As for their counterparts, the old
mother-scratch-tobies, they most devoutly waited for the blessed hour when
the batch that was in the oven was to be drawn, that they might have their
turns, and in a mighty haste they were pulling and hauling the man like
mad, telling him that 'tis the most grievous and intolerable thing in
nature for the tail to be on fire and the head to scare away those who
should quench it.
mother-scratch-tobies, they most devoutly waited for the blessed hour when
the batch that was in the oven was to be drawn, that they might have their
turns, and in a mighty haste they were pulling and hauling the man like
mad, telling him that 'tis the most grievous and intolerable thing in
nature for the tail to be on fire and the head to scare away those who
should quench it.
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
That pious person, being much dunned, teased, and
importuned by his relations to resign his abbey in his old age, said and
professed that he would not strip till he was ready to go to bed, and that
the last fart which his reverend paternity was to utter should be the fart
of an abbot.
Chapter 5. XVIII.
How our ships were stranded, and we were relieved by some people that were
subject to Queen Whims (qui tenoient de la Quinte).
We weighed and set sail with a merry westerly gale. When about seven
leagues off (twenty-two miles) some gusts or scuds of wind suddenly arose,
and the wind veering and shifting from point to point, was, as they say,
like an old woman's breech, at no certainty; so we first got our starboard
tacks aboard, and hauled off our lee-sheets. Then the gusts increased, and
by fits blowed all at once from several quarters, yet we neither settled
nor braided up close our sails, but only let fly the sheets, not to go
against the master of the ship's direction; and thus having let go amain,
lest we should spend our topsails, or the ship's quick-side should lie in
the water and she be overset, we lay by and run adrift; that is, in a
landloper's phrase, we temporized it. For he assured us that, as these
gusts and whirlwinds would not do us much good, so they could not do us
much harm, considering their easiness and pleasant strife, as also the
clearness of the sky and calmness of the current. So that we were to
observe the philosopher's rule, bear and forbear; that is, trim, or go
according to the time.
However, these whirlwinds and gusts lasted so long that we persuaded the
master to let us go and lie at trie with our main course; that is, to haul
the tack aboard, the sheet close aft, the bowline set up, and the helm tied
close aboard; so, after a stormy gale of wind, we broke through the
whirlwind. But it was like falling into Scylla to avoid Charybdis (out of
the frying-pan into the fire). For we had not sailed a league ere our
ships were stranded upon some sands such as are the flats of St. Maixent.
All our company seemed mightily disturbed except Friar John, who was not a
jot daunted, and with sweet sugar-plum words comforted now one and then
another, giving them hopes of speedy assistance from above, and telling
them that he had seen Castor at the main-yardarm. Oh! that I were but now
ashore, cried Panurge, that is all I wish for myself at present, and that
you who like the sea so well had each man of you two hundred thousand
crowns. I would fairly let you set up shop on these sands, and would get a
fat calf dressed and a hundred of faggots (i. e. bottles of wine) cooled for
you against you come ashore. I freely consent never to mount a wife, so
you but set me ashore and mount me on a horse, that I may go home. No
matter for a servant, I will be contented to serve myself; I am never
better treated than when I am without a man. Faith, old Plautus was in the
right on't when he said the more servants the more crosses; for such they
are, even supposing they could want what they all have but too much of, a
tongue, that most busy, dangerous, and pernicious member of servants.
Accordingly, 'twas for their sakes alone that the racks and tortures for
confession were invented, though some foreign civilians in our time have
drawn alogical and unreasonable consequences from it.
That very moment we spied a sail that made towards us. When it was close
by us, we soon knew what was the lading of the ship and who was aboard of
her. She was full freighted with drums. I was acquainted with many of the
passengers that came in her, who were most of 'em of good families; among
the rest Harry Cotiral, an old toast, who had got a swinging ass's
touch-tripe (penis) fastened to his waist, as the good women's beads are to their
girdle. In his left hand he held an old overgrown greasy foul cap, such as
your scald-pated fellows wear, and in the right a huge cabbage-stump.
As soon as he saw me he was overjoyed, and bawled out to me, What cheer,
ho? How dost like me now? Behold the true Algamana (this he said showing
me the ass's tickle-gizzard). This doctor's cap is my true elixir; and
this (continued he, shaking the cabbage-stump in his fist) is lunaria
major, you old noddy. I have 'em, old boy, I have 'em; we'll make 'em when
thou'rt come back. But pray, father, said I, whence come you? Whither are
you bound? What's your lading? Have you smelt the salt deep? To these
four questions he answered, From Queen Whims; for Touraine; alchemy; to the
very bottom.
Whom have you got o' board? said I. Said he, Astrologers, fortune-tellers,
alchemists, rhymers, poets, painters, projectors, mathematicians,
watchmakers, sing-songs, musicianers, and the devil and all of others that
are subject to Queen Whims (Motteux gives the following footnote:--'La
Quinte, This means a fantastic Humour, Maggots, or a foolish Giddiness of
Brains; and also, a fifth, or the Proportion of Five in music, &c. '). They
have very fair legible patents to show for't, as anybody may see. Panurge
had no sooner heard this but he was upon the high-rope, and began to rail
at them like mad. What o' devil d'ye mean, cried he, to sit idly here like
a pack of loitering sneaksbies, and see us stranded, while you may help us,
and tow us off into the current? A plague o' your whims! you can make all
things whatsoever, they say, so much as good weather and little children;
yet won't make haste to fasten some hawsers and cables, and get us off. I
was just coming to set you afloat, quoth Harry Cotiral; by Trismegistus,
I'll clear you in a trice. With this he caused 7,532,810 huge drums to be
unheaded on one side, and set that open side so that it faced the end of
the streamers and pendants; and having fastened them to good tacklings and
our ship's head to the stern of theirs, with cables fastened to the bits
abaft the manger in the ship's loof, they towed us off ground at one pull
so easily and pleasantly that you'd have wondered at it had you been there.
For the dub-a-dub rattling of the drums, with the soft noise of the gravel
which murmuring disputed us our way, and the merry cheers and huzzas of the
sailors, made an harmony almost as good as that of the heavenly bodies when
they roll and are whirled round their spheres, which rattling of the
celestial wheels Plato said he heard some nights in his sleep.
We scorned to be behindhand with 'em in civility, and gratefully gave 'em
store of our sausages and chitterlings, with which we filled their drums;
and we were just a-hoisting two-and-sixty hogsheads of wine out of the
hold, when two huge whirlpools with great fury made towards their ship,
spouting more water than is in the river Vienne (Vigenne) from Chinon to
Saumur; to make short, all their drums, all their sails, their concerns,
and themselves were soused, and their very hose were watered by the collar.
Panurge was so overjoyed, seeing this, and laughed so heartily, that he was
forced to hold his sides, and it set him into a fit of the colic for two
hours and more. I had a mind, quoth he, to make the dogs drink, and those
honest whirlpools, egad, have saved me that labour and that cost. There's
sauce for them; ariston men udor. Water is good, saith a poet; let 'em
Pindarize upon't. They never cared for fresh water but to wash their hands
or their glasses. This good salt water will stand 'em in good stead for
want of sal ammoniac and nitre in Geber's kitchen.
We could not hold any further discourse with 'em; for the former whirlwind
hindered our ship from feeling the helm. The pilot advised us
henceforwards to let her run adrift and follow the stream, not busying
ourselves with anything, but making much of our carcasses. For our only
way to arrive safe at the queendom of Whims was to trust to the whirlwind
and be led by the current.
Chapter 5. XIX.
How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy.
We did as he directed us for about twelve hours, and on the third day the
sky seemed to us somewhat clearer, and we happily arrived at the port of
Mateotechny, not far distant from Queen Whims, alias the Quintessence.
We met full butt on the quay a great number of guards and other military
men that garrisoned the arsenal, and we were somewhat frighted at first
because they made us all lay down our arms, and in a haughty manner asked
us whence we came.
Cousin, quoth Panurge to him that asked the question, we are of Touraine,
and come from France, being ambitious of paying our respects to the Lady
Quintessence and visit this famous realm of Entelechy.
What do you say? cried they; do you call it Entelechy or Endelechy? Truly,
truly, sweet cousins, quoth Panurge, we are a silly sort of grout-headed
lobcocks, an't please you; be so kind as to forgive us if we chance to
knock words out of joint. As for anything else, we are downright honest
fellows and true hearts.
We have not asked you this question without a cause, said they; for a great
number of others who have passed this way from your country of Touraine
seemed as mere jolt-headed doddipolls as ever were scored o'er the coxcomb,
yet spoke as correct as other folks. But there has been here from other
countries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as
moody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing would
serve these, forsooth, but they must wilfully wrangle and stand out against
us at their coming; and much they got by it after all. Troth, we e'en
fitted them and clawed 'em off with a vengeance, for all they looked so big
and so grum.
Pray tell me, does your time lie so heavy upon you in your world that you
do not know how to bestow it better than in thus impudently talking,
disputing, and writing of our sovereign lady? There was much need that
your Tully, the consul, should go and leave the care of his commonwealth to
busy himself idly about her; and after him your Diogenes Laertius, the
biographer, and your Theodorus Gaza, the philosopher, and your Argiropilus,
the emperor, and your Bessario, the cardinal, and your Politian, the
pedant, and your Budaeus, the judge, and your Lascaris, the ambassador, and
the devil and all of those you call lovers of wisdom; whose number, it
seems, was not thought great enough already, but lately your Scaliger,
Bigot, Chambrier, Francis Fleury, and I cannot tell how many such other
junior sneaking fly-blows must take upon 'em to increase it.
A squinsy gripe the cod's-headed changelings at the swallow and eke at the
cover-weasel; we shall make 'em--But the deuce take 'em! (They flatter the
devil here, and smoothify his name, quoth Panurge, between his teeth. ) You
don't come here, continued the captain, to uphold 'em in their folly; you
have no commission from 'em to this effect; well then, we will talk no more
on't.
Aristotle, that first of men and peerless pattern of all philosophy, was
our sovereign lady's godfather, and wisely and properly gave her the name
of Entelechy. Her true name then is Entelechy, and may he be in tail
beshit, and entail a shit-a-bed faculty and nothing else on his family, who
dares call her by any other name; for whoever he is, he does her wrong, and
is a very impudent person. You are heartily welcome, gentlemen. With
this they colled and clipped us about the neck, which was no small comfort
to us, I'll assure you.
Panurge then whispered me, Fellow-traveller, quoth he, hast thou not been
somewhat afraid this bout? A little, said I. To tell you the truth of it,
quoth he, never were the Ephraimites in a greater fear and quandary when
the Gileadites killed and drowned them for saying sibboleth instead of
shibboleth; and among friends, let me tell you that perhaps there is not a
man in the whole country of Beauce but might easily have stopped my
bunghole with a cartload of hay.
The captain afterwards took us to the queen's palace, leading us silently
with great formality. Pantagruel would have said something to him, but the
other, not being able to come up to his height, wished for a ladder or a
very long pair of stilts; then said, Patience, if it were our sovereign
lady's will, we would be as tall as you; well, we shall when she pleases.
