Chapter 3.XLV.—How Panurge taketh advice of Triboulet.
On the sixth day thereafter Pantagruel was returned home at the very same hour that Triboulet was by water come from Blois. Panurge, at his arrival, gave him a hog’s bladder puffed up with wind, and resounding because of the hard peas that were within it. Moreover he did present him with a gilt wooden sword, a hollow budget made of a tortoise shell, an osier-wattled wicker-bottle full of Breton wine, and five-and-twenty apples of the orchard of Blandureau.
If he be such a fool, quoth Carpalin, as to be won with apples, there is no more wit in his pate than in the head of an ordinary cabbage. Triboulet girded the sword and scrip to his side, took the bladder in his hand, ate some few of the apples, and drunk up all the wine. Panurge very wistly and heedfully looking upon him said, I never yet saw a fool, and I have seen ten thousand francs worth of that kind of cattle, who did not love to drink heartily, and by good long draughts. When Triboulet had done with his drinking, Panurge laid out before him and exposed the sum of the business wherein he was to require his advice, in eloquent and choicely-sorted terms, adorned with flourishes of rhetoric. But, before he had altogether done, Triboulet with his fist gave him a bouncing whirret between the shoulders, rendered back into his hand again the empty bottle, fillipped and flirted him in the nose with the hog’s bladder, and lastly, for a final resolution, shaking and wagging his head strongly and disorderly, he answered nothing else but this, By God, God, mad fool, beware the monk, Buzansay hornpipe! These words thus finished, he slipped himself out of the company, went aside, and, rattling the bladder, took a huge delight in the melody of the rickling crackling noise of the peas. After which time it lay not in the power of them all to draw out of his chaps the articulate sound of one syllable, insomuch that, when Panurge went about to interrogate him further, Triboulet drew his wooden sword, and would have stuck him therewith. I have fished fair now, quoth Panurge, and brought my pigs to a fine market. Have I not got a brave determination of all my doubts, and a response in all things agreeable to the oracle that gave it? He is a great fool, that is not to be denied, yet is he a greater fool who brought him hither to me,—That bolt, quoth Carpalin, levels point-blank at me,—but of the three I am the greatest fool, who did impart the secret of my thoughts to such an idiot ass and native ninny.
Without putting ourselves to any stir or trouble in the least, quoth Pantagruel, let us maturely and seriously consider and perpend the gestures and speech which he hath made and uttered. In them, veritably, quoth he, have I remarked and observed some excellent and notable mysteries; yea, of such important worth and weight, that I shall never henceforth be astonished, nor think strange, why the Turks with a great deal of worship and reverence honour and respect natural fools equally with their primest doctors, muftis, divines, and prophets. Did not you take heed, quoth he, a little before he opened his mouth to speak, what a shogging, shaking, and wagging his head did keep? By the approved doctrine of the ancient philosophers, the customary ceremonies of the most expert magicians, and the received opinions of the learnedest lawyers, such a brangling agitation and moving should by us all be judged to proceed from, and be quickened and suscitated by the coming and inspiration of the prophetizing and fatidical spirit, which, entering briskly and on a sudden into a shallow receptacle of a debile substance (for, as you know, and as the proverb shows it, a little head containeth not much brains), was the cause of that commotion. This is conform to what is avouched by the most skilful physicians, when they affirm that shakings and tremblings fall upon the members of a human body, partly because of the heaviness and violent impetuosity of the burden and load that is carried, and, other part, by reason of the weakness and imbecility that is in the virtue of the bearing organ. A manifest example whereof appeareth in those who, fasting, are not able to carry to their head a great goblet full of wine without a trembling and a shaking in the hand that holds it. This of old was accounted a prefiguration and mystical pointing out of the Pythian divineress, who used always, before the uttering of a response from the oracle, to shake a branch of her domestic laurel. Lampridius also testifieth that the Emperor Heliogabalus, to acquire unto himself the reputation of a soothsayer, did, on several holy days of prime solemnnity, in the presence of the fanatic rabble, make the head of his idol by some slight within the body thereof publicly to shake. Plautus, in his Asinaria, declareth likewise, that Saurias, whithersoever he walked, like one quite distracted of his wits kept such a furious lolling and mad-like shaking of his head, that he commonly affrighted those who casually met with him in his way. The said author in another place, showing a reason why Charmides shook and brangled his head, assevered that he was transported and in an ecstasy. Catullus after the same manner maketh mention, in his Berecynthia and Atys, of the place wherein the Menades, Bacchical women, she-priests of the Lyaean god, and demented prophetesses, carrying ivy boughs in their hands, did shake their heads. As in the like case, amongst the Galli, the gelded priests of Cybele were wont to do in the celebrating of their festivals. Whence, too, according to the sense of the ancient theologues, she herself has her denomination, for kubistan signifieth to turn round, whirl about, shake the head, and play the part of one that is wry-necked.
Semblably Titus Livius writeth that, in the solemnization time of the Bacchanalian holidays at Rome, both men and women seemed to prophetize and vaticinate, because of an affected kind of wagging of the head, shrugging of the shoulders, and jectigation of the whole body, which they used then most punctually. For the common voice of the philosophers, together with the opinion of the people, asserteth for an irrefragable truth that vaticination is seldom by the heavens bestowed on any without the concomitancy of a little frenzy and a head-shaking, not only when the said presaging virtue is infused, but when the person also therewith inspired declareth and manifesteth it unto others. The learned lawyer Julian, being asked on a time if that slave might be truly esteemed to be healthful and in a good plight who had not only conversed with some furious, maniac, and enraged people, but in their company had also prophesied, yet without a noddle-shaking concussion, answered that, seeing there was no head-wagging at the time of his predictions, he might be held for sound and compotent enough. Is it not daily seen how schoolmasters, teachers, tutors, and instructors of children shake the heads of their disciples, as one would do a pot in holding it by the lugs, that by this erection, vellication, stretching, and pulling their ears, which, according to the doctrine of the sage Egyptians, is a member consecrated to the memory, they may stir them up to recollect their scattered thoughts, bring home those fancies of theirs which perhaps have been extravagantly roaming abroad upon strange and uncouth objects, and totally range their judgments, which possibly by disordinate affections have been made wild, to the rule and pattern of a wise, discreet, virtuous, and philosophical discipline. All which Virgil acknowledgeth to be true, in the branglement of Apollo Cynthius.
Chapter 3.XLVI.—How Pantagruel and Panurge diversely interpret the words of Triboulet.
He says you are a fool. And what kind of fool? A mad fool, who in your old age would enslave yourself to the bondage of matrimony, and shut your pleasures up within a wedlock whose key some ruffian carries in his codpiece. He says furthermore, Beware of the monk. Upon mine honour, it gives me in my mind that you will be cuckolded by a monk. Nay, I will engage mine honour, which is the most precious pawn I could have in my possession although I were sole and peaceable dominator over all Europe, Asia, and Africa, that, if you marry, you will surely be one of the horned brotherhood of Vulcan. Hereby may you perceive how much I do attribute to the wise foolery of our morosoph Triboulet. The other oracles and responses did in the general prognosticate you a cuckold, without descending so near to the point of a particular determination as to pitch upon what vocation amongst the several sorts of men he should profess who is to be the copesmate of your wife and hornifier of your proper self. Thus noble Triboulet tells it us plainly, from whose words we may gather with all ease imaginable that your cuckoldry is to be infamous, and so much the more scandalous that your conjugal bed will be incestuously contaminated with the filthiness of a monkery lecher. Moreover, he says that you will be the hornpipe of Buzansay, that is to say, well-horned, hornified, and cornuted. And, as Triboulet’s uncle asked from Louis the Twelfth, for a younger brother of his own who lived at Blois, the hornpipes of Buzansay, for the organ pipes, through the mistake of one word for another, even so, whilst you think to marry a wise, humble, calm, discreet, and honest wife, you shall unhappily stumble upon one witless, proud, loud, obstreperous, bawling, clamorous, and more unpleasant than any Buzansay hornpipe. Consider withal how he flirted you on the nose with the bladder, and gave you a sound thumping blow with his fist upon the ridge of the back. This denotates and presageth that you shall be banged, beaten, and fillipped by her, and that also she will steal of your goods from you, as you stole the hog’s bladder from the little boys of Vaubreton.
