No More Learning

Trouil. Talk better.

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

Trouil. I do not gainsay it.

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

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

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

Trouil. I shall be no hinderer thereof.

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

Trouil. I think so.

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

Trouil. It is possible.

Pan. Had you good luck in your first marriage?

Trouil. It is not impossible.

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

Trouil. Even as it pleaseth my fatal destiny.

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

Trouil. It is likely.

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

Trouil. No, if it was not predestinated.

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

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

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

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

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



Chapter 3. XXXVII.

How Pantagruel persuaded Panurge to take counsel of a fool.

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

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

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

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



Chapter 3. XXXVIII.

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

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


Pantagruel. Panurge.
Fatal f. Jovial f.
Natural f. Mercurial f.
Celestial f. Lunatic f.
Erratic f. Ducal f.
Eccentric f. Common f.
Aethereal and Junonian f. Lordly f.
Arctic f. Palatine f.
Heroic f. Principal f.
Genial f. Pretorian f.
Inconstant f. Elected f.
Earthly f. Courtly f.
Salacious and sporting f. Primipilary f.
Jocund and wanton f. Triumphant f.
Pimpled f. Vulgar f.
Freckled f. Domestic f.
Bell-tinging f. Exemplary f.
Laughing and lecherous f. Rare outlandish f.
Nimming and filching f. Satrapal f.
Unpressed f. Civil f.
First broached f. Popular f.
Augustal f. Familiar f.
Caesarine f. Notable f.
Imperial f. Favourized f.
Royal f. Latinized f.
Patriarchal f. Ordinary f.
Original f. Transcendent f.
Loyal f. Rising f.
Episcopal f. Papal f.
Doctoral f. Consistorian f.
Monachal f. Conclavist f.
Fiscal f. Bullist f.
Extravagant f. Synodal f.
Writhed f. Doting and raving f.
Canonical f. Singular and surpassing f.
Such another f. Special and excelling f.
Graduated f. Metaphysical f.
Commensal f. Scatical f.
Primolicentiated f. Predicamental and categoric f.
Train-bearing f. Predicable and enunciatory f.
Supererogating f. Decumane and superlative f.
Collateral f. Dutiful and officious f.
Haunch and side f.
Optical and perspective f.
Nestling, ninny, and youngling f. Algoristic f.
Flitting, giddy, and unsteady f. Algebraical f.
Brancher, novice, and cockney f. Cabalistical and Massoretical f.
Haggard, cross, and froward f. Talmudical f.
Gentle, mild, and tractable f. Algamalized f.
Mail-coated f. Compendious f.
Pilfering and purloining f. Abbreviated f.
Tail-grown f. Hyperbolical f.
Grey peckled f. Anatomastical f.
Pleonasmical f. Allegorical f.
Capital f. Tropological f.
Hair-brained f. Micher pincrust f.
Cordial f. Heteroclit f.
Intimate f. Summist f.
Hepatic f. Abridging f.
Cupshotten and swilling f. Morrish f.
Splenetic f. Leaden-sealed f.
Windy f. Mandatory f.
Legitimate f. Compassionate f.
Azymathal f. Titulary f.
Almicantarized f. Crouching, showking, ducking f.
Proportioned f. Grim, stern, harsh, and wayward f.
Chinnified f. Well-hung and timbered f.
Swollen and puffed up f. Ill-clawed, pounced, and pawed f.
Overcockrifedlid and lified f. Well-stoned f.
Corallory f. Crabbed and unpleasing f.
Eastern f. Winded and untainted f.
Sublime f. Kitchen haunting f.
Crimson f. Lofty and stately f.
Ingrained f. Spitrack f.
City f. Architrave f.
Basely accoutred f. Pedestal f.
Mast-headed f. Tetragonal f.
Modal f. Renowned f.
Second notial f. Rheumatic f.
Cheerful and buxom f. Flaunting and braggadocio f.
Solemn f. Egregious f.
Annual f. Humourous and capricious f.
Festival f. Rude, gross, and absurd f.
Recreative f. Large-measured f.
Boorish and counterfeit f. Babble f.
Pleasant f. Down-right f.
Privileged f. Broad-listed f.
Rustical f. Duncical-bearing f.
Proper and peculiar f. Stale and over-worn f.
Ever ready f. Saucy and swaggering f.
Diapasonal f. Full-bulked f.
Resolute f. Gallant and vainglorious f.
Hieroglyphical f. Gorgeous and gaudy f.
Authentic f. Continual and intermitting f.
Worthy f. Rebasing and roundling f.
Precious f. Prototypal and precedenting f.
Fanatic f. Prating f.
Fantastical f. Catechetic f.
Symphatic f. Cacodoxical f.
Panic f. Meridional f.
Limbecked and distilled f. Nocturnal f.
Comportable f. Occidental f.
Wretched and heartless f. Trifling f.
Fooded f. Astrological and figure-flinging f.
Thick and threefold f. Genethliac and horoscopal f.
Damasked f. Knavish f.
Fearney f. Idiot f.
Unleavened f. Blockish f.
Baritonant f. Beetle-headed f.
Pink and spot-powdered f. Grotesque f.
Musket-proof f. Impertinent f.
Pedantic f. Quarrelsome f.
Strouting f. Unmannerly f.
Wood f. Captious and sophistical f.
Greedy f. Soritic f.
Senseless f. Catholoproton f.
Godderlich f. Hoti and Dioti f.
Obstinate f. Alphos and Catati f.
Contradictory f.
Pedagogical f.
Daft f.
Drunken f.
Peevish f.
Prodigal f.
Rash f.
Plodding f.