In the first galleries we saw great numbers of sick persons, differently
placed according to their maladies. The leprous were apart; those that
were poisoned on one side; those that had got the plague on another; those
that had the pox in the first rank, and the rest accordingly.
Chapter 5. XX.
How the Quintessence cured the sick with a song.
The captain showed us the queen, attended with her ladies and gentlemen, in
the second gallery. She looked young, though she was at least eighteen
hundred years old, and was handsome, slender, and as fine as a queen, that
is, as hands could make her. He then said to us: It is not yet a fit time
to speak to the queen; be you but mindful of her doings in the meanwhile.
You have kings in your world that fantastically pretend to cure some
certain diseases, as, for example, scrofula or wens, swelled throats,
nicknamed the king's evil, and quartan agues, only with a touch; now our
queen cures all manner of diseases without so much as touching the sick,
but barely with a song, according to the nature of the distemper. He then
showed us a set of organs, and said that when it was touched by her those
miraculous cures were performed. The organ was indeed the strangest that
ever eyes beheld; for the pipes were of cassia fistula in the cod; the top
and cornice of guiacum; the bellows of rhubarb; the pedas of turbith, and
the clavier or keys of scammony.
While we were examining this wonderful new make of an organ, the leprous
were brought in by her abstractors, spodizators, masticators, pregustics,
tabachins, chachanins, neemanins, rabrebans, nercins, rozuins, nebidins,
tearins, segamions, perarons, chasinins, sarins, soteins, aboth, enilins,
archasdarpenins, mebins, chabourins, and other officers, for whom I want
names; so she played 'em I don't know what sort of a tune or song, and they
were all immediately cured.
Then those who were poisoned were had in, and she had no sooner given them
a song but they began to find a use for their legs, and up they got. Then
came on the deaf, the blind, and the dumb, and they too were restored to
their lost faculties and senses with the same remedy; which did so
strangely amaze us (and not without reason, I think) that down we fell on
our faces, remaining prostrate, like men ravished in ecstasy, and were not
able to utter one word through the excess of our admiration, till she came,
and having touched Pantagruel with a fine fragrant nosegay of white roses
which she held in her hand, thus made us recover our senses and get up.
Then she made us the following speech in byssin words, such as Parisatis
desired should be spoken to her son Cyrus, or at least of crimson alamode:
The probity that scintillizes in the superfices of your persons informs my
ratiocinating faculty, in a most stupendous manner, of the radiant virtues
latent within the precious caskets and ventricles of your minds. For,
contemplating the mellifluous suavity of your thrice discreet reverences,
it is impossible not to be persuaded with facility that neither your
affections nor your intellects are vitiated with any defect or privation of
liberal and exalted sciences. Far from it, all must judge that in you are
lodged a cornucopia and encyclopaedia, an unmeasurable profundity of
knowledge in the most peregrine and sublime disciplines, so frequently the
admiration, and so rarely the concomitants of the imperite vulgar. This
gently compels me, who in preceding times indefatigably kept my private
affections absolutely subjugated, to condescend to make my application to
you in the trivial phrase of the plebeian world, and assure you that you
are well, more than most heartily welcome.
I have no hand at making of speeches, quoth Panurge to me privately;
prithee, man, make answer to her for us, if thou canst. This would not
work with me, however; neither did Pantagruel return a word. So that Queen
Whims, or Queen Quintessence (which you please), perceiving that we stood
as mute as fishes, said: Your taciturnity speaks you not only disciples of
Pythagoras, from whom the venerable antiquity of my progenitors in
successive propagation was emaned and derives its original, but also
discovers, that through the revolution of many retrograde moons, you have
in Egypt pressed the extremities of your fingers with the hard tenants of
your mouths, and scalptized your heads with frequent applications of your
unguicules. In the school of Pythagoras, taciturnity was the symbol of
abstracted and superlative knowledge, and the silence of the Egyptians was
agnited as an expressive manner of divine adoration; this caused the
pontiffs of Hierapolis to sacrifice to the great deity in silence,
impercussively, without any vociferous or obstreperous sound. My design is
not to enter into a privation of gratitude towards you, but by a vivacious
formality, though matter were to abstract itself from me, excentricate to
you my cogitations.
Having spoken this, she only said to her officers, Tabachins, a panacea;
and straight they desired us not to take it amiss if the queen did not
invite us to dine with her; for she never ate anything at dinner but some
categories, jecabots, emnins, dimions, abstractions, harborins, chelemins,
second intentions, carradoths, antitheses, metempsychoses, transcendent
prolepsies, and such other light food.
Then they took us into a little closet lined through with alarums, where we
were treated God knows how. It is said that Jupiter writes whatever is
transacted in the world on the dipthera or skin of the Amalthaean goat that
suckled him in Crete, which pelt served him instead of a shield against the
Titans, whence he was nicknamed Aegiochos. Now, as I hate to drink water,
brother topers, I protest it would be impossible to make eighteen goatskins
hold the description of all the good meat they brought before us, though it
were written in characters as small as those in which were penned Homer's
Iliads, which Tully tells us he saw enclosed in a nutshell.
For my part, had I one hundred mouths, as many tongues, a voice of iron, a
heart of oak, and lungs of leather, together with the mellifluous abundance
of Plato, yet I never could give you a full account of a third part of a
second of the whole.
Pantagruel was telling me that he believed the queen had given the symbolic
word used among her subjects to denote sovereign good cheer, when she said
to her tabachins, A panacea; just as Lucullus used to say, In Apollo, when
he designed to give his friends a singular treat; though sometimes they
took him at unawares, as, among the rest, Cicero and Hortensius sometimes
used to do.
Chapter 5. XXI.
How the Queen passed her time after dinner.
When we had dined, a chachanin led us into the queen's hall, and there we
saw how, after dinner, with the ladies and the princes of her court, she
used to sift, searce, bolt, range, and pass away time with a fine large
white and blue silk sieve. We also perceived how they revived ancient
sports, diverting themselves together at--
1. Cordax. 6. Phrygia. 11. Monogas.
2. Emmelia. 7. Thracia. 12. Terminalia.
3. Sicinnia. 8. Calabrisme. 13. Floralia.
4. Jambics. 9. Molossia. 14. Pyrrhice.
5. Persica. 10. Cernophorum. 15. (Nicatism. )
And a thousand other dances.
(Motteux has the following footnote:--'1. A sort of country-dance. 2. A
still tragic dance. 3. Dancing and singing used at funerals. 4. Cutting
sarcasms and lampoons. 5. The Persian dance. 6. Tunes, whose measure
inspired men with a kind of divine fury. 7. The Thracian movement. 8.
Smutty verses. 9. A measure to which the Molossi of Epirus danced a
certain morrice. 10. A dance with bowls or pots in their hands. 11. A
song where one sings alone. 12. Sports at the holidays of the god of
bounds. 13. Dancing naked at Flora's holidays. 14. The Trojan dance in
armour. ')
Afterwards she gave orders that they should show us the apartments and
curiosities in her palace. Accordingly we saw there such new, strange, and
wonderful things, that I am still ravished in admiration every time I think
of't. However, nothing surprised us more than what was done by the
gentlemen of her household, abstractors, parazons, nebidins, spodizators,
and others, who freely and without the least dissembling told us that the
queen their mistress did all impossible things, and cured men of incurable
diseases; and they, her officers, used to do the rest.
I saw there a young parazon cure many of the new consumption, I mean the
pox, though they were never so peppered. Had it been the rankest Roan ague
(Anglice, the Covent-garden gout), 'twas all one to him; touching only
their dentiform vertebrae thrice with a piece of a wooden shoe, he made
them as wholesome as so many sucking-pigs.
Another did thoroughly cure folks of dropsies, tympanies, ascites, and
hyposarcides, striking them on the belly nine times with a Tenedian
hatchet, without any solution of the continuum.
Another cured all manner of fevers and agues on the spot, only with hanging
a fox-tail on the left side of the patient's girdle.
One removed the toothache only with washing thrice the root of the aching
tooth with elder-vinegar, and letting it dry half-an-hour in the sun.
Another the gout, whether hot or cold, natural or accidental, by barely
making the gouty person shut his mouth and open his eyes.
I saw another ease nine gentlemen of St. Francis's distemper ('A
consumption in the pocket, or want of money; those of St. Francis's order
must carry none about 'em. '--Motteux. ) in a very short space of time,
having clapped a rope about their necks, at the end of which hung a box
with ten thousand gold crowns in't.
One with a wonderful engine threw the houses out at the windows, by which
means they were purged of all pestilential air.
Another cured all the three kinds of hectics, the tabid, atrophes, and
emaciated, without bathing, Tabian milk, dropax, alias depilatory, or other
such medicaments, only turning the consumptive for three months into monks;
and he assured me that if they did not grow fat and plump in a monastic way
of living, they never would be fattened in this world, either by nature or
by art.
I saw another surrounded with a crowd of two sorts of women. Some were
young, quaint, clever, neat, pretty, juicy, tight, brisk, buxom, proper,
kind-hearted, and as right as my leg, to any man's thinking. The rest were
old, weather-beaten, over-ridden, toothless, blear-eyed, tough, wrinkled,
shrivelled, tawny, mouldy, phthisicky, decrepit hags, beldams, and walking
carcasses. We were told that his office was to cast anew those she-pieces
of antiquity, and make them such as the pretty creatures whom we saw, who
had been made young again that day, recovering at once the beauty, shape,
size, and disposition which they enjoyed at sixteen; except their heels,
that were now much shorter than in their former youth.
This made them yet more apt to fall backwards whenever any man happened to
touch 'em, than they had been before.
As for their counterparts, the old
mother-scratch-tobies, they most devoutly waited for the blessed hour when
the batch that was in the oven was to be drawn, that they might have their
turns, and in a mighty haste they were pulling and hauling the man like
mad, telling him that 'tis the most grievous and intolerable thing in
nature for the tail to be on fire and the head to scare away those who
should quench it.
The officer had his hands full, never wanting patients; neither did his
place bring him in little, you may swear. Pantagruel asked him whether he
could also make old men young again. He said he could not. But the way to
make them new men was to get 'em to cohabit with a new-cast female; for
this they caught that fifth kind of crinckams, which some call pellade, in
Greek, ophiasis, that makes them cast off their old hair and skin, just as
the serpents do, and thus their youth is renewed like the Arabian
phoenix's. This is the true fountain of youth, for there the old and
decrepit become young, active, and lusty.
Just so, as Euripides tells us, Iolaus was transmogrified; and thus Phaon,
for whom kind-hearted Sappho run wild, grew young again, for Venus's use;
so Tithon by Aurora's means; so Aeson by Medea, and Jason also, who, if
you'll believe Pherecides and Simonides, was new-vamped and dyed by that
witch; and so were the nurses of jolly Bacchus, and their husbands, as
Aeschylus relates.
Chapter 5. XXII.
How Queen Whims' officers were employed; and how the said lady retained us
among her abstractors.
I then saw a great number of the queen's officers, who made blackamoors
white as fast as hops, just rubbing their bellies with the bottom of a
pannier.
Others, with three couples of foxes in one yoke, ploughed a sandy shore,
and did not lose their seed.
Others washed burnt tiles, and made them lose their colour.
Others extracted water out of pumice-stones, braying them a good while in a
mortar, and changed their substance.
