The gunner immediately came, and was ordered by
Pantagruel
to fire that
gun, and then charge it with fresh powder, which was soon done.
gun, and then charge it with fresh powder, which was soon done.
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
Catch me there if
you can, cried Panurge; may the devil's head-cook conjure my bumgut into a
pair of bellows if ever you find me among them! Hermits, sham saints,
living forms of mortification, holy mountebanks, avaunt! in the name of
your father Satan, get out of my sight! When the devil's a hog, you shall
eat bacon. I shall not forget yet awhile our fat Concilipetes of Chesil.
O that Beelzebub and Astaroth had counselled them to hang themselves out of
the way, and they had done't! we had not then suffered so much by devilish
storms as we did for having seen 'em. Hark ye me, dear rogue, Xenomanes,
my friend, I prithee are these hermits, hypocrites, and eavesdroppers maids
or married? Is there anything of the feminine gender among them? Could a
body hypocritically take there a small hypocritical touch? Will they lie
backwards, and let out their fore-rooms? There's a fine question to be
asked, cried Pantagruel. Yes, yes, answered Xenomanes; you may find there
many goodly hypocritesses, jolly spiritual actresses, kind hermitesses,
women that have a plaguy deal of religion; then there's the copies of 'em,
little hypocritillons, sham sanctitos, and hermitillons. Foh! away with
them, cried Friar John; a young saint, an old devil! (Mark this, an old
saying, and as true a one as, a young whore, an old saint. ) Were there not
such, continued Xenomanes, the isle of Chaneph, for want of a
multiplication of progeny, had long ere this been desert and desolate.
Pantagruel sent them by Gymnast in the pinnace seventy-eight thousand fine
pretty little gold half-crowns, of those that are marked with a lantern.
After this he asked, What's o'clock? Past nine, answered Epistemon. It is
then the best time to go to dinner, said Pantagruel; for the sacred line so
celebrated by Aristophanes in his play called Concionatrices is at hand,
never failing when the shadow is decempedal.
Formerly, among the Persians, dinner-time was at a set hour only for kings;
as for all others, their appetite and their belly was their clock; when
that chimed, they thought it time to go to dinner. So we find in Plautus a
certain parasite making a heavy do, and sadly railing at the inventors of
hour-glasses and dials as being unnecessary things, there being no clock
more regular than the belly.
Diogenes being asked at what times a man ought to eat, answered, The rich
when he is hungry, the poor when he has anything to eat. Physicians more
properly say that the canonical hours are,
To rise at five, to dine at nine,
To sup at five, to sleep at nine.
The famous king Petosiris's magic was different,--Here the officers for the
gut came in, and got ready the tables and cupboards; laid the cloth, whose
sight and pleasant smell were very comfortable; and brought plates,
napkins, salts, tankards, flagons, tall-boys, ewers, tumblers, cups,
goblets, basins, and cisterns.
Friar John, at the head of the stewards, sewers, yeomen of the pantry, and
of the mouth, tasters, carvers, cupbearers, and cupboard-keepers, brought
four stately pasties, so huge that they put me in mind of the four bastions
at Turin. Ods-fish, how manfully did they storm them! What havoc did they
make with the long train of dishes that came after them! How bravely did
they stand to their pan-puddings, and paid off their dust! How merrily did
they soak their noses!
The fruit was not yet brought in, when a fresh gale at west and by north
began to fill the main-course, mizen-sail, fore-sail, tops, and
top-gallants; for which blessing they all sung divers hymns of thanks and
praise.
When the fruit was on the table, Pantagruel asked, Now tell me, gentlemen,
are your doubts fully resolved or no? I gape and yawn no more, answered
Rhizotome. I sleep no longer like a dog, said Ponocrates. I have cleared
my eyesight, said Gymnast. I have broke my fast, said Eusthenes; so that
for this whole day I shall be secure from the danger of my spittle.
Asps. Black wag leg-flies. Domeses.
Amphisbenes. Spanish flies. Dryinades.
Anerudutes. Catoblepes. Dragons.
Abedissimons. Horned snakes. Elopes.
Alhartrafz. Caterpillars. Enhydrides.
Ammobates. Crocodiles. Falvises.
Apimaos. Toads. Galeotes.
Alhatrabans. Nightmares. Harmenes.
Aractes. Mad dogs. Handons.
Asterions. Colotes. Icles.
Alcharates. Cychriodes. Jarraries.
Arges. Cafezates. Ilicines.
Spiders. Cauhares. Pharaoh's mice.
Starry lizards. Snakes. Kesudures.
Attelabes. Cuhersks, two- Sea-hares.
Ascalabotes. tongued adders. Chalcidic newts.
Haemorrhoids. Amphibious ser- Footed serpents.
Basilisks. pents. Manticores.
Fitches. Cenchres. Molures.
Sucking water- Cockatrices. Mouse-serpents.
snakes. Dipsades. Shrew-mice.
Miliares. Salamanders. Stinkfish.
Megalaunes. Slowworms. Stuphes.
Spitting-asps. Stellions. Sabrins.
Porphyri. Scorpenes. Blood-sucking flies.
Pareades. Scorpions. Hornfretters.
Phalanges. Hornworms. Scolopendres.
Penphredons. Scalavotins. Tarantulas.
Pinetree-worms. Solofuidars. Blind worms.
Ruteles. Deaf-asps. Tetragnathias.
Worms. Horseleeches. Teristales.
Rhagions. Salt-haters. Vipers, &c.
Rhaganes. Rot-serpents.
Chapter 4. LXV.
How Pantagruel passed the time with his servants.
In what hierarchy of such venomous creatures do you place Panurge's future
spouse? asked Friar John. Art thou speaking ill of women, cried Panurge,
thou mangy scoundrel, thou sorry, noddy-peaked shaveling monk? By the
cenomanic paunch and gixy, said Epistemon, Euripides has written, and makes
Andromache say it, that by industry, and the help of the gods, men had
found remedies against all poisonous creatures; but none was yet found
against a bad wife.
This flaunting Euripides, cried Panurge, was gabbling against women every
foot, and therefore was devoured by dogs, as a judgment from above; as
Aristophanes observes. Let's go on. Let him speak that is next. I can
leak now like any stone-horse, said then Epistemon. I am, said Xenomanes,
full as an egg and round as a hoop; my ship's hold can hold no more, and
will now make shift to bear a steady sail. Said Carpalin, A truce with
thirst, a truce with hunger; they are strong, but wine and meat are
stronger. I'm no more in the dumps cried Panurge; my heart's a pound
lighter. I'm in the right cue now, as brisk as a body-louse, and as merry
as a beggar. For my part, I know what I do when I drink; and it is a true
thing (though 'tis in your Euripides) that is said by that jolly toper
Silenus of blessed memory, that--
The man's emphatically mad,
Who drinks the best, yet can be sad.
We must not fail to return our humble and hearty thanks to the Being who,
with this good bread, this cool delicious wine, these good meats and rare
dainties, removes from our bodies and minds these pains and perturbations,
and at the same time fills us with pleasure and with food.
But methinks, sir, you did not give an answer to Friar John's question;
which, as I take it, was how to raise good weather. Since you ask no more
than this easy question, answered Pantagruel, I'll strive to give you
satisfaction; and some other time we'll talk of the rest of the problems,
if you will.
Well then, Friar John asked how good weather might be raised. Have we not
raised it? Look up and see our full topsails. Hark how the wind whistles
through the shrouds, what a stiff gale it blows. Observe the rattling of
the tacklings, and see the sheets that fasten the mainsail behind; the
force of the wind puts them upon the stretch. While we passed our time
merrily, the dull weather also passed away; and while we raised the glasses
to our mouths, we also raised the wind by a secret sympathy in nature.
Thus Atlas and Hercules clubbed to raise and underprop the falling sky, if
you'll believe the wise mythologists, but they raised it some half an inch
too high, Atlas to entertain his guest Hercules more pleasantly, and
Hercules to make himself amends for the thirst which some time before had
tormented him in the deserts of Africa. Your good father, said Friar John,
interrupting him, takes care to free many people from such an
inconveniency; for I have been told by many venerable doctors that his
chief-butler, Turelupin, saves above eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly
to make servants, and all comers and goers, drink before they are a-dry.
As the camels and dromedaries of a caravan, continued Pantagruel, use to
drink for the thirst that's past, for the present, and for that to come, so
did Hercules; and being thus excessively raised, this gave new motion to
the sky, which is that of titubation and trepidation, about which our
crackbrained astrologers make such a pother. This, said Panurge, makes the
saying good:
While jolly companions carouse it together,
A fig for the storm, it gives way to good weather.
Nay, continued Pantagruel, some will tell you that we have not only
shortened the time of the calm, but also much disburthened the ship; not
like Aesop's basket, by easing it of the provision, but by breaking our
fasts; and that a man is more terrestrial and heavy when fasting than when
he has eaten and drank, even as they pretend that he weighs more dead than
living. However it is, you will grant they are in the right who take their
morning's draught and breakfast before a long journey; then say that the
horses will perform the better, and that a spur in the head is worth two in
the flank; or, in the same horse dialect--
That a cup in the pate
Is a mile in the gate.