Pantagruel. If there was any reason why at Rome the Quirinal holiday of
old was called the Feast of Fools, I know not why we may not for the like
cause institute in France the Tribouletic Festivals, to be celebrated and
solemnized over all the land.

Panurge. If all fools carried cruppers.

Pantagruel. If he were the god Fatuus of whom we have already made
mention, the husband of the goddess Fatua, his father would be Good Day,
and his grandmother Good Even.

Panurge. If all fools paced, albeit he be somewhat wry-legged, he would
overlay at least a fathom at every rake. Let us go toward him without any
further lingering or delay; we shall have, no doubt, some fine resolution
of him. I am ready to go, and long for the issue of our progress
impatiently. I must needs, quoth Pantagruel, according to my former
resolution therein, be present at Bridlegoose's trial. Nevertheless,
whilst I shall be upon my journey towards Mirelingues, which is on the
other side of the river of Loire, I will despatch Carpalin to bring along
with him from Blois the fool Triboulet. Then was Carpalin instantly sent
away, and Pantagruel, at the same time attended by his domestics, Panurge,
Epistemon, Ponocrates, Friar John, Gymnast, Ryzotomus, and others, marched
forward on the high road to Mirelingues.



Chapter 3. XXXIX.

How Pantagruel was present at the trial of Judge Bridlegoose, who decided
causes and controversies in law by the chance and fortune of the dice.

On the day following, precisely at the hour appointed, Pantagruel came to
Mirelingues. At his arrival the presidents, senators, and counsellors
prayed him to do them the honour to enter in with them, to hear the
decision of all the causes, arguments, and reasons which Bridlegoose in his
own defence would produce, why he had pronounced a certain sentence against
the subsidy-assessor, Toucheronde, which did not seem very equitable to
that centumviral court. Pantagruel very willingly condescended to their
desire, and accordingly entering in, found Bridlegoose sitting within the
middle of the enclosure of the said court of justice; who immediately upon
the coming of Pantagruel, accompanied with the senatorian members of that
worshipful judicatory, arose, went to the bar, had his indictment read, and
for all his reasons, defences, and excuses, answered nothing else but that
he was become old, and that his sight of late was very much failed, and
become dimmer than it was wont to be; instancing therewithal many miseries
and calamities which old age bringeth along with it, and are concomitant to
wrinkled elders; which not. per Archid. d. lxxxvi. c. tanta. By reason of
which infirmity he was not able so distinctly and clearly to discern the
points and blots of the dice as formerly he had been accustomed to do;
whence it might very well have happened, said he, as old dim-sighted Isaac
took Jacob for Esau, that I after the same manner, at the decision of
causes and controversies in law, should have been mistaken in taking a
quatre for a cinque, or a trey for a deuce. This I beseech your worships,
quoth he, to take into your serious consideration, and to have the more
favourable opinion of my uprightness, notwithstanding the prevarication
whereof I am accused in the matter of Toucheronde's sentence, that at the
time of that decree's pronouncing I only had made use of my small dice; and
your worships, said he, know very well how by the most authentic rules of
the law it is provided that the imperfections of nature should never be
imputed unto any for crimes and transgressions; as appeareth, ff. de re
milit. l. qui cum uno. ff. de reg. Jur. l. fere. ff. de aedil. edict. per
totum. ff. de term. mod. l. Divus Adrianus, resolved by Lud. Rom.