Tickletoby refused
him, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously forbidden
to give or lend anything to players.
him, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously forbidden
to give or lend anything to players.
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
Matter of breviary, mark ye me
(Motteux adds unnecessarily (by way of explanation), 'that's holy stuff. ').
Chapter 4. IX.
How Pantagruel arrived at the island of Ennasin, and of the strange ways of
being akin in that country.
We had still the wind at south-south-west, and had been a whole day without
making land. On the third day, at the flies' uprising (which, you know, is
some two or three hours after the sun's), we got sight of a triangular
island, very much like Sicily for its form and situation. It was called
the Island of Alliances.
The people there are much like your carrot-pated Poitevins, save only that
all of them, men, women, and children, have their noses shaped like an ace
of clubs. For that reason the ancient name of the country was Ennasin.
They were all akin, as the mayor of the place told us; at least they
boasted so.
You people of the other world esteem it a wonderful thing that, out of the
family of the Fabii at Rome, on a certain day, which was the 13th of
February, at a certain gate, which was the Porta Carmentalis, since named
Scelerata, formerly situated at the foot of the Capitol, between the
Tarpeian rock and the Tiber, marched out against the Veientes of Etruria
three hundred and six men bearing arms, all related to each other, with
five thousand other soldiers, every one of them their vassals, who were all
slain near the river Cremera, that comes out of the lake of Beccano. Now
from this same country of Ennasin, in case of need, above three hundred
thousand, all relations and of one family, might march out. Their degrees
of consanguinity and alliance are very strange; for being thus akin and
allied to one another, we found that none was either father or mother,
brother or sister, uncle or aunt, nephew or niece, son-in-law or
daughter-in-law, godfather or godmother, to the other; unless, truly, a tall
flat-nosed old fellow, who, as I perceived, called a little shitten-arsed
girl of three or four years old, father, and the child called him daughter.
Their distinction of degrees of kindred was thus: a man used to call a
woman, my lean bit; the woman called him, my porpoise. Those, said Friar
John, must needs stink damnably of fish when they have rubbed their bacon
one with the other. One, smiling on a young buxom baggage, said, Good
morrow, dear currycomb. She, to return him his civility, said, The like to
you, my steed. Ha! ha! ha! said Panurge, that is pretty well, in faith;
for indeed it stands her in good stead to currycomb this steed. Another
greeted his buttock with a Farewell, my case. She replied, Adieu, trial.
By St. Winifred's placket, cried Gymnast, this case has been often tried.
Another asked a she-friend of his, How is it, hatchet? She answered him,
At your service, dear helve. Odds belly, saith Carpalin, this helve and
this hatchet are well matched. As we went on, I saw one who, calling his
she-relation, styled her my crumb, and she called him, my crust.
Quoth one to a brisk, plump, juicy female, I am glad to see you, dear tap.
So am I to find you so merry, sweet spiggot, replied she. One called a
wench, his shovel; she called him, her peal: one named his, my slipper;
and she, my foot: another, my boot; she, my shasoon.
In the same degree of kindred, one called his, my butter; she called him,
my eggs; and they were akin just like a dish of buttered eggs. I heard one
call his, my tripe, and she him, my faggot. Now I could not, for the
heart's blood of me, pick out or discover what parentage, alliance,
affinity, or consanguinity was between them, with reference to our custom;
only they told us that she was faggot's tripe. (Tripe de fagot means the
smallest sticks in a faggot. ) Another, complimenting his convenient, said,
Yours, my shell; she replied, I was yours before, sweet oyster. I reckon,
said Carpalin, she hath gutted his oyster. Another long-shanked ugly
rogue, mounted on a pair of high-heeled wooden slippers, meeting a
strapping, fusty, squabbed dowdy, says he to her, How is't my top? She was
short upon him, and arrogantly replied, Never the better for you, my whip.
By St. Antony's hog, said Xenomanes, I believe so; for how can this whip be
sufficient to lash this top?
A college professor, well provided with cod, and powdered and prinked up,
having a while discoursed with a great lady, taking his leave with these
words, Thank you, sweetmeat; she cried, There needs no thanks, sour-sauce.
Saith Pantagruel, This is not altogether incongruous, for sweet meat must
have sour sauce. A wooden loggerhead said to a young wench, It is long
since I saw you, bag; All the better, cried she, pipe. Set them together,
said Panurge, then blow in their arses, it will be a bagpipe. We saw,
after that, a diminutive humpbacked gallant, pretty near us, taking leave
of a she-relation of his, thus: Fare thee well, friend hole; she
reparteed, Save thee, friend peg. Quoth Friar John, What could they say
more, were he all peg and she all hole? But now would I give something to
know if every cranny of the hole can be stopped up with that same peg.
A bawdy bachelor, talking with an old trout, was saying, Remember, rusty
gun. I will not fail, said she, scourer. Do you reckon these two to be
akin? said Pantagruel to the mayor. I rather take them to be foes. In our
country a woman would take this as a mortal affront. Good people of
t'other world, replied the mayor, you have few such and so near relations
as this gun and scourer are to one another; for they both come out of one
shop. What, was the shop their mother? quoth Panurge. What mother, said
the mayor, does the man mean? That must be some of your world's affinity;
we have here neither father nor mother. Your little paltry fellows that
live on t'other side the water, poor rogues, booted with wisps of hay, may
indeed have such; but we scorn it. The good Pantagruel stood gazing and
listening; but at those words he had like to have lost all patience. (Here
Motteux adds an aside--'os kai nun o Ermeneutes. P. M. ').
Having very exactly viewed the situation of the island and the way of
living of the Enassed nation, we went to take a cup of the creature at a
tavern, where there happened to be a wedding after the manner of the
country. Bating that shocking custom, there was special good cheer.
While we were there, a pleasant match was struck up betwixt a female called
Pear (a tight thing, as we thought, but by some, who knew better things,
said to be quaggy and flabby), and a young soft male, called Cheese,
somewhat sandy. (Many such matches have been, and they were formerly much
commended. ) In our country we say, Il ne fut onques tel mariage, qu'est de
la poire et du fromage; there is no match like that made between the pear
and the cheese; and in many other places good store of such bargains have
been driven. Besides, when the women are at their last prayers, it is to
this day a noted saying, that after cheese comes nothing.
In another room I saw them marrying an old greasy boot to a young pliable
buskin. Pantagruel was told that young buskin took old boot to have and to
hold because she was of special leather, in good case, and waxed, seared,
liquored, and greased to the purpose, even though it had been for the
fisherman that went to bed with his boots on. In another room below, I saw
a young brogue taking a young slipper for better for worse; which, they
told us, was neither for the sake of her piety, parts, or person, but for
the fourth comprehensive p, portion; the spankers, spur-royals,
rose-nobles, and other coriander seed with which she was quilted all over.
Chapter 4. X.
How Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Chely, where he saw King St.
Panigon.
We sailed right before the wind, which we had at west, leaving those odd
alliancers with their ace-of-clubs snouts, and having taken height by the
sun, stood in for Chely, a large, fruitful, wealthy, and well-peopled
island. King St. Panigon, first of the name, reigned there, and, attended
by the princes his sons and the nobles of his court, came as far as the
port to receive Pantagruel, and conducted him to his palace; near the gate
of which the queen, attended by the princesses her daughters and the court
ladies, received us. Panigon directed her and all her retinue to salute
Pantagruel and his men with a kiss; for such was the civil custom of the
country; and they were all fairly bussed accordingly, except Friar John,
who stepped aside and sneaked off among the king's officers. Panigon used
all the entreaties imaginable to persuade Pantagruel to tarry there that
day and the next; but he would needs be gone, and excused himself upon the
opportunity of wind and weather, which, being oftener desired than enjoyed,
ought not to be neglected when it comes. Panigon, having heard these
reasons, let us go, but first made us take off some five-and-twenty or
thirty bumpers each.
Pantagruel, returning to the port, missed Friar John, and asked why he was
not with the rest of the company. Panurge could not tell how to excuse
him, and would have gone back to the palace to call him, when Friar John
overtook them, and merrily cried, Long live the noble Panigon! As I love
my belly, he minds good eating, and keeps a noble house and a dainty
kitchen. I have been there, boys. Everything goes about by dozens. I was
in good hopes to have stuffed my puddings there like a monk. What! always
in a kitchen, friend? said Pantagruel. By the belly of St. Cramcapon,
quoth the friar, I understand the customs and ceremonies which are used
there much better than all the formal stuff, antique postures, and
nonsensical fiddle-faddle that must be used with those women, magni magna,
shittencumshita, cringes, grimaces, scrapes, bows, and congees; double
honours this way, triple salutes that way, the embrace, the grasp, the
squeeze, the hug, the leer, the smack, baso las manos de vostra merce, de
vostra maesta. You are most tarabin, tarabas, Stront; that's downright
Dutch. Why all this ado? I don't say but a man might be for a bit by the
bye and away, to be doing as well as his neighbours; but this little nasty
cringing and courtesying made me as mad as any March devil. You talk of
kissing ladies; by the worthy and sacred frock I wear, I seldom venture
upon it, lest I be served as was the Lord of Guyercharois. What was it?
said Pantagruel; I know him. He is one of the best friends I have.
He was invited to a sumptuous feast, said Friar John, by a relation and
neighbour of his, together with all the gentlemen and ladies in the
neighbourhood. Now some of the latter expecting his coming, dressed the
pages in women's clothes, and finified them like any babies; then ordered
them to meet my lord at his coming near the drawbridge. So the
complimenting monsieur came, and there kissed the petticoated lads with
great formality. At last the ladies, who minded passages in the gallery,
burst out with laughing, and made signs to the pages to take off their
dress; which the good lord having observed, the devil a bit he durst make
up to the true ladies to kiss them, but said, that since they had disguised
the pages, by his great grandfather's helmet, these were certainly the very
footmen and grooms still more cunningly disguised. Odds fish, da jurandi,
why do not we rather remove our humanities into some good warm kitchen of
God, that noble laboratory, and there admire the turning of the spits, the
harmonious rattling of the jacks and fenders, criticise on the position of
the lard, the temperature of the pottages, the preparation for the dessert,
and the order of the wine service? Beati immaculati in via. Matter of
breviary, my masters.
Chapter 4. XI.
Why monks love to be in kitchens.
This, said Epistemon, is spoke like a true monk; I mean like a right
monking monk, not a bemonked monastical monkling. Truly you put me in mind
of some passages that happened at Florence, some twenty years ago, in a
company of studious travellers, fond of visiting the learned, and seeing
the antiquities of Italy, among whom I was. As we viewed the situation and
beauty of Florence, the structure of the dome, the magnificence of the
churches and palaces, we strove to outdo one another in giving them their
due; when a certain monk of Amiens, Bernard Lardon by name, quite angry,
scandalized, and out of all patience, told us, I don't know what the devil
you can find in this same town, that is so much cried up; for my part I
have looked and pored and stared as well as the best of you; I think my
eyesight is as clear as another body's, and what can one see after all?