Flat contrary, quoth Panurge;—not that I would impudently exempt myself from being a vassal in the territory of folly. I hold of that jurisdiction, and am subject thereto, I confess it. And why should I not? For the whole world is foolish. In the old Lorraine language, fou for tou, all and fool, were the same thing. Besides, it is avouched by Solomon that infinite is the number of fools. From an infinity nothing can be deducted or abated, nor yet, by the testimony of Aristotle, can anything thereto be added or subjoined. Therefore were I a mad fool if, being a fool, I should not hold myself a fool. After the same manner of speaking, we may aver the number of the mad and enraged folks to be infinite. Avicenna maketh no bones to assert that the several kinds of madness are infinite. Though this much of Triboulet’s words tend little to my advantage, howbeit the prejudice which I sustain thereby be common with me to all other men, yet the rest of his talk and gesture maketh altogether for me. He said to my wife, Be wary of the monkey; that is as much as if she should be cheery, and take as much delight in a monkey as ever did the Lesbia of Catullus in her sparrow; who will for his recreation pass his time no less joyfully at the exercise of snatching flies than heretofore did the merciless fly-catcher Domitian. Withal he meant, by another part of his discourse, that she should be of a jovial country-like humour, as gay and pleasing as a harmonious hornpipe of Saulieau or Buzansay. The veridical Triboulet did therein hint at what I liked well, as perfectly knowing the inclinations and propensions of my mind, my natural disposition, and the bias of my interior passions and affections. For you may be assured that my humour is much better satisfied and contented with the pretty, frolic, rural, dishevelled shepherdesses, whose bums through their coarse canvas smocks smell of the clover grass of the field, than with those great ladies in magnific courts, with their flandan top-knots and sultanas, their polvil, pastillos, and cosmetics. The homely sound, likewise, of a rustical hornpipe is more agreeable to my ears than the curious warbling and musical quavering of lutes, theorbos, viols, rebecs, and violins. He gave me a lusty rapping thwack on my back,—what then? Let it pass, in the name and for the love of God, as an abatement of and deduction from so much of my future pains in purgatory. He did it not out of any evil intent. He thought, belike, to have hit some of the pages. He is an honest fool, and an innocent changeling. It is a sin to harbour in the heart any bad conceit of him. As for myself, I heartily pardon him. He flirted me on the nose. In that there is no harm; for it importeth nothing else but that betwixt my wife and me there will occur some toyish wanton tricks which usually happen to all new-married folks.
Chapter 3.XLVII.—How Pantagruel and Panurge resolved to make a visit to the oracle of the holy bottle.
There is as yet another point, quoth Panurge, which you have not at all considered on, although it be the chief and principal head of the matter. He put the bottle in my hand and restored it me again. How interpret you that passage? What is the meaning of that? He possibly, quoth Pantagruel, signifieth thereby that your wife will be such a drunkard as shall daily take in her liquor kindly, and ply the pots and bottles apace. Quite otherwise, quoth Panurge; for the bottle was empty. I swear to you, by the prickling brambly thorn of St. Fiacre in Brie, that our unique morosoph, whom I formerly termed the lunatic Triboulet, referreth me, for attaining to the final resolution of my scruple, to the response-giving bottle. Therefore do I renew afresh the first vow which I made, and here in your presence protest and make oath, by Styx and Acheron, to carry still spectacles in my cap, and never to wear a codpiece in my breeches, until upon the enterprise in hand of my nuptial undertaking I shall have obtained an answer from the holy bottle. I am acquainted with a prudent, understanding, and discreet gentleman, and besides a very good friend of mine, who knoweth the land, country, and place where its temple and oracle is built and posited. He will guide and conduct us thither sure and safely. Let us go thither, I beseech you. Deny me not, and say not nay; reject not the suit I make unto you, I entreat you. I will be to you an Achates, a Damis, and heartily accompany you all along in the whole voyage, both in your going forth and coming back. I have of a long time known you to be a great lover of peregrination, desirous still to learn new things, and still to see what you had never seen before.
Very willingly, quoth Pantagruel, I condescend to your request. But before we enter in upon our progress towards the accomplishment of so far a journey, replenished and fraught with eminent perils, full of innumerable hazards, and every way stored with evident and manifest dangers,—What dangers? quoth Panurge, interrupting him. Dangers fly back, run from, and shun me whithersoever I go, seven leagues around, as in the presence of the sovereign a subordinate magistracy is eclipsed; or as clouds and darkness quite evanish at the bright coming of a radiant sun; or as all sores and sicknesses did suddenly depart at the approach of the body of St. Martin a Quande. Nevertheless, quoth Pantagruel, before we adventure to set forwards on the road of our projected and intended voyage, some few points are to be discussed, expedited, and despatched. First, let us send back Triboulet to Blois. Which was instantly done, after that Pantagruel had given him a frieze coat. Secondly, our design must be backed with the advice and counsel of the king my father. And, lastly, it is most needful and expedient for us that we search for and find out some sibyl to serve us for a guide, truchman, and interpreter. To this Panurge made answer, that his friend Xenomanes would abundantly suffice for the plenary discharge and performance of the sibyl’s office; and that, furthermore, in passing through the Lanternatory revelling country, they should take along with them a learned and profitable Lanternesse, which would be no less useful to them in their voyage than was the sibyl to Aeneas in his descent to the Elysian fields. Carpalin, in the interim, as he was upon the conducting away of Triboulet, in his passing by hearkened a little to the discourse they were upon; then spoke out, saying, Ho, Panurge, master freeman, take my Lord Debitis at Calais alongst with you, for he is goud-fallot, a good fellow. He will not forget those who have been debitors; these are Lanternes. Thus shall you not lack for both fallot and lanterne. I may safely with the little skill I have, quoth Pantagruel, prognosticate that by the way we shall engender no melancholy. I clearly perceive it already. The only thing that vexeth me is, that I cannot speak the Lanternatory language. I shall, answered Panurge, speak for you all. I understand it every whit as well as I do mine own maternal tongue; I have been no less used to it than to the vulgar French.
Briszmarg dalgotbrick nubstzne zos.
Isquebsz prusq: albok crinqs zacbac.
Mizbe dilbarskz morp nipp stancz bos,
Strombtz, Panurge, walmap quost gruszbac.
Now guess, friend Epistemon, what this is. They are, quoth Epistemon, names of errant devils, passant devils, and rampant devils. These words of thine, dear friend of mine, are true, quoth Panurge; yet are they terms used in the language of the court of the Lanternish people. By the way, as we go upon our journey, I will make to thee a pretty little dictionary, which, notwithstanding, shall not last you much longer than a pair of new shoes. Thou shalt have learned it sooner than thou canst perceive the dawning of the next subsequent morning. What I have said in the foregoing tetrastich is thus translated out of the Lanternish tongue into our vulgar dialect:
All miseries attended me, whilst I
A lover was, and had no good thereby.
Of better luck the married people tell;
Panurge is one of those, and knows it well.
There is little more, then, quoth Pantagruel, to be done, but that we understand what the will of the king my father will be therein, and purchase his consent.
Chapter 3.XLVIII.—How Gargantua showeth that the children ought not to marry without the special knowledge and advice of their fathers and mothers.