Don't you know that formerly the Amycleans worshipped the noble Bacchus
above all other gods, and gave him the name of Psila, which in the Doric
dialect signifies wings; for, as the birds raise themselves by a towering
flight with their wings above the clouds, so, with the help of soaring
Bacchus, the powerful juice of the grape, our spirits are exalted to a
pitch above themselves, our bodies are more sprightly, and their earthly
parts become soft and pliant.
Chapter 4. LXVI.
How, by Pantagruel's order, the Muses were saluted near the isle of
Ganabim.
This fair wind and as fine talk brought us in sight of a high land, which
Pantagruel discovering afar off, showed it Xenomanes, and asked him, Do you
see yonder to the leeward a high rock with two tops, much like Mount
Parnassus in Phocis? I do plainly, answered Xenomanes; 'tis the isle of
Ganabim. Have you a mind to go ashore there? No, returned Pantagruel.
You do well, indeed, said Xenomanes; for there is nothing worth seeing in
the place. The people are all thieves; yet there is the finest fountain in
the world, and a very large forest towards the right top of the mountain.
Your fleet may take in wood and water there.
He that spoke last, spoke well, quoth Panurge; let us not by any means be
so mad as to go among a parcel of thieves and sharpers. You may take my
word for't, this place is just such another as, to my knowledge, formerly
were the islands of Sark and Herm, between the smaller and the greater
Britain; such as was the Poneropolis of Philip in Thrace; islands of
thieves, banditti, picaroons, robbers, ruffians, and murderers, worse than
raw-head and bloody-bones, and full as honest as the senior fellows of the
college of iniquity, the very outcasts of the county gaol's common-side.
As you love yourself, do not go among 'em. If you go you'll come off but
bluely, if you come off at all. If you will not believe me, at least
believe what the good and wise Xenomanes tells you; for may I never stir if
they are not worse than the very cannibals; they would certainly eat us
alive. Do not go among 'em, I pray you; it were safer to take a journey to
hell. Hark! by Cod's body, I hear 'em ringing the alarm-bell most
dreadfully, as the Gascons about Bordeaux used formerly to do against the
commissaries and officers for the tax on salt, or my ears tingle. Let's
sheer off.
Believe me, sir, said Friar John, let's rather land; we will rid the world
of that vermin, and inn there for nothing. Old Nick go with thee for me,
quoth Panurge. This rash hairbrained devil of a friar fears nothing, but
ventures and runs on like a mad devil as he is, and cares not a rush what
becomes of others; as if everyone was a monk, like his friarship. A pox on
grinning honour, say I. Go to, returned the friar, thou mangy noddy-peak!
thou forlorn druggle-headed sneaksby! and may a million of black devils
anatomize thy cockle brain. The hen-hearted rascal is so cowardly that he
berays himself for fear every day. If thou art so afraid, dunghill, do not
go; stay here and be hanged; or go and hide thy loggerhead under Madam
Proserpine's petticoat.
Panurge hearing this, his breech began to make buttons; so he slunk in in
an instant, and went to hide his head down in the bread-room among the
musty biscuits and the orts and scraps of broken bread.
Pantagruel in the meantime said to the rest: I feel a pressing retraction
in my soul, which like a voice admonishes me not to land there. Whenever I
have felt such a motion within me I have found myself happy in avoiding
what it directed me to shun, or in undertaking what it prompted me to do;
and I never had occasion to repent following its dictates.
As much, said Epistemon, is related of the daemon of Socrates, so
celebrated among the Academics. Well then, sir, said Friar John, while the
ship's crew water have you a mind to have good sport? Panurge is got down
somewhere in the hold, where he is crept into some corner, and lurks like a
mouse in a cranny. Let 'em give the word for the gunner to fire yon gun
over the round-house on the poop; this will serve to salute the Muses of
this Anti-parnassus; besides, the powder does but decay in it. You are in
the right, said Pantagruel; here, give the word for the gunner.
The gunner immediately came, and was ordered by Pantagruel to fire that
gun, and then charge it with fresh powder, which was soon done. The
gunners of the other ships, frigates, galleons, and galleys of the fleet,
hearing us fire, gave every one a gun to the island; which made such a
horrid noise that you would have sworn heaven had been tumbling about our
ears.
Chapter 4. LXVII.
How Panurge berayed himself for fear; and of the huge cat Rodilardus, which
he took for a puny devil.
Panurge, like a wild, addle-pated, giddy-goat, sallies out of the
bread-room in his shirt, with nothing else about him but one of his
stockings, half on, half off, about his heel, like a rough-footed pigeon;
his hair and beard all bepowdered with crumbs of bread in which he had been
over head and ears, and a huge and mighty puss partly wrapped up in his
other stocking. In this equipage, his chaps moving like a monkey's who's
a-louse-hunting, his eyes staring like a dead pig's, his teeth chattering,
and his bum quivering, the poor dog fled to Friar John, who was then sitting
by the chain-wales of the starboard side of the ship, and prayed him
heartily to take pity on him and keep him in the safeguard of his trusty
bilbo; swearing, by his share of Papimany, that he had seen all hell broke
loose.
Woe is me, my Jacky, cried he, my dear Johnny, my old crony, my brother, my
ghostly father! all the devils keep holiday, all the devils keep their
feast to-day, man. Pork and peas choke me if ever thou sawest such
preparations in thy life for an infernal feast. Dost thou see the smoke of
hell's kitchens? (This he said, showing him the smoke of the gunpowder
above the ships. ) Thou never sawest so many damned souls since thou wast
born; and so fair, so bewitching they seem, that one would swear they are
Stygian ambrosia. I thought at first, God forgive me! that they had been
English souls; and I don't know but that this morning the isle of Horses,
near Scotland, was sacked, with all the English who had surprised it, by
the lords of Termes and Essay.
Friar John, at the approach of Panurge, was entertained with a kind of
smell that was not like that of gunpowder, nor altogether so sweet as musk;
which made him turn Panurge about, and then he saw that his shirt was
dismally bepawed and berayed with fresh sir-reverence. The retentive
faculty of the nerve which restrains the muscle called sphincter ('tis the
arse-hole, an it please you) was relaxated by the violence of the fear
which he had been in during his fantastic visions. Add to this the
thundering noise of the shooting, which seems more dreadful between decks
than above. Nor ought you to wonder at such a mishap; for one of the
symptoms and accidents of fear is, that it often opens the wicket of the
cupboard wherein second-hand meat is kept for a time. Let's illustrate
this noble theme with some examples.
Messer Pantolfe de la Cassina of Siena, riding post from Rome, came to
Chambery, and alighting at honest Vinet's took one of the pitchforks in the
stable; then turning to the innkeeper, said to him, Da Roma in qua io non
son andato del corpo. Di gratia piglia in mano questa forcha, et fa mi
paura. (I have not had a stool since I left Rome. I pray thee take this
pitchfork and fright me. ) Vinet took it, and made several offers as if he
would in good earnest have hit the signor, but all in vain; so the Sienese
said to him, Si tu non fai altramente, tu non fai nulla; pero sforzati di
adoperarli piu guagliardamente. (If thou dost not go another way to work,
thou hadst as good do nothing; therefore try to bestir thyself more
briskly. ) With this, Vinet lent him such a swinging stoater with the
pitchfork souse between the neck and the collar of his jerkin, that down
fell signor on the ground arsyversy, with his spindle shanks wide
straggling over his poll. Then mine host sputtering, with a full-mouthed
laugh, said to his guest, By Beelzebub's bumgut, much good may it do you,
Signore Italiano. Take notice this is datum Camberiaci, given at Chambery.
'Twas well the Sienese had untrussed his points and let down his drawers;
for this physic worked with him as soon as he took it, and as copious was
the evacuation as that of nine buffaloes and fourteen missificating
arch-lubbers. Which operation being over, the mannerly Sienese courteously
gave mine host a whole bushel of thanks, saying to him, Io ti ringratio, bel
messere; cosi facendo tu m' ai esparmiata la speza d'un servitiale. (I
thank thee, good landlord; by this thou hast e'en saved me the expense of a
clyster. )
I'll give you another example of Edward V. , King of England. Master
Francis Villon, being banished France, fled to him, and got so far into his
favour as to be privy to all his household affairs. One day the king,
being on his close-stool, showed Villon the arms of France, and said to
him, Dost thou see what respect I have for thy French kings? I have none
of their arms anywhere but in this backside, near my close-stool.
Ods-life, said the buffoon, how wise, prudent, and careful of your health
your highness is! How carefully your learned doctor, Thomas Linacre, looks
after you! He saw that now you grow old you are inclined to be somewhat
costive, and every day were fain to have an apothecary, I mean a suppository
or clyster, thrust into your royal nockandroe; so he has, much to the
purpose, induced you to place here the arms of France; for the very sight of
them puts you into such a dreadful fright that you immediately let fly as
much as would come from eighteen squattering bonasi of Paeonia. And if they
were painted in other parts of your house, by jingo, you would presently
conskite yourself wherever you saw them. Nay, had you but here a picture of
the great oriflamme of France, ods-bodikins, your tripes and bowels would be
in no small danger of dropping out at the orifice of your posteriors. But
henh, henh, atque iterum henh.