There are fine houses, indeed and that's all. But the cage does not feed
the birds. God and Monsieur St. Bernard, our good patron, be with us! in
all this same town I have not seen one poor lane of roasting cooks; and yet
I have not a little looked about and sought for so necessary a part of a
commonwealth: ay, and I dare assure you that I have pried up and down with
the exactness of an informer; as ready to number, both to the right and
left, how many, and on what side, we might find most roasting cooks, as a
spy would be to reckon the bastions of a town. Now at Amiens, in four,
nay, five times less ground than we have trod in our contemplations, I
could have shown you above fourteen streets of roasting cooks, most
ancient, savoury, and aromatic. I cannot imagine what kind of pleasure you
can have taken in gazing on the lions and Africans (so methinks you call
their tigers) near the belfry, or in ogling the porcupines and estridges in
the Lord Philip Strozzi's palace. Faith and truth I had rather see a good
fat goose at the spit. This porphyry, those marbles are fine; I say
nothing to the contrary; but our cheesecakes at Amiens are far better in my
mind. These ancient statues are well made; I am willing to believe it;
but, by St. Ferreol of Abbeville, we have young wenches in our country
which please me better a thousand times.
What is the reason, asked Friar John, that monks are always to be found in
kitchens, and kings, emperors, and popes are never there? Is there not,
said Rhizotome, some latent virtue and specific propriety hid in the
kettles and pans, which, as the loadstone attracts iron, draws the monks
there, and cannot attract emperors, popes, or kings? Or is it a natural
induction and inclination, fixed in the frocks and cowls, which of itself
leads and forceth those good religious men into kitchens, whether they will
or no? He would speak of forms following matter, as Averroes calls them,
answered Epistemon. Right, said Friar John.
I will not offer to solve this problem, said Pantagruel; for it is somewhat
ticklish, and you can hardly handle it without coming off scurvily; but I
will tell you what I have heard.
Antigonus, King of Macedon, one day coming into one of the tents, where his
cooks used to dress his meat, and finding there poet Antagoras frying a
conger, and holding the pan himself, merrily asked him, Pray, Mr. Poet, was
Homer frying congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon? Antagoras
readily answered: But do you think, sir, that when Agamemnon did them he
made it his business to know if any in his camp were frying congers? The
king thought it an indecency that a poet should be thus a-frying in a
kitchen; and the poet let the king know that it was a more indecent thing
for a king to be found in such a place. I'll clap another story upon the
neck of this, quoth Panurge, and will tell you what Breton Villandry
answered one day to the Duke of Guise.
They were saying that at a certain battle of King Francis against Charles
the Fifth, Breton, armed cap-a-pie to the teeth, and mounted like St.
George, yet sneaked off, and played least in sight during the engagement.
Blood and oons, answered Breton, I was there, and can prove it easily; nay,
even where you, my lord, dared not have been. The duke began to resent
this as too rash and saucy; but Breton easily appeased him, and set them
all a-laughing. Egad, my lord, quoth he, I kept out of harm's way; I was
all the while with your page Jack, skulking in a certain place where you
had not dared hide your head as I did. Thus discoursing, they got to their
ships, and left the island of Chely.
Chapter 4. XII.
How Pantagruel passed by the land of Pettifogging, and of the strange way
of living among the Catchpoles.
Steering our course forwards the next day, we passed through Pettifogging,
a country all blurred and blotted, so that I could hardly tell what to make
on't. There we saw some pettifoggers and catchpoles, rogues that will hang
their father for a groat. They neither invited us to eat or drink; but,
with a multiplied train of scrapes and cringes, said they were all at our
service for the Legem pone.
One of our droggermen related to Pantagruel their strange way of living,
diametrically opposed to that of our modern Romans; for at Rome a world of
folks get an honest livelihood by poisoning, drubbing, lambasting,
stabbing, and murthering; but the catchpoles earn theirs by being thrashed;
so that if they were long without a tight lambasting, the poor dogs with
their wives and children would be starved. This is just, quoth Panurge,
like those who, as Galen tells us, cannot erect the cavernous nerve towards
the equinoctial circle unless they are soundly flogged. By St. Patrick's
slipper, whoever should jerk me so, would soon, instead of setting me
right, throw me off the saddle, in the devil's name.
The way is this, said the interpreter. When a monk, levite, close-fisted
usurer, or lawyer owes a grudge to some neighbouring gentleman, he sends to
him one of those catchpoles or apparitors, who nabs, or at least cites him,
serves a writ or warrant upon him, thumps, abuses, and affronts him
impudently by natural instinct, and according to his pious instructions;
insomuch, that if the gentleman hath but any guts in his brains, and is not
more stupid than a gyrin frog, he will find himself obliged either to apply
a faggot-stick or his sword to the rascal's jobbernowl, give him the gentle
lash, or make him cut a caper out at the window, by way of correction.
This done, Catchpole is rich for four months at least, as if bastinadoes
were his real harvest; for the monk, levite, usurer, or lawyer will reward
him roundly; and my gentleman must pay him such swingeing damages that his
acres must bleed for it, and he be in danger of miserably rotting within a
stone doublet, as if he had struck the king.
Quoth Panurge, I know an excellent remedy against this used by the Lord of
Basche. What is it? said Pantagruel. The Lord of Basche, said Panurge,
was a brave, honest, noble-spirited gentleman, who, at his return from the
long war in which the Duke of Ferrara, with the help of the French, bravely
defended himself against the fury of Pope Julius the Second, was every day
cited, warned, and prosecuted at the suit and for the sport and fancy of
the fat prior of St. Louant.
One morning, as he was at breakfast with some of his domestics (for he
loved to be sometimes among them) he sent for one Loire, his baker, and his
spouse, and for one Oudart, the vicar of his parish, who was also his
butler, as the custom was then in France; then said to them before his
gentlemen and other servants: You all see how I am daily plagued with
these rascally catchpoles. Truly, if you do not lend me your helping hand,
I am finally resolved to leave the country, and go fight for the sultan, or
the devil, rather than be thus eternally teased. Therefore, to be rid of
their damned visits, hereafter, when any of them come here, be ready, you
baker and your wife, to make your personal appearance in my great hall, in
your wedding clothes, as if you were going to be affianced. Here, take
these ducats, which I give you to keep you in a fitting garb. As for you,
Sir Oudart, be sure you make your personal appearance there in your fine
surplice and stole, not forgetting your holy water, as if you were to wed
them. Be you there also, Trudon, said he to his drummer, with your pipe
and tabor. The form of matrimony must be read, and the bride kissed; then
all of you, as the witnesses used to do in this country, shall give one
another the remembrance of the wedding, which you know is to be a blow with
your fist, bidding the party struck remember the nuptials by that token.
This will but make you have the better stomach to your supper; but when you
come to the catchpole's turn, thrash him thrice and threefold, as you would
a sheaf of green corn; do not spare him; maul him, drub him, lambast him,
swinge him off, I pray you. Here, take these steel gauntlets, covered with
kid. Head, back, belly, and sides, give him blows innumerable; he that
gives him most shall be my best friend. Fear not to be called to an
account about it; I will stand by you; for the blows must seem to be given
in jest, as it is customary among us at all weddings.
Ay, but how shall we know the catchpole? said the man of God. All sorts of
people daily resort to this castle. I have taken care of that, replied the
lord. When some fellow, either on foot, or on a scurvy jade, with a large
broad silver ring on his thumb, comes to the door, he is certainly a
catchpole; the porter having civilly let him in, shall ring the bell; then
be all ready, and come into the hall, to act the tragi-comedy whose plot I
have now laid for you.
That numerical day, as chance would have it, came an old fat ruddy
catchpole. Having knocked at the gate, and then pissed, as most men will
do, the porter soon found him out, by his large greasy spatterdashes, his
jaded hollow-flanked mare, his bagful of writs and informations dangling at
his girdle, but, above all, by the large silver hoop on his left thumb.
The porter was civil to him, admitted him in kindly, and rung the bell
briskly. As soon as the baker and his wife heard it, they clapped on their
best clothes, and made their personal appearance in the hall, keeping their
gravities like a new-made judge. The dominie put on his surplice and
stole, and as he came out of his office, met the catchpole, had him in
there, and made him suck his face a good while, while the gauntlets were
drawing on all hands; and then told him, You are come just in pudding-time;
my lord is in his right cue. We shall feast like kings anon; here is to be
swingeing doings; we have a wedding in the house; here, drink and cheer up;
pull away.
While these two were at it hand-to-fist, Basche, seeing all his people in
the hall in their proper equipage, sends for the vicar. Oudart comes with
the holy-water pot, followed by the catchpole, who, as he came into the
hall, did not forget to make good store of awkward cringes, and then served
Basche with a writ. Basche gave him grimace for grimace, slipped an angel
into his mutton-fist, and prayed him to assist at the contract and
ceremony; which he did. When it was ended, thumps and fisticuffs began to
fly about among the assistants; but when it came to the catchpole's turn,
they all laid on him so unmercifully with their gauntlets that they at last
settled him, all stunned and battered, bruised and mortified, with one of
his eyes black and blue, eight ribs bruised, his brisket sunk in, his
omoplates in four quarters, his under jawbone in three pieces; and all this
in jest, and no harm done. God wot how the levite belaboured him, hiding
within the long sleeve of his canonical shirt his huge steel gauntlet lined
with ermine; for he was a strong-built ball, and an old dog at fisticuffs.
The catchpole, all of a bloody tiger-like stripe, with much ado crawled
home to L'Isle Bouchart, well pleased and edified, however, with Basche's
kind reception; and, with the help of the good surgeons of the place, lived
as long as you would have him. From that time to this, not a word of the
business; the memory of it was lost with the sound of the bells that rung
with joy at his funeral.
Chapter 4. XIII.
How, like Master Francis Villon, the Lord of Basche commended his servants.
The catchpole being packed off on blind Sorrel--so he called his one-eyed
mare--Basche sent for his lady, her women, and all his servants, into the
arbour of his garden; had wine brought, attended with good store of
pasties, hams, fruit, and other table-ammunition, for a nunchion; drank
with them joyfully, and then told them this story:
Master Francis Villon in his old age retired to St. Maxent in Poitou, under
the patronage of a good honest abbot of the place. There to make sport for
the mob, he undertook to get the Passion acted, after the way, and in the
dialect of the country. The parts being distributed, the play having been
rehearsed, and the stage prepared, he told the mayor and aldermen that the
mystery might be ready after Niort fair, and that there only wanted
properties and necessaries, but chiefly clothes fit for the parts; so the
mayor and his brethren took care to get them.
Villon, to dress an old clownish father greybeard, who was to represent God
the father, begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan
friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole.
Tickletoby refused
him, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously forbidden
to give or lend anything to players. Villon replied that the statute
reached no farther than farces, drolls, antics, loose and dissolute games,
and that he asked no more than what he had seen allowed at Brussels and
other places. Tickletoby notwithstanding peremptorily bid him provide
himself elsewhere if he would, and not to hope for anything out of his
monastical wardrobe. Villon gave an account of this to the players, as of
a most abominable action; adding, that God would shortly revenge himself,
and make an example of Tickletoby.
The Saturday following he had notice given him that Tickletoby, upon the
filly of the convent--so they call a young mare that was never leaped yet
--was gone a-mumping to St. Ligarius, and would be back about two in the
afternoon. Knowing this, he made a cavalcade of his devils of the Passion
through the town. They were all rigged with wolves', calves', and rams'
skins, laced and trimmed with sheep's heads, bull's feathers, and large
kitchen tenterhooks, girt with broad leathern girdles, whereat hanged
dangling huge cow-bells and horse-bells, which made a horrid din. Some
held in their claws black sticks full of squibs and crackers; others had
long lighted pieces of wood, upon which, at the corner of every street,
they flung whole handfuls of rosin-dust, that made a terrible fire and
smoke. Having thus led them about, to the great diversion of the mob and
the dreadful fear of little children, he finally carried them to an
entertainment at a summer-house without the gate that leads to St.