No sooner had Pantagruel entered in at the door of the great hall of the castle, than that he encountered full butt with the good honest Gargantua coming forth from the council board, unto whom he made a succinct and summary narrative of what had passed and occurred, worthy of his observation, in his travels abroad, since their last interview; then, acquainting him with the design he had in hand, besought him that it might stand with his goodwill and pleasure to grant him leave to prosecute and go through-stitch with the enterprise which he had undertaken. The good man Gargantua, having in one hand two great bundles of petitions endorsed and answered, and in the other some remembrancing notes and bills, to put him in mind of such other requests of supplicants, which, albeit presented, had nevertheless been neither read nor heard, he gave both to Ulric Gallet, his ancient and faithful Master of Requests; then drew aside Pantagruel, and, with a countenance more serene and jovial than customary, spoke to him thus: I praise God, and have great reason so to do, my most dear son, that he hath been pleased to entertain in you a constant inclination to virtuous actions. I am well content that the voyage which you have motioned to me be by you accomplished, but withal I could wish you would have a mind and desire to marry, for that I see you are of competent years. Panurge in the meanwhile was in a readiness of preparing and providing for remedies, salves, and cures against all such lets, obstacles, and impediments as he could in the height of his fancy conceive might by Gargantua be cast in the way of their itinerary design. Is it your pleasure, most dear father, that you speak? answered Pantagruel. For my part, I have not yet thought upon it. In all this affair I wholly submit and rest in your good liking and paternal authority. For I shall rather pray unto God that he would throw me down stark dead at your feet, in your pleasure, than that against your pleasure I should be found married alive. I never yet heard that by any law, whether sacred or profane, yea, amongst the rudest and most barbarous nations in the world, it was allowed and approved of that children may be suffered and tolerated to marry at their own goodwill and pleasure, without the knowledge, advice, or consent asked and had thereto of their fathers, mothers, and nearest kindred. All legislators, everywhere upon the face of the whole earth, have taken away and removed this licentious liberty from children, and totally reserved it to the discretion of the parents.
My dearly beloved son, quoth Gargantua, I believe you, and from my heart thank God for having endowed you with the grace of having both a perfect notice of and entire liking to laudable and praiseworthy things; and that through the windows of your exterior senses he hath vouchsafed to transmit unto the interior faculties of your mind nothing but what is good and virtuous. For in my time there hath been found on the continent a certain country, wherein are I know not what kind of Pastophorian mole-catching priests, who, albeit averse from engaging their proper persons into a matrimonial duty, like the pontifical flamens of Cybele in Phrygia, as if they were capons, and not cocks full of lasciviousness, salacity, and wantonness, who yet have, nevertheless, in the matter of conjugal affairs, taken upon them to prescribe laws and ordinances to married folks. I cannot goodly determine what I should most abhor, detest, loathe, and abominate,—whether the tyrannical presumption of those dreaded sacerdotal mole-catchers, who, not being willing to contain and coop up themselves within the grates and trellises of their own mysterious temples, do deal in, meddle with, obtrude upon, and thrust their sickles into harvests of secular businesses quite contrary and diametrically opposite to the quality, state, and condition of their callings, professions, and vocations; or the superstitious stupidity and senseless scrupulousness of married folks, who have yielded obedience, and submitted their bodies, fortunes, and estates to the discretion and authority of such odious, perverse, barbarous, and unreasonable laws. Nor do they see that which is clearer than the light and splendour of the morning star,—how all these nuptial and connubial sanctions, statutes, and ordinances have been decreed, made, and instituted for the sole benefit, profit, and advantage of the flaminal mysts and mysterious flamens, and nothing at all for the good, utility, or emolument of the silly hoodwinked married people. Which administereth unto others a sufficient cause for rendering these churchmen suspicious of iniquity, and of an unjust and fraudulent manner of dealing, no more to be connived at nor countenanced, after that it be well weighed in the scales of reason, than if with a reciprocal temerity the laics, by way of compensation, would impose laws to be followed and observed by those mysts and flamens, how they should behave themselves in the making and performance of their rites and ceremonies, and after what manner they ought to proceed in the offering up and immolating of their various oblations, victims, and sacrifices; seeing that, besides the decimation and tithe-haling of their goods, they cut off and take parings, shreddings, and clippings of the gain proceeding from the labour of their hands and sweat of their brows, therewith to entertain themselves the better. Upon which consideration, in my opinion, their injunctions and commands would not prove so pernicious and impertinent as those of the ecclesiastic power unto which they had tendered their blind obedience. For, as you have very well said, there is no place in the world where, legally, a licence is granted to the children to marry without the advice and consent of their parents and kindred. Nevertheless, by those wicked laws and mole-catching customs, whereat there is a little hinted in what I have already spoken to you, there is no scurvy, measly, leprous, or pocky ruffian, pander, knave, rogue, skellum, robber, or thief, pilloried, whipped, and burn-marked in his own country for his crimes and felonies, who may not violently snatch away and ravish what maid soever he had a mind to pitch upon, how noble, how fair, how rich, honest, and chaste soever she be, and that out of the house of her own father, in his own presence, from the bosom of her mother, and in the sight and despite of her friends and kindred looking on a so woeful spectacle, provided that the rascal villain be so cunning as to associate unto himself some mystical flamen, who, according to the covenant made betwixt them two, shall be in hope some day to participate of the prey.
Could the Goths, the Scyths, or Massagets do a worse or more cruel act to any of the inhabitants of a hostile city, when, after the loss of many of their most considerable commanders, the expense of a great deal of money, and a long siege, they shall have stormed and taken it by a violent and impetuous assault? May not these fathers and mothers, think you, be sorrowful and heavy-hearted when they see an unknown fellow, a vagabond stranger, a barbarous lout, a rude cur, rotten, fleshless, putrified, scraggy, boily, botchy, poor, a forlorn caitiff and miserable sneak, by an open rapt snatch away before their own eyes their so fair, delicate, neat, well-behavioured, richly-provided-for and healthful daughters, on whose breeding and education they had spared no cost nor charges, by bringing them up in an honest discipline to all the honourable and virtuous employments becoming one of their sex descended of a noble parentage, hoping by those commendable and industrious means in an opportune and convenient time to bestow them on the worthy sons of their well-deserving neighbours and ancient friends, who had nourished, entertained, taught, instructed, and schooled their children with the same care and solicitude, to make them matches fit to attain to the felicity of a so happy marriage, that from them might issue an offspring and progeny no less heirs to the laudable endowments and exquisite qualifications of their parents, whom they every way resemble, than to their personal and real estates, movables, and inheritances? How doleful, trist, and plangorous would such a sight and pageantry prove unto them? You shall not need to think that the collachrymation of the Romans and their confederates at the decease of Germanicus Drusus was comparable to this lamentation of theirs? Neither would I have you to believe that the discomfort and anxiety of the Lacedaemonians, when the Greek Helen, by the perfidiousness of the adulterous Trojan, Paris, was privily stolen away out of their country, was greater or more pitiful than this ruthful and deplorable collugency of theirs? You may very well imagine that Ceres at the ravishment of her daughter Proserpina was not more attristed, sad, nor mournful than they. Trust me, and your own reason, that the loss of Osiris was not so regrettable to Isis, nor did Venus so deplore the death of Adonis, nor yet did Hercules so bewail the straying of Hylas, nor was the rapt of Polyxena more throbbingly resented and condoled by Priamus and Hecuba, than this aforesaid accident would be sympathetically bemoaned, grievous, ruthful, and anxious to the woefully desolate and disconsolate parents.