A silly cockney am I not,
As ever did from Paris come?
And with a rope and sliding knot
My neck shall know what weighs my bum.
A cockney of short reach, I say, shallow of judgment and judging shallowly,
to wonder that you should cause your points to be untrussed in your chamber
before you come into this closet. By'r lady, at first I thought your
close-stool had stood behind the hangings of your bed; otherwise it seemed
very odd to me you should untruss so far from the place of evacuation. But
now I find I was a gull, a wittol, a woodcock, a mere ninny, a dolt-head, a
noddy, a changeling, a calf-lolly, a doddipoll. You do wisely, by the
mass, you do wisely; for had you not been ready to clap your hind face on
the mustard-pot as soon as you came within sight of these arms--mark ye me,
cop's body--the bottom of your breeches had supplied the office of a
close-stool.
Friar John, stopping the handle of his face with his left hand, did, with
the forefinger of the right, point out Panurge's shirt to Pantagruel, who,
seeing him in this pickle, scared, appalled, shivering, raving, staring,
berayed, and torn with the claws of the famous cat Rodilardus, could not
choose but laugh, and said to him, Prithee what wouldst thou do with this
cat? With this cat? quoth Panurge; the devil scratch me if I did not think
it had been a young soft-chinned devil, which, with this same stocking
instead of mitten, I had snatched up in the great hutch of hell as
thievishly as any sizar of Montague college could have done. The devil
take Tybert! I feel it has all bepinked my poor hide, and drawn on it to
the life I don't know how many lobsters' whiskers. With this he threw his
boar-cat down.
Go, go, said Pantagruel, be bathed and cleaned, calm your fears, put on a
clean shift, and then your clothes. What! do you think I am afraid? cried
Panurge. Not I, I protest. By the testicles of Hercules, I am more
hearty, bold, and stout, though I say it that should not, than if I had
swallowed as many flies as are put into plumcakes and other paste at Paris
from Midsummer to Christmas. But what's this? Hah! oh, ho! how the devil
came I by this? Do you call this what the cat left in the malt, filth,
dirt, dung, dejection, faecal matter, excrement, stercoration,
sir-reverence, ordure, second-hand meats, fumets, stronts, scybal, or
spyrathe? 'Tis Hibernian saffron, I protest. Hah, hah, hah! 'tis Irish
saffron, by Shaint Pautrick, and so much for this time. Selah. Let's
drink.
THE FIFTH BOOK
The Author's Prologue.
Indefatigable topers, and you, thrice precious martyrs of the smock, give
me leave to put a serious question to your worships while you are idly
striking your codpieces, and I myself not much better employed. Pray, why
is it that people say that men are not such sots nowadays as they were in
the days of yore? Sot is an old word that signifies a dunce, dullard,
jolthead, gull, wittol, or noddy, one without guts in his brains, whose
cockloft is unfurnished, and, in short, a fool. Now would I know whether
you would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically
may, that formerly men were fools and in this generation are grown wise?
How many and what dispositions made them fools? How many and what
dispositions were wanting to make 'em wise? Why were they fools? How
should they be wise? Pray, how came you to know that men were formerly
fools? How did you find that they are now wise? Who the devil made 'em
fools? Who a God's name made 'em wise? Who d'ye think are most, those
that loved mankind foolish, or those that love it wise? How long has it
been wise? How long otherwise? Whence proceeded the foregoing folly?
Whence the following wisdom? Why did the old folly end now, and no later?
Why did the modern wisdom begin now, and no sooner? What were we the worse
for the former folly? What the better for the succeeding wisdom? How
should the ancient folly be come to nothing? How should this same new
wisdom be started up and established?
Now answer me, an't please you. I dare not adjure you in stronger terms,
reverend sirs, lest I make your pious fatherly worships in the least
uneasy. Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.
Be cheery, my lads; and if you are for me, take me off three or five
bumpers of the best, while I make a halt at the first part of the sermon;
then answer my question. If you are not for me, avaunt! avoid, Satan! For
I swear by my great-grandmother's placket (and that's a horrid oath), that
if you don't help me to solve that puzzling problem, I will, nay, I already
do repent having proposed it; for still I must remain nettled and
gravelled, and a devil a bit I know how to get off. Well, what say you?
I'faith, I begin to smell you out. You are not yet disposed to give me an
answer; nor I neither, by these whiskers. Yet to give some light into the
business, I'll e'en tell you what had been anciently foretold in the matter
by a venerable doctor, who, being moved by the spirit in a prophetic vein,
wrote a book ycleped the Prelatical Bagpipe. What d'ye think the old
fornicator saith? Hearken, you old noddies, hearken now or never.
The jubilee's year, when all like fools were shorn,
Is about thirty supernumerary.
O want of veneration! fools they seemed,
But, persevering, with long breves, at last
No more they shall be gaping greedy fools.
For they shall shell the shrub's delicious fruit,
Whose flower they in the spring so much had feared.
Now you have it, what do you make on't? The seer is ancient, the style
laconic, the sentences dark like those of Scotus, though they treat of
matters dark enough in themselves. The best commentators on that good
father take the jubilee after the thirtieth to be the years that are
included in this present age till 1550 (there being but one jubilee every
fifty years). Men shall no longer be thought fools next green peas season.
The fools, whose number, as Solomon certifies, is infinite, shall go to pot
like a parcel of mad bedlamites as they are; and all manner of folly shall
have an end, that being also numberless, according to Avicenna, maniae
infinitae sunt species. Having been driven back and hidden towards the
centre during the rigour of the winter, 'tis now to be seen on the surface,
and buds out like the trees. This is as plain as a nose in a man's face;
you know it by experience; you see it. And it was formerly found out by
that great good man Hippocrates, Aphorism Verae etenim maniae, &c. This
world therefore wisifying itself, shall no longer dread the flower and
blossoms of every coming spring, that is, as you may piously believe,
bumper in hand and tears in eyes, in the woeful time of Lent, which used to
keep them company.
Whole cartloads of books that seemed florid, flourishing, and flowery, gay,
and gaudy as so many butterflies, but in the main were tiresome, dull,
soporiferous, irksome, mischievous, crabbed, knotty, puzzling, and dark as
those of whining Heraclitus, as unintelligible as the numbers of
Pythagoras, that king of the bean, according to Horace; those books, I say,
have seen their best days and shall soon come to nothing, being delivered
to the executing worms and merciless petty chandlers; such was their
destiny, and to this they were predestinated.
In their stead beans in cod are started up; that is, these merry and
fructifying Pantagruelian books, so much sought nowadays in expectation of
the following jubilee's period; to the study of which writings all people
have given their minds, and accordingly have gained the name of wise.
Now I think I have fairly solved and resolved your problem; then reform,
and be the better for it. Hem once or twice like hearts of oak; stand to
your pan-puddings, and take me off your bumpers, nine go-downs, and huzza!
since we are like to have a good vintage, and misers hang themselves. Oh!
they will cost me an estate in hempen collars if fair weather hold. For I
hereby promise to furnish them with twice as much as will do their business
on free cost, as often as they will take the pains to dance at a rope's end
providently to save charges, to the no small disappointment of the finisher
of the law.
Now, my friends, that you may put in for a share of this new wisdom, and
shake off the antiquated folly this very moment, scratch me out of your
scrolls and quite discard the symbol of the old philosopher with the golden
thigh, by which he has forbidden you to eat beans; for you may take it for
a truth granted among all professors in the science of good eating, that he
enjoined you not to taste of them only with the same kind intent that a
certain fresh-water physician had when he did forbid to Amer, late Lord of
Camelotiere, kinsman to the lawyer of that name, the wing of the partridge,
the rump of the chicken, and the neck of the pigeon, saying, Ala mala,
rumpum dubium, collum bonum, pelle remota. For the duncical dog-leech was
so selfish as to reserve them for his own dainty chops, and allowed his
poor patients little more than the bare bones to pick, lest they should
overload their squeamish stomachs.
To the heathen philosopher succeeded a pack of Capuchins, monks who forbid
us the use of beans, that is, Pantagruelian books. They seem to follow the
example of Philoxenus and Gnatho, one of whom was a Sicilian of fulsome
memory, the ancient master-builders of their monastic cram-gut
voluptuousness, who, when some dainty bit was served up at a feast,
filthily used to spit on it, that none but their nasty selves might have
the stomach to eat of it, though their liquorish chops watered never so
much after it.
So those hideous, snotty, phthisicky, eaves-dropping, musty, moving forms
of mortification, both in public and private, curse those dainty books, and
like toads spit their venom upon them.
