We then saw certain little
hovering
fires on the sea.
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
Fri.
Now (August.
).
Pan. What season do you do it best in? Fri. March.
Pan. How is your performance the rest of the year? Fri. Brisk.
Then quoth Panurge, sneering, Of all, and of all, commend me to Ball; this
is the friar of the world for my money. You've heard how short, concise,
and compendious he is in his answers. Nothing is to be got out of him but
monosyllables. By jingo, I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.
Damn him, cried Friar John, that's as true as I am his uncle. The dog
yelps at another gate's rate when he is among his bitches; there he is
polysyllable enough, my life for yours. You talk of making three bites of
a cherry! God send fools more wit and us more money! May I be doomed to
fast a whole day if I don't verily believe he would not make above two
bites of a shoulder of mutton and one swoop of a whole pottle of wine.
Zoons, do but see how down o' the mouth the cur looks! He's nothing but
skin and bones; he has pissed his tallow.
Truly, truly, quoth Epistemon, this rascally monastical vermin all over the
world mind nothing but their gut, and are as ravenous as any kites, and
then, forsooth, they tell us they've nothing but food and raiment in this
world. 'Sdeath, what more have kings and princes?
Chapter 5. XXIX.
How Epistemon disliked the institution of Lent.
Pray did you observe, continued Epistemon, how this damned ill-favoured
Semiquaver mentioned March as the best month for caterwauling? True, said
Pantagruel; yet Lent and March always go together, and the first was
instituted to macerate and bring down our pampered flesh, to weaken and
subdue its lusts, to curb and assuage the venereal rage.
By this, said Epistemon, you may guess what kind of a pope it was who first
enjoined it to be kept, since this filthy wooden-shoed Semiquaver owns that
his spoon is never oftener nor deeper in the porringer of lechery than in
Lent. Add to this the evident reasons given by all good and learned
physicians, affirming that throughout the whole year no food is eaten that
can prompt mankind to lascivious acts more than at that time.
As, for example, beans, peas, phasels, or long-peason, ciches, onions,
nuts, oysters, herrings, salt-meats, garum (a kind of anchovy), and salads
wholly made up of venereous herbs and fruits, as--
Rocket, Parsley, Hop-buds,
Nose-smart, Rampions, Figs,
Taragon, Poppy, Rice,
Cresses, Celery, Raisins, and others.
It would not a little surprise you, said Pantagruel, should a man tell you
that the good pope who first ordered the keeping of Lent, perceiving that
at that time o' year the natural heat (from the centre of the body, whither
it was retired during the winter's cold) diffuses itself, as the sap does
in trees, through the circumference of the members, did therefore in a
manner prescribe that sort of diet to forward the propagation of mankind.
What makes me think so, is that by the registers of christenings at Touars
it appears that more children are born in October and November than in the
other ten months of the year, and reckoning backwards 'twill be easily
found that they were all made, conceived, and begotten in Lent.
I listen to you with both my ears, quoth Friar John, and that with no small
pleasure, I'll assure you. But I must tell you that the vicar of Jambert
ascribed this copious prolification of the women, not to that sort of food
that we chiefly eat in Lent, but to the little licensed stooping mumpers,
your little booted Lent-preachers, your little draggle-tailed father
confessors, who during all that time of their reign damn all husbands that
run astray three fathom and a half below the very lowest pit of hell. So
the silly cod's-headed brothers of the noose dare not then stumble any more
at the truckle-bed, to the no small discomfort of their maids, and are even
forced, poor souls, to take up with their own bodily wives. Dixi; I have
done.
You may descant on the institution of Lent as much as you please, cried
Epistemon; so many men so many minds; but certainly all the physicians will
be against its being suppressed, though I think that time is at hand. I
know they will, and have heard 'em say were it not for Lent their art would
soon fall into contempt, and they'd get nothing, for hardly anybody would
be sick.
All distempers are sowed in lent; 'tis the true seminary and native bed of
all diseases; nor does it only weaken and putrefy bodies, but it also makes
souls mad and uneasy. For then the devils do their best, and drive a
subtle trade, and the tribe of canting dissemblers come out of their holes.
'Tis then term-time with your cucullated pieces of formality that have one
face to God and another to the devil; and a wretched clutter they make with
their sessions, stations, pardons, syntereses, confessions, whippings,
anathematizations, and much prayer with as little devotion. However, I'll
not offer to infer from this that the Arimaspians are better than we are in
that point; yet I speak to the purpose.
Well, quoth Panurge to the Semiquaver friar, who happened to be by, dear
bumbasting, shaking, trilling, quavering cod, what thinkest thou of this
fellow? Is he a rank heretic? Fri. Much.
Pan. Ought he not to be singed? Fri. Well.
Pan. As soon as may be? Fri. Right.
Pan. Should not he be scalded first? Fri. No.
Pan. How then, should he be roasted? Fri. Quick.
Pan. Till at last he be? Fri. Dead.
Pan. What has he made you? Fri. Mad.
Pan. What d'ye take him to be? Fri. Damned.
Pan. What place is he to go to? Fri. Hell.
Pan. But, first, how would you have 'em served here? Fri. Burnt.
Pan. Some have been served so? Fri. Store.
Pan. That were heretics? Fri. Less.
Pan. And the number of those that are to be warmed thus hereafter is?
Fri. Great.
Pan. How many of 'em do you intend to save? Fri. None.
Pan. So you'd have them burned? Fri. All.
I wonder, said Epistemon to Panurge, what pleasure you can find in talking
thus with this lousy tatterdemalion of a monk. I vow, did I not know you
well, I might be ready to think you had no more wit in your head than he
has in both his shoulders. Come, come, scatter no words, returned Panurge;
everyone as they like, as the woman said when she kissed her cow. I wish I
might carry him to Gargantua; when I'm married he might be my wife's fool.
And make you one, cried Epistemon. Well said, quoth Friar John. Now, poor
Panurge, take that along with thee, thou'rt e'en fitted; 'tis a plain case
thou'lt never escape wearing the bull's feather; thy wife will be as common
as the highway, that's certain.
Chapter 5. XXX.
How we came to the land of Satin.
Having pleased ourselves with observing that new order of Semiquaver
Friars, we set sail, and in three days our skipper made the finest and most
delightful island that ever was seen. He called it the island of Frieze,
for all the ways were of frieze.
In that island is the land of Satin, so celebrated by our court pages. Its
trees and herbage never lose their leaves or flowers, and are all damask
and flowered velvet. As for the beasts and birds, they are all of tapestry
work. There we saw many beasts, birds on trees, of the same colour,
bigness, and shape of those in our country; with this difference, however,
that these did eat nothing, and never sung or bit like ours; and we also
saw there many sorts of creatures which we never had seen before.
Among the rest, several elephants in various postures; twelve of which were
the six males and six females that were brought to Rome by their governor
in the time of Germanicus, Tiberius's nephew. Some of them were learned
elephants, some musicians, others philosophers, dancers, and showers of
tricks; and all sat down at table in good order, silently eating and
drinking like so many fathers in a fratery-room.
With their snouts or proboscises, some two cubits long, they draw up water
for their own drinking, and take hold of palm leaves, plums, and all manner
of edibles, using them offensively or defensively as we do our fists; with
them tossing men high into the air in fight, and making them burst with
laughing when they come to the ground.
They have joints (in their legs), whatever some men, who doubtless never
saw any but painted, may have written to the contrary. Between their teeth
they have two huge horns; thus Juba called 'em, and Pausanias tells us they
are not teeth, but horns; however, Philostratus will have 'em to be teeth,
and not horns. 'Tis all one to me, provided you will be pleased to own
them to be true ivory. These are some three or four cubits long, and are
fixed in the upper jawbone, and consequently not in the lowermost. If you
hearken to those who will tell you to the contrary, you will find yourself
damnably mistaken, for that's a lie with a latchet; though 'twere Aelian,
that long-bow man, that told you so, never believe him, for he lies as fast
as a dog can trot. 'Twas in this very island that Pliny, his brother
tell-truth, had seen some elephants dance on the rope with bells, and whip
over the tables, presto, begone, while people were at feasts, without so
much as touching the toping topers or the topers toping.
I saw a rhinoceros there, just such a one as Harry Clerberg had formerly
showed me. Methought it was not much unlike a certain boar which I had
formerly seen at Limoges, except the sharp horn on its snout, that was
about a cubit long; by the means of which that animal dares encounter with
an elephant, that is sometimes killed with its point thrust into its belly,
which is its most tender and defenceless part.
I saw there two and thirty unicorns. They are a curst sort of creatures,
much resembling a fine horse, unless it be that their heads are like a
stag's, their feet like an elephant's, their tails like a wild boar's, and
out of each of their foreheads sprouts out a sharp black horn, some six or
seven feet long; commonly it dangles down like a turkey-cock's comb. When
a unicorn has a mind to fight, or put it to any other use, what does it do
but make it stand, and then 'tis as straight as an arrow.
I saw one of them, which was attended with a throng of other wild beasts,
purify a fountain with its horn. With that Panurge told me that his
prancer, alias his nimble-wimble, was like the unicorn, not altogether in
length indeed, but in virtue and propriety; for as the unicorn purified
pools and fountains from filth and venom, so that other animals came and
drank securely there afterwards, in the like manner others might water
their nags, and dabble after him without fear of shankers, carnosities,
gonorrhoeas, buboes, crinkams, and such other plagues caught by those who
venture to quench their amorous thirst in a common puddle; for with his
nervous horn he removed all the infection that might be lurking in some
blind cranny of the mephitic sweet-scented hole.
Well, quoth Friar John, when you are sped, that is, when you are married,
we will make a trial of this on thy spouse, merely for charity sake, since
you are pleased to give us so beneficial an instruction.
Ay, ay, returned Panurge, and then immediately I'll give you a pretty
gentle aggregative pill of God, made up of two and twenty kind stabs with a
dagger, after the Caesarian way. Catso, cried Friar John, I had rather
take off a bumper of good cool wine.
I saw there the golden fleece formerly conquered by Jason, and can assure
you, on the word of an honest man, that those who have said it was not a
fleece but a golden pippin, because melon signifies both an apple and a
sheep, were utterly mistaken.
I saw also a chameleon, such as Aristotle describes it, and like that which
had been formerly shown me by Charles Maris, a famous physician of the
noble city of Lyons on the Rhone; and the said chameleon lived on air just
as the other did.
I saw three hydras, like those I had formerly seen. They are a kind of
serpent, with seven different heads.
I saw also fourteen phoenixes. I had read in many authors that there was
but one in the whole world in every century; but, if I may presume to speak
my mind, I declare that those who said this had never seen any, unless it
were in the land of Tapestry; though 'twere vouched by Claudian or
Lactantius Firmianus.