Others sheared asses, and thus got long fleece wool.
Others gathered barberries and figs off of thistles.
Others stroked he-goats by the dugs, and saved their milk in a sieve; and
much they got by it.
(Others washed asses' heads without losing their soap. )
Others taught cows to dance, and did not lose their fiddling.
Others pitched nets to catch the wind, and took cock-lobsters in them.
I saw a spodizator, who very artificially got farts out of a dead ass, and
sold 'em for fivepence an ell.
Another did putrefy beetles. O the dainty food!
Poor Panurge fairly cast up his accounts, and gave up his halfpenny (i. e.
vomited), seeing an archasdarpenin who laid a huge plenty of chamber lye to
putrefy in horsedung, mishmashed with abundance of Christian sir-reverence.
Pugh, fie upon him, nasty dog! However, he told us that with this sacred
distillation he watered kings and princes, and made their sweet lives a
fathom or two the longer.
Others built churches to jump over the steeples.
Others set carts before the horses, and began to flay eels at the tail;
neither did the eels cry before they were hurt, like those of Melun.
Others out of nothing made great things, and made great things return to
nothing.
Others cut fire into steaks with a knife, and drew water with a fish-net.
Others made chalk of cheese, and honey of a dog's t--d.
We saw a knot of others, about a baker's dozen in number, tippling under an
arbour. They toped out of jolly bottomless cups four sorts of cool,
sparkling, pure, delicious, vine-tree sirup, which went down like mother's
milk; and healths and bumpers flew about like lightning. We were told that
these true philosophers were fairly multiplying the stars by drinking till
the seven were fourteen, as brawny Hercules did with Atlas.
Others made a virtue of necessity, and the best of a bad market, which
seemed to me a very good piece of work.
Others made alchemy (i. e. sir-reverence) with their teeth, and clapping
their hind retort to the recipient, made scurvy faces, and then squeezed.
Others, in a large grass plot, exactly measured how far the fleas could go
at a hop, a step, and jump; and told us that this was exceedingly useful
for the ruling of kingdoms, the conduct of armies, and the administration
of commonwealths; and that Socrates, who first got philosophy out of
heaven, and from idling and trifling made it profitable and of moment, used
to spend half his philosophizing time in measuring the leaps of fleas, as
Aristophanes the quintessential affirms.
I saw two gibroins by themselves keeping watch on the top of a tower, and
we were told they guarded the moon from the wolves.
In a blind corner I met four more very hot at it, and ready to go to
loggerheads. I asked what was the cause of the stir and ado, the mighty
coil and pother they made. And I heard that for four livelong days those
overwise roisters had been at it ding-dong, disputing on three high, more
than metaphysical propositions, promising themselves mountains of gold by
solving them. The first was concerning a he-ass's shadow; the second, of
the smoke of a lantern; and the third of goat's hair, whether it were wool
or no. We heard that they did not think it a bit strange that two
contradictions in mode, form, figure, and time should be true; though I
will warrant the sophists of Paris had rather be unchristened than own so
much.
While we were admiring all those men's wonderful doings, the evening star
already twinkling, the queen (God bless her! ) appeared, attended with her
court, and again amazed and dazzled us. She perceived it, and said to us:
What occasions the aberrations of human cogitations through the perplexing
labyrinths and abysses of admiration, is not the source of the effects,
which sagacious mortals visibly experience to be the consequential result
of natural causes. 'Tis the novelty of the experiment which makes
impressions on their conceptive, cogitative faculties; that do not previse
the facility of the operation adequately, with a subact and sedate
intellection, associated with diligent and congruous study. Consequently
let all manner of perturbation abdicate the ventricles of your brains, if
anyone has invaded them while they were contemplating what is transacted by
my domestic ministers. Be spectators and auditors of every particular
phenomenon and every individual proposition within the extent of my
mansion; satiate yourselves with all that can fall here under the
consideration of your visual or auscultating powers, and thus emancipate
yourselves from the servitude of crassous ignorance. And that you may be
induced to apprehend how sincerely I desire this in consideration of the
studious cupidity that so demonstratively emicates at your external organs,
from this present particle of time I retain you as my abstractors. Geber,
my principal Tabachin, shall register and initiate you at your departing.
We humbly thanked her queenship without saying a word, accepting of the
noble office she conferred on us.
Chapter 5. XXIII.
How the Queen was served at dinner, and of her way of eating.
Queen Whims after this said to her gentlemen: The orifice of the
ventricle, that ordinary embassador for the alimentation of all members,
whether superior or inferior, importunes us to restore, by the apposition
of idoneous sustenance, what was dissipated by the internal calidity's
action on the radical humidity. Therefore spodizators, gesinins, memains,
and parazons, be not culpable of dilatory protractions in the apposition of
every re-roborating species, but rather let them pullulate and superabound
on the tables. As for you, nobilissim praegustators, and my gentilissim
masticators, your frequently experimented industry, internected with
perdiligent sedulity and sedulous perdiligence, continually adjuvates you
to perficiate all things in so expeditious a manner that there is no
necessity of exciting in you a cupidity to consummate them. Therefore I
can only suggest to you still to operate as you are assuefacted
indefatigably to operate.
Having made this fine speech, she retired for a while with part of her
women, and we were told that 'twas to bathe, as the ancients did more
commonly than we use nowadays to wash our hands before we eat. The tables
were soon placed, the cloth spread, and then the queen sat down. She ate
nothing but celestial ambrosia, and drank nothing but divine nectar. As
for the lords and ladies that were there, they, as well as we, fared on as
rare, costly, and dainty dishes as ever Apicius wot or dreamed of in his
life.
When we were as round as hoops, and as full as eggs, with stuffing the gut,
an olla podrida ('Some call it an Olio. Rabelais Pot-pourry. '--Motteux. )
was set before us to force hunger to come to terms with us, in case it had
not granted us a truce; and such a huge vast thing it was that the plate
which Pythius Althius gave King Darius would hardly have covered it. The
olla consisted of several sorts of pottages, salads, fricassees,
saugrenees, cabirotadoes, roast and boiled meat, carbonadoes, swingeing
pieces of powdered beef, good old hams, dainty somates, cakes, tarts, a
world of curds after the Moorish way, fresh cheese, jellies, and fruit of
all sorts. All this seemed to me good and dainty; however, the sight of it
made me sigh; for alas! I could not taste a bit on't, so full I had filled
my puddings before, and a bellyful is a bellyful you know. Yet I must tell
you what I saw that seemed to me odd enough o' conscience; 'twas some
pasties in paste; and what should those pasties in paste be, d'ye think,
but pasties in pots? At the bottom I perceived store of dice, cards,
tarots ('Great cards on which many different things are figured. '
--Motteux. ), luettes ('Pieces of ivory to play withal. '--Motteux. ),
chessmen, and chequers, besides full bowls of gold crowns, for those who had
a mind to have a game or two and try their chance. Under this I saw a jolly
company of mules in stately trappings, with velvet footcloths, and a troop
of ambling nags, some for men and some for women; besides I don't know how
many litters all lined with velvet, and some coaches of Ferrara make; all
this for those who had a mind to take the air.
This did not seem strange to me; but if anything did 'twas certainly the
queen's way of eating, and truly 'twas very new, and very odd; for she
chewed nothing, the good lady; not but that she had good sound teeth, and
her meat required to be masticated, but such was her highness's custom.
When her praegustators had tasted the meat, her masticators took it and
chewed it most nobly; for their dainty chops and gullets were lined through
with crimson satin, with little welts and gold purls, and their teeth were
of delicate white ivory. Thus, when they had chewed the meat ready for her
highness's maw, they poured it down her throat through a funnel of fine
gold, and so on to her craw. For that reason they told us she never
visited a close-stool but by proxy.
Chapter 5. XXIV.
How there was a ball in the manner of a tournament, at which Queen Whims
was present.
After supper there was a ball in the form of a tilt or a tournament, not
only worth seeing, but also never to be forgotten. First, the floor of the
hall was covered with a large piece of velveted white and yellow chequered
tapestry, each chequer exactly square, and three full spans in breadth.
Then thirty-two young persons came into the hall; sixteen of them arrayed
in cloth of gold, and of these eight were young nymphs such as the ancients
described Diana's attendants; the other eight were a king, a queen, two
wardens of the castle, two knights, and two archers. Those of the other
band were clad in cloth of silver.
They posted themselves on the tapestry in the following manner: the kings
on the last line on the fourth square; so that the golden king was on a
white square, and the silvered king on a yellow square, and each queen by
her king; the golden queen on a yellow square, and the silvered queen on a
white one: and on each side stood the archers to guide their kings and
queens; by the archers the knights, and the wardens by them. In the next
row before 'em stood the eight nymphs; and between the two bands of nymphs
four rows of squares stood empty.
Each band had its musicians, eight on each side, dressed in its livery; the
one with orange-coloured damask, the other with white; and all played on
different instruments most melodiously and harmoniously, still varying in
time and measure as the figure of the dance required. This seemed to me an
admirable thing, considering the numerous diversity of steps, back-steps,
bounds, rebounds, jerks, paces, leaps, skips, turns, coupes, hops,
leadings, risings, meetings, flights, ambuscadoes, moves, and removes.
I was also at a loss when I strove to comprehend how the dancers could so
suddenly know what every different note meant; for they no sooner heard
this or that sound but they placed themselves in the place which was
denoted by the music, though their motions were all different. For the
nymphs that stood in the first file, as if they designed to begin the
fight, marched straight forwards to their enemies from square to square,
unless it were the first step, at which they were free to move over two
steps at once. They alone never fall back (which is not very natural to
other nymphs), and if any of them is so lucky as to advance to the opposite
king's row, she is immediately crowned queen of her king, and after that
moves with the same state and in the same manner as the queen; but till
that happens they never strike their enemies but forwards, and obliquely in
a diagonal line. However, they make it not their chief business to take
their foes; for, if they did, they would leave their queen exposed to the
adverse parties, who then might take her.
The kings move and take their enemies on all sides square-ways, and only
step from a white square into a yellow one, and vice versa, except at their
first step the rank should want other officers than the wardens; for then
they can set 'em in their place, and retire by him.
The queens take a greater liberty than any of the rest; for they move
backwards and forwards all manner of ways, in a straight line as far as
they please, provided the place be not filled with one of her own party,
and diagonally also, keeping to the colour on which she stands.
The archers move backwards or forwards, far and near, never changing the
colour on which they stand. The knights move and take in a lineal manner,
stepping over one square, though a friend or foe stand upon it, posting
themselves on the second square to the right or left, from one colour to
another, which is very unwelcome to the adverse party, and ought to be
carefully observed, for they take at unawares.
The wardens move and take to the right or left, before or behind them, like
the kings, and can advance as far as they find places empty; which liberty
the kings take not.
The law which both sides observe is, at the end of the fight, to besiege
and enclose the king of either party, so that he may not be able to move;
and being reduced to that extremity, the battle is over, and he loses the
day.
Now, to avoid this, there is none of either sex of each party but is
willing to sacrifice his or her life, and they begin to take one another on
all sides in time, as soon as the music strikes up. When anyone takes a
prisoner, he makes his honours, and striking him gently in the hand, puts
him out of the field and combat, and encamps where he stood.