Ligarius.
As they came near to the place, he espied Tickletoby afar off, coming home
from mumping, and told them in macaronic verse:
Hic est de patria, natus, de gente belistra,
Qui solet antiqua bribas portare bisacco. (Motteux reads:
'Hic est mumpator natus de gente Cucowli,
Qui solet antiquo Scrappas portare bisacco. ')
A plague on his friarship, said the devils then; the lousy beggar would not
lend a poor cope to the fatherly father; let us fright him. Well said,
cried Villon; but let us hide ourselves till he comes by, and then charge
him home briskly with your squibs and burning sticks. Tickletoby being
come to the place, they all rushed on a sudden into the road to meet him,
and in a frightful manner threw fire from all sides upon him and his filly
foal, ringing and tingling their bells, and howling like so many real
devils, Hho, hho, hho, hho, brrou, rrou, rrourrs, rrrourrs, hoo, hou, hou
hho, hho, hhoi. Friar Stephen, don't we play the devils rarely? The filly
was soon scared out of her seven senses, and began to start, to funk it, to
squirt it, to trot it, to fart it, to bound it, to gallop it, to kick it,
to spurn it, to calcitrate it, to wince it, to frisk it, to leap it, to
curvet it, with double jerks, and bum-motions; insomuch that she threw down
Tickletoby, though he held fast by the tree of the pack-saddle with might
and main. Now his straps and stirrups were of cord; and on the right side
his sandals were so entangled and twisted that he could not for the heart's
blood of him get out his foot. Thus he was dragged about by the filly
through the road, scratching his bare breech all the way; she still
multiplying her kicks against him, and straying for fear over hedge and
ditch, insomuch that she trepanned his thick skull so that his cockle
brains were dashed out near the Osanna or high-cross. Then his arms fell
to pieces, one this way and the other that way; and even so were his legs
served at the same time. Then she made a bloody havoc with his puddings;
and being got to the convent, brought back only his right foot and twisted
sandal, leaving them to guess what was become of the rest.
Villon, seeing that things had succeeded as he intended, said to his
devils, You will act rarely, gentlemen devils, you will act rarely; I dare
engage you'll top your parts. I defy the devils of Saumur, Douay,
Montmorillon, Langez, St. Espain, Angers; nay, by gad, even those of
Poictiers, for all their bragging and vapouring, to match you.
Thus, friends, said Basche, I foresee that hereafter you will act rarely
this tragical farce, since the very first time you have so skilfully
hampered, bethwacked, belammed, and bebumped the catchpole. From this day
I double your wages. As for you, my dear, said he to his lady, make your
gratifications as you please; you are my treasurer, you know. For my part,
first and foremost, I drink to you all. Come on, box it about; it is good
and cool. In the second place, you, Mr. Steward, take this silver basin; I
give it you freely. Then you, my gentlemen of the horse, take these two
silver-gilt cups, and let not the pages be horsewhipped these three months.
My dear, let them have my best white plumes of feathers, with the gold
buckles to them. Sir Oudart, this silver flagon falls to your share; this
other I give to the cooks. To the valets de chambre I give this silver
basket; to the grooms, this silver-gilt boat; to the porter, these two
plates; to the hostlers, these ten porringers. Trudon, take you these
silver spoons and this sugar-box. You, footman, take this large salt.
Serve me well, and I will remember you. For, on the word of a gentleman, I
had rather bear in war one hundred blows on my helmet in the service of my
country than be once cited by these knavish catchpoles merely to humour
this same gorbellied prior.
Chapter 4. XIV.
A further account of catchpoles who were drubbed at Basche's house.
Four days after another young, long-shanked, raw-boned catchpole coming to
serve Basche with a writ at the fat prior's request, was no sooner at the
gate but the porter smelt him out and rung the bell; at whose second pull
all the family understood the mystery. Loire was kneading his dough; his
wife was sifting meal; Oudart was toping in his office; the gentlemen were
playing at tennis; the Lord Basche at in-and-out with my lady; the
waiting-men and gentle-women at push-pin; the officers at lanterloo, and the
pages at hot-cockles, giving one another smart bangs. They were all
immediately informed that a catchpole was housed.
Upon this Oudart put on his sacerdotal, and Loire and his wife their
nuptial badges; Trudon piped it, and then tabored it like mad; all made
haste to get ready, not forgetting the gauntlets. Basche went into the
outward yard; there the catchpole meeting him fell on his marrow-bones,
begged of him not to take it ill if he served him with a writ at the suit
of the fat prior; and in a pathetic speech let him know that he was a
public person, a servant to the monking tribe, apparitor to the abbatial
mitre, ready to do as much for him, nay, for the least of his servants,
whensoever he would employ and use him.
Nay, truly, said the lord, you shall not serve your writ till you have
tasted some of my good Quinquenays wine, and been a witness to a wedding
which we are to have this very minute. Let him drink and refresh himself,
added he, turning towards the levitical butler, and then bring him into the
hall. After which, Catchpole, well stuffed and moistened, came with Oudart
to the place where all the actors in the farce stood ready to begin. The
sight of their game set them a-laughing, and the messenger of mischief
grinned also for company's sake. Then the mysterious words were muttered
to and by the couple, their hands joined, the bride bussed, and all
besprinkled with holy water. While they were bringing wine and kickshaws,
thumps began to trot about by dozens. The catchpole gave the levite
several blows. Oudart, who had his gauntlet hid under his canonical shirt,
draws it on like a mitten, and then, with his clenched fist, souse he fell
on the catchpole and mauled him like a devil; the junior gauntlets dropped
on him likewise like so many battering rams. Remember the wedding by this,
by that, by these blows, said they. In short, they stroked him so to the
purpose that he pissed blood out at mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, and was
bruised, thwacked, battered, bebumped, and crippled at the back, neck,
breast, arms, and so forth. Never did the bachelors at Avignon in carnival
time play more melodiously at raphe than was then played on the catchpole's
microcosm. At last down he fell.
They threw a great deal of wine on his snout, tied round the sleeve of his
doublet a fine yellow and green favour, and got him upon his snotty beast,
and God knows how he got to L'Isle Bouchart; where I cannot truly tell you
whether he was dressed and looked after or no, both by his spouse and the
able doctors of the country; for the thing never came to my ears.
The next day they had a third part to the same tune, because it did not
appear by the lean catchpole's bag that he had served his writ. So the fat
prior sent a new catchpole, at the head of a brace of bums for his garde du
corps, to summon my lord. The porter ringing the bell, the whole family
was overjoyed, knowing that it was another rogue. Basche was at dinner
with his lady and the gentlemen; so he sent for the catchpole, made him sit
by him, and the bums by the women, and made them eat till their bellies
cracked with their breeches unbuttoned. The fruit being served, the
catchpole arose from table, and before the bums cited Basche. Basche
kindly asked him for a copy of the warrant, which the other had got ready;
he then takes witness and a copy of the summons. To the catchpole and his
bums he ordered four ducats for civility money. In the meantime all were
withdrawn for the farce. So Trudon gave the alarm with his tabor. Basche
desired the catchpole to stay and see one of his servants married, and
witness the contract of marriage, paying him his fee. The catchpole
slapdash was ready, took out his inkhorn, got paper immediately, and his
bums by him.
Then Loire came into the hall at one door, and his wife with the
gentlewomen at another, in nuptial accoutrements. Oudart, in
pontificalibus, takes them both by their hands, asketh them their will,
giveth them the matrimonial blessing, and was very liberal of holy water.
The contract written, signed, and registered, on one side was brought wine
and comfits; on the other, white and orange-tawny-coloured favours were
distributed; on another, gauntlets privately handed about.
Chapter 4. XV.
How the ancient custom at nuptials is renewed by the catchpole.
The catchpole, having made shift to get down a swingeing sneaker of Breton
wine, said to Basche, Pray, sir, what do you mean? You do not give one
another the memento of the wedding. By St. Joseph's wooden shoe, all good
customs are forgot. We find the form, but the hare is scampered; and the
nest, but the birds are flown. There are no true friends nowadays. You
see how, in several churches, the ancient laudable custom of tippling on
account of the blessed saints O O, at Christmas, is come to nothing. The
world is in its dotage, and doomsday is certainly coming all so fast. Now
come on; the wedding, the wedding, the wedding; remember it by this. This
he said, striking Basche and his lady; then her women and the levite. Then
the tabor beat a point of war, and the gauntlets began to do their duty;
insomuch that the catchpole had his crown cracked in no less than nine
places. One of the bums had his right arm put out of joint, and the other
his upper jaw-bone or mandibule dislocated so that it hid half his chin,
with a denudation of the uvula, and sad loss of the molar, masticatory, and
canine teeth. Then the tabor beat a retreat; the gauntlets were carefully
hid in a trice, and sweetmeats afresh distributed to renew the mirth of the
company. So they all drank to one another, and especially to the catchpole
and his bums. But Oudart cursed and damned the wedding to the pit of hell,
complaining that one of the bums had utterly disincornifistibulated his
nether shoulder-blade. Nevertheless, he scorned to be thought a flincher,
and made shift to tope to him on the square.
The jawless bum shrugged up his shoulders, joined his hands, and by signs
begged his pardon; for speak he could not. The sham bridegroom made his
moan, that the crippled bum had struck him such a horrid thump with his
shoulder-of-mutton fist on the nether elbow that he was grown quite
esperruquanchuzelubelouzerireliced down to his very heel, to the no small
loss of mistress bride.
But what harm had poor I done? cried Trudon, hiding his left eye with his
kerchief, and showing his tabor cracked on one side; they were not
satisfied with thus poaching, black and bluing, and
morrambouzevezengouzequoquemorgasacbaquevezinemaffreliding my poor eyes,
but they have also broke my harmless drum. Drums indeed are commonly
beaten at weddings, and it is fit they should; but drummers are well
entertained and never beaten. Now let Beelzebub e'en take the drum, to
make his devilship a nightcap. Brother, said the lame catchpole, never
fret thyself; I will make thee a present of a fine, large, old patent,
which I have here in my bag, to patch up thy drum, and for Madame St.
Ann's sake I pray thee forgive us. By Our Lady of Riviere, the blessed
dame, I meant no more harm than the child unborn. One of the equerries,
who, hopping and halting like a mumping cripple, mimicked the good limping
Lord de la Roche Posay, directed his discourse to the bum with the pouting
jaw, and told him: What, Mr. Manhound, was it not enough thus to have
morcrocastebezasteverestegrigeligoscopapopondrillated us all in our upper
members with your botched mittens, but you must also apply such
morderegripippiatabirofreluchamburelurecaquelurintimpaniments on our
shinbones with the hard tops and extremities of your cobbled shoes. Do
you call this children's play? By the mass, 'tis no jest. The bum,
wringing his hands, seemed to beg his pardon, muttering with his tongue,
Mon, mon, mon, vrelon, von, von, like a dumb man. The bride crying
laughed, and laughing cried, because the catchpole was not satisfied with
drubbing her without choice or distinction of members, but had also rudely
roused and toused her, pulled off her topping, and not having the fear of
her husband before his eyes, treacherously
trepignemanpenillorifrizonoufresterfumbled tumbled and squeezed her lower
parts. The devil go with it, said Basche; there was much need indeed that
this same Master King (this was the catchpole's name) should thus break my
wife's back; however, I forgive him now; these are little nuptial
caresses. But this I plainly perceive, that he cited me like an angel, and
drubbed me like a devil. He had something in him of Friar Thumpwell.