Now, though we have in our mother-tongue several excellent works in verse
and prose, and, heaven be praised! but little left of the trash and
trumpery stuff of those duncical mumblers of ave-maries and the barbarous
foregoing Gothic age, I have made bold to choose to chirrup and warble my
plain ditty, or, as they say, to whistle like a goose among the swans,
rather than be thought deaf among so many pretty poets and eloquent
orators. And thus I am prouder of acting the clown, or any other
under-part, among the many ingenious actors in that noble play, than of
herding among those mutes, who, like so many shadows and ciphers, only serve
to fill up the house and make up a number, gaping and yawning at the flies,
and pricking up their lugs, like so many Arcadian asses, at the striking up
of the music; thus silently giving to understand that their fopships are
tickled in the right place.
Having taken this resolution, I thought it would not be amiss to move my
Diogenical tub, that you might not accuse me of living without example. I
see a swarm of our modern poets and orators, your Colinets, Marots,
Drouets, Saint Gelais, Salels, Masuels, and many more, who, having
commenced masters in Apollo's academy on Mount Parnassus, and drunk
brimmers at the Caballin fountain among the nine merry Muses, have raised
our vulgar tongue, and made it a noble and everlasting structure. Their
works are all Parian marble, alabaster, porphyry, and royal cement; they
treat of nothing but heroic deeds, mighty things, grave and difficult
matters, and this in a crimson, alamode, rhetorical style. Their writings
are all divine nectar, rich, racy, sparkling, delicate, and luscious wine.
Nor does our sex wholly engross this honour; ladies have had their share of
the glory; one of them, of the royal blood of France, whom it were a
profanation but to name here, surprises the age at once by the transcendent
and inventive genius in her writings and the admirable graces of her style.
Imitate those great examples if you can; for my part I cannot. Everyone,
you know, cannot go to Corinth. When Solomon built the temple, all could
not give gold by handfuls.
Since then 'tis not in my power to improve our architecture as much as
they, I am e'en resolved to do like Renault of Montauban: I'll wait on the
masons, set on the pot for the masons, cook for the stone-cutters; and
since it was not my good luck to be cut out for one of them, I will live
and die the admirer of their divine writings.
As for you, little envious prigs, snarling bastards, puny critics, you'll
soon have railed your last; go hang yourselves, and choose you out some
well-spread oak, under whose shade you may swing in state, to the
admiration of the gaping mob; you shall never want rope enough. While I
here solemnly protest before my Helicon, in the presence of my nine
mistresses the Muses, that if I live yet the age of a dog, eked out with
that of three crows, sound wind and limbs, like the old Hebrew captain
Moses, Xenophilus the musician, and Demonax the philosopher, by arguments
no ways impertinent, and reasons not to be disputed, I will prove, in the
teeth of a parcel of brokers and retailers of ancient rhapsodies and such
mouldy trash, that our vulgar tongue is not so mean, silly, inept, poor,
barren, and contemptible as they pretend. Nor ought I to be afraid of I
know not what botchers of old threadbare stuff, a hundred and a hundred
times clouted up and pieced together; wretched bunglers that can do nothing
but new-vamp old rusty saws; beggarly scavengers that rake even the
muddiest canals of antiquity for scraps and bits of Latin as insignificant
as they are often uncertain. Beseeching our grandees of Witland that, as
when formerly Apollo had distributed all the treasures of his poetical
exchequer to his favourites, little hulchbacked Aesop got for himself the
office of apologue-monger; in the same manner, since I do not aspire
higher, they would not deny me that of puny rhyparographer, or riffraff
follower of the sect of Pyreicus.
I dare swear they will grant me this; for they are all so kind, so
good-natured, and so generous, that they'll ne'er boggle at so small a
request. Therefore, both dry and hungry souls, pot and trenchermen, fully
enjoying those books, perusing, quoting them in their merry conventicles,
and observing the great mysteries of which they treat, shall gain a singular
profit and fame; as in the like case was done by Alexander the Great with
the books of prime philosophy composed by Aristotle.
O rare! belly on belly! what swillers, what twisters will there be!
Then be sure all you that take care not to die of the pip, be sure, I say,
you take my advice, and stock yourselves with good store of such books as
soon as you meet with them at the booksellers; and do not only shell those
beans, but e'en swallow them down like an opiate cordial, and let them be
in you; I say, let them be within you; then you shall find, my beloved,
what good they do to all clever shellers of beans.
Here is a good handsome basketful of them, which I here lay before your
worships; they were gathered in the very individual garden whence the
former came. So I beseech you, reverend sirs, with as much respect as was
ever paid by dedicating author, to accept of the gift, in hopes of somewhat
better against next visit the swallows give us.
THE FIFTH BOOK.
Chapter 5. I.
How Pantagruel arrived at the Ringing Island, and of the noise that we
heard.
Pursuing our voyage, we sailed three days without discovering anything; on
the fourth we made land. Our pilot told us that it was the Ringing Island,
and indeed we heard a kind of a confused and often repeated noise, that
seemed to us at a great distance not unlike the sound of great,
middle-sized, and little bells rung all at once, as 'tis customary at Paris,
Tours, Gergeau, Nantes, and elsewhere on high holidays; and the nearer we
came to the land the louder we heard that jangling.
Some of us doubted that it was the Dodonian kettle, or the portico called
Heptaphone in Olympia, or the eternal humming of the colossus raised on
Memnon's tomb in Thebes of Egypt, or the horrid din that used formerly to
be heard about a tomb at Lipara, one of the Aeolian islands. But this did
not square with chorography.
I do not know, said Pantagruel, but that some swarms of bees hereabouts may
be taking a ramble in the air, and so the neighbourhood make this
dingle-dangle with pans, kettles, and basins, the corybantine cymbals of
Cybele, grandmother of the gods, to call them back. Let's hearken. When we
were nearer, among the everlasting ringing of these indefatigable bells we
heard the singing, as we thought, of some men. For this reason, before we
offered to land on the Ringing Island, Pantagruel was of opinion that we
should go in the pinnace to a small rock, near which we discovered an
hermitage and a little garden. There we found a diminutive old hermit,
whose name was Braguibus, born at Glenay. He gave us a full account of all
the jangling, and regaled us after a strange sort of fashion--four livelong
days did he make us fast, assuring us that we should not be admitted into
the Ringing Island otherwise, because it was then one of the four fasting,
or ember weeks. As I love my belly, quoth Panurge, I by no means understand
this riddle. Methinks this should rather be one of the four windy weeks;
for while we fast we are only puffed up with wind. Pray now, good father
hermit, have not you here some other pastime besides fasting? Methinks it is
somewhat of the leanest; we might well enough be without so many palace
holidays and those fasting times of yours. In my Donatus, quoth Friar John,
I could find yet but three times or tenses, the preterit, the present, and
the future; doubtless here the fourth ought to be a work of supererogation.
That time or tense, said Epistemon, is aorist, derived from the
preter-imperfect tense of the Greeks, admitted in war (? ) and odd cases.
Patience perforce is a remedy for a mad dog. Saith the hermit: It is, as I
told you, fatal to go against this; whosoever does it is a rank heretic, and
wants nothing but fire and faggot, that's certain. To deal plainly with
you, my dear pater, cried Panurge, being at sea, I much more fear being wet
than being warm, and being drowned than being burned.
Well, however, let us fast, a God's name; yet I have fasted so long that it
has quite undermined my flesh, and I fear that at last the bastions of this
bodily fort of mine will fall to ruin. Besides, I am much more afraid of
vexing you in this same trade of fasting; for the devil a bit I understand
anything in it, and it becomes me very scurvily, as several people have
told me, and I am apt to believe them. For my part, I have no great
stomach to fasting; for alas! it is as easy as pissing a bed, and a trade
of which anybody may set up; there needs no tools. I am much more inclined
not to fast for the future; for to do so there is some stock required, and
some tools are set a-work. No matter, since you are so steadfast, and
would have us fast, let us fast as fast as we can, and then breakfast in
the name of famine. Now we are come to these esurial idle days. I vow I
had quite put them out of my head long ago. If we must fast, said
Pantagruel, I see no other remedy but to get rid of it as soon as we can,
as we would out of a bad way. I'll in that space of time somewhat look
over my papers, and examine whether the marine study be as good as ours at
land. For Plato, to describe a silly, raw, ignorant fellow, compares him
to those that are bred on shipboard, as we would do one bred up in a
barrel, who never saw anything but through the bung-hole.
To tell you the short and the long of the matter, our fasting was most
hideous and terrible; for the first day we fasted on fisticuffs, the second
at cudgels, the third at sharps, and the fourth at blood and wounds: such
was the order of the fairies.
Chapter 5. II.
How the Ringing Island had been inhabited by the Siticines, who were become
birds.
Having fasted as aforesaid, the hermit gave us a letter for one whom he
called Albian Camar, Master Aedituus of the Ringing Island; but Panurge
greeting him called him Master Antitus. He was a little queer old fellow,
bald-pated, with a snout whereat you might easily have lighted a
card-match, and a phiz as red as a cardinal's cap. He made us all very
welcome, upon the hermit's recommendation, hearing that we had fasted, as I
have told you.