Notwithstanding all this, the greater part of so vilely abused parents are so timorous and afraid of devils and hobgoblins, and so deeply plunged in superstition, that they dare not gainsay nor contradict, much less oppose and resist those unnatural and impious actions, when the mole-catcher hath been present at the perpetrating of the fact, and a party contractor and covenanter in that detestable bargain. What do they do then? They wretchedly stay at their own miserable homes, destitute of their well-beloved daughters, the fathers cursing the days and the hours wherein they were married, and the mothers howling and crying that it was not their fortune to have brought forth abortive issues when they happened to be delivered of such unfortunate girls, and in this pitiful plight spend at best the remainder of their time with tears and weeping for those their children, of and from whom they expected, (and, with good reason, should have obtained and reaped,) in these latter days of theirs, joy and comfort. Other parents there have been, so impatient of that affront and indignity put upon them and their families, that, transported with the extremity of passion, in a mad and frantic mood, through the vehemency of a grievous fury and raging sorrow, have drowned, hanged, killed, and otherwise put violent hands on themselves. Others, again, of that parental relation have, upon the reception of the like injury, been of a more magnanimous and heroic spirit, who, in imitation and at the example of the children of Jacob revenging upon the Sichemites the rapt of their sister Dinah, having found the rascally ruffian in the association of his mystical mole-catcher closely and in hugger-mugger conferring, parleying, and coming with their daughters, for the suborning, corrupting, depraving, perverting, and enticing these innocent unexperienced maids unto filthy lewdnesses, have, without any further advisement on the matter, cut them instantly into pieces, and thereupon forthwith thrown out upon the fields their so dismembered bodies, to serve for food unto the wolves and ravens. Upon the chivalrous, bold, and courageous achievement of a so valiant, stout, and manlike act, the other mole-catching symmysts have been so highly incensed, and have so chafed, fretted, and fumed thereat, that, bills of complaint and accusations having been in a most odious and detestable manner put in before the competent judges, the arm of secular authority hath with much importunity and impetuosity been by them implored and required, they proudly contending that the servants of God would become contemptible if exemplary punishment were not speedily taken upon the persons of the perpetrators of such an enormous, horrid, sacrilegious, crying, heinous, and execrable crime.
Yet neither by natural equity, by the law of nations, nor by any imperial law whatsoever, hath there been found so much as one rubric, paragraph, point, or tittle, by the which any kind of chastisement or correction hath been adjudged due to be inflicted upon any for their delinquency in that kind. Reason opposeth, and nature is repugnant. For there is no virtuous man in the world who both naturally and with good reason will not be more hugely troubled in mind, hearing of the news of the rapt, disgrace, ignominy, and dishonour of his daughter, than of her death. Now any man, finding in hot blood one who with a forethought felony hath murdered his daughter, may, without tying himself to the formalities and circumstances of a legal proceeding, kill him on a sudden and out of hand without incurring any hazard of being attainted and apprehended by the officers of justice for so doing. What wonder is it then? Or how little strange should it appear to any rational man, if a lechering rogue, together with his mole-catching abettor, be entrapped in the flagrant act of suborning his daughter, and stealing her out of his house, though herself consent thereto, that the father in such a case of stain and infamy by them brought upon his family, should put them both to a shameful death, and cast their carcasses upon dunghills to be devoured and eaten up by dogs and swine, or otherwise fling them a little further off to the direption, tearing, and rending asunder of their joints and members by the wild beasts of the field (as unworthy to receive the gentle, the desired, the last kind embraces of the great Alma Mater, the earth, commonly called burial).
Dearly beloved son, have an especial care that after my decease none of these laws be received in any of your kingdoms; for whilst I breathe, by the grace and assistance of God, I shall give good order. Seeing, therefore, you have totally referred unto my discretion the disposure of you in marriage, I am fully of an opinion that I shall provide sufficiently well for you in that point. Make ready and prepare yourself for Panurge’s voyage. Take along with you Epistemon, Friar John, and such others as you will choose. Do with my treasures what unto yourself shall seem most expedient. None of your actions, I promise you, can in any manner of way displease me. Take out of my arsenal Thalasse whatsoever equipage, furniture, or provision you please, together with such pilots, mariners, and truchmen as you have a mind to, and with the first fair and favourable wind set sail and make out to sea in the name of God our Saviour. In the meanwhile, during your absence, I shall not be neglective of providing a wife for you, nor of those preparations which are requisite to be made for the more sumptuous solemnizing of your nuptials with a most splendid feast, if ever there was any in the world, since the days of Ahasuerus.
Chapter 3.XLIX.—How Pantagruel did put himself in a readiness to go to sea; and of the herb named Pantagruelion.
Within very few days after that Pantagruel had taken his leave of the good Gargantua, who devoutly prayed for his son’s happy voyage, he arrived at the seaport, near to Sammalo, accompanied with Panurge, Epistemon, Friar John of the Funnels, Abbot of Theleme, and others of the royal house, especially with Xenomanes the great traveller and thwarter of dangerous ways, who was come at the bidding and appointment of Panurge, of whose castlewick of Salmigondin he did hold some petty inheritance by the tenure of a mesne fee. Pantagruel, being come thither, prepared and made ready for launching a fleet of ships, to the number of those which Ajax of Salamine had of old equipped in convoy of the Grecian soldiery against the Trojan state. He likewise picked out for his use so many mariners, pilots, sailors, interpreters, artificers, officers, and soldiers, as he thought fitting, and therewithal made provision of so much victuals of all sorts, artillery, munition of divers kinds, clothes, moneys, and other such luggage, stuff, baggage, chaffer, and furniture, as he deemed needful for carrying on the design of a so tedious, long, and perilous voyage. Amongst other things, it was observed how he caused some of his vessels to be fraught and loaded with a great quantity of an herb of his called Pantagruelion, not only of the green and raw sort of it, but of the confected also, and of that which was notably well befitted for present use after the fashion of conserves. The herb Pantagruelion hath a little root somewhat hard and rough, roundish, terminating in an obtuse and very blunt point, and having some of its veins, strings, or filaments coloured with some spots of white, never fixeth itself into the ground above the profoundness almost of a cubit, or foot and a half. From the root thereof proceedeth the only stalk, orbicular, cane-like, green without, whitish within, and hollow like the stem of smyrnium, olus atrum, beans, and gentian, full of long threads, straight, easy to be broken, jagged, snipped, nicked, and notched a little after the manner of pillars and columns, slightly furrowed, chamfered, guttered, and channelled, and full of fibres, or hairs like strings, in which consisteth the chief value and dignity of the herb, especially in that part thereof which is termed mesa, as he would say the mean, and in that other, which hath got the denomination of milasea. Its height is commonly of five or six foot. Yet sometimes it is of such a tall growth as doth surpass the length of a lance, but that is only when it meeteth with a sweet, easy, warm, wet, and well-soaked soil—as is the ground of the territory of Olone, and that of Rasea, near to Preneste in Sabinia—and that it want not for rain enough about the season of the fishers’ holidays and the estival solstice. There are many trees whose height is by it very far exceeded, and you might call it dendromalache by the authority of Theophrastus. The plant every year perisheth,—the tree neither in the trunk, root, bark, or boughs being durable.
From the stalk of this Pantagruelian plant there issue forth several large and great branches, whose leaves have thrice as much length as breadth, always green, roughish, and rugged like the orcanet, or Spanish bugloss, hardish, slit round about like unto a sickle, or as the saxifragum, betony, and finally ending as it were in the points of a Macedonian spear, or of such a lancet as surgeons commonly make use of in their phlebotomizing tiltings. The figure and shape of the leaves thereof is not much different from that of those of the ash-tree, or of agrimony; the herb itself being so like the Eupatorian plant that many skilful herbalists have called it the Domestic Eupator, and the Eupator the Wild Pantagruelion. These leaves are in equal and parallel distances spread around the stalk by the number in every rank either of five or seven, nature having so highly favoured and cherished this plant that she hath richly adorned it with these two odd, divine, and mysterious numbers. The smell thereof is somewhat strong, and not very pleasing to nice, tender, and delicate noses. The seed enclosed therein mounteth up to the very top of its stalk, and a little above it.