I saw the skin of Apuleius's golden ass.
I saw three hundred and nine pelicans.
Item, six thousand and sixteen Seleucid birds marching in battalia, and
picking up straggling grasshoppers in cornfields.
Item, some cynamologi, argatiles, caprimulgi, thynnunculs, onocrotals, or
bitterns, with their wide swallows, stymphalides, harpies, panthers,
dorcasses, or bucks, cemades, cynocephalises, satyrs, cartasans, tarands,
uri, monopses, or bonasi, neades, steras, marmosets, or monkeys, bugles,
musimons, byturoses, ophyri, screech-owls, goblins, fairies, and griffins.
I saw Mid-Lent o' horseback, with Mid-August and Mid-March holding its
stirrups.
I saw some mankind wolves, centaurs, tigers, leopards, hyenas,
camelopardals, and orixes, or huge wild goats with sharp horns.
I saw a remora, a little fish called echineis by the Greeks, and near it a
tall ship that did not get ahead an inch, though she was in the offing with
top and top-gallants spread before the wind. I am somewhat inclined to
believe that 'twas the very numerical ship in which Periander the tyrant
happened to be when it was stopped by such a little fish in spite of wind
and tide. It was in this land of Satin, and in no other, that Mutianus had
seen one of them.
Friar John told us that in the days of yore two sorts of fishes used to
abound in our courts of judicature, and rotted the bodies and tormented the
souls of those who were at law, whether noble or of mean descent, high or
low, rich or poor: the first were your April fish or mackerel (pimps,
panders, and bawds); the others your beneficial remoras, that is, the
eternity of lawsuits, the needless lets that keep 'em undecided.
I saw some sphynges, some raphes, some ounces, and some cepphi, whose
fore-feet are like hands and their hind-feet like man's.
Also some crocutas and some eali as big as sea-horses, with elephants'
tails, boars' jaws and tusks, and horns as pliant as an ass's ears.
The crocutas, most fleet animals, as big as our asses of Mirebalais, have
necks, tails, and breasts like a lion's, legs like a stag's, have mouths up
to the ears, and but two teeth, one above and one below; they speak with
human voices, but when they do they say nothing.
Some people say that none e'er saw an eyrie, or nest of sakers; if you'll
believe me, I saw no less than eleven, and I'm sure I reckoned right.
I saw some left-handed halberds, which were the first that I had ever seen.
I saw some manticores, a most strange sort of creatures, which have the
body of a lion, red hair, a face and ears like a man's, three rows of teeth
which close together as if you joined your hands with your fingers between
each other; they have a sting in their tails like a scorpion's, and a very
melodious voice.
I saw some catablepases, a sort of serpents, whose bodies are small, but
their heads large, without any proportion, so that they've much ado to lift
them up; and their eyes are so infectious that whoever sees 'em dies upon
the spot, as if he had seen a basilisk.
I saw some beasts with two backs, and those seemed to me the merriest
creatures in the world. They were most nimble at wriggling the buttocks,
and more diligent in tail-wagging than any water-wagtails, perpetually
jogging and shaking their double rumps.
I saw there some milched crawfish, creatures that I never had heard of
before in my life. These moved in very good order, and 'twould have done
your heart good to have seen 'em.
Chapter 5. XXXI.
How in the land of Satin we saw Hearsay, who kept a school of vouching.
We went a little higher up into the country of Tapestry, and saw the
Mediterranean Sea open to the right and left down to the very bottom; just
as the Red Sea very fairly left its bed at the Arabian Gulf to make a lane
for the Jews when they left Egypt.
There I found Triton winding his silver shell instead of a horn, and also
Glaucus, Proteus, Nereus, and a thousand other godlings and sea monsters.
I also saw an infinite number of fish of all kinds, dancing, flying,
vaulting, fighting, eating, breathing, billing, shoving, milting, spawning,
hunting, fishing, skirmishing, lying in ambuscado, making truces,
cheapening, bargaining, swearing, and sporting.
In a blind corner we saw Aristotle holding a lantern in the posture in
which the hermit uses to be drawn near St. Christopher, watching, prying,
thinking, and setting everything down.
Behind him stood a pack of other philosophers, like so many bums by a
head-bailiff, as Appian, Heliodorus, Athenaeus, Porphyrius, Pancrates,
Arcadian, Numenius, Possidonius, Ovidius, Oppianus, Olympius, Seleucus,
Leonides, Agathocles, Theophrastus, Damostratus, Mutianus, Nymphodorus,
Aelian, and five hundred other such plodding dons, who were full of
business, yet had little to do; like Chrysippus or Aristarchus of Soli, who
for eight-and-fifty years together did nothing in the world but examine the
state and concerns of bees.
I spied Peter Gilles among these, with a urinal in his hand, narrowly
watching the water of those goodly fishes.
When we had long beheld everything in this land of Satin, Pantagruel said,
I have sufficiently fed my eyes, but my belly is empty all this while, and
chimes to let me know 'tis time to go to dinner. Let's take care of the
body lest the soul abdicate it; and to this effect let's taste some of
these anacampserotes ('An herb, the touching of which is said to reconcile
lovers. '--Motteux. ) that hang over our heads. Psha, cried one, they are
mere trash, stark naught, o' my word; they're good for nothing.
I then went to pluck some mirobolans off of a piece of tapestry whereon
they hung, but the devil a bit I could chew or swallow 'em; and had you had
them betwixt your teeth you would have sworn they had been thrown silk;
there was no manner of savour in 'em.
One might be apt to think Heliogabalus had taken a hint from thence, to
feast those whom he had caused to fast a long time, promising them a
sumptuous, plentiful, and imperial feast after it; for all the treat used
to amount to no more than several sorts of meat in wax, marble,
earthenware, painted and figured tablecloths.
While we were looking up and down to find some more substantial food, we
heard a loud various noise, like that of paper-mills (or women bucking of
linen); so with all speed we went to the place whence the noise came, where
we found a diminutive, monstrous, misshapen old fellow, called Hearsay.
His mouth was slit up to his ears, and in it were seven tongues, each of
them cleft into seven parts. However, he chattered, tattled, and prated
with all the seven at once, of different matters, and in divers languages.
He had as many ears all over his head and the rest of his body as Argus
formerly had eyes, and was as blind as a beetle, and had the palsy in his
legs.
About him stood an innumerable number of men and women, gaping, listening,
and hearing very intensely. Among 'em I observed some who strutted like
crows in a gutter, and principally a very handsome bodied man in the face,
who held then a map of the world, and with little aphorisms compendiously
explained everything to 'em; so that those men of happy memories grew
learned in a trice, and would most fluently talk with you of a world of
prodigious things, the hundredth part of which would take up a man's whole
life to be fully known.
Among the rest they descanted with great prolixity on the pyramids and
hieroglyphics of Egypt, of the Nile, of Babylon, of the Troglodytes, the
Hymantopodes, or crump-footed nation, the Blemiae, people that wear their
heads in the middle of their breasts, the Pigmies, the Cannibals, the
Hyperborei and their mountains, the Egypanes with their goat's feet, and
the devil and all of others; every individual word of it by hearsay.
I am much mistaken if I did not see among them Herodotus, Pliny, Solinus,
Berosus, Philostratus, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and God knows how many other
antiquaries.
Then Albert, the great Jacobin friar, Peter Tesmoin, alias Witness, Pope
Pius the Second, Volaterranus, Paulus Jovius the valiant, Jemmy Cartier,
Chaton the Armenian, Marco Polo the Venetian, Ludovico Romano, Pedro
Aliares, and forty cartloads of other modern historians, lurking behind a
piece of tapestry, where they were at it ding-dong, privately scribbling
the Lord knows what, and making rare work of it; and all by hearsay.
Behind another piece of tapestry (on which Naboth and Susanna's accusers
were fairly represented), I saw close by Hearsay, good store of men of the
country of Perce and Maine, notable students, and young enough.
I asked what sort of study they applied themselves to; and was told that
from their youth they learned to be evidences, affidavit-men, and vouchers,
and were instructed in the art of swearing; in which they soon became such
proficients, that when they left that country, and went back into their
own, they set up for themselves and very honestly lived by their trade of
evidencing, positively giving their testimony of all things whatsoever to
those who feed them most roundly to do a job of journey-work for them; and
all this by hearsay.
You may think what you will of it; but I can assure you they gave some of
us corners of their cakes, and we merrily helped to empty their hogsheads.
Then, in a friendly manner, they advised us to be as sparing of truth as
possibly we could if ever we had a mind to get court preferment.
Chapter 5. XXXII.
How we came in sight of Lantern-land.
Having been but scurvily entertained in the land of Satin, we went o'
board, and having set sail, in four days came near the coast of
Lantern-land.
We then saw certain little hovering fires on the sea.
For my part, I did not take them to be lanterns, but rather thought they
were fishes which lolled their flaming tongues on the surface of the sea,
or lampyrides, which some call cicindelas, or glowworms, shining there as
ripe barley does o' nights in my country.
But the skipper satisfied us that they were the lanterns of the watch, or,
more properly, lighthouses, set up in many places round the precinct of the
place to discover the land, and for the safe piloting in of some outlandish
lanterns, which, like good Franciscan and Jacobin friars, were coming to
make their personal appearance at the provincial chapter.
However, some of us were somewhat suspicious that these fires were the
forerunners of some storm, but the skipper assured us again they were not.
Chapter 5. XXXIII.
How we landed at the port of the Lychnobii, and came to Lantern-land.
Soon after we arrived at the port of Lantern-land, where Pantagruel
discovered on a high tower the lantern of Rochelle, that stood us in good
stead, for it cast a great light. We also saw the lantern of Pharos, that
of Nauplion, and that of Acropolis at Athens, sacred to Pallas.
Near the port there's a little hamlet inhabited by the Lychnobii, that live
by lanterns, as the gulligutted friars in our country live by nuns; they
are studious people, and as honest men as ever shit in a trumpet.
Demosthenes had formerly lanternized there.
We were conducted from that place to the palace by three obeliscolichnys
('A kind of beacons. '--Motteux. ), military guards of the port, with
high-crowned hats, whom we acquainted with the cause of our voyage, and our
design, which was to desire the queen of the country to grant us a lantern
to light and conduct us during our voyage to the Oracle of the Holy Bottle.
They promised to assist us in this, and added that we could never have come
in a better time, for then the lanterns held their provincial chapter.
When we came to the royal palace we had audience of her highness the Queen
of Lantern-land, being introduced by two lanterns of honour, that of
Aristophanes and that of Cleanthes (Motteux adds here--'Mistresses of the
ceremonies. '). Panurge in a few words acquainted her with the causes of
our voyage, and she received us with great demonstrations of friendship,
desiring us to come to her at supper-time that we might more easily make
choice of one to be our guide; which pleased us extremely. We did not fail
to observe intensely everything we could see, as the garbs, motions, and
deportment of the queen's subjects, principally the manner after which she
was served.