When we had well stuffed our puddings, he gave us an account of what was
remarkable in the island, affirming that it had been at first inhabited by
the Siticines; but that, according to the course of nature--as all things,
you know, are subject to change--they were become birds.
you can, cried Panurge; may the devil's head-cook conjure my bumgut into a
pair of bellows if ever you find me among them! Hermits, sham saints,
living forms of mortification, holy mountebanks, avaunt! in the name of
your father Satan, get out of my sight! When the devil's a hog, you shall
eat bacon. I shall not forget yet awhile our fat Concilipetes of Chesil.
O that Beelzebub and Astaroth had counselled them to hang themselves out of
the way, and they had done't! we had not then suffered so much by devilish
storms as we did for having seen 'em. Hark ye me, dear rogue, Xenomanes,
my friend, I prithee are these hermits, hypocrites, and eavesdroppers maids
or married? Is there anything of the feminine gender among them? Could a
body hypocritically take there a small hypocritical touch? Will they lie
backwards, and let out their fore-rooms? There's a fine question to be
asked, cried Pantagruel. Yes, yes, answered Xenomanes; you may find there
many goodly hypocritesses, jolly spiritual actresses, kind hermitesses,
women that have a plaguy deal of religion; then there's the copies of 'em,
little hypocritillons, sham sanctitos, and hermitillons. Foh! away with
them, cried Friar John; a young saint, an old devil! (Mark this, an old
saying, and as true a one as, a young whore, an old saint. ) Were there not
such, continued Xenomanes, the isle of Chaneph, for want of a
multiplication of progeny, had long ere this been desert and desolate.
Pantagruel sent them by Gymnast in the pinnace seventy-eight thousand fine
pretty little gold half-crowns, of those that are marked with a lantern.
After this he asked, What's o'clock? Past nine, answered Epistemon. It is
then the best time to go to dinner, said Pantagruel; for the sacred line so
celebrated by Aristophanes in his play called Concionatrices is at hand,
never failing when the shadow is decempedal.
Formerly, among the Persians, dinner-time was at a set hour only for kings;
as for all others, their appetite and their belly was their clock; when
that chimed, they thought it time to go to dinner. So we find in Plautus a
certain parasite making a heavy do, and sadly railing at the inventors of
hour-glasses and dials as being unnecessary things, there being no clock
more regular than the belly.
Diogenes being asked at what times a man ought to eat, answered, The rich
when he is hungry, the poor when he has anything to eat. Physicians more
properly say that the canonical hours are,
To rise at five, to dine at nine,
To sup at five, to sleep at nine.
The famous king Petosiris's magic was different,--Here the officers for the
gut came in, and got ready the tables and cupboards; laid the cloth, whose
sight and pleasant smell were very comfortable; and brought plates,
napkins, salts, tankards, flagons, tall-boys, ewers, tumblers, cups,
goblets, basins, and cisterns.
Friar John, at the head of the stewards, sewers, yeomen of the pantry, and
of the mouth, tasters, carvers, cupbearers, and cupboard-keepers, brought
four stately pasties, so huge that they put me in mind of the four bastions
at Turin. Ods-fish, how manfully did they storm them! What havoc did they
make with the long train of dishes that came after them! How bravely did
they stand to their pan-puddings, and paid off their dust! How merrily did
they soak their noses!
The fruit was not yet brought in, when a fresh gale at west and by north
began to fill the main-course, mizen-sail, fore-sail, tops, and
top-gallants; for which blessing they all sung divers hymns of thanks and
praise.
When the fruit was on the table, Pantagruel asked, Now tell me, gentlemen,
are your doubts fully resolved or no? I gape and yawn no more, answered
Rhizotome. I sleep no longer like a dog, said Ponocrates. I have cleared
my eyesight, said Gymnast. I have broke my fast, said Eusthenes; so that
for this whole day I shall be secure from the danger of my spittle.
Asps. Black wag leg-flies. Domeses.
Amphisbenes. Spanish flies. Dryinades.
Anerudutes. Catoblepes. Dragons.
Abedissimons. Horned snakes. Elopes.
Alhartrafz. Caterpillars. Enhydrides.
Ammobates. Crocodiles. Falvises.
Apimaos. Toads. Galeotes.
Alhatrabans. Nightmares. Harmenes.
Aractes. Mad dogs. Handons.
Asterions. Colotes. Icles.
Alcharates. Cychriodes. Jarraries.
Arges. Cafezates. Ilicines.
Spiders. Cauhares. Pharaoh's mice.
Starry lizards. Snakes. Kesudures.
Attelabes. Cuhersks, two- Sea-hares.
Ascalabotes. tongued adders. Chalcidic newts.
Haemorrhoids. Amphibious ser- Footed serpents.
Basilisks. pents. Manticores.
Fitches. Cenchres. Molures.
Sucking water- Cockatrices. Mouse-serpents.
snakes. Dipsades. Shrew-mice.
Miliares. Salamanders. Stinkfish.
Megalaunes. Slowworms. Stuphes.
Spitting-asps. Stellions. Sabrins.
Porphyri. Scorpenes. Blood-sucking flies.
Pareades. Scorpions. Hornfretters.
Phalanges. Hornworms. Scolopendres.
Penphredons. Scalavotins. Tarantulas.
Pinetree-worms. Solofuidars. Blind worms.
Ruteles. Deaf-asps. Tetragnathias.
Worms. Horseleeches. Teristales.
Rhagions. Salt-haters. Vipers, &c.
Rhaganes. Rot-serpents.
Chapter 4. LXV.
How Pantagruel passed the time with his servants.
In what hierarchy of such venomous creatures do you place Panurge's future
spouse? asked Friar John. Art thou speaking ill of women, cried Panurge,
thou mangy scoundrel, thou sorry, noddy-peaked shaveling monk? By the
cenomanic paunch and gixy, said Epistemon, Euripides has written, and makes
Andromache say it, that by industry, and the help of the gods, men had
found remedies against all poisonous creatures; but none was yet found
against a bad wife.
This flaunting Euripides, cried Panurge, was gabbling against women every
foot, and therefore was devoured by dogs, as a judgment from above; as
Aristophanes observes. Let's go on. Let him speak that is next. I can
leak now like any stone-horse, said then Epistemon. I am, said Xenomanes,
full as an egg and round as a hoop; my ship's hold can hold no more, and
will now make shift to bear a steady sail. Said Carpalin, A truce with
thirst, a truce with hunger; they are strong, but wine and meat are
stronger. I'm no more in the dumps cried Panurge; my heart's a pound
lighter. I'm in the right cue now, as brisk as a body-louse, and as merry
as a beggar. For my part, I know what I do when I drink; and it is a true
thing (though 'tis in your Euripides) that is said by that jolly toper
Silenus of blessed memory, that--
The man's emphatically mad,
Who drinks the best, yet can be sad.
We must not fail to return our humble and hearty thanks to the Being who,
with this good bread, this cool delicious wine, these good meats and rare
dainties, removes from our bodies and minds these pains and perturbations,
and at the same time fills us with pleasure and with food.
But methinks, sir, you did not give an answer to Friar John's question;
which, as I take it, was how to raise good weather. Since you ask no more
than this easy question, answered Pantagruel, I'll strive to give you
satisfaction; and some other time we'll talk of the rest of the problems,
if you will.
Well then, Friar John asked how good weather might be raised. Have we not
raised it? Look up and see our full topsails. Hark how the wind whistles
through the shrouds, what a stiff gale it blows. Observe the rattling of
the tacklings, and see the sheets that fasten the mainsail behind; the
force of the wind puts them upon the stretch. While we passed our time
merrily, the dull weather also passed away; and while we raised the glasses
to our mouths, we also raised the wind by a secret sympathy in nature.
Thus Atlas and Hercules clubbed to raise and underprop the falling sky, if
you'll believe the wise mythologists, but they raised it some half an inch
too high, Atlas to entertain his guest Hercules more pleasantly, and
Hercules to make himself amends for the thirst which some time before had
tormented him in the deserts of Africa. Your good father, said Friar John,
interrupting him, takes care to free many people from such an
inconveniency; for I have been told by many venerable doctors that his
chief-butler, Turelupin, saves above eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly
to make servants, and all comers and goers, drink before they are a-dry.
As the camels and dromedaries of a caravan, continued Pantagruel, use to
drink for the thirst that's past, for the present, and for that to come, so
did Hercules; and being thus excessively raised, this gave new motion to
the sky, which is that of titubation and trepidation, about which our
crackbrained astrologers make such a pother. This, said Panurge, makes the
saying good:
While jolly companions carouse it together,
A fig for the storm, it gives way to good weather.
Nay, continued Pantagruel, some will tell you that we have not only
shortened the time of the calm, but also much disburthened the ship; not
like Aesop's basket, by easing it of the provision, but by breaking our
fasts; and that a man is more terrestrial and heavy when fasting than when
he has eaten and drank, even as they pretend that he weighs more dead than
living. However it is, you will grant they are in the right who take their
morning's draught and breakfast before a long journey; then say that the
horses will perform the better, and that a spur in the head is worth two in
the flank; or, in the same horse dialect--
That a cup in the pate
Is a mile in the gate.