If one of the kings chance to stand where he might be taken, it is not
lawful for any of his adversaries that had discovered him to lay hold on
him; far from it, they are strictly enjoined humbly to pay him their
respects, and give him notice, saying, God preserve you, sir! that his
officers may relieve and cover him, or he may remove, if unhappily he could
not be relieved. However, he is not to be taken, but greeted with a
Good-morrow, the others bending the knee; and thus the tournament uses
to end.
Chapter 5. XXV.
How the thirty-two persons at the ball fought.
The two companies having taken their stations, the music struck up, and
with a martial sound, which had something of horrid in it, like a point of
war, roused and alarmed both parties, who now began to shiver, and then
soon were warmed with warlike rage; and having got in readiness to fight
desperately, impatient of delay stood waiting for the charge.
Then the music of the silvered band ceased playing, and the instruments of
the golden side alone were heard, which denoted that the golden party
attacked. Accordingly, a new movement was played for the onset, and we saw
the nymph who stood before the queen turn to the left towards her king, as
it were to ask leave to fight; and thus saluting her company at the same
time, she moved two squares forwards, and saluted the adverse party.
Now the music of the golden brigade ceased playing, and their antagonists
began again. I ought to have told you that the nymph who began by saluting
her company, had by that formality also given them to understand that they
were to fall on. She was saluted by them in the same manner, with a full
turn to the left, except the queen, who went aside towards her king to the
right; and the same manner of salutation was observed on both sides during
the whole ball.
The silvered nymph that stood before her queen likewise moved as soon as
the music of her party sounded a charge; her salutations, and those of her
side, were to the right, and her queen's to the left. She moved in the
second square forwards, and saluted her antagonists, facing the first
golden nymph; so that there was not any distance between them, and you
would have thought they two had been going to fight; but they only strike
sideways.
Their comrades, whether silvered or golden, followed 'em in an intercalary
figure, and seemed to skirmish a while, till the golden nymph who had first
entered the lists, striking a silvered nymph in the hand on the right, put
her out of the field, and set herself in her place. But soon the music
playing a new measure, she was struck by a silvered archer, who after that
was obliged himself to retire. A silvered knight then sallied out, and the
golden queen posted herself before her king.
Then the silvered king, dreading the golden queen's fury, removed to the
right, to the place where his warden stood, which seemed to him strong and
well guarded.
The two knights on the left, whether golden or silvered, marched up, and on
either side took up many nymphs who could not retreat; principally the
golden knight, who made this his whole business; but the silvered knight
had greater designs, dissembling all along, and even sometimes not taking a
nymph when he could have done it, still moving on till he was come up to
the main body of the enemies in such a manner that he saluted their king
with a God save you, sir!
The whole golden brigade quaked for fear and anger, those words giving
notice of their king's danger; not but that they could soon relieve him,
but because their king being thus saluted they were to lose their warden on
the right wing without any hopes of a recovery. Then the golden king
retired to the left, and the silvered knight took the golden warden, which
was a mighty loss to that party. However, they resolved to be revenged,
and surrounded the knight that he might not escape. He tried to get off,
behaving himself with a great deal of gallantry, and his friends did what
they could to save him; but at last he fell into the golden queen's hands,
and was carried off.
Her forces, not yet satisfied, having lost one of her best men, with more
fury than conduct moved about, and did much mischief among their enemies.
The silvered party warily dissembled, watching their opportunity to be even
with them, and presented one of their nymphs to the golden queen, having
laid an ambuscado; so that the nymph being taken, a golden archer had like
to have seized the silvered queen. Then the golden knight undertakes to
take the silvered king and queen, and says, Good-morrow! Then the silvered
archer salutes them, and was taken by a golden nymph, and she herself by a
silvered one.
The fight was obstinate and sharp. The wardens left their posts, and
advanced to relieve their friends. The battle was doubtful, and victory
hovered over both armies. Now the silvered host charge and break through
their enemy's ranks as far as the golden king's tent, and now they are
beaten back. The golden queen distinguishes herself from the rest by her
mighty achievements still more than by her garb and dignity; for at once
she takes an archer, and, going sideways, seizes a silvered warden. Which
thing the silvered queen perceiving, she came forwards, and, rushing on
with equal bravery, takes the last golden warden and some nymphs. The two
queens fought a long while hand to hand; now striving to take each other by
surprise, then to save themselves, and sometimes to guard their kings.
Finally, the golden queen took the silvered queen; but presently after she
herself was taken by the silvered archer.
Then the silvered king had only three nymphs, an archer, and a warden left,
and the golden only three nymphs and the right knight, which made them
fight more slowly and warily than before. The two kings seemed to mourn
for the loss of their loving queens, and only studied and endeavoured to
get new ones out of all their nymphs to be raised to that dignity, and thus
be married to them. This made them excite those brave nymphs to strive to
reach the farthest rank, where stood the king of the contrary party,
promising them certainly to have them crowned if they could do this. The
golden nymphs were beforehand with the others, and out of their number was
created a queen, who was dressed in royal robes, and had a crown set on her
head. You need not doubt the silvered nymphs made also what haste they
could to be queens. One of them was within a step of the coronation place,
but there the golden knight lay ready to intercept her, so that she could
go no further.
The new golden queen, resolved to show herself valiant and worthy of her
advancement to the crown, achieved great feats of arms. But in the
meantime the silvered knight takes the golden warden who guarded the camp;
and thus there was a new silvered queen, who, like the other, strove to
excel in heroic deeds at the beginning of her reign. Thus the fight grew
hotter than before. A thousand stratagems, charges, rallyings, retreats,
and attacks were tried on both sides; till at last the silvered queen,
having by stealth advanced as far as the golden king's tent, cried, God
save you, sir! Now none but his new queen could relieve him; so she
bravely came and exposed herself to the utmost extremity to deliver him out
of it. Then the silvered warden with his queen reduced the golden king to
such a stress that, to save himself, he was forced to lose his queen; but
the golden king took him at last. However, the rest of the golden party
were soon taken; and that king being left alone, the silvered party made
him a low bow, crying, Good morrow, sir! which denoted that the silvered
king had got the day.
This being heard, the music of both parties loudly proclaimed the victory.
And thus the first battle ended to the unspeakable joy of all the
spectators.
After this the two brigades took their former stations, and began to tilt a
second time, much as they had done before, only the music played somewhat
faster than at the first battle, and the motions were altogether different.
I saw the golden queen sally out one of the first, with an archer and a
knight, as it were angry at the former defeat, and she had like to have
fallen upon the silvered king in his tent among his officers; but having
been baulked in her attempt, she skirmished briskly, and overthrew so many
silvered nymphs and officers that it was a most amazing sight. You would
have sworn she had been another Penthesilea; for she behaved herself with
as much bravery as that Amazonian queen did at Troy.
But this havoc did not last long; for the silvered party, exasperated by
their loss, resolved to perish or stop her progress; and having posted an
archer in ambuscado on a distant angle, together with a knight-errant, her
highness fell into their hands and was carried out of the field. The rest
were soon routed after the taking of their queen, who, without doubt, from
that time resolved to be more wary and keep near her king, without
venturing so far amidst her enemies unless with more force to defend her.
Thus the silvered brigade once more got the victory.
This did not dishearten or deject the golden party; far from it. They soon
appeared again in the field to face their enemies; and being posted as
before, both the armies seemed more resolute and cheerful than ever. Now
the martial concert began, and the music was above a hemiole the quicker,
according to the warlike Phrygian mode, such as was invented by Marsyas.
Then our combatants began to wheel about, and charge with such a swiftness
that in an instant they made four moves, besides the usual salutations. So
that they were continually in action, flying, hovering, jumping, vaulting,
curvetting, with petauristical turns and motions, and often intermingled.
Seeing them then turn about on one foot after they had made their honours,
we compared them to your tops or gigs, such as boys use to whip about,
making them turn round so swiftly that they sleep, as they call it, and
motion cannot be perceived, but resembles rest, its contrary; so that if
you make a point or mark on some part of one of those gigs, 'twill be
perceived not as a point, but a continual line, in a most divine manner, as
Cusanus has wisely observed.
While they were thus warmly engaged, we heard continually the claps and
episemapsies which those of the two bands reiterated at the taking of their
enemies; and this, joined to the variety of their motions and music, would
have forced smiles out of the most severe Cato, the never-laughing Crassus,
the Athenian man-hater, Timon; nay, even whining Heraclitus, though he
abhorred laughing, the action that is most peculiar to man. For who could
have forborne? seeing those young warriors, with their nymphs and queens,
so briskly and gracefully advance, retire, jump, leap, skip, spring, fly,
vault, caper, move to the right, to the left, every way still in time, so
swiftly, and yet so dexterously, that they never touched one another but
methodically.
As the number of the combatants lessened, the pleasure of the spectators
increased; for the stratagems and motions of the remaining forces were more
singular. I shall only add that this pleasing entertainment charmed us to
such a degree that our minds were ravished with admiration and delight, and
the martial harmony moved our souls so powerfully that we easily believed
what is said of Ismenias's having excited Alexander to rise from table and
run to his arms, with such a warlike melody. At last the golden king
remained master of the field; and while we were minding those dances, Queen
Whims vanished, so that we saw her no more from that day to this.
Then Geber's michelots conducted us, and we were set down among her
abstractors, as her queenship had commanded. After that we returned to the
port of Mateotechny, and thence straight aboard our ships; for the wind was
fair, and had we not hoisted out of hand, we could hardly have got off in
three quarters of a moon in the wane.
Chapter 5. XXVI.
How we came to the island of Odes, where the ways go up and down.
We sailed before the wind, between a pair of courses, and in two days made
the island of Odes, at which place we saw a very strange thing. The ways
there are animals; so true is Aristotle's saying, that all self-moving
things are animals. Now the ways walk there. Ergo, they are then animals.
Some of them are strange unknown ways, like those of the planets; others
are highways, crossways, and byways. I perceived that the travellers and
inhabitants of that country asked, Whither does this way go? Whither does
that way go? Some answered, Between Midy and Fevrolles, to the parish
church, to the city, to the river, and so forth. Being thus in their right
way, they used to reach their journey's end without any further trouble,
just like those who go by water from Lyons to Avignon or Arles.
Now, as you know that nothing is perfect here below, we heard there was a
sort of people whom they called highwaymen, waybeaters, and makers of
inroads in roads; and that the poor ways were sadly afraid of them, and
shunned them as you do robbers. For these used to waylay them, as people
lay trains for wolves, and set gins for woodcocks. I saw one who was taken
up with a lord chief justice's warrant for having unjustly, and in spite of
Pallas, taken the schoolway, which is the longest. Another boasted that he
had fairly taken his shortest, and that doing so he first compassed his
design. Thus, Carpalin, meeting once Epistemon looking upon a wall with
his fiddle-diddle, or live urinal, in his hand, to make a little maid's
water, cried that he did not wonder now how the other came to be still the
first at Pantagruel's levee, since he held his shortest and least used.
I found Bourges highway among these. It went with the deliberation of an
abbot, but was made to scamper at the approach of some waggoners, who
threatened to have it trampled under their horses' feet, and make their
waggons run over it, as Tullia's chariot did over her father's body.
