Chapter 5.XXXIV.—How we arrived at the Oracle of the Bottle.
Our glorious lantern lighting and directing us to heart’s content, we at last arrived at the desired island where was the Oracle of the Bottle. As soon as friend Panurge landed, he nimbly cut a caper with one leg for joy, and cried to Pantagruel, Now we are where we have wished ourselves long ago. This is the place we’ve been seeking with such toil and labour. He then made a compliment to our lantern, who desired us to be of good cheer, and not be daunted or dismayed whatever we might chance to see.
To come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle we were to go through a large vineyard, in which were all sorts of vines, as the Falernian, Malvoisian, the Muscadine, those of Taige, Beaune, Mirevaux, Orleans, Picardent, Arbois, Coussi, Anjou, Grave, Corsica, Vierron, Nerac, and others. This vineyard was formerly planted by the good Bacchus, with so great a blessing that it yields leaves, flowers, and fruit all the year round, like the orange trees at Suraine.
Our magnificent lantern ordered every one of us to eat three grapes, to put some vine-leaves in his shoes, and take a vine-branch in his left hand.
At the end of the close we went under an arch built after the manner of those of the ancients. The trophies of a toper were curiously carved on it.
First, on one side was to be seen a long train of flagons, leathern bottles, flasks, cans, glass bottles, barrels, nipperkins, pint pots, quart pots, pottles, gallons, and old-fashioned semaises (swingeing wooden pots, such as those out of which the Germans fill their glasses); these hung on a shady arbour.
On another side was store of garlic, onions, shallots, hams, botargos, caviare, biscuits, neat’s tongues, old cheese, and such like comfits, very artificially interwoven, and packed together with vine-stocks.
On another were a hundred sorts of drinking glasses, cups, cisterns, ewers, false cups, tumblers, bowls, mazers, mugs, jugs, goblets, talboys, and such other Bacchic artillery.
On the frontispiece of the triumphal arch, under the zoophore, was the following couplet:
You who presume to move this way,
Get a good lantern, lest you stray.
We took special care of that, cried Pantagruel when he had read them; for there is not a better or a more divine lantern than ours in all Lantern-land.
This arch ended at a fine large round alley covered over with the interlaid branches of vines, loaded and adorned with clusters of five hundred different colours, and of as many various shapes, not natural, but due to the skill of agriculture; some were golden, others bluish, tawny, azure, white, black, green, purple, streaked with many colours, long, round, triangular, cod-like, hairy, great-headed, and grassy. That pleasant alley ended at three old ivy-trees, verdant, and all loaden with rings. Our enlightened lantern directed us to make ourselves hats with some of their leaves, and cover our heads wholly with them, which was immediately done.
Jupiter’s priestess, said Pantagruel, in former days would not like us have walked under this arbour. There was a mystical reason, answered our most perspicuous lantern, that would have hindered her; for had she gone under it, the wine, or the grapes of which ‘tis made, that’s the same thing, had been over her head, and then she would have seemed overtopped and mastered by wine. Which implies that priests, and all persons who devote themselves to the contemplation of divine things, ought to keep their minds sedate and calm, and avoid whatever might disturb and discompose their tranquillity, which nothing is more apt to do than drunkenness.
You also, continued our lantern, could not come into the Holy Bottle’s presence, after you have gone through this arch, did not that noble priestess Bacbuc first see your shoes full of vine-leaves; which action is diametrically opposite to the other, and signifies that you despise wine, and having mastered it, as it were, tread it under foot.
I am no scholar, quoth Friar John, for which I’m heartily sorry, yet I find by my breviary that in the Revelation a woman was seen with the moon under her feet, which was a most wonderful sight. Now, as Bigot explained it to me, this was to signify that she was not of the nature of other women; for they have all the moon at their heads, and consequently their brains are always troubled with a lunacy. This makes me willing to believe what you said, dear Madam Lantern.
Chapter 5.XXXV.—How we went underground to come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle, and how Chinon is the oldest city in the world.
We went underground through a plastered vault, on which was coarsely painted a dance of women and satyrs waiting on old Silenus, who was grinning o’ horseback on his ass. This made me say to Pantagruel, that this entry put me in mind of the painted cellar in the oldest city in the world, where such paintings are to be seen, and in as cool a place.