This is a numerous herb; for there is no less abundance of it than of any other whatsoever. Some of these plants are spherical, some rhomboid, and some of an oblong shape, and all of those either black, bright-coloured, or tawny, rude to the touch, and mantled with a quickly-blasted-away coat, yet such a one as is of a delicious taste and savour to all shrill and sweetly-singing birds, such as linnets, goldfinches, larks, canary birds, yellow-hammers, and others of that airy chirping choir; but it would quite extinguish the natural heat and procreative virtue of the semence of any man who would eat much and often of it. And although that of old amongst the Greeks there was certain kinds of fritters and pancakes, buns and tarts, made thereof, which commonly for a liquorish daintiness were presented on the table after supper to delight the palate and make the wine relish the better; yet is it of a difficult concoction, and offensive to the stomach. For it engendereth bad and unwholesome blood, and with its exorbitant heat woundeth them with grievous, hurtful, smart, and noisome vapours. And, as in divers plants and trees there are two sexes, male and female, which is perceptible in laurels, palms, cypresses, oaks, holms, the daffodil, mandrake, fern, the agaric, mushroom, birthwort, turpentine, pennyroyal, peony, rose of the mount, and many other such like, even so in this herb there is a male which beareth no flower at all, yet it is very copious of and abundant in seed. There is likewise in it a female, which hath great store and plenty of whitish flowers, serviceable to little or no purpose, nor doth it carry in it seed of any worth at all, at least comparable to that of the male. It hath also a larger leaf, and much softer than that of the male, nor doth it altogether grow to so great a height. This Pantagruelion is to be sown at the first coming of the swallows, and is to be plucked out of the ground when the grasshoppers begin to be a little hoarse.
Chapter 3.L.—How the famous Pantagruelion ought to be prepared and wrought.
The herb Pantagruelion, in September, under the autumnal equinox, is dressed and prepared several ways, according to the various fancies of the people and diversity of the climates wherein it groweth. The first instruction which Pantagruel gave concerning it was to divest and despoil the stalk and stem thereof of all its flowers and seeds, to macerate and mortify it in pond, pool, or lake water, which is to be made run a little for five days together (Properly—‘lake water, which is to be made stagnant, not current, for five days together.’—M.) if the season be dry and the water hot, or for full nine or twelve days if the weather be cloudish and the water cold. Then must it be parched before the sun till it be drained of its moisture. After this it is in the shadow, where the sun shines not, to be peeled and its rind pulled off. Then are the fibres and strings thereof to be parted, wherein, as we have already said, consisteth its prime virtue, price, and efficacy, and severed from the woody part thereof, which is unprofitable, and serveth hardly to any other use than to make a clear and glistering blaze, to kindle the fire, and for the play, pastime, and disport of little children, to blow up hogs’ bladders and make them rattle. Many times some use is made thereof by tippling sweet-lipped bibbers, who out of it frame quills and pipes, through which they with their liquor-attractive breath suck up the new dainty wine from the bung of the barrel. Some modern Pantagruelists, to shun and avoid that manual labour which such a separating and partitional work would of necessity require, employ certain cataractic instruments, composed and formed after the same manner that the froward, pettish, and angry Juno did hold the fingers of both her hands interwovenly clenched together when she would have hindered the childbirth delivery of Alcmena at the nativity of Hercules; and athwart those cataracts they break and bruise to very trash the woody parcels, thereby to preserve the better the fibres, which are the precious and excellent parts. In and with this sole operation do these acquiesce and are contented, who, contrary to the received opinion of the whole earth, and in a manner paradoxical to all philosophers, gain their livelihoods backwards, and by recoiling. But those that love to hold it at a higher rate, and prize it according to its value, for their own greater profit do the very same which is told us of the recreation of the three fatal sister Parcae, or of the nocturnal exercise of the noble Circe, or yet of the excuse which Penelope made to her fond wooing youngsters and effeminate courtiers during the long absence of her husband Ulysses.
By these means is this herb put into a way to display its inestimable virtues, whereof I will discover a part; for to relate all is a thing impossible to do. I have already interpreted and exposed before you the denomination thereof. I find that plants have their names given and bestowed upon them after several ways. Some got the name of him who first found them out, knew them, sowed them, improved them by culture, qualified them to tractability, and appropriated them to the uses and subserviences they were fit for, as the Mercuriale from Mercury; Panacea from Panace, the daughter of Aesculapius; Armois from Artemis, who is Diana; Eupatoria from the king Eupator; Telephion from Telephus; Euphorbium from Euphorbus, King Juba’s physician; Clymenos from Clymenus; Alcibiadium from Alcibiades; Gentiane from Gentius, King of Sclavonia, and so forth, through a great many other herbs or plants. Truly, in ancient times this prerogative of imposing the inventor’s name upon an herb found out by him was held in a so great account and estimation, that, as a controversy arose betwixt Neptune and Pallas from which of them two that land should receive its denomination which had been equally found out by them both together—though thereafter it was called and had the appellation of Athens, from Athene, which is Minerva—just so would Lynceus, King of Scythia, have treacherously slain the young Triptolemus, whom Ceres had sent to show unto mankind the invention of corn, which until then had been utterly unknown, to the end that, after the murder of the messenger, whose death he made account to have kept secret, he might, by imposing, with the less suspicion of false dealing, his own name upon the said found out seed, acquire unto himself an immortal honour and glory for having been the inventor of a grain so profitable and necessary to and for the use of human life. For the wickedness of which treasonable attempt he was by Ceres transformed into that wild beast which by some is called a lynx and by others an ounce. Such also was the ambition of others upon the like occasion, as appeareth by that very sharp wars and of a long continuance have been made of old betwixt some residentiary kings in Cappadocia upon this only debate, of whose name a certain herb should have the appellation; by reason of which difference, so troublesome and expensive to them all, it was by them called Polemonion, and by us for the same cause termed Make-bate.
Other herbs and plants there are which retain the names of the countries from whence they were transported, as the Median apples from Media, where they first grew; Punic apples from Punicia, that is to say, Carthage; Ligusticum, which we call lovage, from Liguria, the coast of Genoa; Rhubarb from a flood in Barbary, as Ammianus attesteth, called Ru; Santonica from a region of that name; Fenugreek from Greece; Gastanes from a country so called; Persicaria from Persia; Sabine from a territory of that appellation; Staechas from the Staechad Islands; Spica Celtica from the land of the Celtic Gauls, and so throughout a great many other, which were tedious to enumerate. Some others, again, have obtained their denominations by way of antiphrasis, or contrariety; as Absinth, because it is contrary to Psinthos, for it is bitter to the taste in drinking; Holosteon, as if it were all bones, whilst, on the contrary, there is no frailer, tenderer, nor brittler herb in the whole production of nature than it.
There are some other sorts of herbs which have got their names from their virtues and operations, as Aristolochia, because it helpeth women in childbirth; Lichen, for that it cureth the disease of that name; Mallow, because it mollifieth; Callithricum, because it maketh the hair of a bright colour; Alyssum, Ephemerum, Bechium, Nasturtium, Aneban (Henbane), and so forth through many more.
Other some there are which have obtained their names from the admirable qualities that are found to be in them, as Heliotropium, which is the marigold, because it followeth the sun, so that at the sun rising it displayeth and spreads itself out, at his ascending it mounteth, at his declining it waneth, and when he is set it is close shut; Adianton, because, although it grow near unto watery places, and albeit you should let it lie in water a long time, it will nevertheless retain no moisture nor humidity; Hierachia, Eringium, and so throughout a great many more. There are also a great many herbs and plants which have retained the very same names of the men and women who have been metamorphosed and transformed in them, as from Daphne the laurel is called also Daphne; Myrrh from Myrrha, the daughter of Cinarus; Pythis from Pythis; Cinara, which is the artichoke, from one of that name; Narcissus, with Saffron, Smilax, and divers others.