I also espied there the old way between Peronne and St. Quentin, which
seemed to me a very good, honest, plain way, as smooth as a carpet, and as
good as ever was trod upon by shoe of leather.
Among the rocks I knew again the good old way to La Ferrare, mounted on a
huge bear.
importuned by his relations to resign his abbey in his old age, said and
professed that he would not strip till he was ready to go to bed, and that
the last fart which his reverend paternity was to utter should be the fart
of an abbot.
Chapter 5. XVIII.
How our ships were stranded, and we were relieved by some people that were
subject to Queen Whims (qui tenoient de la Quinte).
We weighed and set sail with a merry westerly gale. When about seven
leagues off (twenty-two miles) some gusts or scuds of wind suddenly arose,
and the wind veering and shifting from point to point, was, as they say,
like an old woman's breech, at no certainty; so we first got our starboard
tacks aboard, and hauled off our lee-sheets. Then the gusts increased, and
by fits blowed all at once from several quarters, yet we neither settled
nor braided up close our sails, but only let fly the sheets, not to go
against the master of the ship's direction; and thus having let go amain,
lest we should spend our topsails, or the ship's quick-side should lie in
the water and she be overset, we lay by and run adrift; that is, in a
landloper's phrase, we temporized it. For he assured us that, as these
gusts and whirlwinds would not do us much good, so they could not do us
much harm, considering their easiness and pleasant strife, as also the
clearness of the sky and calmness of the current. So that we were to
observe the philosopher's rule, bear and forbear; that is, trim, or go
according to the time.
However, these whirlwinds and gusts lasted so long that we persuaded the
master to let us go and lie at trie with our main course; that is, to haul
the tack aboard, the sheet close aft, the bowline set up, and the helm tied
close aboard; so, after a stormy gale of wind, we broke through the
whirlwind. But it was like falling into Scylla to avoid Charybdis (out of
the frying-pan into the fire). For we had not sailed a league ere our
ships were stranded upon some sands such as are the flats of St. Maixent.
All our company seemed mightily disturbed except Friar John, who was not a
jot daunted, and with sweet sugar-plum words comforted now one and then
another, giving them hopes of speedy assistance from above, and telling
them that he had seen Castor at the main-yardarm. Oh! that I were but now
ashore, cried Panurge, that is all I wish for myself at present, and that
you who like the sea so well had each man of you two hundred thousand
crowns. I would fairly let you set up shop on these sands, and would get a
fat calf dressed and a hundred of faggots (i. e. bottles of wine) cooled for
you against you come ashore. I freely consent never to mount a wife, so
you but set me ashore and mount me on a horse, that I may go home. No
matter for a servant, I will be contented to serve myself; I am never
better treated than when I am without a man. Faith, old Plautus was in the
right on't when he said the more servants the more crosses; for such they
are, even supposing they could want what they all have but too much of, a
tongue, that most busy, dangerous, and pernicious member of servants.
Accordingly, 'twas for their sakes alone that the racks and tortures for
confession were invented, though some foreign civilians in our time have
drawn alogical and unreasonable consequences from it.
That very moment we spied a sail that made towards us. When it was close
by us, we soon knew what was the lading of the ship and who was aboard of
her. She was full freighted with drums. I was acquainted with many of the
passengers that came in her, who were most of 'em of good families; among
the rest Harry Cotiral, an old toast, who had got a swinging ass's
touch-tripe (penis) fastened to his waist, as the good women's beads are to their
girdle. In his left hand he held an old overgrown greasy foul cap, such as
your scald-pated fellows wear, and in the right a huge cabbage-stump.
As soon as he saw me he was overjoyed, and bawled out to me, What cheer,
ho? How dost like me now? Behold the true Algamana (this he said showing
me the ass's tickle-gizzard). This doctor's cap is my true elixir; and
this (continued he, shaking the cabbage-stump in his fist) is lunaria
major, you old noddy. I have 'em, old boy, I have 'em; we'll make 'em when
thou'rt come back. But pray, father, said I, whence come you? Whither are
you bound? What's your lading? Have you smelt the salt deep? To these
four questions he answered, From Queen Whims; for Touraine; alchemy; to the
very bottom.
Whom have you got o' board? said I. Said he, Astrologers, fortune-tellers,
alchemists, rhymers, poets, painters, projectors, mathematicians,
watchmakers, sing-songs, musicianers, and the devil and all of others that
are subject to Queen Whims (Motteux gives the following footnote:--'La
Quinte, This means a fantastic Humour, Maggots, or a foolish Giddiness of
Brains; and also, a fifth, or the Proportion of Five in music, &c. '). They
have very fair legible patents to show for't, as anybody may see. Panurge
had no sooner heard this but he was upon the high-rope, and began to rail
at them like mad. What o' devil d'ye mean, cried he, to sit idly here like
a pack of loitering sneaksbies, and see us stranded, while you may help us,
and tow us off into the current? A plague o' your whims! you can make all
things whatsoever, they say, so much as good weather and little children;
yet won't make haste to fasten some hawsers and cables, and get us off. I
was just coming to set you afloat, quoth Harry Cotiral; by Trismegistus,
I'll clear you in a trice. With this he caused 7,532,810 huge drums to be
unheaded on one side, and set that open side so that it faced the end of
the streamers and pendants; and having fastened them to good tacklings and
our ship's head to the stern of theirs, with cables fastened to the bits
abaft the manger in the ship's loof, they towed us off ground at one pull
so easily and pleasantly that you'd have wondered at it had you been there.
For the dub-a-dub rattling of the drums, with the soft noise of the gravel
which murmuring disputed us our way, and the merry cheers and huzzas of the
sailors, made an harmony almost as good as that of the heavenly bodies when
they roll and are whirled round their spheres, which rattling of the
celestial wheels Plato said he heard some nights in his sleep.
We scorned to be behindhand with 'em in civility, and gratefully gave 'em
store of our sausages and chitterlings, with which we filled their drums;
and we were just a-hoisting two-and-sixty hogsheads of wine out of the
hold, when two huge whirlpools with great fury made towards their ship,
spouting more water than is in the river Vienne (Vigenne) from Chinon to
Saumur; to make short, all their drums, all their sails, their concerns,
and themselves were soused, and their very hose were watered by the collar.
Panurge was so overjoyed, seeing this, and laughed so heartily, that he was
forced to hold his sides, and it set him into a fit of the colic for two
hours and more. I had a mind, quoth he, to make the dogs drink, and those
honest whirlpools, egad, have saved me that labour and that cost. There's
sauce for them; ariston men udor. Water is good, saith a poet; let 'em
Pindarize upon't. They never cared for fresh water but to wash their hands
or their glasses. This good salt water will stand 'em in good stead for
want of sal ammoniac and nitre in Geber's kitchen.
We could not hold any further discourse with 'em; for the former whirlwind
hindered our ship from feeling the helm. The pilot advised us
henceforwards to let her run adrift and follow the stream, not busying
ourselves with anything, but making much of our carcasses. For our only
way to arrive safe at the queendom of Whims was to trust to the whirlwind
and be led by the current.
Chapter 5. XIX.
How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy.
We did as he directed us for about twelve hours, and on the third day the
sky seemed to us somewhat clearer, and we happily arrived at the port of
Mateotechny, not far distant from Queen Whims, alias the Quintessence.
We met full butt on the quay a great number of guards and other military
men that garrisoned the arsenal, and we were somewhat frighted at first
because they made us all lay down our arms, and in a haughty manner asked
us whence we came.
Cousin, quoth Panurge to him that asked the question, we are of Touraine,
and come from France, being ambitious of paying our respects to the Lady
Quintessence and visit this famous realm of Entelechy.
What do you say? cried they; do you call it Entelechy or Endelechy? Truly,
truly, sweet cousins, quoth Panurge, we are a silly sort of grout-headed
lobcocks, an't please you; be so kind as to forgive us if we chance to
knock words out of joint. As for anything else, we are downright honest
fellows and true hearts.
We have not asked you this question without a cause, said they; for a great
number of others who have passed this way from your country of Touraine
seemed as mere jolt-headed doddipolls as ever were scored o'er the coxcomb,
yet spoke as correct as other folks. But there has been here from other
countries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as
moody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing would
serve these, forsooth, but they must wilfully wrangle and stand out against
us at their coming; and much they got by it after all. Troth, we e'en
fitted them and clawed 'em off with a vengeance, for all they looked so big
and so grum.
Pray tell me, does your time lie so heavy upon you in your world that you
do not know how to bestow it better than in thus impudently talking,
disputing, and writing of our sovereign lady? There was much need that
your Tully, the consul, should go and leave the care of his commonwealth to
busy himself idly about her; and after him your Diogenes Laertius, the
biographer, and your Theodorus Gaza, the philosopher, and your Argiropilus,
the emperor, and your Bessario, the cardinal, and your Politian, the
pedant, and your Budaeus, the judge, and your Lascaris, the ambassador, and
the devil and all of those you call lovers of wisdom; whose number, it
seems, was not thought great enough already, but lately your Scaliger,
Bigot, Chambrier, Francis Fleury, and I cannot tell how many such other
junior sneaking fly-blows must take upon 'em to increase it.
A squinsy gripe the cod's-headed changelings at the swallow and eke at the
cover-weasel; we shall make 'em--But the deuce take 'em! (They flatter the
devil here, and smoothify his name, quoth Panurge, between his teeth. ) You
don't come here, continued the captain, to uphold 'em in their folly; you
have no commission from 'em to this effect; well then, we will talk no more
on't.
Aristotle, that first of men and peerless pattern of all philosophy, was
our sovereign lady's godfather, and wisely and properly gave her the name
of Entelechy. Her true name then is Entelechy, and may he be in tail
beshit, and entail a shit-a-bed faculty and nothing else on his family, who
dares call her by any other name; for whoever he is, he does her wrong, and
is a very impudent person. You are heartily welcome, gentlemen. With
this they colled and clipped us about the neck, which was no small comfort
to us, I'll assure you.
Panurge then whispered me, Fellow-traveller, quoth he, hast thou not been
somewhat afraid this bout? A little, said I. To tell you the truth of it,
quoth he, never were the Ephraimites in a greater fear and quandary when
the Gileadites killed and drowned them for saying sibboleth instead of
shibboleth; and among friends, let me tell you that perhaps there is not a
man in the whole country of Beauce but might easily have stopped my
bunghole with a cartload of hay.
The captain afterwards took us to the queen's palace, leading us silently
with great formality. Pantagruel would have said something to him, but the
other, not being able to come up to his height, wished for a ladder or a
very long pair of stilts; then said, Patience, if it were our sovereign
lady's will, we would be as tall as you; well, we shall when she pleases.
In the first galleries we saw great numbers of sick persons, differently
placed according to their maladies. The leprous were apart; those that
were poisoned on one side; those that had got the plague on another; those
that had the pox in the first rank, and the rest accordingly.
Chapter 5. XX.
How the Quintessence cured the sick with a song.