Don't you know that formerly the Amycleans worshipped the noble Bacchus
above all other gods, and gave him the name of Psila, which in the Doric
dialect signifies wings; for, as the birds raise themselves by a towering
flight with their wings above the clouds, so, with the help of soaring
Bacchus, the powerful juice of the grape, our spirits are exalted to a
pitch above themselves, our bodies are more sprightly, and their earthly
parts become soft and pliant.
Chapter 4. LXVI.
How, by Pantagruel's order, the Muses were saluted near the isle of
Ganabim.
This fair wind and as fine talk brought us in sight of a high land, which
Pantagruel discovering afar off, showed it Xenomanes, and asked him, Do you
see yonder to the leeward a high rock with two tops, much like Mount
Parnassus in Phocis? I do plainly, answered Xenomanes; 'tis the isle of
Ganabim. Have you a mind to go ashore there? No, returned Pantagruel.
You do well, indeed, said Xenomanes; for there is nothing worth seeing in
the place. The people are all thieves; yet there is the finest fountain in
the world, and a very large forest towards the right top of the mountain.
Your fleet may take in wood and water there.
He that spoke last, spoke well, quoth Panurge; let us not by any means be
so mad as to go among a parcel of thieves and sharpers. You may take my
word for't, this place is just such another as, to my knowledge, formerly
were the islands of Sark and Herm, between the smaller and the greater
Britain; such as was the Poneropolis of Philip in Thrace; islands of
thieves, banditti, picaroons, robbers, ruffians, and murderers, worse than
raw-head and bloody-bones, and full as honest as the senior fellows of the
college of iniquity, the very outcasts of the county gaol's common-side.
As you love yourself, do not go among 'em. If you go you'll come off but
bluely, if you come off at all. If you will not believe me, at least
believe what the good and wise Xenomanes tells you; for may I never stir if
they are not worse than the very cannibals; they would certainly eat us
alive. Do not go among 'em, I pray you; it were safer to take a journey to
hell. Hark! by Cod's body, I hear 'em ringing the alarm-bell most
dreadfully, as the Gascons about Bordeaux used formerly to do against the
commissaries and officers for the tax on salt, or my ears tingle. Let's
sheer off.
Believe me, sir, said Friar John, let's rather land; we will rid the world
of that vermin, and inn there for nothing. Old Nick go with thee for me,
quoth Panurge. This rash hairbrained devil of a friar fears nothing, but
ventures and runs on like a mad devil as he is, and cares not a rush what
becomes of others; as if everyone was a monk, like his friarship. A pox on
grinning honour, say I. Go to, returned the friar, thou mangy noddy-peak!
thou forlorn druggle-headed sneaksby! and may a million of black devils
anatomize thy cockle brain. The hen-hearted rascal is so cowardly that he
berays himself for fear every day. If thou art so afraid, dunghill, do not
go; stay here and be hanged; or go and hide thy loggerhead under Madam
Proserpine's petticoat.
Panurge hearing this, his breech began to make buttons; so he slunk in in
an instant, and went to hide his head down in the bread-room among the
musty biscuits and the orts and scraps of broken bread.
Pantagruel in the meantime said to the rest: I feel a pressing retraction
in my soul, which like a voice admonishes me not to land there. Whenever I
have felt such a motion within me I have found myself happy in avoiding
what it directed me to shun, or in undertaking what it prompted me to do;
and I never had occasion to repent following its dictates.
As much, said Epistemon, is related of the daemon of Socrates, so
celebrated among the Academics. Well then, sir, said Friar John, while the
ship's crew water have you a mind to have good sport? Panurge is got down
somewhere in the hold, where he is crept into some corner, and lurks like a
mouse in a cranny. Let 'em give the word for the gunner to fire yon gun
over the round-house on the poop; this will serve to salute the Muses of
this Anti-parnassus; besides, the powder does but decay in it. You are in
the right, said Pantagruel; here, give the word for the gunner.
The gunner immediately came, and was ordered by Pantagruel to fire that
gun, and then charge it with fresh powder, which was soon done. The
gunners of the other ships, frigates, galleons, and galleys of the fleet,
hearing us fire, gave every one a gun to the island; which made such a
horrid noise that you would have sworn heaven had been tumbling about our
ears.
Chapter 4. LXVII.
How Panurge berayed himself for fear; and of the huge cat Rodilardus, which
he took for a puny devil.
Panurge, like a wild, addle-pated, giddy-goat, sallies out of the
bread-room in his shirt, with nothing else about him but one of his
stockings, half on, half off, about his heel, like a rough-footed pigeon;
his hair and beard all bepowdered with crumbs of bread in which he had been
over head and ears, and a huge and mighty puss partly wrapped up in his
other stocking. In this equipage, his chaps moving like a monkey's who's
a-louse-hunting, his eyes staring like a dead pig's, his teeth chattering,
and his bum quivering, the poor dog fled to Friar John, who was then sitting
by the chain-wales of the starboard side of the ship, and prayed him
heartily to take pity on him and keep him in the safeguard of his trusty
bilbo; swearing, by his share of Papimany, that he had seen all hell broke
loose.
Woe is me, my Jacky, cried he, my dear Johnny, my old crony, my brother, my
ghostly father! all the devils keep holiday, all the devils keep their
feast to-day, man. Pork and peas choke me if ever thou sawest such
preparations in thy life for an infernal feast. Dost thou see the smoke of
hell's kitchens? (This he said, showing him the smoke of the gunpowder
above the ships. ) Thou never sawest so many damned souls since thou wast
born; and so fair, so bewitching they seem, that one would swear they are
Stygian ambrosia. I thought at first, God forgive me! that they had been
English souls; and I don't know but that this morning the isle of Horses,
near Scotland, was sacked, with all the English who had surprised it, by
the lords of Termes and Essay.
Friar John, at the approach of Panurge, was entertained with a kind of
smell that was not like that of gunpowder, nor altogether so sweet as musk;
which made him turn Panurge about, and then he saw that his shirt was
dismally bepawed and berayed with fresh sir-reverence. The retentive
faculty of the nerve which restrains the muscle called sphincter ('tis the
arse-hole, an it please you) was relaxated by the violence of the fear
which he had been in during his fantastic visions. Add to this the
thundering noise of the shooting, which seems more dreadful between decks
than above. Nor ought you to wonder at such a mishap; for one of the
symptoms and accidents of fear is, that it often opens the wicket of the
cupboard wherein second-hand meat is kept for a time. Let's illustrate
this noble theme with some examples.
Messer Pantolfe de la Cassina of Siena, riding post from Rome, came to
Chambery, and alighting at honest Vinet's took one of the pitchforks in the
stable; then turning to the innkeeper, said to him, Da Roma in qua io non
son andato del corpo. Di gratia piglia in mano questa forcha, et fa mi
paura. (I have not had a stool since I left Rome. I pray thee take this
pitchfork and fright me. ) Vinet took it, and made several offers as if he
would in good earnest have hit the signor, but all in vain; so the Sienese
said to him, Si tu non fai altramente, tu non fai nulla; pero sforzati di
adoperarli piu guagliardamente. (If thou dost not go another way to work,
thou hadst as good do nothing; therefore try to bestir thyself more
briskly. ) With this, Vinet lent him such a swinging stoater with the
pitchfork souse between the neck and the collar of his jerkin, that down
fell signor on the ground arsyversy, with his spindle shanks wide
straggling over his poll. Then mine host sputtering, with a full-mouthed
laugh, said to his guest, By Beelzebub's bumgut, much good may it do you,
Signore Italiano. Take notice this is datum Camberiaci, given at Chambery.
'Twas well the Sienese had untrussed his points and let down his drawers;
for this physic worked with him as soon as he took it, and as copious was
the evacuation as that of nine buffaloes and fourteen missificating
arch-lubbers. Which operation being over, the mannerly Sienese courteously
gave mine host a whole bushel of thanks, saying to him, Io ti ringratio, bel
messere; cosi facendo tu m' ai esparmiata la speza d'un servitiale. (I
thank thee, good landlord; by this thou hast e'en saved me the expense of a
clyster. )
I'll give you another example of Edward V. , King of England. Master
Francis Villon, being banished France, fled to him, and got so far into his
favour as to be privy to all his household affairs. One day the king,
being on his close-stool, showed Villon the arms of France, and said to
him, Dost thou see what respect I have for thy French kings? I have none
of their arms anywhere but in this backside, near my close-stool.
Ods-life, said the buffoon, how wise, prudent, and careful of your health
your highness is! How carefully your learned doctor, Thomas Linacre, looks
after you! He saw that now you grow old you are inclined to be somewhat
costive, and every day were fain to have an apothecary, I mean a suppository
or clyster, thrust into your royal nockandroe; so he has, much to the
purpose, induced you to place here the arms of France; for the very sight of
them puts you into such a dreadful fright that you immediately let fly as
much as would come from eighteen squattering bonasi of Paeonia. And if they
were painted in other parts of your house, by jingo, you would presently
conskite yourself wherever you saw them. Nay, had you but here a picture of
the great oriflamme of France, ods-bodikins, your tripes and bowels would be
in no small danger of dropping out at the orifice of your posteriors. But
henh, henh, atque iterum henh.
