But Ponocrates did not hesitate. He poured out a black liquid from a bottle into a great spoon, and striding up the table to Gargantua, dashed it into his open mouth.
For all the time Gargantua had been eating and playing, Ponocrates had been looking on. And when he saw what Gargantua’s habits were, he knew that it would take more than a new course of study to change them. So he had gone to Doctor Theodore, a famous physician of Paris, and got from him a medicine which should make Gargantua forget his old ways entirely.
So well did it work, that hardly had Gargantua swallowed it when he laid down his fork and looked wonderingly at the table as if he were trying to make out what all the puddings and pastries were there for.
“And now,” said Ponocrates, “you will oblige me, young gentlemen, by starting off to bed. I want clear heads for to-morrow’s study.”
Gargantua was the first one up from the table; and before eight o’clock had struck, he was asleep for the first time in his life without dreaming of banquets.
Early next morning a new kind of life began for him. For Ponocrates had laid out such a course of study that he should not lose a single hour of the day. At four o’clock he was called; and while he was being rubbed down after his bath, a page read the Latin lesson aloud to him. As he dressed, Ponocrates would come in to explain the hard points; and after a day or two Gargantua himself could repeat the lessons off by heart. And all the time he would be carefully parting his hair with a real comb instead of a German one, and never thinking of breakfast at all. Indeed after a few more doses of the black medicine, Ponocrates had to remind him that it was time to be eating or he would rush off to the schoolroom as soon as he was dressed.
Even when he swam down the river Seine
After breakfast Ponocrates talked for three hours in Latin, and then, as the boys began to look a trifle sleepy, sent them out for a game of tennis till dinner-time. After dinner they would sing for a while, and then get at their Latin books again for three hours more. And after six months of that, Eudemon himself could not outdo Gargantua in talking Latin. He thought in it, dreamed in it, and was as anxious to be at his book as he was before to be at his dinner.