Come, for all this, I must drink to him, and to you likewise, his trusty
esquires. But, said his lady, why hath he been so very liberal of his
manual kindness to me, without the least provocation? I assure you, I by
no means like it; but this I dare say for him, that he hath the hardest
knuckles that ever I felt on my shoulders. The steward held his left arm
in a scarf, as if it had been rent and torn in twain. I think it was the
devil, said he, that moved me to assist at these nuptials; shame on ill
luck; I must needs be meddling with a pox, and now see what I have got by
the bargain, both my arms are wretchedly engoulevezinemassed and bruised.
Do you call this a wedding? By St. Bridget's tooth, I had rather be at
that of a Tom T--d-man. This is, o' my word, even just such another feast
as was that of the Lapithae, described by the philosopher of Samosata.
One of the bums had lost his tongue. The other two, tho' they had more
need to complain, made their excuse as well as they could, protesting that
they had no ill design in this dumbfounding; begging that, for goodness
sake, they would forgive them; and so, tho' they could hardly budge a
foot, or wag along, away they crawled. About a mile from Basche's seat,
the catchpole found himself somewhat out of sorts. The bums got to L'Isle
Bouchart, publicly saying that since they were born they had never seen an
honester gentleman than the Lord of Basche, or civiller people than his,
and that they had never been at the like wedding (which I verily believe);
but that it was their own faults if they had been tickled off, and tossed
about from post to pillar, since themselves had began the beating. So
they lived I cannot exactly tell you how many days after this. But from
that time to this it was held for a certain truth that Basche's money was
more pestilential, mortal, and pernicious to the catchpoles and bums than
were formerly the aurum Tholosanum and the Sejan horse to those that
possessed them. Ever since this he lived quietly, and Basche's wedding
grew into a common proverb.
Chapter 4. XVI.
How Friar John made trial of the nature of the catchpoles.
This story would seem pleasant enough, said Pantagruel, were we not to have
always the fear of God before our eyes. It had been better, said
Epistemon, if those gauntlets had fallen upon the fat prior. Since he took
a pleasure in spending his money partly to vex Basche, partly to see those
catchpoles banged, good lusty thumps would have done well on his shaved
crown, considering the horrid concussions nowadays among those puny judges.
What harm had done those poor devils the catchpoles? This puts me in mind,
said Pantagruel, of an ancient Roman named L. Neratius. He was of noble
blood, and for some time was rich; but had this tyrannical inclination,
that whenever he went out of doors he caused his servants to fill their
pockets with gold and silver, and meeting in the street your spruce
gallants and better sort of beaux, without the least provocation, for his
fancy, he used to strike them hard on the face with his fist; and
immediately after that, to appease them and hinder them from complaining to
the magistrates, he would give them as much money as satisfied them
according to the law of the twelve tables. Thus he used to spend his
revenue, beating people for the price of his money. By St. Bennet's sacred
boot, quoth Friar John, I will know the truth of it presently.
This said, he went on shore, put his hand in his fob, and took out twenty
ducats; then said with a loud voice, in the hearing of a shoal of the
nation of catchpoles, Who will earn twenty ducats for being beaten like the
devil? Io, Io, Io, said they all; you will cripple us for ever, sir, that
is most certain; but the money is tempting. With this they were all
thronging who should be first to be thus preciously beaten. Friar John
singled him out of the whole knot of these rogues in grain, a red-snouted
catchpole, who upon his right thumb wore a thick broad silver hoop, wherein
was set a good large toadstone. He had no sooner picked him out from the
rest, but I perceived that they all muttered and grumbled; and I heard a
young thin-jawed catchpole, a notable scholar, a pretty fellow at his pen,
and, according to public report, much cried up for his honesty at Doctors'
Commons, making his complaint and muttering because this same crimson phiz
carried away all the practice, and that if there were but a score and a
half of bastinadoes to be got, he would certainly run away with eight and
twenty of them. But all this was looked upon to be nothing but mere envy.
Friar John so unmercifully thrashed, thumped, and belaboured Red-snout,
back and belly, sides, legs, and arms, head, feet, and so forth, with the
home and frequently repeated application of one of the best members of a
faggot, that I took him to be a dead man; then he gave him the twenty
ducats, which made the dog get on his legs, pleased like a little king or
two. The rest were saying to Friar John, Sir, sir, brother devil, if it
please you to do us the favour to beat some of us for less money, we are
all at your devilship's command, bags, papers, pens, and all. Red-snout
cried out against them, saying, with a loud voice, Body of me, you little
prigs, will you offer to take the bread out of my mouth? will you take my
bargain over my head? would you draw and inveigle from me my clients and
customers? Take notice, I summon you before the official this day
sevennight; I will law and claw you like any old devil of Vauverd, that I
will--Then turning himself towards Friar John, with a smiling and joyful
look, he said to him, Reverend father in the devil, if you have found me a
good hide, and have a mind to divert yourself once more by beating your
humble servant, I will bate you half in half this time rather than lose
your custom; do not spare me, I beseech you; I am all, and more than all,
yours, good Mr. Devil; head, lungs, tripes, guts, and garbage; and that at
a pennyworth, I'll assure you. Friar John never heeded his proffers, but
even left them. The other catchpoles were making addresses to Panurge,
Epistemon, Gymnast, and others, entreating them charitably to bestow upon
their carcasses a small beating, for otherwise they were in danger of
keeping a long fast; but none of them had a stomach to it. Some time
after, seeking fresh water for the ship's company, we met a couple of old
female catchpoles of the place, miserably howling and weeping in concert.
Pantagruel had kept on board, and already had caused a retreat to be
sounded. Thinking that they might be related to the catchpole that was
bastinadoed, we asked them the occasion of their grief. They replied that
they had too much cause to weep; for that very hour, from an exalted triple
tree, two of the honestest gentlemen in Catchpole-land had been made to cut
a caper on nothing. Cut a caper on nothing, said Gymnast; my pages use to
cut capers on the ground; to cut a caper on nothing should be hanging and
choking, or I am out. Ay, ay, said Friar John; you speak of it like St.
John de la Palisse.
We asked them why they treated these worthy persons with such a choking
hempen salad. They told us they had only borrowed, alias stolen, the tools
of the mass and hid them under the handle of the parish. This is a very
allegorical way of speaking, said Epistemon.
Chapter 4. XVII.
How Pantagruel came to the islands of Tohu and Bohu; and of the strange
death of Wide-nostrils, the swallower of windmills.
That day Pantagruel came to the two islands of Tohu and Bohu, where the
devil a bit we could find anything to fry with. For one Wide-nostrils,
a huge giant, had swallowed every individual pan, skillet, kettle,
frying-pan, dripping-pan, and brass and iron pot in the land, for want of
windmills, which were his daily food. Whence it happened that somewhat
before day, about the hour of his digestion, the greedy churl was taken
very ill with a kind of a surfeit, or crudity of stomach, occasioned, as
the physicians said, by the weakness of the concocting faculty of his
stomach, naturally disposed to digest whole windmills at a gust, yet unable
to consume perfectly the pans and skillets; though it had indeed pretty
well digested the kettles and pots, as they said they knew by the
hypostases and eneoremes of four tubs of second-hand drink which he had
evacuated at two different times that morning. They made use of divers
remedies, according to art, to give him ease; but all would not do; the
distemper prevailed over the remedies; insomuch that the famous
Wide-nostrils died that morning of so strange a death that I think you ought
no longer to wonder at that of the poet Aeschylus. It had been foretold him
by the soothsayers that he would die on a certain day by the ruin of
something that should fall on him. The fatal day being come in its turn, he
removed himself out of town, far from all houses, trees, (rocks,) or any
other things that can fall and endanger by their ruin; and strayed in a
large field, trusting himself to the open sky; there very secure, as he
thought, unless indeed the sky should happen to fall, which he held to be
impossible. Yet they say that the larks are much afraid of it; for if it
should fall, they must all be taken.
The Celts that once lived near the Rhine--they are our noble valiant
French--in ancient times were also afraid of the sky's falling; for being
asked by Alexander the Great what they feared most in this world, hoping
well they would say that they feared none but him, considering his great
achievements, they made answer that they feared nothing but the sky's
falling; however, not refusing to enter into a confederacy with so brave a
king, if you believe Strabo, lib. 7, and Arrian, lib. I.
Plutarch also, in his book of the face that appears on the body of the
moon, speaks of one Phenaces, who very much feared the moon should fall on
the earth, and pitied those that live under that planet, as the Aethiopians
and Taprobanians, if so heavy a mass ever happened to fall on them, and
would have feared the like of heaven and earth had they not been duly
propped up and borne by the Atlantic pillars, as the ancients believed,
according to Aristotle's testimony, lib. 5, Metaphys. Notwithstanding all
this, poor Aeschylus was killed by the fall of the shell of a tortoise,
which falling from betwixt the claws of an eagle high in the air, just on
his head, dashed out his brains.
Neither ought you to wonder at the death of another poet, I mean old jolly
Anacreon, who was choked with a grape-stone. Nor at that of Fabius the
Roman praetor, who was choked with a single goat's hair as he was supping
up a porringer of milk. Nor at the death of that bashful fool, who by
holding in his wind, and for want of letting out a bum-gunshot, died
suddenly in the presence of the Emperor Claudius. Nor at that of the
Italian buried on the Via Flaminia at Rome, who in his epitaph complains
that the bite of a she-puss on his little finger was the cause of his
death. Nor of that of Q. Lecanius Bassus, who died suddenly of so small a
prick with a needle on his left thumb that it could hardly be discerned.
Nor of Quenelault, a Norman physician, who died suddenly at Montpellier,
merely for having sideways took a worm out of his hand with a penknife.
Nor of Philomenes, whose servant having got him some new figs for the first
course of his dinner, whilst he went to fetch wine, a straggling well-hung
ass got into the house, and seeing the figs on the table, without further
invitation soberly fell to. Philomenes coming into the room and nicely
observing with what gravity the ass ate its dinner, said to the man, who
was come back, Since thou hast set figs here for this reverend guest of
ours to eat, methinks it is but reason thou also give him some of this wine
to drink. He had no sooner said this, but he was so excessively pleased,
and fell into so exorbitant a fit of laughter, that the use of his spleen
took that of his breath utterly away, and he immediately died. Nor of
Spurius Saufeius, who died supping up a soft-boiled egg as he came out of a
bath. Nor of him who, as Boccaccio tells us, died suddenly by picking his
grinders with a sage-stalk. Nor of Phillipot Placut, who being brisk and
hale, fell dead as he was paying an old debt; which causes, perhaps, many
not to pay theirs, for fear of the like accident. Nor of the painter
Zeuxis, who killed himself with laughing at the sight of the antique
jobbernowl of an old hag drawn by him. Nor, in short, of a thousand more
of which authors write, as Varrius, Pliny, Valerius, J. Baptista Fulgosus,
and Bacabery the elder. In short, Gaffer Wide-nostrils choked himself with
eating a huge lump of fresh butter at the mouth of a hot oven by the advice
of physicians.
They likewise told us there that the King of Cullan in Bohu had routed the
grandees of King Mecloth, and made sad work with the fortresses of Belima.
After this, we sailed by the islands of Nargues and Zargues; also by the
islands of Teleniabin and Geleniabin, very fine and fruitful in ingredients
for clysters; and then by the islands of Enig and Evig, on whose account
formerly the Landgrave of Hesse was swinged off with a vengeance.