The bright queen was dressed in virgin crystal of Tutia wrought damaskwise,
and beset with large diamonds.
The lanterns of the royal blood were clad partly with bastard-diamonds,
partly with diaphanous stones; the rest with horn, paper, and oiled cloth.
The cresset-lights took place according to the antiquity and lustre of
their families.
An earthen dark-lantern, shaped like a pot, notwithstanding this took place
of some of the first quality; at which I wondered much, till I was told it
was that of Epictetus, for which three thousand drachmas had been formerly
refused.
Martial's polymix lantern (Motteux gives a footnote:--'A lamp with many
wicks, or a branch'd candlestick with many springs coming out of it, that
supply all the branches with oil. ') made a very good figure there. I took
particular notice of its dress, and more yet of the lychnosimity formerly
consecrated by Canopa, the daughter of Tisias.
I saw the lantern pensile formerly taken out of the temple of Apollo
Palatinus at Thebes, and afterwards by Alexander the Great (carried to the
town of Cymos). (The words in brackets have been omitted by Motteux. )
I saw another that distinguished itself from the rest by a bushy tuft of
crimson silk on its head. I was told 'twas that of Bartolus, the lantern
of the civilians.
Two others were very remarkable for glister-pouches that dangled at their
waist. We were told that one was the greater light and the other the
lesser light of the apothecaries.
When 'twas supper-time, the queen's highness first sat down, and then the
lady lanterns, according to their rank and dignity. For the first course
they were all served with large Christmas candles, except the queen, who
was served with a hugeous, thick, stiff, flaming taper of white wax,
somewhat red towards the tip; and the royal family, as also the provincial
lantern of Mirebalais, who were served with nutlights; and the provincial
of Lower Poitou, with an armed candle.
After that, God wot, what a glorious light they gave with their wicks! I
do not say all, for you must except a parcel of junior lanterns, under the
government of a high and mighty one. These did not cast a light like the
rest, but seemed to me dimmer than any long-snuff farthing candle whose
tallow has been half melted away in a hothouse.
After supper we withdrew to take some rest, and the next day the queen made
us choose one of the most illustrious lanterns to guide us; after which we
took our leave.
Chapter 5. XXXIV.
How we arrived at the Oracle of the Bottle.
Our glorious lantern lighting and directing us to heart's content, we at
last arrived at the desired island where was the Oracle of the Bottle. As
soon as friend Panurge landed, he nimbly cut a caper with one leg for joy,
and cried to Pantagruel, Now we are where we have wished ourselves long
ago. This is the place we've been seeking with such toil and labour. He
then made a compliment to our lantern, who desired us to be of good cheer,
and not be daunted or dismayed whatever we might chance to see.
To come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle we were to go through a large
vineyard, in which were all sorts of vines, as the Falernian, Malvoisian,
the Muscadine, those of Taige, Beaune, Mirevaux, Orleans, Picardent,
Arbois, Coussi, Anjou, Grave, Corsica, Vierron, Nerac, and others. This
vineyard was formerly planted by the good Bacchus, with so great a blessing
that it yields leaves, flowers, and fruit all the year round, like the
orange trees at Suraine.
Our magnificent lantern ordered every one of us to eat three grapes, to put
some vine-leaves in his shoes, and take a vine-branch in his left hand.
At the end of the close we went under an arch built after the manner of
those of the ancients. The trophies of a toper were curiously carved on
it.
First, on one side was to be seen a long train of flagons, leathern
bottles, flasks, cans, glass bottles, barrels, nipperkins, pint pots, quart
pots, pottles, gallons, and old-fashioned semaises (swingeing wooden pots,
such as those out of which the Germans fill their glasses); these hung on a
shady arbour.
On another side was store of garlic, onions, shallots, hams, botargos,
caviare, biscuits, neat's tongues, old cheese, and such like comfits, very
artificially interwoven, and packed together with vine-stocks.
On another were a hundred sorts of drinking glasses, cups, cisterns, ewers,
false cups, tumblers, bowls, mazers, mugs, jugs, goblets, talboys, and such
other Bacchic artillery.
On the frontispiece of the triumphal arch, under the zoophore, was the
following couplet:
You who presume to move this way,
Get a good lantern, lest you stray.
We took special care of that, cried Pantagruel when he had read them; for
there is not a better or a more divine lantern than ours in all
Lantern-land.
This arch ended at a fine large round alley covered over with the interlaid
branches of vines, loaded and adorned with clusters of five hundred
different colours, and of as many various shapes, not natural, but due to
the skill of agriculture; some were golden, others bluish, tawny, azure,
white, black, green, purple, streaked with many colours, long, round,
triangular, cod-like, hairy, great-headed, and grassy. That pleasant alley
ended at three old ivy-trees, verdant, and all loaden with rings. Our
enlightened lantern directed us to make ourselves hats with some of their
leaves, and cover our heads wholly with them, which was immediately done.
Jupiter's priestess, said Pantagruel, in former days would not like us have
walked under this arbour. There was a mystical reason, answered our most
perspicuous lantern, that would have hindered her; for had she gone under
it, the wine, or the grapes of which 'tis made, that's the same thing, had
been over her head, and then she would have seemed overtopped and mastered
by wine. Which implies that priests, and all persons who devote themselves
to the contemplation of divine things, ought to keep their minds sedate and
calm, and avoid whatever might disturb and discompose their tranquillity,
which nothing is more apt to do than drunkenness.
You also, continued our lantern, could not come into the Holy Bottle's
presence, after you have gone through this arch, did not that noble
priestess Bacbuc first see your shoes full of vine-leaves; which action is
diametrically opposite to the other, and signifies that you despise wine,
and having mastered it, as it were, tread it under foot.
I am no scholar, quoth Friar John, for which I'm heartily sorry, yet I find
by my breviary that in the Revelation a woman was seen with the moon under
her feet, which was a most wonderful sight. Now, as Bigot explained it to
me, this was to signify that she was not of the nature of other women; for
they have all the moon at their heads, and consequently their brains are
always troubled with a lunacy. This makes me willing to believe what you
said, dear Madam Lantern.
Chapter 5. XXXV.
How we went underground to come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle, and how
Chinon is the oldest city in the world.
We went underground through a plastered vault, on which was coarsely
painted a dance of women and satyrs waiting on old Silenus, who was
grinning o' horseback on his ass. This made me say to Pantagruel, that
this entry put me in mind of the painted cellar in the oldest city in the
world, where such paintings are to be seen, and in as cool a place.
Which is the oldest city in the world? asked Pantagruel. 'Tis Chinon, sir,
or Cainon in Touraine, said I. I know, returned Pantagruel, where Chinon
lies, and the painted cellar also, having myself drunk there many a glass
of cool wine; neither do I doubt but that Chinon is an ancient town
--witness its blazon. I own 'tis said twice or thrice:
Chinon,
Little town,
Great renown,
On old stone
Long has stood;
There's the Vienne, if you look down;
If you look up, there's the wood.
But how, continued he, can you make it out that 'tis the oldest city in the
world? Where did you find this written? I have found it in the sacred
writ, said I, that Cain was the first that built a town; we may then
reasonably conjecture that from his name he gave it that of Cainon. Thus,
after his example, most other founders of towns have given them their
names: Athena, that's Minerva in Greek, to Athens; Alexander to
Alexandria; Constantine to Constantinople; Pompey to Pompeiopolis in
Cilicia; Adrian to Adrianople; Canaan, to the Canaanites; Saba, to the
Sabaeans; Assur, to the Assyrians; and so Ptolemais, Caesarea, Tiberias,
and Herodium in Judaea got their names.
While we were thus talking, there came to us the great flask whom our
lantern called the philosopher, her holiness the Bottle's governor. He was
attended with a troop of the temple-guards, all French bottles in wicker
armour; and seeing us with our javelins wrapped with ivy, with our
illustrious lantern, whom he knew, he desired us to come in with all manner
of safety, and ordered we should be immediately conducted to the Princess
Bacbuc, the Bottle's lady of honour, and priestess of all the mysteries;
which was done.
Chapter 5. XXXVI.
How we went down the tetradic steps, and of Panurge's fear.
We went down one marble step under ground, where there was a resting, or,
as our workmen call it, a landing-place; then, turning to the left, we went
down two other steps, where there was another resting-place; after that we
came to three other steps, turning about, and met a third; and the like at
four steps which we met afterwards. There quoth Panurge, Is it here? How
many steps have you told? asked our magnificent lantern. One, two, three,
four, answered Pantagruel. How much is that? asked she. Ten, returned he.
Multiply that, said she, according to the same Pythagorical tetrad. That
is, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, cried Pantagruel. How much is the whole?
said she. One hundred, answered Pantagruel. Add, continued she, the first
cube--that's eight. At the end of that fatal number you'll find the temple
gate; and pray observe, this is the true psychogony of Plato, so celebrated
by the Academics, yet so little understood; one moiety of which consists of
the unity of the two first numbers full of two square and two cubic
numbers. We then went down those numerical stairs, all under ground, and I
can assure you, in the first place, that our legs stood us in good stead;
for had it not been for 'em, we had rolled just like so many hogsheads into
a vault. Secondly, our radiant lantern gave us just so much light as is in
St. Patrick's hole in Ireland, or Trophonius's pit in Boeotia; which caused
Panurge to say to her, after we had got down some seventy-eight steps:
Dear madam, with a sorrowful, aching heart, I most humbly beseech your
lanternship to lead us back. May I be led to hell if I be not half dead
with fear; my heart is sunk down into my hose; I am afraid I shall make
buttered eggs in my breeches. I freely consent never to marry. You have
given yourself too much trouble on my account. The Lord shall reward you
in his great rewarder; neither will I be ungrateful when I come out of this
cave of Troglodytes. Let's go back, I pray you. I'm very much afraid this
is Taenarus, the low way to hell, and methinks I already hear Cerberus
bark. Hark! I hear the cur, or my ears tingle. I have no manner of
kindness for the dog, for there never is a greater toothache than when dogs
bite us by the shins. And if this be only Trophonius's pit, the lemures,
hobthrushes, and goblins will certainly swallow us alive, just as they
devoured formerly one of Demetrius's halberdiers for want of bridles. Art
thou here, Friar John? Prithee, dear, dear cod, stay by me; I'm almost
dead with fear. Hast thou got thy bilbo? Alas! poor pilgarlic's
defenceless. I'm a naked man, thou knowest; let's go back. Zoons, fear
nothing, cried Friar John; I'm by thee, and have thee fast by the collar;
eighteen devils shan't get thee out of my clutches, though I were unarmed.