Which is the oldest city in the world? asked Pantagruel. ‘Tis Chinon, sir, or Cainon in Touraine, said I. I know, returned Pantagruel, where Chinon lies, and the painted cellar also, having myself drunk there many a glass of cool wine; neither do I doubt but that Chinon is an ancient town —witness its blazon. I own ‘tis said twice or thrice:
Chinon,
Little town,
Great renown,
On old stone
Long has stood;
There’s the Vienne, if you look down;
If you look up, there’s the wood.
But how, continued he, can you make it out that ‘tis the oldest city in the world? Where did you find this written? I have found it in the sacred writ, said I, that Cain was the first that built a town; we may then reasonably conjecture that from his name he gave it that of Cainon. Thus, after his example, most other founders of towns have given them their names: Athena, that’s Minerva in Greek, to Athens; Alexander to Alexandria; Constantine to Constantinople; Pompey to Pompeiopolis in Cilicia; Adrian to Adrianople; Canaan, to the Canaanites; Saba, to the Sabaeans; Assur, to the Assyrians; and so Ptolemais, Caesarea, Tiberias, and Herodium in Judaea got their names.
While we were thus talking, there came to us the great flask whom our lantern called the philosopher, her holiness the Bottle’s governor. He was attended with a troop of the temple-guards, all French bottles in wicker armour; and seeing us with our javelins wrapped with ivy, with our illustrious lantern, whom he knew, he desired us to come in with all manner of safety, and ordered we should be immediately conducted to the Princess Bacbuc, the Bottle’s lady of honour, and priestess of all the mysteries; which was done.
Chapter 5.XXXVI.—How we went down the tetradic steps, and of Panurge’s fear.
We went down one marble step under ground, where there was a resting, or, as our workmen call it, a landing-place; then, turning to the left, we went down two other steps, where there was another resting-place; after that we came to three other steps, turning about, and met a third; and the like at four steps which we met afterwards. There quoth Panurge, Is it here? How many steps have you told? asked our magnificent lantern. One, two, three, four, answered Pantagruel. How much is that? asked she. Ten, returned he. Multiply that, said she, according to the same Pythagorical tetrad. That is, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, cried Pantagruel. How much is the whole? said she. One hundred, answered Pantagruel. Add, continued she, the first cube—that’s eight. At the end of that fatal number you’ll find the temple gate; and pray observe, this is the true psychogony of Plato, so celebrated by the Academics, yet so little understood; one moiety of which consists of the unity of the two first numbers full of two square and two cubic numbers. We then went down those numerical stairs, all under ground, and I can assure you, in the first place, that our legs stood us in good stead; for had it not been for ‘em, we had rolled just like so many hogsheads into a vault. Secondly, our radiant lantern gave us just so much light as is in St. Patrick’s hole in Ireland, or Trophonius’s pit in Boeotia; which caused Panurge to say to her, after we had got down some seventy-eight steps:
Dear madam, with a sorrowful, aching heart, I most humbly beseech your lanternship to lead us back. May I be led to hell if I be not half dead with fear; my heart is sunk down into my hose; I am afraid I shall make buttered eggs in my breeches. I freely consent never to marry. You have given yourself too much trouble on my account. The Lord shall reward you in his great rewarder; neither will I be ungrateful when I come out of this cave of Troglodytes. Let’s go back, I pray you. I’m very much afraid this is Taenarus, the low way to hell, and methinks I already hear Cerberus bark. Hark! I hear the cur, or my ears tingle. I have no manner of kindness for the dog, for there never is a greater toothache than when dogs bite us by the shins. And if this be only Trophonius’s pit, the lemures, hobthrushes, and goblins will certainly swallow us alive, just as they devoured formerly one of Demetrius’s halberdiers for want of bridles. Art thou here, Friar John? Prithee, dear, dear cod, stay by me; I’m almost dead with fear. Hast thou got thy bilbo? Alas! poor pilgarlic’s defenceless. I’m a naked man, thou knowest; let’s go back. Zoons, fear nothing, cried Friar John; I’m by thee, and have thee fast by the collar; eighteen devils shan’t get thee out of my clutches, though I were unarmed. Never did a man yet want weapons who had a good arm with as stout a heart. Heaven would sooner send down a shower of them; even as in Provence, in the fields of La Crau, near Mariannes, there rained stones (they are there to this day) to help Hercules, who otherwise wanted wherewithal to fight Neptune’s two bastards. But whither are we bound? Are we a-going to the little children’s limbo? By Pluto, they’ll bepaw and conskite us all. Or are we going to hell for orders? By cob’s body, I’ll hamper, bethwack, and belabour all the devils, now I have some vine-leaves in my shoes. Thou shalt see me lay about me like mad, old boy. Which way? where the devil are they? I fear nothing but their damned horns; but cuckoldy Panurge’s bull-feather will altogether secure me from ‘em. Lo! in a prophetic spirit I already see him, like another Actaeon, horned, horny, hornified. Prithee, quoth Panurge, take heed thyself, dear frater, lest, till monks have leave to marry, thou weddest something thou dostn’t like, as some cat-o’-nine-tails or the quartan ague; if thou dost, may I never come safe and sound out of this hypogeum, this subterranean cave, if I don’t tup and ram that disease merely for the sake of making thee a cornuted, corniferous property; otherwise I fancy the quartan ague is but an indifferent bedfellow. I remember Gripe-men-all threatened to wed thee to some such thing; for which thou calledest him heretic.
