come to get
notice that we have been in the kennel of this muffled devil. I repent my
being come hither. I would willingly dispense with a hundred nobles and
fourteen yeomans, on condition that he who not long since did blow in the
bottom of my breeches should instantly with his squirting spittle inluminate
his moustaches. O Lord God now! how the villain hath besmoked me with
vexation and anger, with charms and witchcraft, and with a terrible coil and
stir of infernal and Tartarian devils! The devil take him! Say Amen, and
let us go drink. I shall not have any appetite for my victuals, how good
cheer soever I make, these two days to come,--hardly these four.
Chapter 3. XXVI.
How Panurge consulteth with Friar John of the Funnels.
Panurge was indeed very much troubled in mind and disquieted at the words
of Herr Trippa, and therefore, as he passed by the little village of
Huymes, after he had made his address to Friar John, in pecking at,
rubbing, and scratching his own left ear, he said unto him, Keep me a
little jovial and merry, my dear and sweet bully, for I find my brains
altogether metagrabolized and confounded, and my spirits in a most dunsical
puzzle at the bitter talk of this devilish, hellish, damned fool. Hearken,
my dainty cod.
Mellow C. Varnished C. Resolute C.
Lead-coloured C. Renowned C. Cabbage-like C.
Knurled C. Matted C. Courteous C.
Suborned C. Genitive C. Fertile C.
Desired C. Gigantal C. Whizzing C.
Stuffed C. Oval C. Neat C.
Speckled C. Claustral C. Common C.
Finely metalled C. Virile C. Brisk C.
Arabian-like C. Stayed C. Quick C.
Trussed-up Grey- Massive C. Bearlike C.
hound-like C. Manual C. Partitional C.
Mounted C. Absolute C. Patronymic C.
Sleeked C. Well-set C. Cockney C.
Diapered C. Gemel C. Auromercuriated C.
Spotted C. Turkish C. Robust C.
Master C. Burning C. Appetizing C.
Seeded C. Thwacking C. Succourable C.
Lusty C. Urgent C. Redoubtable C.
Jupped C.