Never did a man yet want weapons who had a good arm with as stout a heart.
Heaven would sooner send down a shower of them; even as in Provence, in the
fields of La Crau, near Mariannes, there rained stones (they are there to
this day) to help Hercules, who otherwise wanted wherewithal to fight
Neptune's two bastards. But whither are we bound? Are we a-going to the
little children's limbo? By Pluto, they'll bepaw and conskite us all. Or
are we going to hell for orders? By cob's body, I'll hamper, bethwack, and
belabour all the devils, now I have some vine-leaves in my shoes. Thou
shalt see me lay about me like mad, old boy. Which way? where the devil
are they? I fear nothing but their damned horns; but cuckoldy Panurge's
bull-feather will altogether secure me from 'em. Lo! in a prophetic spirit
I already see him, like another Actaeon, horned, horny, hornified.
Prithee, quoth Panurge, take heed thyself, dear frater, lest, till monks
have leave to marry, thou weddest something thou dostn't like, as some
cat-o'-nine-tails or the quartan ague; if thou dost, may I never come safe
and sound out of this hypogeum, this subterranean cave, if I don't tup and
ram that disease merely for the sake of making thee a cornuted, corniferous
property; otherwise I fancy the quartan ague is but an indifferent
bedfellow. I remember Gripe-men-all threatened to wed thee to some such
thing; for which thou calledest him heretic.
Here our splendid lantern interrupted them, letting us know this was the
place where we were to have a taste of the creature, and be silent; bidding
us not despair of having the word of the Bottle before we went back, since
we had lined our shoes with vine-leaves.
Come on then, cried Panurge, let's charge through and through all the
devils of hell; we can but perish, and that's soon done. However, I
thought to have reserved my life for some mighty battle. Move, move, move
forwards; I am as stout as Hercules, my breeches are full of courage; my
heart trembles a little, I own, but that's only an effect of the coldness
and dampness of this vault; 'tis neither fear nor ague. Come on, move on,
piss, pish, push on. My name's William Dreadnought.
Chapter 5. XXXVII.
How the temple gates in a wonderful manner opened of themselves.
After we were got down the steps, we came to a portal of fine jasper, of
Doric order, on whose front we read this sentence in the finest gold,
EN OINO ALETHEIA--that is, In wine truth. The gates were of
Corinthian-like brass, massy, wrought with little vine-branches, finely
embossed and engraven, and were equally joined and closed together in their
mortise without padlock, key-chain, or tie whatsoever. Where they joined,
there hanged an Indian loadstone as big as an Egyptian bean, set in gold,
having two points, hexagonal, in a right line; and on each side, towards the
wall, hung a handful of scordium (garlic germander).
There our noble lantern desired us not to take it amiss that she went no
farther with us, leaving us wholly to the conduct of the priestess Bacbuc;
for she herself was not allowed to go in, for certain causes rather to be
concealed than revealed to mortals. However, she advised us to be resolute
and secure, and to trust to her for the return. She then pulled the
loadstone that hung at the folding of the gates, and threw it into a silver
box fixed for that purpose; which done, from the threshold of each gate she
drew a twine of crimson silk about nine feet long, by which the scordium
hung, and having fastened it to two gold buckles that hung at the sides,
she withdrew.
Immediately the gates flew open without being touched; not with a creaking
or loud harsh noise like that made by heavy brazen gates, but with a soft
pleasing murmur that resounded through the arches of the temple.
Pantagruel soon knew the cause of it, having discovered a small cylinder or
roller that joined the gates over the threshold, and, turning like them
towards the wall on a hard well-polished ophites stone, with rubbing and
rolling caused that harmonious murmur.
I wondered how the gates thus opened of themselves to the right and left,
and after we were all got in, I cast my eye between the gates and the wall
to endeavour to know how this happened; for one would have thought our kind
lantern had put between the gates the herb aethiopis, which they say opens
some things that are shut. But I perceived that the parts of the gates
that joined on the inside were covered with steel, and just where the said
gates touched when they were opened I saw two square Indian loadstones of a
bluish hue, well polished, and half a span broad, mortised in the temple
wall. Now, by the hidden and admirable power of the loadstones, the steel
plates were put into motion, and consequently the gates were slowly drawn;
however, not always, but when the said loadstone on the outside was
removed, after which the steel was freed from its power, the two bunches of
scordium being at the same time put at some distance, because it deadens
the magnes and robs it of its attractive virtue.
On the loadstone that was placed on the right side the following iambic
verse was curiously engraven in ancient Roman characters:
Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.
Fate leads the willing, and th' unwilling draws.
The following sentence was neatly cut in the loadstone that was on the
left:
ALL THINGS TEND TO THEIR END.
Chapter 5. XXXVIII.
Of the Temple's admirable pavement.
When I had read those inscriptions, I admired the beauty of the temple, and
particularly the disposition of its pavement, with which no work that is
now, or has been under the cope of heaven, can justly be compared; not that
of the Temple of Fortune at Praeneste in Sylla's time, or the pavement of
the Greeks, called asarotum, laid by Sosistratus at Pergamus. For this
here was wholly in compartments of precious stones, all in their natural
colours: one of red jasper, most charmingly spotted; another of ophites; a
third of porphyry; a fourth of lycophthalmy, a stone of four different
colours, powdered with sparks of gold as small as atoms; a fifth of agate,
streaked here and there with small milk-coloured waves; a sixth of costly
chalcedony or onyx-stone; and another of green jasper, with certain red and
yellowish veins. And all these were disposed in a diagonal line.
At the portico some small stones were inlaid and evenly joined on the
floor, all in their native colours, to embellish the design of the figures;
and they were ordered in such a manner that you would have thought some
vine-leaves and branches had been carelessly strewed on the pavement; for
in some places they were thick, and thin in others. That inlaying was very
wonderful everywhere. Here were seen, as it were in the shade, some snails
crawling on the grapes; there, little lizards running on the branches. On
this side were grapes that seemed yet greenish; on another, some clusters
that seemed full ripe, so like the true that they could as easily have
deceived starlings and other birds as those which Zeuxis drew.
Nay, we ourselves were deceived; for where the artist seemed to have
strewed the vine-branches thickest, we could not forbear walking with great
strides lest we should entangle our feet, just as people go over an unequal
stony place.
I then cast my eyes on the roof and walls of the temple, that were all
pargetted with porphyry and mosaic work, which from the left side at the
coming in most admirably represented the battle in which the good Bacchus
overthrew the Indians; as followeth.
Chapter 5. XXXIX.
How we saw Bacchus's army drawn up in battalia in mosaic work.
At the beginning, divers towns, hamlets, castles, fortresses, and forests
were seen in flames; and several mad and loose women, who furiously ripped
up and tore live calves, sheep, and lambs limb from limb, and devoured
their flesh. There we learned how Bacchus, at his coming into India,
destroyed all things with fire and sword.
Notwithstanding this, he was so despised by the Indians that they did not
think it worth their while to stop his progress, having been certainly
informed by their spies that his camp was destitute of warriors, and that
he had only with him a crew of drunken females, a low-built, old,
effeminate, sottish fellow, continually addled, and as drunk as a
wheelbarrow, with a pack of young clownish doddipolls, stark naked, always
skipping and frisking up and down, with tails and horns like those of young
kids.
For this reason the Indians had resolved to let them go through their
country without the least opposition, esteeming a victory over such enemies
more dishonourable than glorious.
In the meantime Bacchus marched on, burning everything; for, as you know,
fire and thunder are his paternal arms, Jupiter having saluted his mother
Semele with his thunder, so that his maternal house was ruined by fire.
Bacchus also caused a great deal of blood to be spilt; which, when he is
roused and angered, principally in war, is as natural to him as to make
some in time of peace.
Thus the plains of the island of Samos are called Panema, which signifies
bloody, because Bacchus there overtook the Amazons, who fled from the
country of Ephesus, and there let 'em blood, so that they all died of
phlebotomy. This may give you a better insight into the meaning of an
ancient proverb than Aristotle has done in his problems, viz. , Why 'twas
formerly said, Neither eat nor sow any mint in time of war. The reason is,
that blows are given then without any distinction of parts or persons, and
if a man that's wounded has that day handled or eaten any mint, 'tis
impossible, or at least very hard, to stanch his blood.
After this, Bacchus was seen marching in battalia, riding in a stately
chariot drawn by six young leopards. He looked as young as a child, to
show that all good topers never grow old. He was as red as a cherry, or a
cherub, which you please, and had no more hair on his chin than there's in
the inside of my hand. His forehead was graced with pointed horns, above
which he wore a fine crown or garland of vine-leaves and grapes, and a
mitre of crimson velvet, having also gilt buskins on.
He had not one man with him that looked like a man; his guards and all his
forces consisted wholly of Bassarides, Evantes, Euhyades, Edonides,
Trietherides, Ogygiae, Mimallonides, Maenades, Thyades, and Bacchae,
frantic, raving, raging, furious, mad women, begirt with live snakes and
serpents instead of girdles, dishevelled, their hair flowing about their
shoulders, with garlands of vine-branches instead of forehead-cloths, clad
with stag's or goat's skins, and armed with torches, javelins, spears, and
halberds whose ends were like pineapples. Besides, they had certain small
light bucklers that gave a loud sound if you touched 'em never so little,
and these served them instead of drums. They were just seventy-nine
thousand two hundred and twenty-seven.
Silenus, who led the van, was one on whom Bacchus relied very much, having
formerly had many proofs of his valour and conduct. He was a diminutive,
stooping, palsied, plump, gorbellied old fellow, with a swingeing pair of
stiff-standing lugs of his own, a sharp Roman nose, large rough eyebrows,
mounted on a well-hung ass. In his fist he held a staff to lean upon, and
also bravely to fight whenever he had occasion to alight; and he was
dressed in a woman's yellow gown. His followers were all young, wild,
clownish people, as hornified as so many kids and as fell as so many
tigers, naked, and perpetually singing and dancing country-dances. They
were called tityri and satyrs, and were in all eighty-five thousand one
hundred and thirty-three.
Pan, who brought up the rear, was a monstrous sort of a thing; for his
lower parts were like a goat's, his thighs hairy, and his horns bolt
upright; a crimson fiery phiz, and a beard that was none of the shortest.
He was a bold, stout, daring, desperate fellow, very apt to take pepper in
the nose for yea and nay.
In his left hand he held a pipe, and a crooked stick in his right. His
forces consisted also wholly of satyrs, aegipanes, agripanes, sylvans,
fauns, lemures, lares, elves, and hobgoblins, and their number was
seventy-eight thousand one hundred and fourteen. The signal or word
common to all the army was Evohe.