The captain showed us the queen, attended with her ladies and gentlemen, in
the second gallery. She looked young, though she was at least eighteen
hundred years old, and was handsome, slender, and as fine as a queen, that
is, as hands could make her. He then said to us: It is not yet a fit time
to speak to the queen; be you but mindful of her doings in the meanwhile.
You have kings in your world that fantastically pretend to cure some
certain diseases, as, for example, scrofula or wens, swelled throats,
nicknamed the king's evil, and quartan agues, only with a touch; now our
queen cures all manner of diseases without so much as touching the sick,
but barely with a song, according to the nature of the distemper. He then
showed us a set of organs, and said that when it was touched by her those
miraculous cures were performed. The organ was indeed the strangest that
ever eyes beheld; for the pipes were of cassia fistula in the cod; the top
and cornice of guiacum; the bellows of rhubarb; the pedas of turbith, and
the clavier or keys of scammony.
While we were examining this wonderful new make of an organ, the leprous
were brought in by her abstractors, spodizators, masticators, pregustics,
tabachins, chachanins, neemanins, rabrebans, nercins, rozuins, nebidins,
tearins, segamions, perarons, chasinins, sarins, soteins, aboth, enilins,
archasdarpenins, mebins, chabourins, and other officers, for whom I want
names; so she played 'em I don't know what sort of a tune or song, and they
were all immediately cured.
Then those who were poisoned were had in, and she had no sooner given them
a song but they began to find a use for their legs, and up they got. Then
came on the deaf, the blind, and the dumb, and they too were restored to
their lost faculties and senses with the same remedy; which did so
strangely amaze us (and not without reason, I think) that down we fell on
our faces, remaining prostrate, like men ravished in ecstasy, and were not
able to utter one word through the excess of our admiration, till she came,
and having touched Pantagruel with a fine fragrant nosegay of white roses
which she held in her hand, thus made us recover our senses and get up.
Then she made us the following speech in byssin words, such as Parisatis
desired should be spoken to her son Cyrus, or at least of crimson alamode:
The probity that scintillizes in the superfices of your persons informs my
ratiocinating faculty, in a most stupendous manner, of the radiant virtues
latent within the precious caskets and ventricles of your minds. For,
contemplating the mellifluous suavity of your thrice discreet reverences,
it is impossible not to be persuaded with facility that neither your
affections nor your intellects are vitiated with any defect or privation of
liberal and exalted sciences. Far from it, all must judge that in you are
lodged a cornucopia and encyclopaedia, an unmeasurable profundity of
knowledge in the most peregrine and sublime disciplines, so frequently the
admiration, and so rarely the concomitants of the imperite vulgar. This
gently compels me, who in preceding times indefatigably kept my private
affections absolutely subjugated, to condescend to make my application to
you in the trivial phrase of the plebeian world, and assure you that you
are well, more than most heartily welcome.
I have no hand at making of speeches, quoth Panurge to me privately;
prithee, man, make answer to her for us, if thou canst. This would not
work with me, however; neither did Pantagruel return a word. So that Queen
Whims, or Queen Quintessence (which you please), perceiving that we stood
as mute as fishes, said: Your taciturnity speaks you not only disciples of
Pythagoras, from whom the venerable antiquity of my progenitors in
successive propagation was emaned and derives its original, but also
discovers, that through the revolution of many retrograde moons, you have
in Egypt pressed the extremities of your fingers with the hard tenants of
your mouths, and scalptized your heads with frequent applications of your
unguicules. In the school of Pythagoras, taciturnity was the symbol of
abstracted and superlative knowledge, and the silence of the Egyptians was
agnited as an expressive manner of divine adoration; this caused the
pontiffs of Hierapolis to sacrifice to the great deity in silence,
impercussively, without any vociferous or obstreperous sound. My design is
not to enter into a privation of gratitude towards you, but by a vivacious
formality, though matter were to abstract itself from me, excentricate to
you my cogitations.
Having spoken this, she only said to her officers, Tabachins, a panacea;
and straight they desired us not to take it amiss if the queen did not
invite us to dine with her; for she never ate anything at dinner but some
categories, jecabots, emnins, dimions, abstractions, harborins, chelemins,
second intentions, carradoths, antitheses, metempsychoses, transcendent
prolepsies, and such other light food.
Then they took us into a little closet lined through with alarums, where we
were treated God knows how. It is said that Jupiter writes whatever is
transacted in the world on the dipthera or skin of the Amalthaean goat that
suckled him in Crete, which pelt served him instead of a shield against the
Titans, whence he was nicknamed Aegiochos. Now, as I hate to drink water,
brother topers, I protest it would be impossible to make eighteen goatskins
hold the description of all the good meat they brought before us, though it
were written in characters as small as those in which were penned Homer's
Iliads, which Tully tells us he saw enclosed in a nutshell.
For my part, had I one hundred mouths, as many tongues, a voice of iron, a
heart of oak, and lungs of leather, together with the mellifluous abundance
of Plato, yet I never could give you a full account of a third part of a
second of the whole.
Pantagruel was telling me that he believed the queen had given the symbolic
word used among her subjects to denote sovereign good cheer, when she said
to her tabachins, A panacea; just as Lucullus used to say, In Apollo, when
he designed to give his friends a singular treat; though sometimes they
took him at unawares, as, among the rest, Cicero and Hortensius sometimes
used to do.
Chapter 5. XXI.
How the Queen passed her time after dinner.
When we had dined, a chachanin led us into the queen's hall, and there we
saw how, after dinner, with the ladies and the princes of her court, she
used to sift, searce, bolt, range, and pass away time with a fine large
white and blue silk sieve. We also perceived how they revived ancient
sports, diverting themselves together at--
1. Cordax. 6. Phrygia. 11. Monogas.
2. Emmelia. 7. Thracia. 12. Terminalia.
3. Sicinnia. 8. Calabrisme. 13. Floralia.
4. Jambics. 9. Molossia. 14. Pyrrhice.
5. Persica. 10. Cernophorum. 15. (Nicatism. )
And a thousand other dances.
(Motteux has the following footnote:--'1. A sort of country-dance. 2. A
still tragic dance. 3. Dancing and singing used at funerals. 4. Cutting
sarcasms and lampoons. 5. The Persian dance. 6. Tunes, whose measure
inspired men with a kind of divine fury. 7. The Thracian movement. 8.
Smutty verses. 9. A measure to which the Molossi of Epirus danced a
certain morrice. 10. A dance with bowls or pots in their hands. 11. A
song where one sings alone. 12. Sports at the holidays of the god of
bounds. 13. Dancing naked at Flora's holidays. 14. The Trojan dance in
armour. ')
Afterwards she gave orders that they should show us the apartments and
curiosities in her palace. Accordingly we saw there such new, strange, and
wonderful things, that I am still ravished in admiration every time I think
of't. However, nothing surprised us more than what was done by the
gentlemen of her household, abstractors, parazons, nebidins, spodizators,
and others, who freely and without the least dissembling told us that the
queen their mistress did all impossible things, and cured men of incurable
diseases; and they, her officers, used to do the rest.
I saw there a young parazon cure many of the new consumption, I mean the
pox, though they were never so peppered. Had it been the rankest Roan ague
(Anglice, the Covent-garden gout), 'twas all one to him; touching only
their dentiform vertebrae thrice with a piece of a wooden shoe, he made
them as wholesome as so many sucking-pigs.
Another did thoroughly cure folks of dropsies, tympanies, ascites, and
hyposarcides, striking them on the belly nine times with a Tenedian
hatchet, without any solution of the continuum.
Another cured all manner of fevers and agues on the spot, only with hanging
a fox-tail on the left side of the patient's girdle.
One removed the toothache only with washing thrice the root of the aching
tooth with elder-vinegar, and letting it dry half-an-hour in the sun.
Another the gout, whether hot or cold, natural or accidental, by barely
making the gouty person shut his mouth and open his eyes.
I saw another ease nine gentlemen of St. Francis's distemper ('A
consumption in the pocket, or want of money; those of St. Francis's order
must carry none about 'em. '--Motteux. ) in a very short space of time,
having clapped a rope about their necks, at the end of which hung a box
with ten thousand gold crowns in't.
One with a wonderful engine threw the houses out at the windows, by which
means they were purged of all pestilential air.
Another cured all the three kinds of hectics, the tabid, atrophes, and
emaciated, without bathing, Tabian milk, dropax, alias depilatory, or other
such medicaments, only turning the consumptive for three months into monks;
and he assured me that if they did not grow fat and plump in a monastic way
of living, they never would be fattened in this world, either by nature or
by art.
I saw another surrounded with a crowd of two sorts of women. Some were
young, quaint, clever, neat, pretty, juicy, tight, brisk, buxom, proper,
kind-hearted, and as right as my leg, to any man's thinking. The rest were
old, weather-beaten, over-ridden, toothless, blear-eyed, tough, wrinkled,
shrivelled, tawny, mouldy, phthisicky, decrepit hags, beldams, and walking
carcasses. We were told that his office was to cast anew those she-pieces
of antiquity, and make them such as the pretty creatures whom we saw, who
had been made young again that day, recovering at once the beauty, shape,
size, and disposition which they enjoyed at sixteen; except their heels,
that were now much shorter than in their former youth.
This made them yet more apt to fall backwards whenever any man happened to
touch 'em, than they had been before.
As for their counterparts, the old
mother-scratch-tobies, they most devoutly waited for the blessed hour when
the batch that was in the oven was to be drawn, that they might have their
turns, and in a mighty haste they were pulling and hauling the man like
mad, telling him that 'tis the most grievous and intolerable thing in
nature for the tail to be on fire and the head to scare away those who
should quench it.
The officer had his hands full, never wanting patients; neither did his
place bring him in little, you may swear. Pantagruel asked him whether he
could also make old men young again. He said he could not. But the way to
make them new men was to get 'em to cohabit with a new-cast female; for
this they caught that fifth kind of crinckams, which some call pellade, in
Greek, ophiasis, that makes them cast off their old hair and skin, just as
the serpents do, and thus their youth is renewed like the Arabian
phoenix's. This is the true fountain of youth, for there the old and
decrepit become young, active, and lusty.
Just so, as Euripides tells us, Iolaus was transmogrified; and thus Phaon,
for whom kind-hearted Sappho run wild, grew young again, for Venus's use;
so Tithon by Aurora's means; so Aeson by Medea, and Jason also, who, if
you'll believe Pherecides and Simonides, was new-vamped and dyed by that
witch; and so were the nurses of jolly Bacchus, and their husbands, as
Aeschylus relates.
Chapter 5. XXII.
How Queen Whims' officers were employed; and how the said lady retained us
among her abstractors.
I then saw a great number of the queen's officers, who made blackamoors
white as fast as hops, just rubbing their bellies with the bottom of a
pannier.
Others, with three couples of foxes in one yoke, ploughed a sandy shore,
and did not lose their seed.
Others washed burnt tiles, and made them lose their colour.
Others extracted water out of pumice-stones, braying them a good while in a
mortar, and changed their substance.
Others sheared asses, and thus got long fleece wool.
Others gathered barberries and figs off of thistles.
Others stroked he-goats by the dugs, and saved their milk in a sieve; and
much they got by it.
(Others washed asses' heads without losing their soap. )
Others taught cows to dance, and did not lose their fiddling.