Many herbs likewise have got their names of those things which they seem to have some resemblance to; as Hippuris, because it hath the likeness of a horse’s tail; Alopecuris, because it representeth in similitude the tail of a fox; Psyllion, from a flea which it resembleth; Delphinium, for that it is like a dolphin fish; Bugloss is so called because it is an herb like an ox’s tongue; Iris, so called because in its flowers it hath some resemblance of the rainbow; Myosota, because it is like the ear of a mouse; Coronopus, for that it is of the likeness of a crow’s foot. A great many other such there are, which here to recite were needless. Furthermore, as there are herbs and plants which have had their names from those of men, so by a reciprocal denomination have the surnames of many families taken their origin from them, as the Fabii, a fabis, beans; the Pisons, a pisis, peas; the Lentuli from lentils; the Cicerons; a ciceribus, vel ciceris, a sort of pulse called chickpease, and so forth. In some plants and herbs the resemblance or likeness hath been taken from a higher mark or object, as when we say Venus’ navel, Venus’ hair, Venus’ tub, Jupiter’s beard, Jupiter’s eye, Mars’ blood, the Hermodactyl or Mercury’s fingers, which are all of them names of herbs, as there are a great many more of the like appellation. Others, again, have received their denomination from their forms, such as the Trefoil, because it is three-leaved; Pentaphylon, for having five leaves; Serpolet, because it creepeth along the ground; Helxine, Petast, Myrobalon, which the Arabians called Been, as if you would say an acorn, for it hath a kind of resemblance thereto, and withal is very oily.
Chapter 3.LI.—Why it is called Pantagruelion, and of the admirable virtues thereof.
By such-like means of attaining to a denomination—the fabulous ways being only from thence excepted, for the Lord forbid that we should make use of any fables in this a so veritable history—is this herb called Pantagruelion, for Pantagruel was the inventor thereof. I do not say of the plant itself, but of a certain use which it serves for, exceeding odious and hateful to thieves and robbers, unto whom it is more contrarious and hurtful than the strangle-weed and chokefitch is to the flax, the cats-tail to the brakes, the sheave-grass to the mowers of hay, the fitches to the chickney-pease, the darnel to barley, the hatchet-fitch to the lentil pulse, the antramium to the beans, tares to wheat, ivy to walls, the water-lily to lecherous monks, the birchen rod to the scholars of the college of Navarre in Paris, colewort to the vine-tree, garlic to the loadstone, onions to the sight, fern-seed to women with child, willow-grain to vicious nuns, the yew-tree shade to those that sleep under it, wolfsbane to wolves and libbards, the smell of fig-tree to mad bulls, hemlock to goslings, purslane to the teeth, or oil to trees. For we have seen many of those rogues, by virtue and right application of this herb, finish their lives short and long, after the manner of Phyllis, Queen of Thracia, of Bonosus, Emperor of Rome, of Amata, King Latinus’s wife, of Iphis, Autolycus, Lycambe, Arachne, Phaedra, Leda, Achius, King of Lydia, and many thousands more, who were chiefly angry and vexed at this disaster therein, that, without being otherwise sick or evil-disposed in their bodies, by a touch only of the Pantagruelion they came on a sudden to have the passage obstructed, and their pipes, through which were wont to bolt so many jolly sayings and to enter so many luscious morsels, stopped, more cleverly than ever could have done the squinancy.
Others have been heard most woefully to lament, at the very instant when Atropos was about to cut the thread of their life, that Pantagruel held them by the gorge. But, well-a-day, it was not Pantagruel; he never was an executioner. It was the Pantagruelion, manufactured and fashioned into an halter; and serving in the place and office of a cravat. In that, verily, they solecized and spoke improperly, unless you would excuse them by a trope, which alloweth us to posit the inventor in the place of the thing invented, as when Ceres is taken for bread, and Bacchus put instead of wine. I swear to you here, by the good and frolic words which are to issue out of that wine-bottle which is a-cooling below in the copper vessel full of fountain water, that the noble Pantagruel never snatched any man by the throat, unless it was such a one as was altogether careless and neglective of those obviating remedies which were preventive of the thirst to come.
It is also termed Pantagruelion by a similitude. For Pantagruel, at the very first minute of his birth, was no less tall than this herb is long whereof I speak unto you, his measure having been then taken the more easy that he was born in the season of the great drought, when they were busiest in the gathering of the said herb, to wit, at that time when Icarus’s dog, with his fiery bawling and barking at the sun, maketh the whole world Troglodytic, and enforceth people everywhere to hide themselves in dens and subterranean caves. It is likewise called Pantagruelion because of the notable and singular qualities, virtues, and properties thereof. For as Pantagruel hath been the idea, pattern, prototype, and exemplary of all jovial perfection and accomplishment—in the truth whereof I believe there is none of you gentlemen drinkers that putteth any question—so in this Pantagruelion have I found so much efficacy and energy, so much completeness and excellency, so much exquisiteness and rarity, and so many admirable effects and operations of a transcendent nature, that if the worth and virtue thereof had been known when those trees, by the relation of the prophet, made election of a wooden king to rule and govern over them, it without all doubt would have carried away from all the rest the plurality of votes and suffrages.
Shall I yet say more? If Oxylus, the son of Orius, had begotten this plant upon his sister Hamadryas, he had taken more delight in the value and perfection of it alone than in all his eight children, so highly renowned by our ablest mythologians that they have sedulously recommended their names to the never-failing tuition of an eternal remembrance. The eldest child was a daughter, whose name was Vine; the next born was a boy, and his name was Fig-tree; the third was called Walnut-tree; the fourth Oak; the fifth Sorbapple-tree; the sixth Ash; the seventh Poplar, and the last had the name of Elm, who was the greatest surgeon in his time. I shall forbear to tell you how the juice or sap thereof, being poured and distilled within the ears, killeth every kind of vermin that by any manner of putrefaction cometh to be bred and engendered there, and destroyeth also any whatsoever other animal that shall have entered in thereat. If, likewise, you put a little of the said juice within a pail or bucket full of water, you shall see the water instantly turn and grow thick therewith as if it were milk-curds, whereof the virtue is so great that the water thus curded is a present remedy for horses subject to the colic, and such as strike at their own flanks. The root thereof well boiled mollifieth the joints, softeneth the hardness of shrunk-in sinews, is every way comfortable to the nerves, and good against all cramps and convulsions, as likewise all cold and knotty gouts. If you would speedily heal a burning, whether occasioned by water or fire, apply thereto a little raw Pantagruelion, that is to say, take it so as it cometh out of the ground, without bestowing any other preparation or composition upon it; but have a special care to change it for some fresher in lieu thereof as soon as you shall find it waxing dry upon the sore.