Chapter 5. XL.
Pan. What season do you do it best in? Fri. March.
Pan. How is your performance the rest of the year? Fri. Brisk.
Then quoth Panurge, sneering, Of all, and of all, commend me to Ball; this
is the friar of the world for my money. You've heard how short, concise,
and compendious he is in his answers. Nothing is to be got out of him but
monosyllables. By jingo, I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.
Damn him, cried Friar John, that's as true as I am his uncle. The dog
yelps at another gate's rate when he is among his bitches; there he is
polysyllable enough, my life for yours. You talk of making three bites of
a cherry! God send fools more wit and us more money! May I be doomed to
fast a whole day if I don't verily believe he would not make above two
bites of a shoulder of mutton and one swoop of a whole pottle of wine.
Zoons, do but see how down o' the mouth the cur looks! He's nothing but
skin and bones; he has pissed his tallow.
Truly, truly, quoth Epistemon, this rascally monastical vermin all over the
world mind nothing but their gut, and are as ravenous as any kites, and
then, forsooth, they tell us they've nothing but food and raiment in this
world. 'Sdeath, what more have kings and princes?
Chapter 5. XXIX.
How Epistemon disliked the institution of Lent.
Pray did you observe, continued Epistemon, how this damned ill-favoured
Semiquaver mentioned March as the best month for caterwauling? True, said
Pantagruel; yet Lent and March always go together, and the first was
instituted to macerate and bring down our pampered flesh, to weaken and
subdue its lusts, to curb and assuage the venereal rage.
By this, said Epistemon, you may guess what kind of a pope it was who first
enjoined it to be kept, since this filthy wooden-shoed Semiquaver owns that
his spoon is never oftener nor deeper in the porringer of lechery than in
Lent. Add to this the evident reasons given by all good and learned
physicians, affirming that throughout the whole year no food is eaten that
can prompt mankind to lascivious acts more than at that time.
As, for example, beans, peas, phasels, or long-peason, ciches, onions,
nuts, oysters, herrings, salt-meats, garum (a kind of anchovy), and salads
wholly made up of venereous herbs and fruits, as--
Rocket, Parsley, Hop-buds,
Nose-smart, Rampions, Figs,
Taragon, Poppy, Rice,
Cresses, Celery, Raisins, and others.
It would not a little surprise you, said Pantagruel, should a man tell you
that the good pope who first ordered the keeping of Lent, perceiving that
at that time o' year the natural heat (from the centre of the body, whither
it was retired during the winter's cold) diffuses itself, as the sap does
in trees, through the circumference of the members, did therefore in a
manner prescribe that sort of diet to forward the propagation of mankind.
What makes me think so, is that by the registers of christenings at Touars
it appears that more children are born in October and November than in the
other ten months of the year, and reckoning backwards 'twill be easily
found that they were all made, conceived, and begotten in Lent.
I listen to you with both my ears, quoth Friar John, and that with no small
pleasure, I'll assure you. But I must tell you that the vicar of Jambert
ascribed this copious prolification of the women, not to that sort of food
that we chiefly eat in Lent, but to the little licensed stooping mumpers,
your little booted Lent-preachers, your little draggle-tailed father
confessors, who during all that time of their reign damn all husbands that
run astray three fathom and a half below the very lowest pit of hell. So
the silly cod's-headed brothers of the noose dare not then stumble any more
at the truckle-bed, to the no small discomfort of their maids, and are even
forced, poor souls, to take up with their own bodily wives. Dixi; I have
done.
You may descant on the institution of Lent as much as you please, cried
Epistemon; so many men so many minds; but certainly all the physicians will
be against its being suppressed, though I think that time is at hand. I
know they will, and have heard 'em say were it not for Lent their art would
soon fall into contempt, and they'd get nothing, for hardly anybody would
be sick.
All distempers are sowed in lent; 'tis the true seminary and native bed of
all diseases; nor does it only weaken and putrefy bodies, but it also makes
souls mad and uneasy. For then the devils do their best, and drive a
subtle trade, and the tribe of canting dissemblers come out of their holes.
'Tis then term-time with your cucullated pieces of formality that have one
face to God and another to the devil; and a wretched clutter they make with
their sessions, stations, pardons, syntereses, confessions, whippings,
anathematizations, and much prayer with as little devotion. However, I'll
not offer to infer from this that the Arimaspians are better than we are in
that point; yet I speak to the purpose.
Well, quoth Panurge to the Semiquaver friar, who happened to be by, dear
bumbasting, shaking, trilling, quavering cod, what thinkest thou of this
fellow? Is he a rank heretic? Fri. Much.
Pan. Ought he not to be singed? Fri. Well.
Pan. As soon as may be? Fri. Right.
Pan. Should not he be scalded first? Fri. No.
Pan. How then, should he be roasted? Fri. Quick.
Pan. Till at last he be? Fri. Dead.
Pan. What has he made you? Fri. Mad.
Pan. What d'ye take him to be? Fri. Damned.
Pan. What place is he to go to? Fri. Hell.
Pan. But, first, how would you have 'em served here? Fri. Burnt.
Pan. Some have been served so? Fri. Store.
Pan. That were heretics? Fri. Less.
Pan. And the number of those that are to be warmed thus hereafter is?
Fri. Great.
Pan. How many of 'em do you intend to save? Fri. None.
Pan. So you'd have them burned? Fri. All.
I wonder, said Epistemon to Panurge, what pleasure you can find in talking
thus with this lousy tatterdemalion of a monk. I vow, did I not know you
well, I might be ready to think you had no more wit in your head than he
has in both his shoulders. Come, come, scatter no words, returned Panurge;
everyone as they like, as the woman said when she kissed her cow. I wish I
might carry him to Gargantua; when I'm married he might be my wife's fool.
And make you one, cried Epistemon. Well said, quoth Friar John. Now, poor
Panurge, take that along with thee, thou'rt e'en fitted; 'tis a plain case
thou'lt never escape wearing the bull's feather; thy wife will be as common
as the highway, that's certain.
Chapter 5. XXX.
How we came to the land of Satin.
Having pleased ourselves with observing that new order of Semiquaver
Friars, we set sail, and in three days our skipper made the finest and most
delightful island that ever was seen. He called it the island of Frieze,
for all the ways were of frieze.
In that island is the land of Satin, so celebrated by our court pages. Its
trees and herbage never lose their leaves or flowers, and are all damask
and flowered velvet. As for the beasts and birds, they are all of tapestry
work. There we saw many beasts, birds on trees, of the same colour,
bigness, and shape of those in our country; with this difference, however,
that these did eat nothing, and never sung or bit like ours; and we also
saw there many sorts of creatures which we never had seen before.
Among the rest, several elephants in various postures; twelve of which were
the six males and six females that were brought to Rome by their governor
in the time of Germanicus, Tiberius's nephew. Some of them were learned
elephants, some musicians, others philosophers, dancers, and showers of
tricks; and all sat down at table in good order, silently eating and
drinking like so many fathers in a fratery-room.
With their snouts or proboscises, some two cubits long, they draw up water
for their own drinking, and take hold of palm leaves, plums, and all manner
of edibles, using them offensively or defensively as we do our fists; with
them tossing men high into the air in fight, and making them burst with
laughing when they come to the ground.
They have joints (in their legs), whatever some men, who doubtless never
saw any but painted, may have written to the contrary. Between their teeth
they have two huge horns; thus Juba called 'em, and Pausanias tells us they
are not teeth, but horns; however, Philostratus will have 'em to be teeth,
and not horns. 'Tis all one to me, provided you will be pleased to own
them to be true ivory. These are some three or four cubits long, and are
fixed in the upper jawbone, and consequently not in the lowermost. If you
hearken to those who will tell you to the contrary, you will find yourself
damnably mistaken, for that's a lie with a latchet; though 'twere Aelian,
that long-bow man, that told you so, never believe him, for he lies as fast
as a dog can trot. 'Twas in this very island that Pliny, his brother
tell-truth, had seen some elephants dance on the rope with bells, and whip
over the tables, presto, begone, while people were at feasts, without so
much as touching the toping topers or the topers toping.
I saw a rhinoceros there, just such a one as Harry Clerberg had formerly
showed me. Methought it was not much unlike a certain boar which I had
formerly seen at Limoges, except the sharp horn on its snout, that was
about a cubit long; by the means of which that animal dares encounter with
an elephant, that is sometimes killed with its point thrust into its belly,
which is its most tender and defenceless part.
I saw there two and thirty unicorns. They are a curst sort of creatures,
much resembling a fine horse, unless it be that their heads are like a
stag's, their feet like an elephant's, their tails like a wild boar's, and
out of each of their foreheads sprouts out a sharp black horn, some six or
seven feet long; commonly it dangles down like a turkey-cock's comb. When
a unicorn has a mind to fight, or put it to any other use, what does it do
but make it stand, and then 'tis as straight as an arrow.
I saw one of them, which was attended with a throng of other wild beasts,
purify a fountain with its horn. With that Panurge told me that his
prancer, alias his nimble-wimble, was like the unicorn, not altogether in
length indeed, but in virtue and propriety; for as the unicorn purified
pools and fountains from filth and venom, so that other animals came and
drank securely there afterwards, in the like manner others might water
their nags, and dabble after him without fear of shankers, carnosities,
gonorrhoeas, buboes, crinkams, and such other plagues caught by those who
venture to quench their amorous thirst in a common puddle; for with his
nervous horn he removed all the infection that might be lurking in some
blind cranny of the mephitic sweet-scented hole.
Well, quoth Friar John, when you are sped, that is, when you are married,
we will make a trial of this on thy spouse, merely for charity sake, since
you are pleased to give us so beneficial an instruction.
Ay, ay, returned Panurge, and then immediately I'll give you a pretty
gentle aggregative pill of God, made up of two and twenty kind stabs with a
dagger, after the Caesarian way. Catso, cried Friar John, I had rather
take off a bumper of good cool wine.
I saw there the golden fleece formerly conquered by Jason, and can assure
you, on the word of an honest man, that those who have said it was not a
fleece but a golden pippin, because melon signifies both an apple and a
sheep, were utterly mistaken.
I saw also a chameleon, such as Aristotle describes it, and like that which
had been formerly shown me by Charles Maris, a famous physician of the
noble city of Lyons on the Rhone; and the said chameleon lived on air just
as the other did.
I saw three hydras, like those I had formerly seen. They are a kind of
serpent, with seven different heads.
I saw also fourteen phoenixes. I had read in many authors that there was
but one in the whole world in every century; but, if I may presume to speak
my mind, I declare that those who said this had never seen any, unless it
were in the land of Tapestry; though 'twere vouched by Claudian or
Lactantius Firmianus.