Others pitched nets to catch the wind, and took cock-lobsters in them.
I saw a spodizator, who very artificially got farts out of a dead ass, and
sold 'em for fivepence an ell.
Another did putrefy beetles. O the dainty food!
Poor Panurge fairly cast up his accounts, and gave up his halfpenny (i. e.
vomited), seeing an archasdarpenin who laid a huge plenty of chamber lye to
putrefy in horsedung, mishmashed with abundance of Christian sir-reverence.
Pugh, fie upon him, nasty dog! However, he told us that with this sacred
distillation he watered kings and princes, and made their sweet lives a
fathom or two the longer.
Others built churches to jump over the steeples.
Others set carts before the horses, and began to flay eels at the tail;
neither did the eels cry before they were hurt, like those of Melun.
Others out of nothing made great things, and made great things return to
nothing.
Others cut fire into steaks with a knife, and drew water with a fish-net.
Others made chalk of cheese, and honey of a dog's t--d.
We saw a knot of others, about a baker's dozen in number, tippling under an
arbour. They toped out of jolly bottomless cups four sorts of cool,
sparkling, pure, delicious, vine-tree sirup, which went down like mother's
milk; and healths and bumpers flew about like lightning. We were told that
these true philosophers were fairly multiplying the stars by drinking till
the seven were fourteen, as brawny Hercules did with Atlas.
Others made a virtue of necessity, and the best of a bad market, which
seemed to me a very good piece of work.
Others made alchemy (i. e. sir-reverence) with their teeth, and clapping
their hind retort to the recipient, made scurvy faces, and then squeezed.
Others, in a large grass plot, exactly measured how far the fleas could go
at a hop, a step, and jump; and told us that this was exceedingly useful
for the ruling of kingdoms, the conduct of armies, and the administration
of commonwealths; and that Socrates, who first got philosophy out of
heaven, and from idling and trifling made it profitable and of moment, used
to spend half his philosophizing time in measuring the leaps of fleas, as
Aristophanes the quintessential affirms.
I saw two gibroins by themselves keeping watch on the top of a tower, and
we were told they guarded the moon from the wolves.
In a blind corner I met four more very hot at it, and ready to go to
loggerheads. I asked what was the cause of the stir and ado, the mighty
coil and pother they made. And I heard that for four livelong days those
overwise roisters had been at it ding-dong, disputing on three high, more
than metaphysical propositions, promising themselves mountains of gold by
solving them. The first was concerning a he-ass's shadow; the second, of
the smoke of a lantern; and the third of goat's hair, whether it were wool
or no. We heard that they did not think it a bit strange that two
contradictions in mode, form, figure, and time should be true; though I
will warrant the sophists of Paris had rather be unchristened than own so
much.
While we were admiring all those men's wonderful doings, the evening star
already twinkling, the queen (God bless her! ) appeared, attended with her
court, and again amazed and dazzled us. She perceived it, and said to us:
What occasions the aberrations of human cogitations through the perplexing
labyrinths and abysses of admiration, is not the source of the effects,
which sagacious mortals visibly experience to be the consequential result
of natural causes. 'Tis the novelty of the experiment which makes
impressions on their conceptive, cogitative faculties; that do not previse
the facility of the operation adequately, with a subact and sedate
intellection, associated with diligent and congruous study. Consequently
let all manner of perturbation abdicate the ventricles of your brains, if
anyone has invaded them while they were contemplating what is transacted by
my domestic ministers. Be spectators and auditors of every particular
phenomenon and every individual proposition within the extent of my
mansion; satiate yourselves with all that can fall here under the
consideration of your visual or auscultating powers, and thus emancipate
yourselves from the servitude of crassous ignorance. And that you may be
induced to apprehend how sincerely I desire this in consideration of the
studious cupidity that so demonstratively emicates at your external organs,
from this present particle of time I retain you as my abstractors. Geber,
my principal Tabachin, shall register and initiate you at your departing.
We humbly thanked her queenship without saying a word, accepting of the
noble office she conferred on us.
Chapter 5. XXIII.
How the Queen was served at dinner, and of her way of eating.
Queen Whims after this said to her gentlemen: The orifice of the
ventricle, that ordinary embassador for the alimentation of all members,
whether superior or inferior, importunes us to restore, by the apposition
of idoneous sustenance, what was dissipated by the internal calidity's
action on the radical humidity. Therefore spodizators, gesinins, memains,
and parazons, be not culpable of dilatory protractions in the apposition of
every re-roborating species, but rather let them pullulate and superabound
on the tables. As for you, nobilissim praegustators, and my gentilissim
masticators, your frequently experimented industry, internected with
perdiligent sedulity and sedulous perdiligence, continually adjuvates you
to perficiate all things in so expeditious a manner that there is no
necessity of exciting in you a cupidity to consummate them. Therefore I
can only suggest to you still to operate as you are assuefacted
indefatigably to operate.
Having made this fine speech, she retired for a while with part of her
women, and we were told that 'twas to bathe, as the ancients did more
commonly than we use nowadays to wash our hands before we eat. The tables
were soon placed, the cloth spread, and then the queen sat down. She ate
nothing but celestial ambrosia, and drank nothing but divine nectar. As
for the lords and ladies that were there, they, as well as we, fared on as
rare, costly, and dainty dishes as ever Apicius wot or dreamed of in his
life.
When we were as round as hoops, and as full as eggs, with stuffing the gut,
an olla podrida ('Some call it an Olio. Rabelais Pot-pourry. '--Motteux. )
was set before us to force hunger to come to terms with us, in case it had
not granted us a truce; and such a huge vast thing it was that the plate
which Pythius Althius gave King Darius would hardly have covered it. The
olla consisted of several sorts of pottages, salads, fricassees,
saugrenees, cabirotadoes, roast and boiled meat, carbonadoes, swingeing
pieces of powdered beef, good old hams, dainty somates, cakes, tarts, a
world of curds after the Moorish way, fresh cheese, jellies, and fruit of
all sorts. All this seemed to me good and dainty; however, the sight of it
made me sigh; for alas! I could not taste a bit on't, so full I had filled
my puddings before, and a bellyful is a bellyful you know. Yet I must tell
you what I saw that seemed to me odd enough o' conscience; 'twas some
pasties in paste; and what should those pasties in paste be, d'ye think,
but pasties in pots? At the bottom I perceived store of dice, cards,
tarots ('Great cards on which many different things are figured. '
--Motteux. ), luettes ('Pieces of ivory to play withal. '--Motteux. ),
chessmen, and chequers, besides full bowls of gold crowns, for those who had
a mind to have a game or two and try their chance. Under this I saw a jolly
company of mules in stately trappings, with velvet footcloths, and a troop
of ambling nags, some for men and some for women; besides I don't know how
many litters all lined with velvet, and some coaches of Ferrara make; all
this for those who had a mind to take the air.
This did not seem strange to me; but if anything did 'twas certainly the
queen's way of eating, and truly 'twas very new, and very odd; for she
chewed nothing, the good lady; not but that she had good sound teeth, and
her meat required to be masticated, but such was her highness's custom.
When her praegustators had tasted the meat, her masticators took it and
chewed it most nobly; for their dainty chops and gullets were lined through
with crimson satin, with little welts and gold purls, and their teeth were
of delicate white ivory. Thus, when they had chewed the meat ready for her
highness's maw, they poured it down her throat through a funnel of fine
gold, and so on to her craw. For that reason they told us she never
visited a close-stool but by proxy.
Chapter 5. XXIV.
How there was a ball in the manner of a tournament, at which Queen Whims
was present.
After supper there was a ball in the form of a tilt or a tournament, not
only worth seeing, but also never to be forgotten. First, the floor of the
hall was covered with a large piece of velveted white and yellow chequered
tapestry, each chequer exactly square, and three full spans in breadth.
Then thirty-two young persons came into the hall; sixteen of them arrayed
in cloth of gold, and of these eight were young nymphs such as the ancients
described Diana's attendants; the other eight were a king, a queen, two
wardens of the castle, two knights, and two archers. Those of the other
band were clad in cloth of silver.
They posted themselves on the tapestry in the following manner: the kings
on the last line on the fourth square; so that the golden king was on a
white square, and the silvered king on a yellow square, and each queen by
her king; the golden queen on a yellow square, and the silvered queen on a
white one: and on each side stood the archers to guide their kings and
queens; by the archers the knights, and the wardens by them. In the next
row before 'em stood the eight nymphs; and between the two bands of nymphs
four rows of squares stood empty.
Each band had its musicians, eight on each side, dressed in its livery; the
one with orange-coloured damask, the other with white; and all played on
different instruments most melodiously and harmoniously, still varying in
time and measure as the figure of the dance required. This seemed to me an
admirable thing, considering the numerous diversity of steps, back-steps,
bounds, rebounds, jerks, paces, leaps, skips, turns, coupes, hops,
leadings, risings, meetings, flights, ambuscadoes, moves, and removes.
I was also at a loss when I strove to comprehend how the dancers could so
suddenly know what every different note meant; for they no sooner heard
this or that sound but they placed themselves in the place which was
denoted by the music, though their motions were all different. For the
nymphs that stood in the first file, as if they designed to begin the
fight, marched straight forwards to their enemies from square to square,
unless it were the first step, at which they were free to move over two
steps at once. They alone never fall back (which is not very natural to
other nymphs), and if any of them is so lucky as to advance to the opposite
king's row, she is immediately crowned queen of her king, and after that
moves with the same state and in the same manner as the queen; but till
that happens they never strike their enemies but forwards, and obliquely in
a diagonal line. However, they make it not their chief business to take
their foes; for, if they did, they would leave their queen exposed to the
adverse parties, who then might take her.
The kings move and take their enemies on all sides square-ways, and only
step from a white square into a yellow one, and vice versa, except at their
first step the rank should want other officers than the wardens; for then
they can set 'em in their place, and retire by him.
The queens take a greater liberty than any of the rest; for they move
backwards and forwards all manner of ways, in a straight line as far as
they please, provided the place be not filled with one of her own party,
and diagonally also, keeping to the colour on which she stands.
The archers move backwards or forwards, far and near, never changing the
colour on which they stand. The knights move and take in a lineal manner,
stepping over one square, though a friend or foe stand upon it, posting
themselves on the second square to the right or left, from one colour to
another, which is very unwelcome to the adverse party, and ought to be
carefully observed, for they take at unawares.
The wardens move and take to the right or left, before or behind them, like
the kings, and can advance as far as they find places empty; which liberty
the kings take not.
The law which both sides observe is, at the end of the fight, to besiege
and enclose the king of either party, so that he may not be able to move;
and being reduced to that extremity, the battle is over, and he loses the
day.
Now, to avoid this, there is none of either sex of each party but is
willing to sacrifice his or her life, and they begin to take one another on
all sides in time, as soon as the music strikes up. When anyone takes a
prisoner, he makes his honours, and striking him gently in the hand, puts
him out of the field and combat, and encamps where he stood.
If one of the kings chance to stand where he might be taken, it is not
lawful for any of his adversaries that had discovered him to lay hold on
him; far from it, they are strictly enjoined humbly to pay him their
respects, and give him notice, saying, God preserve you, sir! that his
officers may relieve and cover him, or he may remove, if unhappily he could
not be relieved. However, he is not to be taken, but greeted with a
Good-morrow, the others bending the knee; and thus the tournament uses
to end.