A silly cockney am I not,
As ever did from Paris come?
And with a rope and sliding knot
My neck shall know what weighs my bum.
A cockney of short reach, I say, shallow of judgment and judging shallowly,
to wonder that you should cause your points to be untrussed in your chamber
before you come into this closet. By'r lady, at first I thought your
close-stool had stood behind the hangings of your bed; otherwise it seemed
very odd to me you should untruss so far from the place of evacuation. But
now I find I was a gull, a wittol, a woodcock, a mere ninny, a dolt-head, a
noddy, a changeling, a calf-lolly, a doddipoll. You do wisely, by the
mass, you do wisely; for had you not been ready to clap your hind face on
the mustard-pot as soon as you came within sight of these arms--mark ye me,
cop's body--the bottom of your breeches had supplied the office of a
close-stool.
Friar John, stopping the handle of his face with his left hand, did, with
the forefinger of the right, point out Panurge's shirt to Pantagruel, who,
seeing him in this pickle, scared, appalled, shivering, raving, staring,
berayed, and torn with the claws of the famous cat Rodilardus, could not
choose but laugh, and said to him, Prithee what wouldst thou do with this
cat? With this cat? quoth Panurge; the devil scratch me if I did not think
it had been a young soft-chinned devil, which, with this same stocking
instead of mitten, I had snatched up in the great hutch of hell as
thievishly as any sizar of Montague college could have done. The devil
take Tybert! I feel it has all bepinked my poor hide, and drawn on it to
the life I don't know how many lobsters' whiskers. With this he threw his
boar-cat down.
Go, go, said Pantagruel, be bathed and cleaned, calm your fears, put on a
clean shift, and then your clothes. What! do you think I am afraid? cried
Panurge. Not I, I protest. By the testicles of Hercules, I am more
hearty, bold, and stout, though I say it that should not, than if I had
swallowed as many flies as are put into plumcakes and other paste at Paris
from Midsummer to Christmas. But what's this? Hah! oh, ho! how the devil
came I by this? Do you call this what the cat left in the malt, filth,
dirt, dung, dejection, faecal matter, excrement, stercoration,
sir-reverence, ordure, second-hand meats, fumets, stronts, scybal, or
spyrathe? 'Tis Hibernian saffron, I protest. Hah, hah, hah! 'tis Irish
saffron, by Shaint Pautrick, and so much for this time. Selah. Let's
drink.
THE FIFTH BOOK
The Author's Prologue.
Indefatigable topers, and you, thrice precious martyrs of the smock, give
me leave to put a serious question to your worships while you are idly
striking your codpieces, and I myself not much better employed. Pray, why
is it that people say that men are not such sots nowadays as they were in
the days of yore? Sot is an old word that signifies a dunce, dullard,
jolthead, gull, wittol, or noddy, one without guts in his brains, whose
cockloft is unfurnished, and, in short, a fool. Now would I know whether
you would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically
may, that formerly men were fools and in this generation are grown wise?
How many and what dispositions made them fools? How many and what
dispositions were wanting to make 'em wise? Why were they fools? How
should they be wise? Pray, how came you to know that men were formerly
fools? How did you find that they are now wise? Who the devil made 'em
fools? Who a God's name made 'em wise? Who d'ye think are most, those
that loved mankind foolish, or those that love it wise? How long has it
been wise? How long otherwise? Whence proceeded the foregoing folly?
Whence the following wisdom? Why did the old folly end now, and no later?
Why did the modern wisdom begin now, and no sooner? What were we the worse
for the former folly? What the better for the succeeding wisdom? How
should the ancient folly be come to nothing? How should this same new
wisdom be started up and established?
Now answer me, an't please you. I dare not adjure you in stronger terms,
reverend sirs, lest I make your pious fatherly worships in the least
uneasy. Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.
Be cheery, my lads; and if you are for me, take me off three or five
bumpers of the best, while I make a halt at the first part of the sermon;
then answer my question. If you are not for me, avaunt! avoid, Satan! For
I swear by my great-grandmother's placket (and that's a horrid oath), that
if you don't help me to solve that puzzling problem, I will, nay, I already
do repent having proposed it; for still I must remain nettled and
gravelled, and a devil a bit I know how to get off. Well, what say you?
I'faith, I begin to smell you out. You are not yet disposed to give me an
answer; nor I neither, by these whiskers. Yet to give some light into the
business, I'll e'en tell you what had been anciently foretold in the matter
by a venerable doctor, who, being moved by the spirit in a prophetic vein,
wrote a book ycleped the Prelatical Bagpipe. What d'ye think the old
fornicator saith? Hearken, you old noddies, hearken now or never.
The jubilee's year, when all like fools were shorn,
Is about thirty supernumerary.
O want of veneration! fools they seemed,
But, persevering, with long breves, at last
No more they shall be gaping greedy fools.
For they shall shell the shrub's delicious fruit,
Whose flower they in the spring so much had feared.
Now you have it, what do you make on't? The seer is ancient, the style
laconic, the sentences dark like those of Scotus, though they treat of
matters dark enough in themselves. The best commentators on that good
father take the jubilee after the thirtieth to be the years that are
included in this present age till 1550 (there being but one jubilee every
fifty years). Men shall no longer be thought fools next green peas season.
The fools, whose number, as Solomon certifies, is infinite, shall go to pot
like a parcel of mad bedlamites as they are; and all manner of folly shall
have an end, that being also numberless, according to Avicenna, maniae
infinitae sunt species. Having been driven back and hidden towards the
centre during the rigour of the winter, 'tis now to be seen on the surface,
and buds out like the trees. This is as plain as a nose in a man's face;
you know it by experience; you see it. And it was formerly found out by
that great good man Hippocrates, Aphorism Verae etenim maniae, &c. This
world therefore wisifying itself, shall no longer dread the flower and
blossoms of every coming spring, that is, as you may piously believe,
bumper in hand and tears in eyes, in the woeful time of Lent, which used to
keep them company.
Whole cartloads of books that seemed florid, flourishing, and flowery, gay,
and gaudy as so many butterflies, but in the main were tiresome, dull,
soporiferous, irksome, mischievous, crabbed, knotty, puzzling, and dark as
those of whining Heraclitus, as unintelligible as the numbers of
Pythagoras, that king of the bean, according to Horace; those books, I say,
have seen their best days and shall soon come to nothing, being delivered
to the executing worms and merciless petty chandlers; such was their
destiny, and to this they were predestinated.
In their stead beans in cod are started up; that is, these merry and
fructifying Pantagruelian books, so much sought nowadays in expectation of
the following jubilee's period; to the study of which writings all people
have given their minds, and accordingly have gained the name of wise.
Now I think I have fairly solved and resolved your problem; then reform,
and be the better for it. Hem once or twice like hearts of oak; stand to
your pan-puddings, and take me off your bumpers, nine go-downs, and huzza!
since we are like to have a good vintage, and misers hang themselves. Oh!
they will cost me an estate in hempen collars if fair weather hold. For I
hereby promise to furnish them with twice as much as will do their business
on free cost, as often as they will take the pains to dance at a rope's end
providently to save charges, to the no small disappointment of the finisher
of the law.
Now, my friends, that you may put in for a share of this new wisdom, and
shake off the antiquated folly this very moment, scratch me out of your
scrolls and quite discard the symbol of the old philosopher with the golden
thigh, by which he has forbidden you to eat beans; for you may take it for
a truth granted among all professors in the science of good eating, that he
enjoined you not to taste of them only with the same kind intent that a
certain fresh-water physician had when he did forbid to Amer, late Lord of
Camelotiere, kinsman to the lawyer of that name, the wing of the partridge,
the rump of the chicken, and the neck of the pigeon, saying, Ala mala,
rumpum dubium, collum bonum, pelle remota. For the duncical dog-leech was
so selfish as to reserve them for his own dainty chops, and allowed his
poor patients little more than the bare bones to pick, lest they should
overload their squeamish stomachs.
To the heathen philosopher succeeded a pack of Capuchins, monks who forbid
us the use of beans, that is, Pantagruelian books. They seem to follow the
example of Philoxenus and Gnatho, one of whom was a Sicilian of fulsome
memory, the ancient master-builders of their monastic cram-gut
voluptuousness, who, when some dainty bit was served up at a feast,
filthily used to spit on it, that none but their nasty selves might have
the stomach to eat of it, though their liquorish chops watered never so
much after it.
So those hideous, snotty, phthisicky, eaves-dropping, musty, moving forms
of mortification, both in public and private, curse those dainty books, and
like toads spit their venom upon them.