I saw the skin of Apuleius's golden ass.
I saw three hundred and nine pelicans.
Item, six thousand and sixteen Seleucid birds marching in battalia, and
picking up straggling grasshoppers in cornfields.
Item, some cynamologi, argatiles, caprimulgi, thynnunculs, onocrotals, or
bitterns, with their wide swallows, stymphalides, harpies, panthers,
dorcasses, or bucks, cemades, cynocephalises, satyrs, cartasans, tarands,
uri, monopses, or bonasi, neades, steras, marmosets, or monkeys, bugles,
musimons, byturoses, ophyri, screech-owls, goblins, fairies, and griffins.
I saw Mid-Lent o' horseback, with Mid-August and Mid-March holding its
stirrups.
I saw some mankind wolves, centaurs, tigers, leopards, hyenas,
camelopardals, and orixes, or huge wild goats with sharp horns.
I saw a remora, a little fish called echineis by the Greeks, and near it a
tall ship that did not get ahead an inch, though she was in the offing with
top and top-gallants spread before the wind. I am somewhat inclined to
believe that 'twas the very numerical ship in which Periander the tyrant
happened to be when it was stopped by such a little fish in spite of wind
and tide. It was in this land of Satin, and in no other, that Mutianus had
seen one of them.
Friar John told us that in the days of yore two sorts of fishes used to
abound in our courts of judicature, and rotted the bodies and tormented the
souls of those who were at law, whether noble or of mean descent, high or
low, rich or poor: the first were your April fish or mackerel (pimps,
panders, and bawds); the others your beneficial remoras, that is, the
eternity of lawsuits, the needless lets that keep 'em undecided.
I saw some sphynges, some raphes, some ounces, and some cepphi, whose
fore-feet are like hands and their hind-feet like man's.
Also some crocutas and some eali as big as sea-horses, with elephants'
tails, boars' jaws and tusks, and horns as pliant as an ass's ears.
The crocutas, most fleet animals, as big as our asses of Mirebalais, have
necks, tails, and breasts like a lion's, legs like a stag's, have mouths up
to the ears, and but two teeth, one above and one below; they speak with
human voices, but when they do they say nothing.
Some people say that none e'er saw an eyrie, or nest of sakers; if you'll
believe me, I saw no less than eleven, and I'm sure I reckoned right.
I saw some left-handed halberds, which were the first that I had ever seen.
I saw some manticores, a most strange sort of creatures, which have the
body of a lion, red hair, a face and ears like a man's, three rows of teeth
which close together as if you joined your hands with your fingers between
each other; they have a sting in their tails like a scorpion's, and a very
melodious voice.
I saw some catablepases, a sort of serpents, whose bodies are small, but
their heads large, without any proportion, so that they've much ado to lift
them up; and their eyes are so infectious that whoever sees 'em dies upon
the spot, as if he had seen a basilisk.
I saw some beasts with two backs, and those seemed to me the merriest
creatures in the world. They were most nimble at wriggling the buttocks,
and more diligent in tail-wagging than any water-wagtails, perpetually
jogging and shaking their double rumps.
I saw there some milched crawfish, creatures that I never had heard of
before in my life. These moved in very good order, and 'twould have done
your heart good to have seen 'em.
Chapter 5. XXXI.
How in the land of Satin we saw Hearsay, who kept a school of vouching.
We went a little higher up into the country of Tapestry, and saw the
Mediterranean Sea open to the right and left down to the very bottom; just
as the Red Sea very fairly left its bed at the Arabian Gulf to make a lane
for the Jews when they left Egypt.
There I found Triton winding his silver shell instead of a horn, and also
Glaucus, Proteus, Nereus, and a thousand other godlings and sea monsters.
I also saw an infinite number of fish of all kinds, dancing, flying,
vaulting, fighting, eating, breathing, billing, shoving, milting, spawning,
hunting, fishing, skirmishing, lying in ambuscado, making truces,
cheapening, bargaining, swearing, and sporting.
In a blind corner we saw Aristotle holding a lantern in the posture in
which the hermit uses to be drawn near St. Christopher, watching, prying,
thinking, and setting everything down.
Behind him stood a pack of other philosophers, like so many bums by a
head-bailiff, as Appian, Heliodorus, Athenaeus, Porphyrius, Pancrates,
Arcadian, Numenius, Possidonius, Ovidius, Oppianus, Olympius, Seleucus,
Leonides, Agathocles, Theophrastus, Damostratus, Mutianus, Nymphodorus,
Aelian, and five hundred other such plodding dons, who were full of
business, yet had little to do; like Chrysippus or Aristarchus of Soli, who
for eight-and-fifty years together did nothing in the world but examine the
state and concerns of bees.
I spied Peter Gilles among these, with a urinal in his hand, narrowly
watching the water of those goodly fishes.
When we had long beheld everything in this land of Satin, Pantagruel said,
I have sufficiently fed my eyes, but my belly is empty all this while, and
chimes to let me know 'tis time to go to dinner. Let's take care of the
body lest the soul abdicate it; and to this effect let's taste some of
these anacampserotes ('An herb, the touching of which is said to reconcile
lovers. '--Motteux. ) that hang over our heads. Psha, cried one, they are
mere trash, stark naught, o' my word; they're good for nothing.
I then went to pluck some mirobolans off of a piece of tapestry whereon
they hung, but the devil a bit I could chew or swallow 'em; and had you had
them betwixt your teeth you would have sworn they had been thrown silk;
there was no manner of savour in 'em.
One might be apt to think Heliogabalus had taken a hint from thence, to
feast those whom he had caused to fast a long time, promising them a
sumptuous, plentiful, and imperial feast after it; for all the treat used
to amount to no more than several sorts of meat in wax, marble,
earthenware, painted and figured tablecloths.
While we were looking up and down to find some more substantial food, we
heard a loud various noise, like that of paper-mills (or women bucking of
linen); so with all speed we went to the place whence the noise came, where
we found a diminutive, monstrous, misshapen old fellow, called Hearsay.
His mouth was slit up to his ears, and in it were seven tongues, each of
them cleft into seven parts. However, he chattered, tattled, and prated
with all the seven at once, of different matters, and in divers languages.
He had as many ears all over his head and the rest of his body as Argus
formerly had eyes, and was as blind as a beetle, and had the palsy in his
legs.
About him stood an innumerable number of men and women, gaping, listening,
and hearing very intensely. Among 'em I observed some who strutted like
crows in a gutter, and principally a very handsome bodied man in the face,
who held then a map of the world, and with little aphorisms compendiously
explained everything to 'em; so that those men of happy memories grew
learned in a trice, and would most fluently talk with you of a world of
prodigious things, the hundredth part of which would take up a man's whole
life to be fully known.
Among the rest they descanted with great prolixity on the pyramids and
hieroglyphics of Egypt, of the Nile, of Babylon, of the Troglodytes, the
Hymantopodes, or crump-footed nation, the Blemiae, people that wear their
heads in the middle of their breasts, the Pigmies, the Cannibals, the
Hyperborei and their mountains, the Egypanes with their goat's feet, and
the devil and all of others; every individual word of it by hearsay.
I am much mistaken if I did not see among them Herodotus, Pliny, Solinus,
Berosus, Philostratus, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and God knows how many other
antiquaries.
Then Albert, the great Jacobin friar, Peter Tesmoin, alias Witness, Pope
Pius the Second, Volaterranus, Paulus Jovius the valiant, Jemmy Cartier,
Chaton the Armenian, Marco Polo the Venetian, Ludovico Romano, Pedro
Aliares, and forty cartloads of other modern historians, lurking behind a
piece of tapestry, where they were at it ding-dong, privately scribbling
the Lord knows what, and making rare work of it; and all by hearsay.
Behind another piece of tapestry (on which Naboth and Susanna's accusers
were fairly represented), I saw close by Hearsay, good store of men of the
country of Perce and Maine, notable students, and young enough.
I asked what sort of study they applied themselves to; and was told that
from their youth they learned to be evidences, affidavit-men, and vouchers,
and were instructed in the art of swearing; in which they soon became such
proficients, that when they left that country, and went back into their
own, they set up for themselves and very honestly lived by their trade of
evidencing, positively giving their testimony of all things whatsoever to
those who feed them most roundly to do a job of journey-work for them; and
all this by hearsay.
You may think what you will of it; but I can assure you they gave some of
us corners of their cakes, and we merrily helped to empty their hogsheads.
Then, in a friendly manner, they advised us to be as sparing of truth as
possibly we could if ever we had a mind to get court preferment.
Chapter 5. XXXII.
How we came in sight of Lantern-land.
Having been but scurvily entertained in the land of Satin, we went o'
board, and having set sail, in four days came near the coast of
Lantern-land.
We then saw certain little hovering fires on the sea.
For my part, I did not take them to be lanterns, but rather thought they
were fishes which lolled their flaming tongues on the surface of the sea,
or lampyrides, which some call cicindelas, or glowworms, shining there as
ripe barley does o' nights in my country.
But the skipper satisfied us that they were the lanterns of the watch, or,
more properly, lighthouses, set up in many places round the precinct of the
place to discover the land, and for the safe piloting in of some outlandish
lanterns, which, like good Franciscan and Jacobin friars, were coming to
make their personal appearance at the provincial chapter.
However, some of us were somewhat suspicious that these fires were the
forerunners of some storm, but the skipper assured us again they were not.
Chapter 5. XXXIII.
How we landed at the port of the Lychnobii, and came to Lantern-land.
Soon after we arrived at the port of Lantern-land, where Pantagruel
discovered on a high tower the lantern of Rochelle, that stood us in good
stead, for it cast a great light. We also saw the lantern of Pharos, that
of Nauplion, and that of Acropolis at Athens, sacred to Pallas.
Near the port there's a little hamlet inhabited by the Lychnobii, that live
by lanterns, as the gulligutted friars in our country live by nuns; they
are studious people, and as honest men as ever shit in a trumpet.
Demosthenes had formerly lanternized there.
We were conducted from that place to the palace by three obeliscolichnys
('A kind of beacons. '--Motteux. ), military guards of the port, with
high-crowned hats, whom we acquainted with the cause of our voyage, and our
design, which was to desire the queen of the country to grant us a lantern
to light and conduct us during our voyage to the Oracle of the Holy Bottle.
They promised to assist us in this, and added that we could never have come
in a better time, for then the lanterns held their provincial chapter.
When we came to the royal palace we had audience of her highness the Queen
of Lantern-land, being introduced by two lanterns of honour, that of
Aristophanes and that of Cleanthes (Motteux adds here--'Mistresses of the
ceremonies. '). Panurge in a few words acquainted her with the causes of
our voyage, and she received us with great demonstrations of friendship,
desiring us to come to her at supper-time that we might more easily make
choice of one to be our guide; which pleased us extremely. We did not fail
to observe intensely everything we could see, as the garbs, motions, and
deportment of the queen's subjects, principally the manner after which she
was served.