Here our splendid lantern interrupted them, letting us know this was the place where we were to have a taste of the creature, and be silent; bidding us not despair of having the word of the Bottle before we went back, since we had lined our shoes with vine-leaves.
Come on then, cried Panurge, let’s charge through and through all the devils of hell; we can but perish, and that’s soon done. However, I thought to have reserved my life for some mighty battle. Move, move, move forwards; I am as stout as Hercules, my breeches are full of courage; my heart trembles a little, I own, but that’s only an effect of the coldness and dampness of this vault; ‘tis neither fear nor ague. Come on, move on, piss, pish, push on. My name’s William Dreadnought.
Chapter 5.XXXVII.—How the temple gates in a wonderful manner opened of themselves.
After we were got down the steps, we came to a portal of fine jasper, of Doric order, on whose front we read this sentence in the finest gold, EN OINO ALETHEIA—that is, In wine truth. The gates were of Corinthian-like brass, massy, wrought with little vine-branches, finely embossed and engraven, and were equally joined and closed together in their mortise without padlock, key-chain, or tie whatsoever. Where they joined, there hanged an Indian loadstone as big as an Egyptian bean, set in gold, having two points, hexagonal, in a right line; and on each side, towards the wall, hung a handful of scordium (garlic germander).
There our noble lantern desired us not to take it amiss that she went no farther with us, leaving us wholly to the conduct of the priestess Bacbuc; for she herself was not allowed to go in, for certain causes rather to be concealed than revealed to mortals. However, she advised us to be resolute and secure, and to trust to her for the return. She then pulled the loadstone that hung at the folding of the gates, and threw it into a silver box fixed for that purpose; which done, from the threshold of each gate she drew a twine of crimson silk about nine feet long, by which the scordium hung, and having fastened it to two gold buckles that hung at the sides, she withdrew.
Immediately the gates flew open without being touched; not with a creaking or loud harsh noise like that made by heavy brazen gates, but with a soft pleasing murmur that resounded through the arches of the temple.
Pantagruel soon knew the cause of it, having discovered a small cylinder or roller that joined the gates over the threshold, and, turning like them towards the wall on a hard well-polished ophites stone, with rubbing and rolling caused that harmonious murmur.
I wondered how the gates thus opened of themselves to the right and left, and after we were all got in, I cast my eye between the gates and the wall to endeavour to know how this happened; for one would have thought our kind lantern had put between the gates the herb aethiopis, which they say opens some things that are shut. But I perceived that the parts of the gates that joined on the inside were covered with steel, and just where the said gates touched when they were opened I saw two square Indian loadstones of a bluish hue, well polished, and half a span broad, mortised in the temple wall. Now, by the hidden and admirable power of the loadstones, the steel plates were put into motion, and consequently the gates were slowly drawn; however, not always, but when the said loadstone on the outside was removed, after which the steel was freed from its power, the two bunches of scordium being at the same time put at some distance, because it deadens the magnes and robs it of its attractive virtue.
On the loadstone that was placed on the right side the following iambic verse was curiously engraven in ancient Roman characters:
Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.
Fate leads the willing, and th’ unwilling draws.
The following sentence was neatly cut in the loadstone that was on the left:
ALL THINGS TEND TO THEIR END.