(Motteux adds unnecessarily (by way of explanation), 'that's holy stuff. ').
Chapter 4. IX.
How Pantagruel arrived at the island of Ennasin, and of the strange ways of
being akin in that country.
We had still the wind at south-south-west, and had been a whole day without
making land. On the third day, at the flies' uprising (which, you know, is
some two or three hours after the sun's), we got sight of a triangular
island, very much like Sicily for its form and situation. It was called
the Island of Alliances.
The people there are much like your carrot-pated Poitevins, save only that
all of them, men, women, and children, have their noses shaped like an ace
of clubs. For that reason the ancient name of the country was Ennasin.
They were all akin, as the mayor of the place told us; at least they
boasted so.
You people of the other world esteem it a wonderful thing that, out of the
family of the Fabii at Rome, on a certain day, which was the 13th of
February, at a certain gate, which was the Porta Carmentalis, since named
Scelerata, formerly situated at the foot of the Capitol, between the
Tarpeian rock and the Tiber, marched out against the Veientes of Etruria
three hundred and six men bearing arms, all related to each other, with
five thousand other soldiers, every one of them their vassals, who were all
slain near the river Cremera, that comes out of the lake of Beccano. Now
from this same country of Ennasin, in case of need, above three hundred
thousand, all relations and of one family, might march out. Their degrees
of consanguinity and alliance are very strange; for being thus akin and
allied to one another, we found that none was either father or mother,
brother or sister, uncle or aunt, nephew or niece, son-in-law or
daughter-in-law, godfather or godmother, to the other; unless, truly, a tall
flat-nosed old fellow, who, as I perceived, called a little shitten-arsed
girl of three or four years old, father, and the child called him daughter.
Their distinction of degrees of kindred was thus: a man used to call a
woman, my lean bit; the woman called him, my porpoise. Those, said Friar
John, must needs stink damnably of fish when they have rubbed their bacon
one with the other. One, smiling on a young buxom baggage, said, Good
morrow, dear currycomb. She, to return him his civility, said, The like to
you, my steed. Ha! ha! ha! said Panurge, that is pretty well, in faith;
for indeed it stands her in good stead to currycomb this steed. Another
greeted his buttock with a Farewell, my case. She replied, Adieu, trial.
By St. Winifred's placket, cried Gymnast, this case has been often tried.
Another asked a she-friend of his, How is it, hatchet? She answered him,
At your service, dear helve. Odds belly, saith Carpalin, this helve and
this hatchet are well matched. As we went on, I saw one who, calling his
she-relation, styled her my crumb, and she called him, my crust.
Quoth one to a brisk, plump, juicy female, I am glad to see you, dear tap.
So am I to find you so merry, sweet spiggot, replied she. One called a
wench, his shovel; she called him, her peal: one named his, my slipper;
and she, my foot: another, my boot; she, my shasoon.
In the same degree of kindred, one called his, my butter; she called him,
my eggs; and they were akin just like a dish of buttered eggs. I heard one
call his, my tripe, and she him, my faggot. Now I could not, for the
heart's blood of me, pick out or discover what parentage, alliance,
affinity, or consanguinity was between them, with reference to our custom;
only they told us that she was faggot's tripe. (Tripe de fagot means the
smallest sticks in a faggot. ) Another, complimenting his convenient, said,
Yours, my shell; she replied, I was yours before, sweet oyster. I reckon,
said Carpalin, she hath gutted his oyster. Another long-shanked ugly
rogue, mounted on a pair of high-heeled wooden slippers, meeting a
strapping, fusty, squabbed dowdy, says he to her, How is't my top? She was
short upon him, and arrogantly replied, Never the better for you, my whip.
By St. Antony's hog, said Xenomanes, I believe so; for how can this whip be
sufficient to lash this top?
A college professor, well provided with cod, and powdered and prinked up,
having a while discoursed with a great lady, taking his leave with these
words, Thank you, sweetmeat; she cried, There needs no thanks, sour-sauce.
Saith Pantagruel, This is not altogether incongruous, for sweet meat must
have sour sauce. A wooden loggerhead said to a young wench, It is long
since I saw you, bag; All the better, cried she, pipe. Set them together,
said Panurge, then blow in their arses, it will be a bagpipe. We saw,
after that, a diminutive humpbacked gallant, pretty near us, taking leave
of a she-relation of his, thus: Fare thee well, friend hole; she
reparteed, Save thee, friend peg. Quoth Friar John, What could they say
more, were he all peg and she all hole? But now would I give something to
know if every cranny of the hole can be stopped up with that same peg.
A bawdy bachelor, talking with an old trout, was saying, Remember, rusty
gun. I will not fail, said she, scourer. Do you reckon these two to be
akin? said Pantagruel to the mayor. I rather take them to be foes. In our
country a woman would take this as a mortal affront. Good people of
t'other world, replied the mayor, you have few such and so near relations
as this gun and scourer are to one another; for they both come out of one
shop. What, was the shop their mother? quoth Panurge. What mother, said
the mayor, does the man mean? That must be some of your world's affinity;
we have here neither father nor mother. Your little paltry fellows that
live on t'other side the water, poor rogues, booted with wisps of hay, may
indeed have such; but we scorn it. The good Pantagruel stood gazing and
listening; but at those words he had like to have lost all patience. (Here
Motteux adds an aside--'os kai nun o Ermeneutes. P. M. ').
Having very exactly viewed the situation of the island and the way of
living of the Enassed nation, we went to take a cup of the creature at a
tavern, where there happened to be a wedding after the manner of the
country. Bating that shocking custom, there was special good cheer.
While we were there, a pleasant match was struck up betwixt a female called
Pear (a tight thing, as we thought, but by some, who knew better things,
said to be quaggy and flabby), and a young soft male, called Cheese,
somewhat sandy. (Many such matches have been, and they were formerly much
commended. ) In our country we say, Il ne fut onques tel mariage, qu'est de
la poire et du fromage; there is no match like that made between the pear
and the cheese; and in many other places good store of such bargains have
been driven. Besides, when the women are at their last prayers, it is to
this day a noted saying, that after cheese comes nothing.
In another room I saw them marrying an old greasy boot to a young pliable
buskin. Pantagruel was told that young buskin took old boot to have and to
hold because she was of special leather, in good case, and waxed, seared,
liquored, and greased to the purpose, even though it had been for the
fisherman that went to bed with his boots on. In another room below, I saw
a young brogue taking a young slipper for better for worse; which, they
told us, was neither for the sake of her piety, parts, or person, but for
the fourth comprehensive p, portion; the spankers, spur-royals,
rose-nobles, and other coriander seed with which she was quilted all over.
Chapter 4. X.
How Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Chely, where he saw King St.
Panigon.
We sailed right before the wind, which we had at west, leaving those odd
alliancers with their ace-of-clubs snouts, and having taken height by the
sun, stood in for Chely, a large, fruitful, wealthy, and well-peopled
island. King St. Panigon, first of the name, reigned there, and, attended
by the princes his sons and the nobles of his court, came as far as the
port to receive Pantagruel, and conducted him to his palace; near the gate
of which the queen, attended by the princesses her daughters and the court
ladies, received us. Panigon directed her and all her retinue to salute
Pantagruel and his men with a kiss; for such was the civil custom of the
country; and they were all fairly bussed accordingly, except Friar John,
who stepped aside and sneaked off among the king's officers. Panigon used
all the entreaties imaginable to persuade Pantagruel to tarry there that
day and the next; but he would needs be gone, and excused himself upon the
opportunity of wind and weather, which, being oftener desired than enjoyed,
ought not to be neglected when it comes. Panigon, having heard these
reasons, let us go, but first made us take off some five-and-twenty or
thirty bumpers each.
Pantagruel, returning to the port, missed Friar John, and asked why he was
not with the rest of the company. Panurge could not tell how to excuse
him, and would have gone back to the palace to call him, when Friar John
overtook them, and merrily cried, Long live the noble Panigon! As I love
my belly, he minds good eating, and keeps a noble house and a dainty
kitchen. I have been there, boys. Everything goes about by dozens. I was
in good hopes to have stuffed my puddings there like a monk. What! always
in a kitchen, friend? said Pantagruel. By the belly of St. Cramcapon,
quoth the friar, I understand the customs and ceremonies which are used
there much better than all the formal stuff, antique postures, and
nonsensical fiddle-faddle that must be used with those women, magni magna,
shittencumshita, cringes, grimaces, scrapes, bows, and congees; double
honours this way, triple salutes that way, the embrace, the grasp, the
squeeze, the hug, the leer, the smack, baso las manos de vostra merce, de
vostra maesta. You are most tarabin, tarabas, Stront; that's downright
Dutch. Why all this ado? I don't say but a man might be for a bit by the
bye and away, to be doing as well as his neighbours; but this little nasty
cringing and courtesying made me as mad as any March devil. You talk of
kissing ladies; by the worthy and sacred frock I wear, I seldom venture
upon it, lest I be served as was the Lord of Guyercharois. What was it?
said Pantagruel; I know him. He is one of the best friends I have.
He was invited to a sumptuous feast, said Friar John, by a relation and
neighbour of his, together with all the gentlemen and ladies in the
neighbourhood. Now some of the latter expecting his coming, dressed the
pages in women's clothes, and finified them like any babies; then ordered
them to meet my lord at his coming near the drawbridge. So the
complimenting monsieur came, and there kissed the petticoated lads with
great formality. At last the ladies, who minded passages in the gallery,
burst out with laughing, and made signs to the pages to take off their
dress; which the good lord having observed, the devil a bit he durst make
up to the true ladies to kiss them, but said, that since they had disguised
the pages, by his great grandfather's helmet, these were certainly the very
footmen and grooms still more cunningly disguised. Odds fish, da jurandi,
why do not we rather remove our humanities into some good warm kitchen of
God, that noble laboratory, and there admire the turning of the spits, the
harmonious rattling of the jacks and fenders, criticise on the position of
the lard, the temperature of the pottages, the preparation for the dessert,
and the order of the wine service? Beati immaculati in via. Matter of
breviary, my masters.
Chapter 4. XI.
Why monks love to be in kitchens.
This, said Epistemon, is spoke like a true monk; I mean like a right
monking monk, not a bemonked monastical monkling. Truly you put me in mind
of some passages that happened at Florence, some twenty years ago, in a
company of studious travellers, fond of visiting the learned, and seeing
the antiquities of Italy, among whom I was. As we viewed the situation and
beauty of Florence, the structure of the dome, the magnificence of the
churches and palaces, we strove to outdo one another in giving them their
due; when a certain monk of Amiens, Bernard Lardon by name, quite angry,
scandalized, and out of all patience, told us, I don't know what the devil
you can find in this same town, that is so much cried up; for my part I
have looked and pored and stared as well as the best of you; I think my
eyesight is as clear as another body's, and what can one see after all?