Without this herb kitchens would be detested, the tables of dining-rooms abhorred, although there were great plenty and variety of most dainty and sumptuous dishes of meat set down upon them, and the choicest beds also, how richly soever adorned with gold, silver, amber, ivory, porphyry, and the mixture of most precious metals, would without it yield no delight or pleasure to the reposers in them. Without it millers could neither carry wheat, nor any other kind of corn to the mill, nor would they be able to bring back from thence flour, or any other sort of meal whatsoever. Without it, how could the papers and writs of lawyers’ clients be brought to the bar? Seldom is the mortar, lime, or plaster brought to the workhouse without it. Without it, how should the water be got out of a draw-well? In what case would tabellions, notaries, copists, makers of counterpanes, writers, clerks, secretaries, scriveners, and such-like persons be without it? Were it not for it, what would become of the toll-rates and rent-rolls? Would not the noble art of printing perish without it? Whereof could the chassis or paper-windows be made? How should the bells be rung? The altars of Isis are adorned therewith, the Pastophorian priests are therewith clad and accoutred, and whole human nature covered and wrapped therein at its first position and production in and into this world. All the lanific trees of Seres, the bumbast and cotton bushes in the territories near the Persian Sea and Gulf of Bengala, the Arabian swans, together with the plants of Malta, do not all the them clothe, attire, and apparel so many persons as this one herb alone. Soldiers are nowadays much better sheltered under it than they were in former times, when they lay in tents covered with skins. It overshadows the theatres and amphitheatres from the heat of a scorching sun. It begirdeth and encompasseth forests, chases, parks, copses, and groves, for the pleasure of hunters. It descendeth into the salt and fresh of both sea and river-waters for the profit of fishers. By it are boots of all sizes, buskins, gamashes, brodkins, gambadoes, shoes, pumps, slippers, and every cobbled ware wrought and made steadable for the use of man. By it the butt and rover-bows are strung, the crossbows bended, and the slings made fixed. And, as if it were an herb every whit as holy as the vervain, and reverenced by ghosts, spirits, hobgoblins, fiends, and phantoms, the bodies of deceased men are never buried without it.
I will proceed yet further. By the means of this fine herb the invisible substances are visibly stopped, arrested, taken, detained, and prisoner-like committed to their receptive gaols. Heavy and ponderous weights are by it heaved, lifted up, turned, veered, drawn, carried, and every way moved quickly, nimbly, and easily, to the great profit and emolument of humankind. When I perpend with myself these and such-like marvellous effects of this wonderful herb, it seemeth strange unto me how the invention of so useful a practice did escape through so many by-past ages the knowledge of the ancient philosophers, considering the inestimable utility which from thence proceeded, and the immense labour which without it they did undergo in their pristine elucubrations. By virtue thereof, through the retention of some aerial gusts, are the huge rambarges, mighty galleons, the large floats, the Chiliander, the Myriander ships launched from their stations and set a-going at the pleasure and arbitrament of their rulers, conders, and steersmen. By the help thereof those remote nations whom nature seemed so unwilling to have discovered to us, and so desirous to have kept them still in abscondito and hidden from us, that the ways through which their countries were to be reached unto were not only totally unknown, but judged also to be altogether impermeable and inaccessible, are now arrived to us, and we to them.
Those voyages outreached flights of birds and far surpassed the scope of feathered fowls, how swift soever they had been on the wing, and notwithstanding that advantage which they have of us in swimming through the air. Taproban hath seen the heaths of Lapland, and both the Javas and Riphaean mountains; wide distant Phebol shall see Theleme, and the Islanders drink of the flood Euphrates. By it the chill-mouthed Boreas hath surveyed the parched mansions of the torrid Auster, and Eurus visited the regions which Zephyrus hath under his command; yea, in such sort have interviews been made by the assistance of this sacred herb, that, maugre longitudes and latitudes, and all the variations of the zones, the Periaecian people, and Antoecian, Amphiscian, Heteroscian, and Periscian had oft rendered and received mutual visits to and from other, upon all the climates. These strange exploits bred such astonishment to the celestial intelligences, to all the marine and terrestrial gods, that they were on a sudden all afraid. From which amazement, when they saw how, by means of this blest Pantagruelion, the Arctic people looked upon the Antarctic, scoured the Atlantic Ocean, passed the tropics, pushed through the torrid zone, measured all the zodiac, sported under the equinoctial, having both poles level with their horizon, they judged it high time to call a council for their own safety and preservation.
The Olympic gods, being all and each of them affrighted at the sight of such achievements, said: Pantagruel hath shapen work enough for us, and put us more to a plunge and nearer our wits’ end by this sole herb of his than did of old the Aloidae by overturning mountains. He very speedily is to be married, and shall have many children by his wife. It lies not in our power to oppose this destiny; for it hath passed through the hands and spindles of the Fatal Sisters, necessity’s inexorable daughters. Who knows but by his sons may be found out an herb of such another virtue and prodigious energy, as that by the aid thereof, in using it aright according to their father’s skill, they may contrive a way for humankind to pierce into the high aerian clouds, get up unto the springhead of the hail, take an inspection of the snowy sources, and shut and open as they please the sluices from whence proceed the floodgates of the rain; then, prosecuting their aethereal voyage, they may step in unto the lightning workhouse and shop, where all the thunderbolts are forged, where, seizing on the magazine of heaven and storehouse of our warlike fire-munition, they may discharge a bouncing peal or two of thundering ordnance for joy of their arrival to these new supernal places, and, charging those tonitrual guns afresh, turn the whole force of that artillery against ourselves wherein we most confided. Then is it like they will set forward to invade the territories of the Moon, whence, passing through both Mercury and Venus, the Sun will serve them for a torch, to show the way from Mars to Jupiter and Saturn. We shall not then be able to resist the impetuosity of their intrusion, nor put a stoppage to their entering in at all, whatever regions, domiciles, or mansions of the spangled firmament they shall have any mind to see, to stay in, to travel through for their recreation. All the celestial signs together, with the constellations of the fixed stars, will jointly be at their devotion then. Some will take up their lodging at the Ram, some at the Bull, and others at the Twins; some at the Crab, some at the Lion Inn, and others at the sign of the Virgin; some at the Balance, others at the Scorpion, and others will be quartered at the Archer; some will be harboured at the Goat, some at the Water-pourer’s sign, some at the Fishes; some will lie at the Crown, some at the Harp, some at the Golden Eagle and the Dolphin; some at the Flying Horse, some at the Ship, some at the great, some at the little Bear; and so throughout the glistening hostelries of the whole twinkling asteristic welkin. There will be sojourners come from the earth, who, longing after the taste of the sweet cream, of their own skimming off, from the best milk of all the dairy of the Galaxy, will set themselves at table down with us, drink of our nectar and ambrosia, and take to their own beds at night for wives and concubines our fairest goddesses, the only means whereby they can be deified. A junto hereupon being convocated, the better to consult upon the manner of obviating a so dreadful danger, Jove, sitting in his presidential throne, asked the votes of all the other gods, which, after a profound deliberation amongst themselves on all contingencies, they freely gave at last, and then resolved unanimously to withstand the shocks of all whatsoever sublunary assaults.
Chapter 3.LII.—How a certain kind of Pantagruelion is of that nature that the fire is not able to consume it.
I have already related to you great and admirable things; but, if you might be induced to adventure upon the hazard of believing some other divinity of this sacred Pantagruelion, I very willingly would tell it you. Believe it, if you will, or otherwise, believe it not, I care not which of them you do, they are both alike to me. It shall be sufficient for my purpose to have told you the truth, and the truth I will tell you. But to enter in thereat, because it is of a knaggy, difficult, and rugged access, this is the question which I ask of you. If I had put within this bottle two pints, the one of wine and the other of water, thoroughly and exactly mingled together, how would you unmix them? After what manner would you go about to sever them, and separate the one liquor from the other, in such sort that you render me the water apart, free from the wine, and the wine also pure, without the intermixture of one drop of water, and both of them in the same measure, quantity, and taste that I had embottled them? Or, to state the question otherwise. If your carmen and mariners, entrusted for the provision of your houses with the bringing of a certain considerable number of tuns, puncheons, pipes, barrels, and hogsheads of Graves wine, or of the wine of Orleans, Beaune, and Mireveaux, should drink out the half, and afterwards with water fill up the other empty halves of the vessels as full as before, as the Limosins use to do in their carriages by wains and carts of the wines of Argenton and Sangaultier; after that, how would you part the water from the wine, and purify them both in such a case? I understand you well enough. Your meaning is, that I must do it with an ivy funnel. That is written, it is true, and the verity thereof explored by a thousand experiments; you have learned to do this feat before, I see it. But those that have never known it, nor at any time have seen the like, would hardly believe that it were possible. Let us nevertheless proceed.