Chapter 5. XXV.
How the thirty-two persons at the ball fought.
The two companies having taken their stations, the music struck up, and
with a martial sound, which had something of horrid in it, like a point of
war, roused and alarmed both parties, who now began to shiver, and then
soon were warmed with warlike rage; and having got in readiness to fight
desperately, impatient of delay stood waiting for the charge.
Then the music of the silvered band ceased playing, and the instruments of
the golden side alone were heard, which denoted that the golden party
attacked. Accordingly, a new movement was played for the onset, and we saw
the nymph who stood before the queen turn to the left towards her king, as
it were to ask leave to fight; and thus saluting her company at the same
time, she moved two squares forwards, and saluted the adverse party.
Now the music of the golden brigade ceased playing, and their antagonists
began again. I ought to have told you that the nymph who began by saluting
her company, had by that formality also given them to understand that they
were to fall on. She was saluted by them in the same manner, with a full
turn to the left, except the queen, who went aside towards her king to the
right; and the same manner of salutation was observed on both sides during
the whole ball.
The silvered nymph that stood before her queen likewise moved as soon as
the music of her party sounded a charge; her salutations, and those of her
side, were to the right, and her queen's to the left. She moved in the
second square forwards, and saluted her antagonists, facing the first
golden nymph; so that there was not any distance between them, and you
would have thought they two had been going to fight; but they only strike
sideways.
Their comrades, whether silvered or golden, followed 'em in an intercalary
figure, and seemed to skirmish a while, till the golden nymph who had first
entered the lists, striking a silvered nymph in the hand on the right, put
her out of the field, and set herself in her place. But soon the music
playing a new measure, she was struck by a silvered archer, who after that
was obliged himself to retire. A silvered knight then sallied out, and the
golden queen posted herself before her king.
Then the silvered king, dreading the golden queen's fury, removed to the
right, to the place where his warden stood, which seemed to him strong and
well guarded.
The two knights on the left, whether golden or silvered, marched up, and on
either side took up many nymphs who could not retreat; principally the
golden knight, who made this his whole business; but the silvered knight
had greater designs, dissembling all along, and even sometimes not taking a
nymph when he could have done it, still moving on till he was come up to
the main body of the enemies in such a manner that he saluted their king
with a God save you, sir!
The whole golden brigade quaked for fear and anger, those words giving
notice of their king's danger; not but that they could soon relieve him,
but because their king being thus saluted they were to lose their warden on
the right wing without any hopes of a recovery. Then the golden king
retired to the left, and the silvered knight took the golden warden, which
was a mighty loss to that party. However, they resolved to be revenged,
and surrounded the knight that he might not escape. He tried to get off,
behaving himself with a great deal of gallantry, and his friends did what
they could to save him; but at last he fell into the golden queen's hands,
and was carried off.
Her forces, not yet satisfied, having lost one of her best men, with more
fury than conduct moved about, and did much mischief among their enemies.
The silvered party warily dissembled, watching their opportunity to be even
with them, and presented one of their nymphs to the golden queen, having
laid an ambuscado; so that the nymph being taken, a golden archer had like
to have seized the silvered queen. Then the golden knight undertakes to
take the silvered king and queen, and says, Good-morrow! Then the silvered
archer salutes them, and was taken by a golden nymph, and she herself by a
silvered one.
The fight was obstinate and sharp. The wardens left their posts, and
advanced to relieve their friends. The battle was doubtful, and victory
hovered over both armies. Now the silvered host charge and break through
their enemy's ranks as far as the golden king's tent, and now they are
beaten back. The golden queen distinguishes herself from the rest by her
mighty achievements still more than by her garb and dignity; for at once
she takes an archer, and, going sideways, seizes a silvered warden. Which
thing the silvered queen perceiving, she came forwards, and, rushing on
with equal bravery, takes the last golden warden and some nymphs. The two
queens fought a long while hand to hand; now striving to take each other by
surprise, then to save themselves, and sometimes to guard their kings.
Finally, the golden queen took the silvered queen; but presently after she
herself was taken by the silvered archer.
Then the silvered king had only three nymphs, an archer, and a warden left,
and the golden only three nymphs and the right knight, which made them
fight more slowly and warily than before. The two kings seemed to mourn
for the loss of their loving queens, and only studied and endeavoured to
get new ones out of all their nymphs to be raised to that dignity, and thus
be married to them. This made them excite those brave nymphs to strive to
reach the farthest rank, where stood the king of the contrary party,
promising them certainly to have them crowned if they could do this. The
golden nymphs were beforehand with the others, and out of their number was
created a queen, who was dressed in royal robes, and had a crown set on her
head. You need not doubt the silvered nymphs made also what haste they
could to be queens. One of them was within a step of the coronation place,
but there the golden knight lay ready to intercept her, so that she could
go no further.
The new golden queen, resolved to show herself valiant and worthy of her
advancement to the crown, achieved great feats of arms. But in the
meantime the silvered knight takes the golden warden who guarded the camp;
and thus there was a new silvered queen, who, like the other, strove to
excel in heroic deeds at the beginning of her reign. Thus the fight grew
hotter than before. A thousand stratagems, charges, rallyings, retreats,
and attacks were tried on both sides; till at last the silvered queen,
having by stealth advanced as far as the golden king's tent, cried, God
save you, sir! Now none but his new queen could relieve him; so she
bravely came and exposed herself to the utmost extremity to deliver him out
of it. Then the silvered warden with his queen reduced the golden king to
such a stress that, to save himself, he was forced to lose his queen; but
the golden king took him at last. However, the rest of the golden party
were soon taken; and that king being left alone, the silvered party made
him a low bow, crying, Good morrow, sir! which denoted that the silvered
king had got the day.
This being heard, the music of both parties loudly proclaimed the victory.
And thus the first battle ended to the unspeakable joy of all the
spectators.
After this the two brigades took their former stations, and began to tilt a
second time, much as they had done before, only the music played somewhat
faster than at the first battle, and the motions were altogether different.
I saw the golden queen sally out one of the first, with an archer and a
knight, as it were angry at the former defeat, and she had like to have
fallen upon the silvered king in his tent among his officers; but having
been baulked in her attempt, she skirmished briskly, and overthrew so many
silvered nymphs and officers that it was a most amazing sight. You would
have sworn she had been another Penthesilea; for she behaved herself with
as much bravery as that Amazonian queen did at Troy.
But this havoc did not last long; for the silvered party, exasperated by
their loss, resolved to perish or stop her progress; and having posted an
archer in ambuscado on a distant angle, together with a knight-errant, her
highness fell into their hands and was carried out of the field. The rest
were soon routed after the taking of their queen, who, without doubt, from
that time resolved to be more wary and keep near her king, without
venturing so far amidst her enemies unless with more force to defend her.
Thus the silvered brigade once more got the victory.
This did not dishearten or deject the golden party; far from it. They soon
appeared again in the field to face their enemies; and being posted as
before, both the armies seemed more resolute and cheerful than ever. Now
the martial concert began, and the music was above a hemiole the quicker,
according to the warlike Phrygian mode, such as was invented by Marsyas.
Then our combatants began to wheel about, and charge with such a swiftness
that in an instant they made four moves, besides the usual salutations. So
that they were continually in action, flying, hovering, jumping, vaulting,
curvetting, with petauristical turns and motions, and often intermingled.
Seeing them then turn about on one foot after they had made their honours,
we compared them to your tops or gigs, such as boys use to whip about,
making them turn round so swiftly that they sleep, as they call it, and
motion cannot be perceived, but resembles rest, its contrary; so that if
you make a point or mark on some part of one of those gigs, 'twill be
perceived not as a point, but a continual line, in a most divine manner, as
Cusanus has wisely observed.
While they were thus warmly engaged, we heard continually the claps and
episemapsies which those of the two bands reiterated at the taking of their
enemies; and this, joined to the variety of their motions and music, would
have forced smiles out of the most severe Cato, the never-laughing Crassus,
the Athenian man-hater, Timon; nay, even whining Heraclitus, though he
abhorred laughing, the action that is most peculiar to man. For who could
have forborne? seeing those young warriors, with their nymphs and queens,
so briskly and gracefully advance, retire, jump, leap, skip, spring, fly,
vault, caper, move to the right, to the left, every way still in time, so
swiftly, and yet so dexterously, that they never touched one another but
methodically.
As the number of the combatants lessened, the pleasure of the spectators
increased; for the stratagems and motions of the remaining forces were more
singular. I shall only add that this pleasing entertainment charmed us to
such a degree that our minds were ravished with admiration and delight, and
the martial harmony moved our souls so powerfully that we easily believed
what is said of Ismenias's having excited Alexander to rise from table and
run to his arms, with such a warlike melody. At last the golden king
remained master of the field; and while we were minding those dances, Queen
Whims vanished, so that we saw her no more from that day to this.
Then Geber's michelots conducted us, and we were set down among her
abstractors, as her queenship had commanded. After that we returned to the
port of Mateotechny, and thence straight aboard our ships; for the wind was
fair, and had we not hoisted out of hand, we could hardly have got off in
three quarters of a moon in the wane.
Chapter 5. XXVI.
How we came to the island of Odes, where the ways go up and down.
We sailed before the wind, between a pair of courses, and in two days made
the island of Odes, at which place we saw a very strange thing. The ways
there are animals; so true is Aristotle's saying, that all self-moving
things are animals. Now the ways walk there. Ergo, they are then animals.
Some of them are strange unknown ways, like those of the planets; others
are highways, crossways, and byways. I perceived that the travellers and
inhabitants of that country asked, Whither does this way go? Whither does
that way go? Some answered, Between Midy and Fevrolles, to the parish
church, to the city, to the river, and so forth. Being thus in their right
way, they used to reach their journey's end without any further trouble,
just like those who go by water from Lyons to Avignon or Arles.
Now, as you know that nothing is perfect here below, we heard there was a
sort of people whom they called highwaymen, waybeaters, and makers of
inroads in roads; and that the poor ways were sadly afraid of them, and
shunned them as you do robbers. For these used to waylay them, as people
lay trains for wolves, and set gins for woodcocks. I saw one who was taken
up with a lord chief justice's warrant for having unjustly, and in spite of
Pallas, taken the schoolway, which is the longest. Another boasted that he
had fairly taken his shortest, and that doing so he first compassed his
design. Thus, Carpalin, meeting once Epistemon looking upon a wall with
his fiddle-diddle, or live urinal, in his hand, to make a little maid's
water, cried that he did not wonder now how the other came to be still the
first at Pantagruel's levee, since he held his shortest and least used.
I found Bourges highway among these. It went with the deliberation of an
abbot, but was made to scamper at the approach of some waggoners, who
threatened to have it trampled under their horses' feet, and make their
waggons run over it, as Tullia's chariot did over her father's body.
I also espied there the old way between Peronne and St. Quentin, which
seemed to me a very good, honest, plain way, as smooth as a carpet, and as
good as ever was trod upon by shoe of leather.
Among the rocks I knew again the good old way to La Ferrare, mounted on a
huge bear.