There are fine houses, indeed and that's all. But the cage does not feed
the birds. God and Monsieur St. Bernard, our good patron, be with us! in
all this same town I have not seen one poor lane of roasting cooks; and yet
I have not a little looked about and sought for so necessary a part of a
commonwealth: ay, and I dare assure you that I have pried up and down with
the exactness of an informer; as ready to number, both to the right and
left, how many, and on what side, we might find most roasting cooks, as a
spy would be to reckon the bastions of a town. Now at Amiens, in four,
nay, five times less ground than we have trod in our contemplations, I
could have shown you above fourteen streets of roasting cooks, most
ancient, savoury, and aromatic. I cannot imagine what kind of pleasure you
can have taken in gazing on the lions and Africans (so methinks you call
their tigers) near the belfry, or in ogling the porcupines and estridges in
the Lord Philip Strozzi's palace. Faith and truth I had rather see a good
fat goose at the spit. This porphyry, those marbles are fine; I say
nothing to the contrary; but our cheesecakes at Amiens are far better in my
mind. These ancient statues are well made; I am willing to believe it;
but, by St. Ferreol of Abbeville, we have young wenches in our country
which please me better a thousand times.
What is the reason, asked Friar John, that monks are always to be found in
kitchens, and kings, emperors, and popes are never there? Is there not,
said Rhizotome, some latent virtue and specific propriety hid in the
kettles and pans, which, as the loadstone attracts iron, draws the monks
there, and cannot attract emperors, popes, or kings? Or is it a natural
induction and inclination, fixed in the frocks and cowls, which of itself
leads and forceth those good religious men into kitchens, whether they will
or no? He would speak of forms following matter, as Averroes calls them,
answered Epistemon. Right, said Friar John.
I will not offer to solve this problem, said Pantagruel; for it is somewhat
ticklish, and you can hardly handle it without coming off scurvily; but I
will tell you what I have heard.
Antigonus, King of Macedon, one day coming into one of the tents, where his
cooks used to dress his meat, and finding there poet Antagoras frying a
conger, and holding the pan himself, merrily asked him, Pray, Mr. Poet, was
Homer frying congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon? Antagoras
readily answered: But do you think, sir, that when Agamemnon did them he
made it his business to know if any in his camp were frying congers? The
king thought it an indecency that a poet should be thus a-frying in a
kitchen; and the poet let the king know that it was a more indecent thing
for a king to be found in such a place. I'll clap another story upon the
neck of this, quoth Panurge, and will tell you what Breton Villandry
answered one day to the Duke of Guise.
They were saying that at a certain battle of King Francis against Charles
the Fifth, Breton, armed cap-a-pie to the teeth, and mounted like St.
George, yet sneaked off, and played least in sight during the engagement.
Blood and oons, answered Breton, I was there, and can prove it easily; nay,
even where you, my lord, dared not have been. The duke began to resent
this as too rash and saucy; but Breton easily appeased him, and set them
all a-laughing. Egad, my lord, quoth he, I kept out of harm's way; I was
all the while with your page Jack, skulking in a certain place where you
had not dared hide your head as I did. Thus discoursing, they got to their
ships, and left the island of Chely.
Chapter 4. XII.
How Pantagruel passed by the land of Pettifogging, and of the strange way
of living among the Catchpoles.
Steering our course forwards the next day, we passed through Pettifogging,
a country all blurred and blotted, so that I could hardly tell what to make
on't. There we saw some pettifoggers and catchpoles, rogues that will hang
their father for a groat. They neither invited us to eat or drink; but,
with a multiplied train of scrapes and cringes, said they were all at our
service for the Legem pone.
One of our droggermen related to Pantagruel their strange way of living,
diametrically opposed to that of our modern Romans; for at Rome a world of
folks get an honest livelihood by poisoning, drubbing, lambasting,
stabbing, and murthering; but the catchpoles earn theirs by being thrashed;
so that if they were long without a tight lambasting, the poor dogs with
their wives and children would be starved. This is just, quoth Panurge,
like those who, as Galen tells us, cannot erect the cavernous nerve towards
the equinoctial circle unless they are soundly flogged. By St. Patrick's
slipper, whoever should jerk me so, would soon, instead of setting me
right, throw me off the saddle, in the devil's name.
The way is this, said the interpreter. When a monk, levite, close-fisted
usurer, or lawyer owes a grudge to some neighbouring gentleman, he sends to
him one of those catchpoles or apparitors, who nabs, or at least cites him,
serves a writ or warrant upon him, thumps, abuses, and affronts him
impudently by natural instinct, and according to his pious instructions;
insomuch, that if the gentleman hath but any guts in his brains, and is not
more stupid than a gyrin frog, he will find himself obliged either to apply
a faggot-stick or his sword to the rascal's jobbernowl, give him the gentle
lash, or make him cut a caper out at the window, by way of correction.
This done, Catchpole is rich for four months at least, as if bastinadoes
were his real harvest; for the monk, levite, usurer, or lawyer will reward
him roundly; and my gentleman must pay him such swingeing damages that his
acres must bleed for it, and he be in danger of miserably rotting within a
stone doublet, as if he had struck the king.
Quoth Panurge, I know an excellent remedy against this used by the Lord of
Basche. What is it? said Pantagruel. The Lord of Basche, said Panurge,
was a brave, honest, noble-spirited gentleman, who, at his return from the
long war in which the Duke of Ferrara, with the help of the French, bravely
defended himself against the fury of Pope Julius the Second, was every day
cited, warned, and prosecuted at the suit and for the sport and fancy of
the fat prior of St. Louant.
One morning, as he was at breakfast with some of his domestics (for he
loved to be sometimes among them) he sent for one Loire, his baker, and his
spouse, and for one Oudart, the vicar of his parish, who was also his
butler, as the custom was then in France; then said to them before his
gentlemen and other servants: You all see how I am daily plagued with
these rascally catchpoles. Truly, if you do not lend me your helping hand,
I am finally resolved to leave the country, and go fight for the sultan, or
the devil, rather than be thus eternally teased. Therefore, to be rid of
their damned visits, hereafter, when any of them come here, be ready, you
baker and your wife, to make your personal appearance in my great hall, in
your wedding clothes, as if you were going to be affianced. Here, take
these ducats, which I give you to keep you in a fitting garb. As for you,
Sir Oudart, be sure you make your personal appearance there in your fine
surplice and stole, not forgetting your holy water, as if you were to wed
them. Be you there also, Trudon, said he to his drummer, with your pipe
and tabor. The form of matrimony must be read, and the bride kissed; then
all of you, as the witnesses used to do in this country, shall give one
another the remembrance of the wedding, which you know is to be a blow with
your fist, bidding the party struck remember the nuptials by that token.
This will but make you have the better stomach to your supper; but when you
come to the catchpole's turn, thrash him thrice and threefold, as you would
a sheaf of green corn; do not spare him; maul him, drub him, lambast him,
swinge him off, I pray you. Here, take these steel gauntlets, covered with
kid. Head, back, belly, and sides, give him blows innumerable; he that
gives him most shall be my best friend. Fear not to be called to an
account about it; I will stand by you; for the blows must seem to be given
in jest, as it is customary among us at all weddings.
Ay, but how shall we know the catchpole? said the man of God. All sorts of
people daily resort to this castle. I have taken care of that, replied the
lord. When some fellow, either on foot, or on a scurvy jade, with a large
broad silver ring on his thumb, comes to the door, he is certainly a
catchpole; the porter having civilly let him in, shall ring the bell; then
be all ready, and come into the hall, to act the tragi-comedy whose plot I
have now laid for you.
That numerical day, as chance would have it, came an old fat ruddy
catchpole. Having knocked at the gate, and then pissed, as most men will
do, the porter soon found him out, by his large greasy spatterdashes, his
jaded hollow-flanked mare, his bagful of writs and informations dangling at
his girdle, but, above all, by the large silver hoop on his left thumb.
The porter was civil to him, admitted him in kindly, and rung the bell
briskly. As soon as the baker and his wife heard it, they clapped on their
best clothes, and made their personal appearance in the hall, keeping their
gravities like a new-made judge. The dominie put on his surplice and
stole, and as he came out of his office, met the catchpole, had him in
there, and made him suck his face a good while, while the gauntlets were
drawing on all hands; and then told him, You are come just in pudding-time;
my lord is in his right cue. We shall feast like kings anon; here is to be
swingeing doings; we have a wedding in the house; here, drink and cheer up;
pull away.
While these two were at it hand-to-fist, Basche, seeing all his people in
the hall in their proper equipage, sends for the vicar. Oudart comes with
the holy-water pot, followed by the catchpole, who, as he came into the
hall, did not forget to make good store of awkward cringes, and then served
Basche with a writ. Basche gave him grimace for grimace, slipped an angel
into his mutton-fist, and prayed him to assist at the contract and
ceremony; which he did. When it was ended, thumps and fisticuffs began to
fly about among the assistants; but when it came to the catchpole's turn,
they all laid on him so unmercifully with their gauntlets that they at last
settled him, all stunned and battered, bruised and mortified, with one of
his eyes black and blue, eight ribs bruised, his brisket sunk in, his
omoplates in four quarters, his under jawbone in three pieces; and all this
in jest, and no harm done. God wot how the levite belaboured him, hiding
within the long sleeve of his canonical shirt his huge steel gauntlet lined
with ermine; for he was a strong-built ball, and an old dog at fisticuffs.
The catchpole, all of a bloody tiger-like stripe, with much ado crawled
home to L'Isle Bouchart, well pleased and edified, however, with Basche's
kind reception; and, with the help of the good surgeons of the place, lived
as long as you would have him. From that time to this, not a word of the
business; the memory of it was lost with the sound of the bells that rung
with joy at his funeral.
Chapter 4. XIII.
How, like Master Francis Villon, the Lord of Basche commended his servants.
The catchpole being packed off on blind Sorrel--so he called his one-eyed
mare--Basche sent for his lady, her women, and all his servants, into the
arbour of his garden; had wine brought, attended with good store of
pasties, hams, fruit, and other table-ammunition, for a nunchion; drank
with them joyfully, and then told them this story:
Master Francis Villon in his old age retired to St. Maxent in Poitou, under
the patronage of a good honest abbot of the place. There to make sport for
the mob, he undertook to get the Passion acted, after the way, and in the
dialect of the country. The parts being distributed, the play having been
rehearsed, and the stage prepared, he told the mayor and aldermen that the
mystery might be ready after Niort fair, and that there only wanted
properties and necessaries, but chiefly clothes fit for the parts; so the
mayor and his brethren took care to get them.
Villon, to dress an old clownish father greybeard, who was to represent God
the father, begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan
friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole.
Tickletoby refused
him, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously forbidden
to give or lend anything to players. Villon replied that the statute
reached no farther than farces, drolls, antics, loose and dissolute games,
and that he asked no more than what he had seen allowed at Brussels and
other places. Tickletoby notwithstanding peremptorily bid him provide
himself elsewhere if he would, and not to hope for anything out of his
monastical wardrobe. Villon gave an account of this to the players, as of
a most abominable action; adding, that God would shortly revenge himself,
and make an example of Tickletoby.
The Saturday following he had notice given him that Tickletoby, upon the
filly of the convent--so they call a young mare that was never leaped yet
--was gone a-mumping to St. Ligarius, and would be back about two in the
afternoon. Knowing this, he made a cavalcade of his devils of the Passion
through the town. They were all rigged with wolves', calves', and rams'
skins, laced and trimmed with sheep's heads, bull's feathers, and large
kitchen tenterhooks, girt with broad leathern girdles, whereat hanged
dangling huge cow-bells and horse-bells, which made a horrid din. Some
held in their claws black sticks full of squibs and crackers; others had
long lighted pieces of wood, upon which, at the corner of every street,
they flung whole handfuls of rosin-dust, that made a terrible fire and
smoke. Having thus led them about, to the great diversion of the mob and
the dreadful fear of little children, he finally carried them to an
entertainment at a summer-house without the gate that leads to St.