But put the case, we were now living in the age of Sylla, Marius, Caesar, and other such Roman emperors, or that we were in the time of our ancient Druids, whose custom was to burn and calcine the dead bodies of their parents and lords, and that you had a mind to drink the ashes or cinders of your wives or fathers in the infused liquor of some good white-wine, as Artemisia drunk the dust and ashes of her husband Mausolus; or otherwise, that you did determine to have them reserved in some fine urn or reliquary pot; how would you save the ashes apart, and separate them from those other cinders and ashes into which the fuel of the funeral and bustuary fire hath been converted? Answer, if you can. By my figgins, I believe it will trouble you so to do.
Well, I will despatch, and tell you that, if you take of this celestial Pantagruelion so much as is needful to cover the body of the defunct, and after that you shall have enwrapped and bound therein as hard and closely as you can the corpse of the said deceased persons, and sewed up the folding-sheet with thread of the same stuff, throw it into the fire, how great or ardent soever it be it matters not a straw, the fire through this Pantagruelion will burn the body and reduce to ashes the bones thereof, and the Pantagruelion shall be not only not consumed nor burnt, but also shall neither lose one atom of the ashes enclosed within it, nor receive one atom of the huge bustuary heap of ashes resulting from the blazing conflagration of things combustible laid round about it, but shall at last, when taken out of the fire, be fairer, whiter, and much cleaner than when you did put it in at first. Therefore it is called Asbeston, which is as much to say as incombustible. Great plenty is to be found thereof in Carpasia, as likewise in the climate Dia Sienes, at very easy rates. O how rare and admirable a thing it is, that the fire which devoureth, consumeth, and destroyeth all such things else, should cleanse, purge, and whiten this sole Pantagruelion Carpasian Asbeston! If you mistrust the verity of this relation, and demand for further confirmation of my assertion a visible sign, as the Jews and such incredulous infidels use to do, take a fresh egg, and orbicularly, or rather ovally, enfold it within this divine Pantagruelion. When it is so wrapped up, put it in the hot embers of a fire, how great or ardent soever it be, and having left it there as long as you will, you shall at last, at your taking it out of the fire, find the egg roasted hard, and as it were burnt, without any alteration, change, mutation, or so much as a calefaction of the sacred Pantagruelion. For less than a million of pounds sterling, modified, taken down, and amoderated to the twelfth part of one fourpence halfpenny farthing, you are able to put it to a trial and make proof thereof.
Do not think to overmatch me here, by paragoning with it in the way of a more eminent comparison the Salamander. That is a fib; for, albeit a little ordinary fire, such as is used in dining-rooms and chambers, gladden, cheer up, exhilarate, and quicken it, yet may I warrantably enough assure that in the flaming fire of a furnace it will, like any other animated creature, be quickly suffocated, choked, consumed, and destroyed. We have seen the experiment thereof, and Galen many ages ago hath clearly demonstrated and confirmed it, Lib. 3, De temperamentis, and Dioscorides maintaineth the same doctrine, Lib. 2. Do not here instance in competition with this sacred herb the feather alum or the wooden tower of Pyraeus, which Lucius Sylla was never able to get burnt; for that Archelaus, governor of the town for Mithridates, King of Pontus, had plastered it all over on the outside with the said alum. Nor would I have you to compare therewith the herb which Alexander Cornelius called Eonem, and said that it had some resemblance with that oak which bears the mistletoe, and that it could neither be consumed nor receive any manner of prejudice by fire nor by water, no more than the mistletoe, of which was built, said he, the so renowned ship Argos. Search where you please for those that will believe it. I in that point desire to be excused. Neither would I wish you to parallel therewith—although I cannot deny but that it is of a very marvellous nature—that sort of tree which groweth alongst the mountains of Brianson and Ambrun, which produceth out of his root the good agaric. From its body it yieldeth unto us a so excellent rosin, that Galen hath been bold to equal it to the turpentine. Upon the delicate leaves thereof it retaineth for our use that sweet heavenly honey which is called the manna, and, although it be of a gummy, oily, fat, and greasy substance, it is, notwithstanding, unconsumable by any fire. It is in Greek and Latin called Larix. The Alpinese name is Melze. The Antenorides and Venetians term it Larege; which gave occasion to that castle in Piedmont to receive the denomination of Larignum, by putting Julius Caesar to a stand at his return from amongst the Gauls.
Julius Caesar commanded all the yeomen, boors, hinds, and other inhabitants in, near unto, and about the Alps and Piedmont, to bring all manner of victuals and provision for an army to those places which on the military road he had appointed to receive them for the use of his marching soldiery. To which ordinance all of them were obedient, save only those as were within the garrison of Larignum, who, trusting in the natural strength of the place, would not pay their contribution. The emperor, purposing to chastise them for their refusal, caused his whole army to march straight towards that castle, before the gate whereof was erected a tower built of huge big spars and rafters of the larch-tree, fast bound together with pins and pegs of the same wood, and interchangeably laid on one another, after the fashion of a pile or stack of timber, set up in the fabric thereof to such an apt and convenient height that from the parapet above the portcullis they thought with stones and levers to beat off and drive away such as should approach thereto.
When Caesar had understood that the chief defence of those within the castle did consist in stones and clubs, and that it was not an easy matter to sling, hurl, dart, throw, or cast them so far as to hinder the approaches, he forthwith commanded his men to throw great store of bavins, faggots, and fascines round about the castle, and when they had made the heap of a competent height, to put them all in a fair fire; which was thereupon incontinently done. The fire put amidst the faggots was so great and so high that it covered the whole castle, that they might well imagine the tower would thereby be altogether burnt to dust, and demolished. Nevertheless, contrary to all their hopes and expectations, when the flame ceased, and that the faggots were quite burnt and consumed, the tower appeared as whole, sound, and entire as ever. Caesar, after a serious consideration had thereof, commanded a compass to be taken without the distance of a stone cast from the castle round about it there, with ditches and entrenchments to form a blockade; which when the Larignans understood, they rendered themselves upon terms. And then by a relation from them it was that Caesar learned the admirable nature and virtue of this wood, which of itself produceth neither fire, flame, nor coal, and would, therefore, in regard of that rare quality of incombustibility, have been admitted into this rank and degree of a true Pantagruelional plant; and that so much the rather, for that Pantagruel directed that all the gates, doors, angiports, windows, gutters, fretticed and embowed ceilings, cans, (cants?) and other whatsoever wooden furniture in the abbey of Theleme, should be all materiated of this kind of timber. He likewise caused to cover therewith the sterns, stems, cook-rooms or laps, hatches, decks, courses, bends, and walls of his carricks, ships, galleons, galleys, brigantines, foists, frigates, crears, barques, floats, pinks, pinnaces, hoys, ketches, capers, and other vessels of his Thalassian arsenal; were it not that the wood or timber of the larch-tree, being put within a large and ample furnace full of huge vehemently flaming fire proceeding from the fuel of other sorts and kinds of wood, cometh at last to be corrupted, consumed, dissipated, and destroyed, as are stones in a lime-kiln. But this Pantagruelion Asbeston is rather by the fire renewed and cleansed than by the flames thereof consumed or changed. Therefore,
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Arabians, Indians, Sabaeans, Sing not, in hymns and Io Paeans, Your incense, myrrh, or ebony. Come here, a nobler plant to see, And carry home, at any rate, Some seed, that you may propagate. If in your soil it takes, to heaven A thousand thousand thanks be given; And say with France, it goodly goes, Where the Pantagruelion grows. |
END OF BOOK III