The bright queen was dressed in virgin crystal of Tutia wrought damaskwise,
and beset with large diamonds.
The lanterns of the royal blood were clad partly with bastard-diamonds,
partly with diaphanous stones; the rest with horn, paper, and oiled cloth.
The cresset-lights took place according to the antiquity and lustre of
their families.
An earthen dark-lantern, shaped like a pot, notwithstanding this took place
of some of the first quality; at which I wondered much, till I was told it
was that of Epictetus, for which three thousand drachmas had been formerly
refused.
Martial's polymix lantern (Motteux gives a footnote:--'A lamp with many
wicks, or a branch'd candlestick with many springs coming out of it, that
supply all the branches with oil. ') made a very good figure there. I took
particular notice of its dress, and more yet of the lychnosimity formerly
consecrated by Canopa, the daughter of Tisias.
I saw the lantern pensile formerly taken out of the temple of Apollo
Palatinus at Thebes, and afterwards by Alexander the Great (carried to the
town of Cymos). (The words in brackets have been omitted by Motteux. )
I saw another that distinguished itself from the rest by a bushy tuft of
crimson silk on its head. I was told 'twas that of Bartolus, the lantern
of the civilians.
Two others were very remarkable for glister-pouches that dangled at their
waist. We were told that one was the greater light and the other the
lesser light of the apothecaries.
When 'twas supper-time, the queen's highness first sat down, and then the
lady lanterns, according to their rank and dignity. For the first course
they were all served with large Christmas candles, except the queen, who
was served with a hugeous, thick, stiff, flaming taper of white wax,
somewhat red towards the tip; and the royal family, as also the provincial
lantern of Mirebalais, who were served with nutlights; and the provincial
of Lower Poitou, with an armed candle.
After that, God wot, what a glorious light they gave with their wicks! I
do not say all, for you must except a parcel of junior lanterns, under the
government of a high and mighty one. These did not cast a light like the
rest, but seemed to me dimmer than any long-snuff farthing candle whose
tallow has been half melted away in a hothouse.
After supper we withdrew to take some rest, and the next day the queen made
us choose one of the most illustrious lanterns to guide us; after which we
took our leave.
Chapter 5. XXXIV.
How we arrived at the Oracle of the Bottle.
Our glorious lantern lighting and directing us to heart's content, we at
last arrived at the desired island where was the Oracle of the Bottle. As
soon as friend Panurge landed, he nimbly cut a caper with one leg for joy,
and cried to Pantagruel, Now we are where we have wished ourselves long
ago. This is the place we've been seeking with such toil and labour. He
then made a compliment to our lantern, who desired us to be of good cheer,
and not be daunted or dismayed whatever we might chance to see.
To come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle we were to go through a large
vineyard, in which were all sorts of vines, as the Falernian, Malvoisian,
the Muscadine, those of Taige, Beaune, Mirevaux, Orleans, Picardent,
Arbois, Coussi, Anjou, Grave, Corsica, Vierron, Nerac, and others. This
vineyard was formerly planted by the good Bacchus, with so great a blessing
that it yields leaves, flowers, and fruit all the year round, like the
orange trees at Suraine.
Our magnificent lantern ordered every one of us to eat three grapes, to put
some vine-leaves in his shoes, and take a vine-branch in his left hand.
At the end of the close we went under an arch built after the manner of
those of the ancients. The trophies of a toper were curiously carved on
it.
First, on one side was to be seen a long train of flagons, leathern
bottles, flasks, cans, glass bottles, barrels, nipperkins, pint pots, quart
pots, pottles, gallons, and old-fashioned semaises (swingeing wooden pots,
such as those out of which the Germans fill their glasses); these hung on a
shady arbour.
On another side was store of garlic, onions, shallots, hams, botargos,
caviare, biscuits, neat's tongues, old cheese, and such like comfits, very
artificially interwoven, and packed together with vine-stocks.
On another were a hundred sorts of drinking glasses, cups, cisterns, ewers,
false cups, tumblers, bowls, mazers, mugs, jugs, goblets, talboys, and such
other Bacchic artillery.
On the frontispiece of the triumphal arch, under the zoophore, was the
following couplet:
You who presume to move this way,
Get a good lantern, lest you stray.
We took special care of that, cried Pantagruel when he had read them; for
there is not a better or a more divine lantern than ours in all
Lantern-land.
This arch ended at a fine large round alley covered over with the interlaid
branches of vines, loaded and adorned with clusters of five hundred
different colours, and of as many various shapes, not natural, but due to
the skill of agriculture; some were golden, others bluish, tawny, azure,
white, black, green, purple, streaked with many colours, long, round,
triangular, cod-like, hairy, great-headed, and grassy. That pleasant alley
ended at three old ivy-trees, verdant, and all loaden with rings. Our
enlightened lantern directed us to make ourselves hats with some of their
leaves, and cover our heads wholly with them, which was immediately done.
Jupiter's priestess, said Pantagruel, in former days would not like us have
walked under this arbour. There was a mystical reason, answered our most
perspicuous lantern, that would have hindered her; for had she gone under
it, the wine, or the grapes of which 'tis made, that's the same thing, had
been over her head, and then she would have seemed overtopped and mastered
by wine. Which implies that priests, and all persons who devote themselves
to the contemplation of divine things, ought to keep their minds sedate and
calm, and avoid whatever might disturb and discompose their tranquillity,
which nothing is more apt to do than drunkenness.
You also, continued our lantern, could not come into the Holy Bottle's
presence, after you have gone through this arch, did not that noble
priestess Bacbuc first see your shoes full of vine-leaves; which action is
diametrically opposite to the other, and signifies that you despise wine,
and having mastered it, as it were, tread it under foot.
I am no scholar, quoth Friar John, for which I'm heartily sorry, yet I find
by my breviary that in the Revelation a woman was seen with the moon under
her feet, which was a most wonderful sight. Now, as Bigot explained it to
me, this was to signify that she was not of the nature of other women; for
they have all the moon at their heads, and consequently their brains are
always troubled with a lunacy. This makes me willing to believe what you
said, dear Madam Lantern.
Chapter 5. XXXV.
How we went underground to come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle, and how
Chinon is the oldest city in the world.
We went underground through a plastered vault, on which was coarsely
painted a dance of women and satyrs waiting on old Silenus, who was
grinning o' horseback on his ass. This made me say to Pantagruel, that
this entry put me in mind of the painted cellar in the oldest city in the
world, where such paintings are to be seen, and in as cool a place.
Which is the oldest city in the world? asked Pantagruel. 'Tis Chinon, sir,
or Cainon in Touraine, said I. I know, returned Pantagruel, where Chinon
lies, and the painted cellar also, having myself drunk there many a glass
of cool wine; neither do I doubt but that Chinon is an ancient town
--witness its blazon. I own 'tis said twice or thrice:
Chinon,
Little town,
Great renown,
On old stone
Long has stood;
There's the Vienne, if you look down;
If you look up, there's the wood.
But how, continued he, can you make it out that 'tis the oldest city in the
world? Where did you find this written? I have found it in the sacred
writ, said I, that Cain was the first that built a town; we may then
reasonably conjecture that from his name he gave it that of Cainon. Thus,
after his example, most other founders of towns have given them their
names: Athena, that's Minerva in Greek, to Athens; Alexander to
Alexandria; Constantine to Constantinople; Pompey to Pompeiopolis in
Cilicia; Adrian to Adrianople; Canaan, to the Canaanites; Saba, to the
Sabaeans; Assur, to the Assyrians; and so Ptolemais, Caesarea, Tiberias,
and Herodium in Judaea got their names.
While we were thus talking, there came to us the great flask whom our
lantern called the philosopher, her holiness the Bottle's governor. He was
attended with a troop of the temple-guards, all French bottles in wicker
armour; and seeing us with our javelins wrapped with ivy, with our
illustrious lantern, whom he knew, he desired us to come in with all manner
of safety, and ordered we should be immediately conducted to the Princess
Bacbuc, the Bottle's lady of honour, and priestess of all the mysteries;
which was done.
Chapter 5. XXXVI.
How we went down the tetradic steps, and of Panurge's fear.
We went down one marble step under ground, where there was a resting, or,
as our workmen call it, a landing-place; then, turning to the left, we went
down two other steps, where there was another resting-place; after that we
came to three other steps, turning about, and met a third; and the like at
four steps which we met afterwards. There quoth Panurge, Is it here? How
many steps have you told? asked our magnificent lantern. One, two, three,
four, answered Pantagruel. How much is that? asked she. Ten, returned he.
Multiply that, said she, according to the same Pythagorical tetrad. That
is, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, cried Pantagruel. How much is the whole?
said she. One hundred, answered Pantagruel. Add, continued she, the first
cube--that's eight. At the end of that fatal number you'll find the temple
gate; and pray observe, this is the true psychogony of Plato, so celebrated
by the Academics, yet so little understood; one moiety of which consists of
the unity of the two first numbers full of two square and two cubic
numbers. We then went down those numerical stairs, all under ground, and I
can assure you, in the first place, that our legs stood us in good stead;
for had it not been for 'em, we had rolled just like so many hogsheads into
a vault. Secondly, our radiant lantern gave us just so much light as is in
St. Patrick's hole in Ireland, or Trophonius's pit in Boeotia; which caused
Panurge to say to her, after we had got down some seventy-eight steps:
Dear madam, with a sorrowful, aching heart, I most humbly beseech your
lanternship to lead us back. May I be led to hell if I be not half dead
with fear; my heart is sunk down into my hose; I am afraid I shall make
buttered eggs in my breeches. I freely consent never to marry. You have
given yourself too much trouble on my account. The Lord shall reward you
in his great rewarder; neither will I be ungrateful when I come out of this
cave of Troglodytes. Let's go back, I pray you. I'm very much afraid this
is Taenarus, the low way to hell, and methinks I already hear Cerberus
bark. Hark! I hear the cur, or my ears tingle. I have no manner of
kindness for the dog, for there never is a greater toothache than when dogs
bite us by the shins. And if this be only Trophonius's pit, the lemures,
hobthrushes, and goblins will certainly swallow us alive, just as they
devoured formerly one of Demetrius's halberdiers for want of bridles. Art
thou here, Friar John? Prithee, dear, dear cod, stay by me; I'm almost
dead with fear. Hast thou got thy bilbo? Alas! poor pilgarlic's
defenceless. I'm a naked man, thou knowest; let's go back. Zoons, fear
nothing, cried Friar John; I'm by thee, and have thee fast by the collar;
eighteen devils shan't get thee out of my clutches, though I were unarmed.