Now, though we have in our mother-tongue several excellent works in verse
and prose, and, heaven be praised! but little left of the trash and
trumpery stuff of those duncical mumblers of ave-maries and the barbarous
foregoing Gothic age, I have made bold to choose to chirrup and warble my
plain ditty, or, as they say, to whistle like a goose among the swans,
rather than be thought deaf among so many pretty poets and eloquent
orators. And thus I am prouder of acting the clown, or any other
under-part, among the many ingenious actors in that noble play, than of
herding among those mutes, who, like so many shadows and ciphers, only serve
to fill up the house and make up a number, gaping and yawning at the flies,
and pricking up their lugs, like so many Arcadian asses, at the striking up
of the music; thus silently giving to understand that their fopships are
tickled in the right place.
Having taken this resolution, I thought it would not be amiss to move my
Diogenical tub, that you might not accuse me of living without example. I
see a swarm of our modern poets and orators, your Colinets, Marots,
Drouets, Saint Gelais, Salels, Masuels, and many more, who, having
commenced masters in Apollo's academy on Mount Parnassus, and drunk
brimmers at the Caballin fountain among the nine merry Muses, have raised
our vulgar tongue, and made it a noble and everlasting structure. Their
works are all Parian marble, alabaster, porphyry, and royal cement; they
treat of nothing but heroic deeds, mighty things, grave and difficult
matters, and this in a crimson, alamode, rhetorical style. Their writings
are all divine nectar, rich, racy, sparkling, delicate, and luscious wine.
Nor does our sex wholly engross this honour; ladies have had their share of
the glory; one of them, of the royal blood of France, whom it were a
profanation but to name here, surprises the age at once by the transcendent
and inventive genius in her writings and the admirable graces of her style.
Imitate those great examples if you can; for my part I cannot. Everyone,
you know, cannot go to Corinth. When Solomon built the temple, all could
not give gold by handfuls.
Since then 'tis not in my power to improve our architecture as much as
they, I am e'en resolved to do like Renault of Montauban: I'll wait on the
masons, set on the pot for the masons, cook for the stone-cutters; and
since it was not my good luck to be cut out for one of them, I will live
and die the admirer of their divine writings.
As for you, little envious prigs, snarling bastards, puny critics, you'll
soon have railed your last; go hang yourselves, and choose you out some
well-spread oak, under whose shade you may swing in state, to the
admiration of the gaping mob; you shall never want rope enough. While I
here solemnly protest before my Helicon, in the presence of my nine
mistresses the Muses, that if I live yet the age of a dog, eked out with
that of three crows, sound wind and limbs, like the old Hebrew captain
Moses, Xenophilus the musician, and Demonax the philosopher, by arguments
no ways impertinent, and reasons not to be disputed, I will prove, in the
teeth of a parcel of brokers and retailers of ancient rhapsodies and such
mouldy trash, that our vulgar tongue is not so mean, silly, inept, poor,
barren, and contemptible as they pretend. Nor ought I to be afraid of I
know not what botchers of old threadbare stuff, a hundred and a hundred
times clouted up and pieced together; wretched bunglers that can do nothing
but new-vamp old rusty saws; beggarly scavengers that rake even the
muddiest canals of antiquity for scraps and bits of Latin as insignificant
as they are often uncertain. Beseeching our grandees of Witland that, as
when formerly Apollo had distributed all the treasures of his poetical
exchequer to his favourites, little hulchbacked Aesop got for himself the
office of apologue-monger; in the same manner, since I do not aspire
higher, they would not deny me that of puny rhyparographer, or riffraff
follower of the sect of Pyreicus.
I dare swear they will grant me this; for they are all so kind, so
good-natured, and so generous, that they'll ne'er boggle at so small a
request. Therefore, both dry and hungry souls, pot and trenchermen, fully
enjoying those books, perusing, quoting them in their merry conventicles,
and observing the great mysteries of which they treat, shall gain a singular
profit and fame; as in the like case was done by Alexander the Great with
the books of prime philosophy composed by Aristotle.
O rare! belly on belly! what swillers, what twisters will there be!
Then be sure all you that take care not to die of the pip, be sure, I say,
you take my advice, and stock yourselves with good store of such books as
soon as you meet with them at the booksellers; and do not only shell those
beans, but e'en swallow them down like an opiate cordial, and let them be
in you; I say, let them be within you; then you shall find, my beloved,
what good they do to all clever shellers of beans.
Here is a good handsome basketful of them, which I here lay before your
worships; they were gathered in the very individual garden whence the
former came. So I beseech you, reverend sirs, with as much respect as was
ever paid by dedicating author, to accept of the gift, in hopes of somewhat
better against next visit the swallows give us.
THE FIFTH BOOK.
Chapter 5. I.
How Pantagruel arrived at the Ringing Island, and of the noise that we
heard.
Pursuing our voyage, we sailed three days without discovering anything; on
the fourth we made land. Our pilot told us that it was the Ringing Island,
and indeed we heard a kind of a confused and often repeated noise, that
seemed to us at a great distance not unlike the sound of great,
middle-sized, and little bells rung all at once, as 'tis customary at Paris,
Tours, Gergeau, Nantes, and elsewhere on high holidays; and the nearer we
came to the land the louder we heard that jangling.
Some of us doubted that it was the Dodonian kettle, or the portico called
Heptaphone in Olympia, or the eternal humming of the colossus raised on
Memnon's tomb in Thebes of Egypt, or the horrid din that used formerly to
be heard about a tomb at Lipara, one of the Aeolian islands. But this did
not square with chorography.
I do not know, said Pantagruel, but that some swarms of bees hereabouts may
be taking a ramble in the air, and so the neighbourhood make this
dingle-dangle with pans, kettles, and basins, the corybantine cymbals of
Cybele, grandmother of the gods, to call them back. Let's hearken. When we
were nearer, among the everlasting ringing of these indefatigable bells we
heard the singing, as we thought, of some men. For this reason, before we
offered to land on the Ringing Island, Pantagruel was of opinion that we
should go in the pinnace to a small rock, near which we discovered an
hermitage and a little garden. There we found a diminutive old hermit,
whose name was Braguibus, born at Glenay. He gave us a full account of all
the jangling, and regaled us after a strange sort of fashion--four livelong
days did he make us fast, assuring us that we should not be admitted into
the Ringing Island otherwise, because it was then one of the four fasting,
or ember weeks. As I love my belly, quoth Panurge, I by no means understand
this riddle. Methinks this should rather be one of the four windy weeks;
for while we fast we are only puffed up with wind. Pray now, good father
hermit, have not you here some other pastime besides fasting? Methinks it is
somewhat of the leanest; we might well enough be without so many palace
holidays and those fasting times of yours. In my Donatus, quoth Friar John,
I could find yet but three times or tenses, the preterit, the present, and
the future; doubtless here the fourth ought to be a work of supererogation.
That time or tense, said Epistemon, is aorist, derived from the
preter-imperfect tense of the Greeks, admitted in war (? ) and odd cases.
Patience perforce is a remedy for a mad dog. Saith the hermit: It is, as I
told you, fatal to go against this; whosoever does it is a rank heretic, and
wants nothing but fire and faggot, that's certain. To deal plainly with
you, my dear pater, cried Panurge, being at sea, I much more fear being wet
than being warm, and being drowned than being burned.
Well, however, let us fast, a God's name; yet I have fasted so long that it
has quite undermined my flesh, and I fear that at last the bastions of this
bodily fort of mine will fall to ruin. Besides, I am much more afraid of
vexing you in this same trade of fasting; for the devil a bit I understand
anything in it, and it becomes me very scurvily, as several people have
told me, and I am apt to believe them. For my part, I have no great
stomach to fasting; for alas! it is as easy as pissing a bed, and a trade
of which anybody may set up; there needs no tools. I am much more inclined
not to fast for the future; for to do so there is some stock required, and
some tools are set a-work. No matter, since you are so steadfast, and
would have us fast, let us fast as fast as we can, and then breakfast in
the name of famine. Now we are come to these esurial idle days. I vow I
had quite put them out of my head long ago. If we must fast, said
Pantagruel, I see no other remedy but to get rid of it as soon as we can,
as we would out of a bad way. I'll in that space of time somewhat look
over my papers, and examine whether the marine study be as good as ours at
land. For Plato, to describe a silly, raw, ignorant fellow, compares him
to those that are bred on shipboard, as we would do one bred up in a
barrel, who never saw anything but through the bung-hole.
To tell you the short and the long of the matter, our fasting was most
hideous and terrible; for the first day we fasted on fisticuffs, the second
at cudgels, the third at sharps, and the fourth at blood and wounds: such
was the order of the fairies.
Chapter 5. II.
How the Ringing Island had been inhabited by the Siticines, who were become
birds.
Having fasted as aforesaid, the hermit gave us a letter for one whom he
called Albian Camar, Master Aedituus of the Ringing Island; but Panurge
greeting him called him Master Antitus. He was a little queer old fellow,
bald-pated, with a snout whereat you might easily have lighted a
card-match, and a phiz as red as a cardinal's cap. He made us all very
welcome, upon the hermit's recommendation, hearing that we had fasted, as I
have told you.
When we had well stuffed our puddings, he gave us an account of what was
remarkable in the island, affirming that it had been at first inhabited by
the Siticines; but that, according to the course of nature--as all things,
you know, are subject to change--they were become birds.