Ligarius.
As they came near to the place, he espied Tickletoby afar off, coming home
from mumping, and told them in macaronic verse:
Hic est de patria, natus, de gente belistra,
Qui solet antiqua bribas portare bisacco. (Motteux reads:
'Hic est mumpator natus de gente Cucowli,
Qui solet antiquo Scrappas portare bisacco. ')
A plague on his friarship, said the devils then; the lousy beggar would not
lend a poor cope to the fatherly father; let us fright him. Well said,
cried Villon; but let us hide ourselves till he comes by, and then charge
him home briskly with your squibs and burning sticks. Tickletoby being
come to the place, they all rushed on a sudden into the road to meet him,
and in a frightful manner threw fire from all sides upon him and his filly
foal, ringing and tingling their bells, and howling like so many real
devils, Hho, hho, hho, hho, brrou, rrou, rrourrs, rrrourrs, hoo, hou, hou
hho, hho, hhoi. Friar Stephen, don't we play the devils rarely? The filly
was soon scared out of her seven senses, and began to start, to funk it, to
squirt it, to trot it, to fart it, to bound it, to gallop it, to kick it,
to spurn it, to calcitrate it, to wince it, to frisk it, to leap it, to
curvet it, with double jerks, and bum-motions; insomuch that she threw down
Tickletoby, though he held fast by the tree of the pack-saddle with might
and main. Now his straps and stirrups were of cord; and on the right side
his sandals were so entangled and twisted that he could not for the heart's
blood of him get out his foot. Thus he was dragged about by the filly
through the road, scratching his bare breech all the way; she still
multiplying her kicks against him, and straying for fear over hedge and
ditch, insomuch that she trepanned his thick skull so that his cockle
brains were dashed out near the Osanna or high-cross. Then his arms fell
to pieces, one this way and the other that way; and even so were his legs
served at the same time. Then she made a bloody havoc with his puddings;
and being got to the convent, brought back only his right foot and twisted
sandal, leaving them to guess what was become of the rest.
Villon, seeing that things had succeeded as he intended, said to his
devils, You will act rarely, gentlemen devils, you will act rarely; I dare
engage you'll top your parts. I defy the devils of Saumur, Douay,
Montmorillon, Langez, St. Espain, Angers; nay, by gad, even those of
Poictiers, for all their bragging and vapouring, to match you.
Thus, friends, said Basche, I foresee that hereafter you will act rarely
this tragical farce, since the very first time you have so skilfully
hampered, bethwacked, belammed, and bebumped the catchpole. From this day
I double your wages. As for you, my dear, said he to his lady, make your
gratifications as you please; you are my treasurer, you know. For my part,
first and foremost, I drink to you all. Come on, box it about; it is good
and cool. In the second place, you, Mr. Steward, take this silver basin; I
give it you freely. Then you, my gentlemen of the horse, take these two
silver-gilt cups, and let not the pages be horsewhipped these three months.
My dear, let them have my best white plumes of feathers, with the gold
buckles to them. Sir Oudart, this silver flagon falls to your share; this
other I give to the cooks. To the valets de chambre I give this silver
basket; to the grooms, this silver-gilt boat; to the porter, these two
plates; to the hostlers, these ten porringers. Trudon, take you these
silver spoons and this sugar-box. You, footman, take this large salt.
Serve me well, and I will remember you. For, on the word of a gentleman, I
had rather bear in war one hundred blows on my helmet in the service of my
country than be once cited by these knavish catchpoles merely to humour
this same gorbellied prior.
Chapter 4. XIV.
A further account of catchpoles who were drubbed at Basche's house.
Four days after another young, long-shanked, raw-boned catchpole coming to
serve Basche with a writ at the fat prior's request, was no sooner at the
gate but the porter smelt him out and rung the bell; at whose second pull
all the family understood the mystery. Loire was kneading his dough; his
wife was sifting meal; Oudart was toping in his office; the gentlemen were
playing at tennis; the Lord Basche at in-and-out with my lady; the
waiting-men and gentle-women at push-pin; the officers at lanterloo, and the
pages at hot-cockles, giving one another smart bangs. They were all
immediately informed that a catchpole was housed.
Upon this Oudart put on his sacerdotal, and Loire and his wife their
nuptial badges; Trudon piped it, and then tabored it like mad; all made
haste to get ready, not forgetting the gauntlets. Basche went into the
outward yard; there the catchpole meeting him fell on his marrow-bones,
begged of him not to take it ill if he served him with a writ at the suit
of the fat prior; and in a pathetic speech let him know that he was a
public person, a servant to the monking tribe, apparitor to the abbatial
mitre, ready to do as much for him, nay, for the least of his servants,
whensoever he would employ and use him.
Nay, truly, said the lord, you shall not serve your writ till you have
tasted some of my good Quinquenays wine, and been a witness to a wedding
which we are to have this very minute. Let him drink and refresh himself,
added he, turning towards the levitical butler, and then bring him into the
hall. After which, Catchpole, well stuffed and moistened, came with Oudart
to the place where all the actors in the farce stood ready to begin. The
sight of their game set them a-laughing, and the messenger of mischief
grinned also for company's sake. Then the mysterious words were muttered
to and by the couple, their hands joined, the bride bussed, and all
besprinkled with holy water. While they were bringing wine and kickshaws,
thumps began to trot about by dozens. The catchpole gave the levite
several blows. Oudart, who had his gauntlet hid under his canonical shirt,
draws it on like a mitten, and then, with his clenched fist, souse he fell
on the catchpole and mauled him like a devil; the junior gauntlets dropped
on him likewise like so many battering rams. Remember the wedding by this,
by that, by these blows, said they. In short, they stroked him so to the
purpose that he pissed blood out at mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, and was
bruised, thwacked, battered, bebumped, and crippled at the back, neck,
breast, arms, and so forth. Never did the bachelors at Avignon in carnival
time play more melodiously at raphe than was then played on the catchpole's
microcosm. At last down he fell.
They threw a great deal of wine on his snout, tied round the sleeve of his
doublet a fine yellow and green favour, and got him upon his snotty beast,
and God knows how he got to L'Isle Bouchart; where I cannot truly tell you
whether he was dressed and looked after or no, both by his spouse and the
able doctors of the country; for the thing never came to my ears.
The next day they had a third part to the same tune, because it did not
appear by the lean catchpole's bag that he had served his writ. So the fat
prior sent a new catchpole, at the head of a brace of bums for his garde du
corps, to summon my lord. The porter ringing the bell, the whole family
was overjoyed, knowing that it was another rogue. Basche was at dinner
with his lady and the gentlemen; so he sent for the catchpole, made him sit
by him, and the bums by the women, and made them eat till their bellies
cracked with their breeches unbuttoned. The fruit being served, the
catchpole arose from table, and before the bums cited Basche. Basche
kindly asked him for a copy of the warrant, which the other had got ready;
he then takes witness and a copy of the summons. To the catchpole and his
bums he ordered four ducats for civility money. In the meantime all were
withdrawn for the farce. So Trudon gave the alarm with his tabor. Basche
desired the catchpole to stay and see one of his servants married, and
witness the contract of marriage, paying him his fee. The catchpole
slapdash was ready, took out his inkhorn, got paper immediately, and his
bums by him.
Then Loire came into the hall at one door, and his wife with the
gentlewomen at another, in nuptial accoutrements. Oudart, in
pontificalibus, takes them both by their hands, asketh them their will,
giveth them the matrimonial blessing, and was very liberal of holy water.
The contract written, signed, and registered, on one side was brought wine
and comfits; on the other, white and orange-tawny-coloured favours were
distributed; on another, gauntlets privately handed about.
Chapter 4. XV.
How the ancient custom at nuptials is renewed by the catchpole.
The catchpole, having made shift to get down a swingeing sneaker of Breton
wine, said to Basche, Pray, sir, what do you mean? You do not give one
another the memento of the wedding. By St. Joseph's wooden shoe, all good
customs are forgot. We find the form, but the hare is scampered; and the
nest, but the birds are flown. There are no true friends nowadays. You
see how, in several churches, the ancient laudable custom of tippling on
account of the blessed saints O O, at Christmas, is come to nothing. The
world is in its dotage, and doomsday is certainly coming all so fast. Now
come on; the wedding, the wedding, the wedding; remember it by this. This
he said, striking Basche and his lady; then her women and the levite. Then
the tabor beat a point of war, and the gauntlets began to do their duty;
insomuch that the catchpole had his crown cracked in no less than nine
places. One of the bums had his right arm put out of joint, and the other
his upper jaw-bone or mandibule dislocated so that it hid half his chin,
with a denudation of the uvula, and sad loss of the molar, masticatory, and
canine teeth. Then the tabor beat a retreat; the gauntlets were carefully
hid in a trice, and sweetmeats afresh distributed to renew the mirth of the
company. So they all drank to one another, and especially to the catchpole
and his bums. But Oudart cursed and damned the wedding to the pit of hell,
complaining that one of the bums had utterly disincornifistibulated his
nether shoulder-blade. Nevertheless, he scorned to be thought a flincher,
and made shift to tope to him on the square.
The jawless bum shrugged up his shoulders, joined his hands, and by signs
begged his pardon; for speak he could not. The sham bridegroom made his
moan, that the crippled bum had struck him such a horrid thump with his
shoulder-of-mutton fist on the nether elbow that he was grown quite
esperruquanchuzelubelouzerireliced down to his very heel, to the no small
loss of mistress bride.
But what harm had poor I done? cried Trudon, hiding his left eye with his
kerchief, and showing his tabor cracked on one side; they were not
satisfied with thus poaching, black and bluing, and
morrambouzevezengouzequoquemorgasacbaquevezinemaffreliding my poor eyes,
but they have also broke my harmless drum. Drums indeed are commonly
beaten at weddings, and it is fit they should; but drummers are well
entertained and never beaten. Now let Beelzebub e'en take the drum, to
make his devilship a nightcap. Brother, said the lame catchpole, never
fret thyself; I will make thee a present of a fine, large, old patent,
which I have here in my bag, to patch up thy drum, and for Madame St.
Ann's sake I pray thee forgive us. By Our Lady of Riviere, the blessed
dame, I meant no more harm than the child unborn. One of the equerries,
who, hopping and halting like a mumping cripple, mimicked the good limping
Lord de la Roche Posay, directed his discourse to the bum with the pouting
jaw, and told him: What, Mr. Manhound, was it not enough thus to have
morcrocastebezasteverestegrigeligoscopapopondrillated us all in our upper
members with your botched mittens, but you must also apply such
morderegripippiatabirofreluchamburelurecaquelurintimpaniments on our
shinbones with the hard tops and extremities of your cobbled shoes. Do
you call this children's play? By the mass, 'tis no jest. The bum,
wringing his hands, seemed to beg his pardon, muttering with his tongue,
Mon, mon, mon, vrelon, von, von, like a dumb man. The bride crying
laughed, and laughing cried, because the catchpole was not satisfied with
drubbing her without choice or distinction of members, but had also rudely
roused and toused her, pulled off her topping, and not having the fear of
her husband before his eyes, treacherously
trepignemanpenillorifrizonoufresterfumbled tumbled and squeezed her lower
parts. The devil go with it, said Basche; there was much need indeed that
this same Master King (this was the catchpole's name) should thus break my
wife's back; however, I forgive him now; these are little nuptial
caresses. But this I plainly perceive, that he cited me like an angel, and
drubbed me like a devil. He had something in him of Friar Thumpwell.
