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.