Never did a man yet want weapons who had a good arm with as stout a heart.
Heaven would sooner send down a shower of them; even as in Provence, in the
fields of La Crau, near Mariannes, there rained stones (they are there to
this day) to help Hercules, who otherwise wanted wherewithal to fight
Neptune's two bastards. But whither are we bound? Are we a-going to the
little children's limbo? By Pluto, they'll bepaw and conskite us all. Or
are we going to hell for orders? By cob's body, I'll hamper, bethwack, and
belabour all the devils, now I have some vine-leaves in my shoes. Thou
shalt see me lay about me like mad, old boy. Which way? where the devil
are they? I fear nothing but their damned horns; but cuckoldy Panurge's
bull-feather will altogether secure me from 'em. Lo! in a prophetic spirit
I already see him, like another Actaeon, horned, horny, hornified.
Prithee, quoth Panurge, take heed thyself, dear frater, lest, till monks
have leave to marry, thou weddest something thou dostn't like, as some
cat-o'-nine-tails or the quartan ague; if thou dost, may I never come safe
and sound out of this hypogeum, this subterranean cave, if I don't tup and
ram that disease merely for the sake of making thee a cornuted, corniferous
property; otherwise I fancy the quartan ague is but an indifferent
bedfellow. I remember Gripe-men-all threatened to wed thee to some such
thing; for which thou calledest him heretic.
Here our splendid lantern interrupted them, letting us know this was the
place where we were to have a taste of the creature, and be silent; bidding
us not despair of having the word of the Bottle before we went back, since
we had lined our shoes with vine-leaves.
Come on then, cried Panurge, let's charge through and through all the
devils of hell; we can but perish, and that's soon done. However, I
thought to have reserved my life for some mighty battle. Move, move, move
forwards; I am as stout as Hercules, my breeches are full of courage; my
heart trembles a little, I own, but that's only an effect of the coldness
and dampness of this vault; 'tis neither fear nor ague. Come on, move on,
piss, pish, push on. My name's William Dreadnought.
Chapter 5. XXXVII.
How the temple gates in a wonderful manner opened of themselves.
After we were got down the steps, we came to a portal of fine jasper, of
Doric order, on whose front we read this sentence in the finest gold,
EN OINO ALETHEIA--that is, In wine truth. The gates were of
Corinthian-like brass, massy, wrought with little vine-branches, finely
embossed and engraven, and were equally joined and closed together in their
mortise without padlock, key-chain, or tie whatsoever. Where they joined,
there hanged an Indian loadstone as big as an Egyptian bean, set in gold,
having two points, hexagonal, in a right line; and on each side, towards the
wall, hung a handful of scordium (garlic germander).
There our noble lantern desired us not to take it amiss that she went no
farther with us, leaving us wholly to the conduct of the priestess Bacbuc;
for she herself was not allowed to go in, for certain causes rather to be
concealed than revealed to mortals. However, she advised us to be resolute
and secure, and to trust to her for the return. She then pulled the
loadstone that hung at the folding of the gates, and threw it into a silver
box fixed for that purpose; which done, from the threshold of each gate she
drew a twine of crimson silk about nine feet long, by which the scordium
hung, and having fastened it to two gold buckles that hung at the sides,
she withdrew.
Immediately the gates flew open without being touched; not with a creaking
or loud harsh noise like that made by heavy brazen gates, but with a soft
pleasing murmur that resounded through the arches of the temple.
Pantagruel soon knew the cause of it, having discovered a small cylinder or
roller that joined the gates over the threshold, and, turning like them
towards the wall on a hard well-polished ophites stone, with rubbing and
rolling caused that harmonious murmur.
I wondered how the gates thus opened of themselves to the right and left,
and after we were all got in, I cast my eye between the gates and the wall
to endeavour to know how this happened; for one would have thought our kind
lantern had put between the gates the herb aethiopis, which they say opens
some things that are shut. But I perceived that the parts of the gates
that joined on the inside were covered with steel, and just where the said
gates touched when they were opened I saw two square Indian loadstones of a
bluish hue, well polished, and half a span broad, mortised in the temple
wall. Now, by the hidden and admirable power of the loadstones, the steel
plates were put into motion, and consequently the gates were slowly drawn;
however, not always, but when the said loadstone on the outside was
removed, after which the steel was freed from its power, the two bunches of
scordium being at the same time put at some distance, because it deadens
the magnes and robs it of its attractive virtue.
On the loadstone that was placed on the right side the following iambic
verse was curiously engraven in ancient Roman characters:
Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.
Fate leads the willing, and th' unwilling draws.
The following sentence was neatly cut in the loadstone that was on the
left:
ALL THINGS TEND TO THEIR END.
Chapter 5. XXXVIII.
Of the Temple's admirable pavement.
When I had read those inscriptions, I admired the beauty of the temple, and
particularly the disposition of its pavement, with which no work that is
now, or has been under the cope of heaven, can justly be compared; not that
of the Temple of Fortune at Praeneste in Sylla's time, or the pavement of
the Greeks, called asarotum, laid by Sosistratus at Pergamus. For this
here was wholly in compartments of precious stones, all in their natural
colours: one of red jasper, most charmingly spotted; another of ophites; a
third of porphyry; a fourth of lycophthalmy, a stone of four different
colours, powdered with sparks of gold as small as atoms; a fifth of agate,
streaked here and there with small milk-coloured waves; a sixth of costly
chalcedony or onyx-stone; and another of green jasper, with certain red and
yellowish veins. And all these were disposed in a diagonal line.
At the portico some small stones were inlaid and evenly joined on the
floor, all in their native colours, to embellish the design of the figures;
and they were ordered in such a manner that you would have thought some
vine-leaves and branches had been carelessly strewed on the pavement; for
in some places they were thick, and thin in others. That inlaying was very
wonderful everywhere. Here were seen, as it were in the shade, some snails
crawling on the grapes; there, little lizards running on the branches. On
this side were grapes that seemed yet greenish; on another, some clusters
that seemed full ripe, so like the true that they could as easily have
deceived starlings and other birds as those which Zeuxis drew.
Nay, we ourselves were deceived; for where the artist seemed to have
strewed the vine-branches thickest, we could not forbear walking with great
strides lest we should entangle our feet, just as people go over an unequal
stony place.
I then cast my eyes on the roof and walls of the temple, that were all
pargetted with porphyry and mosaic work, which from the left side at the
coming in most admirably represented the battle in which the good Bacchus
overthrew the Indians; as followeth.
Chapter 5. XXXIX.
How we saw Bacchus's army drawn up in battalia in mosaic work.
At the beginning, divers towns, hamlets, castles, fortresses, and forests
were seen in flames; and several mad and loose women, who furiously ripped
up and tore live calves, sheep, and lambs limb from limb, and devoured
their flesh. There we learned how Bacchus, at his coming into India,
destroyed all things with fire and sword.
Notwithstanding this, he was so despised by the Indians that they did not
think it worth their while to stop his progress, having been certainly
informed by their spies that his camp was destitute of warriors, and that
he had only with him a crew of drunken females, a low-built, old,
effeminate, sottish fellow, continually addled, and as drunk as a
wheelbarrow, with a pack of young clownish doddipolls, stark naked, always
skipping and frisking up and down, with tails and horns like those of young
kids.
For this reason the Indians had resolved to let them go through their
country without the least opposition, esteeming a victory over such enemies
more dishonourable than glorious.
In the meantime Bacchus marched on, burning everything; for, as you know,
fire and thunder are his paternal arms, Jupiter having saluted his mother
Semele with his thunder, so that his maternal house was ruined by fire.
Bacchus also caused a great deal of blood to be spilt; which, when he is
roused and angered, principally in war, is as natural to him as to make
some in time of peace.
Thus the plains of the island of Samos are called Panema, which signifies
bloody, because Bacchus there overtook the Amazons, who fled from the
country of Ephesus, and there let 'em blood, so that they all died of
phlebotomy. This may give you a better insight into the meaning of an
ancient proverb than Aristotle has done in his problems, viz. , Why 'twas
formerly said, Neither eat nor sow any mint in time of war. The reason is,
that blows are given then without any distinction of parts or persons, and
if a man that's wounded has that day handled or eaten any mint, 'tis
impossible, or at least very hard, to stanch his blood.
After this, Bacchus was seen marching in battalia, riding in a stately
chariot drawn by six young leopards. He looked as young as a child, to
show that all good topers never grow old. He was as red as a cherry, or a
cherub, which you please, and had no more hair on his chin than there's in
the inside of my hand. His forehead was graced with pointed horns, above
which he wore a fine crown or garland of vine-leaves and grapes, and a
mitre of crimson velvet, having also gilt buskins on.
He had not one man with him that looked like a man; his guards and all his
forces consisted wholly of Bassarides, Evantes, Euhyades, Edonides,
Trietherides, Ogygiae, Mimallonides, Maenades, Thyades, and Bacchae,
frantic, raving, raging, furious, mad women, begirt with live snakes and
serpents instead of girdles, dishevelled, their hair flowing about their
shoulders, with garlands of vine-branches instead of forehead-cloths, clad
with stag's or goat's skins, and armed with torches, javelins, spears, and
halberds whose ends were like pineapples. Besides, they had certain small
light bucklers that gave a loud sound if you touched 'em never so little,
and these served them instead of drums. They were just seventy-nine
thousand two hundred and twenty-seven.
Silenus, who led the van, was one on whom Bacchus relied very much, having
formerly had many proofs of his valour and conduct. He was a diminutive,
stooping, palsied, plump, gorbellied old fellow, with a swingeing pair of
stiff-standing lugs of his own, a sharp Roman nose, large rough eyebrows,
mounted on a well-hung ass. In his fist he held a staff to lean upon, and
also bravely to fight whenever he had occasion to alight; and he was
dressed in a woman's yellow gown. His followers were all young, wild,
clownish people, as hornified as so many kids and as fell as so many
tigers, naked, and perpetually singing and dancing country-dances. They
were called tityri and satyrs, and were in all eighty-five thousand one
hundred and thirty-three.
Pan, who brought up the rear, was a monstrous sort of a thing; for his
lower parts were like a goat's, his thighs hairy, and his horns bolt
upright; a crimson fiery phiz, and a beard that was none of the shortest.
He was a bold, stout, daring, desperate fellow, very apt to take pepper in
the nose for yea and nay.
In his left hand he held a pipe, and a crooked stick in his right. His
forces consisted also wholly of satyrs, aegipanes, agripanes, sylvans,
fauns, lemures, lares, elves, and hobgoblins, and their number was
seventy-eight thousand one hundred and fourteen. The signal or word
common to all the army was Evohe.
Chapter 5. XL.