Come, for all this, I must drink to him, and to you likewise, his trusty
esquires. But, said his lady, why hath he been so very liberal of his
manual kindness to me, without the least provocation? I assure you, I by
no means like it; but this I dare say for him, that he hath the hardest
knuckles that ever I felt on my shoulders. The steward held his left arm
in a scarf, as if it had been rent and torn in twain. I think it was the
devil, said he, that moved me to assist at these nuptials; shame on ill
luck; I must needs be meddling with a pox, and now see what I have got by
the bargain, both my arms are wretchedly engoulevezinemassed and bruised.
Do you call this a wedding? By St. Bridget's tooth, I had rather be at
that of a Tom T--d-man. This is, o' my word, even just such another feast
as was that of the Lapithae, described by the philosopher of Samosata.
One of the bums had lost his tongue. The other two, tho' they had more
need to complain, made their excuse as well as they could, protesting that
they had no ill design in this dumbfounding; begging that, for goodness
sake, they would forgive them; and so, tho' they could hardly budge a
foot, or wag along, away they crawled. About a mile from Basche's seat,
the catchpole found himself somewhat out of sorts. The bums got to L'Isle
Bouchart, publicly saying that since they were born they had never seen an
honester gentleman than the Lord of Basche, or civiller people than his,
and that they had never been at the like wedding (which I verily believe);
but that it was their own faults if they had been tickled off, and tossed
about from post to pillar, since themselves had began the beating. So
they lived I cannot exactly tell you how many days after this. But from
that time to this it was held for a certain truth that Basche's money was
more pestilential, mortal, and pernicious to the catchpoles and bums than
were formerly the aurum Tholosanum and the Sejan horse to those that
possessed them. Ever since this he lived quietly, and Basche's wedding
grew into a common proverb.
Chapter 4. XVI.
How Friar John made trial of the nature of the catchpoles.
This story would seem pleasant enough, said Pantagruel, were we not to have
always the fear of God before our eyes. It had been better, said
Epistemon, if those gauntlets had fallen upon the fat prior. Since he took
a pleasure in spending his money partly to vex Basche, partly to see those
catchpoles banged, good lusty thumps would have done well on his shaved
crown, considering the horrid concussions nowadays among those puny judges.
What harm had done those poor devils the catchpoles? This puts me in mind,
said Pantagruel, of an ancient Roman named L. Neratius. He was of noble
blood, and for some time was rich; but had this tyrannical inclination,
that whenever he went out of doors he caused his servants to fill their
pockets with gold and silver, and meeting in the street your spruce
gallants and better sort of beaux, without the least provocation, for his
fancy, he used to strike them hard on the face with his fist; and
immediately after that, to appease them and hinder them from complaining to
the magistrates, he would give them as much money as satisfied them
according to the law of the twelve tables. Thus he used to spend his
revenue, beating people for the price of his money. By St. Bennet's sacred
boot, quoth Friar John, I will know the truth of it presently.
This said, he went on shore, put his hand in his fob, and took out twenty
ducats; then said with a loud voice, in the hearing of a shoal of the
nation of catchpoles, Who will earn twenty ducats for being beaten like the
devil? Io, Io, Io, said they all; you will cripple us for ever, sir, that
is most certain; but the money is tempting. With this they were all
thronging who should be first to be thus preciously beaten. Friar John
singled him out of the whole knot of these rogues in grain, a red-snouted
catchpole, who upon his right thumb wore a thick broad silver hoop, wherein
was set a good large toadstone. He had no sooner picked him out from the
rest, but I perceived that they all muttered and grumbled; and I heard a
young thin-jawed catchpole, a notable scholar, a pretty fellow at his pen,
and, according to public report, much cried up for his honesty at Doctors'
Commons, making his complaint and muttering because this same crimson phiz
carried away all the practice, and that if there were but a score and a
half of bastinadoes to be got, he would certainly run away with eight and
twenty of them. But all this was looked upon to be nothing but mere envy.
Friar John so unmercifully thrashed, thumped, and belaboured Red-snout,
back and belly, sides, legs, and arms, head, feet, and so forth, with the
home and frequently repeated application of one of the best members of a
faggot, that I took him to be a dead man; then he gave him the twenty
ducats, which made the dog get on his legs, pleased like a little king or
two. The rest were saying to Friar John, Sir, sir, brother devil, if it
please you to do us the favour to beat some of us for less money, we are
all at your devilship's command, bags, papers, pens, and all. Red-snout
cried out against them, saying, with a loud voice, Body of me, you little
prigs, will you offer to take the bread out of my mouth? will you take my
bargain over my head? would you draw and inveigle from me my clients and
customers? Take notice, I summon you before the official this day
sevennight; I will law and claw you like any old devil of Vauverd, that I
will--Then turning himself towards Friar John, with a smiling and joyful
look, he said to him, Reverend father in the devil, if you have found me a
good hide, and have a mind to divert yourself once more by beating your
humble servant, I will bate you half in half this time rather than lose
your custom; do not spare me, I beseech you; I am all, and more than all,
yours, good Mr. Devil; head, lungs, tripes, guts, and garbage; and that at
a pennyworth, I'll assure you. Friar John never heeded his proffers, but
even left them. The other catchpoles were making addresses to Panurge,
Epistemon, Gymnast, and others, entreating them charitably to bestow upon
their carcasses a small beating, for otherwise they were in danger of
keeping a long fast; but none of them had a stomach to it. Some time
after, seeking fresh water for the ship's company, we met a couple of old
female catchpoles of the place, miserably howling and weeping in concert.
Pantagruel had kept on board, and already had caused a retreat to be
sounded. Thinking that they might be related to the catchpole that was
bastinadoed, we asked them the occasion of their grief. They replied that
they had too much cause to weep; for that very hour, from an exalted triple
tree, two of the honestest gentlemen in Catchpole-land had been made to cut
a caper on nothing. Cut a caper on nothing, said Gymnast; my pages use to
cut capers on the ground; to cut a caper on nothing should be hanging and
choking, or I am out. Ay, ay, said Friar John; you speak of it like St.
John de la Palisse.
We asked them why they treated these worthy persons with such a choking
hempen salad. They told us they had only borrowed, alias stolen, the tools
of the mass and hid them under the handle of the parish. This is a very
allegorical way of speaking, said Epistemon.
Chapter 4. XVII.
How Pantagruel came to the islands of Tohu and Bohu; and of the strange
death of Wide-nostrils, the swallower of windmills.
That day Pantagruel came to the two islands of Tohu and Bohu, where the
devil a bit we could find anything to fry with. For one Wide-nostrils,
a huge giant, had swallowed every individual pan, skillet, kettle,
frying-pan, dripping-pan, and brass and iron pot in the land, for want of
windmills, which were his daily food. Whence it happened that somewhat
before day, about the hour of his digestion, the greedy churl was taken
very ill with a kind of a surfeit, or crudity of stomach, occasioned, as
the physicians said, by the weakness of the concocting faculty of his
stomach, naturally disposed to digest whole windmills at a gust, yet unable
to consume perfectly the pans and skillets; though it had indeed pretty
well digested the kettles and pots, as they said they knew by the
hypostases and eneoremes of four tubs of second-hand drink which he had
evacuated at two different times that morning. They made use of divers
remedies, according to art, to give him ease; but all would not do; the
distemper prevailed over the remedies; insomuch that the famous
Wide-nostrils died that morning of so strange a death that I think you ought
no longer to wonder at that of the poet Aeschylus. It had been foretold him
by the soothsayers that he would die on a certain day by the ruin of
something that should fall on him. The fatal day being come in its turn, he
removed himself out of town, far from all houses, trees, (rocks,) or any
other things that can fall and endanger by their ruin; and strayed in a
large field, trusting himself to the open sky; there very secure, as he
thought, unless indeed the sky should happen to fall, which he held to be
impossible. Yet they say that the larks are much afraid of it; for if it
should fall, they must all be taken.
The Celts that once lived near the Rhine--they are our noble valiant
French--in ancient times were also afraid of the sky's falling; for being
asked by Alexander the Great what they feared most in this world, hoping
well they would say that they feared none but him, considering his great
achievements, they made answer that they feared nothing but the sky's
falling; however, not refusing to enter into a confederacy with so brave a
king, if you believe Strabo, lib. 7, and Arrian, lib. I.
Plutarch also, in his book of the face that appears on the body of the
moon, speaks of one Phenaces, who very much feared the moon should fall on
the earth, and pitied those that live under that planet, as the Aethiopians
and Taprobanians, if so heavy a mass ever happened to fall on them, and
would have feared the like of heaven and earth had they not been duly
propped up and borne by the Atlantic pillars, as the ancients believed,
according to Aristotle's testimony, lib. 5, Metaphys. Notwithstanding all
this, poor Aeschylus was killed by the fall of the shell of a tortoise,
which falling from betwixt the claws of an eagle high in the air, just on
his head, dashed out his brains.
Neither ought you to wonder at the death of another poet, I mean old jolly
Anacreon, who was choked with a grape-stone. Nor at that of Fabius the
Roman praetor, who was choked with a single goat's hair as he was supping
up a porringer of milk. Nor at the death of that bashful fool, who by
holding in his wind, and for want of letting out a bum-gunshot, died
suddenly in the presence of the Emperor Claudius. Nor at that of the
Italian buried on the Via Flaminia at Rome, who in his epitaph complains
that the bite of a she-puss on his little finger was the cause of his
death. Nor of that of Q. Lecanius Bassus, who died suddenly of so small a
prick with a needle on his left thumb that it could hardly be discerned.
Nor of Quenelault, a Norman physician, who died suddenly at Montpellier,
merely for having sideways took a worm out of his hand with a penknife.
Nor of Philomenes, whose servant having got him some new figs for the first
course of his dinner, whilst he went to fetch wine, a straggling well-hung
ass got into the house, and seeing the figs on the table, without further
invitation soberly fell to. Philomenes coming into the room and nicely
observing with what gravity the ass ate its dinner, said to the man, who
was come back, Since thou hast set figs here for this reverend guest of
ours to eat, methinks it is but reason thou also give him some of this wine
to drink. He had no sooner said this, but he was so excessively pleased,
and fell into so exorbitant a fit of laughter, that the use of his spleen
took that of his breath utterly away, and he immediately died. Nor of
Spurius Saufeius, who died supping up a soft-boiled egg as he came out of a
bath. Nor of him who, as Boccaccio tells us, died suddenly by picking his
grinders with a sage-stalk. Nor of Phillipot Placut, who being brisk and
hale, fell dead as he was paying an old debt; which causes, perhaps, many
not to pay theirs, for fear of the like accident. Nor of the painter
Zeuxis, who killed himself with laughing at the sight of the antique
jobbernowl of an old hag drawn by him. Nor, in short, of a thousand more
of which authors write, as Varrius, Pliny, Valerius, J. Baptista Fulgosus,
and Bacabery the elder. In short, Gaffer Wide-nostrils choked himself with
eating a huge lump of fresh butter at the mouth of a hot oven by the advice
of physicians.
They likewise told us there that the King of Cullan in Bohu had routed the
grandees of King Mecloth, and made sad work with the fortresses of Belima.
After this, we sailed by the islands of Nargues and Zargues; also by the
islands of Teleniabin and Geleniabin, very fine and fruitful in ingredients
for clysters; and then by the islands of Enig and Evig, on whose account
formerly the Landgrave of Hesse was swinged off with a vengeance.
