But I cannot better satisfy you as to the growth of the vine-tree sirup that is here squeezed out of grapes, than in desiring you to look yonder in that back-yard, where you will see above a thousand different growths that lie waiting to be squeezed every moment. Here are some of the public and some of the private growth; some of the builders’ fortifications, loans, gifts, and gratuities, escheats, forfeitures, fines, and recoveries, penal statutes, crown lands, and demesne, privy purse, post-offices, offerings, lordships of manors, and a world of other growths, for which we want names. Pray, quoth Epistemon, tell me of what growth is that great one, with all those little grapelings about it. Oh, oh! returned Double-fee, that plump one is of the treasury, the very best growth in the whole country. Whenever anyone of that growth is squeezed, there is not one of their worships but gets juice enough of it to soak his nose six months together. When their worships were up, Pantagruel desired Double-fee to take us into that great wine-press, which he readily did. As soon as we were in, Epistemon, who understood all sorts of tongues, began to show us many devices on the press, which was large and fine, and made of the wood of the cross—at least Double-fee told us so. On each part of it were names of everything in the language of the country. The spindle of the press was called receipt; the trough, cost and damages; the hole for the vice-pin, state; the side-boards, money paid into the office; the great beam, respite of homage; the branches, radietur; the side-beams, recuperetur; the fats, ignoramus; the two-handled basket, the rolls; the treading-place, acquittance; the dossers, validation; the panniers, authentic decrees; the pailes, potentials; the funnels, quietus est.
By the Queen of the Chitterlings, quoth Panurge, all the hieroglyphics of Egypt are mine a— to this jargon. Why! here are a parcel of words full as analogous as chalk and cheese, or a cat and a cart-wheel! But why, prithee, dear Double-fee, do they call these worshipful dons of yours ignorant fellows? Only, said Double-fee, because they neither are, nor ought to be, clerks, and all must be ignorant as to what they transact here; nor is there to be any other reason given, but, The court hath said it; The court will have it so; The court has decreed it. Cop’s body, quoth Pantagruel, they might full as well have called ‘em necessity; for necessity has no law.
From thence, as he was leading us to see a thousand little puny presses, we spied another paltry bar, about which sat four are five ignorant waspish churls, of so testy, fuming a temper, (like an ass with squibs and crackers tied to its tail,) and so ready to take pepper in the nose for yea and nay, that a dog would not have lived with ‘em. They were hard at it with the lees and dregs of the grapes, which they gripped over and over again, might and main, with their clenched fists. They were called contractors in the language of the country. These are the ugliest, misshapen, grim-looking scrubs, said Friar John, that ever were beheld, with or without spectacles. Then we passed by an infinite number of little pimping wine-presses all full of vintage-mongers, who were picking, examining, and raking the grapes with some instruments called bills-of-charge.
Finally we came into a hall downstairs, where we saw an overgrown cursed mangy cur with a pair of heads, a wolf’s belly, and claws like the devil of hell. The son of a bitch was fed with costs, for he lived on a multiplicity of fine amonds and amerciaments by order of their worships, to each of whom the monster was worth more than the best farm in the land. In their tongue of ignorance they called him Twofold. His dam lay by him, and her hair and shape was like her whelp’s, only she had four heads, two male and two female, and her name was Fourfold. She was certainly the most cursed and dangerous creature of the place, except her grandam, which we saw, and had been kept locked up in a dungeon time out of mind, and her name was Refusing-of-fees.
Friar John, who had always twenty yards of gut ready empty to swallow a gallimaufry of lawyers, began to be somewhat out of humour, and desired Pantagruel to remember he had not dined, and bring Double-fee along with him. So away we went, and as we marched out at the back-gate whom should we meet but an old piece of mortality in chains. He was half ignorant and half learned, like an hermaphrodite of Satan. The fellow was all caparisoned with spectacles as a tortoise is with shells, and lived on nothing but a sort of food which, in their gibberish, was called appeals. Pantagruel asked Double-fee of what breed was that prothonotary, and what name they gave him. Double-fee told us that time out of mind he had been kept there in chains, to the great grief of their worships, who starved him, and his name was Review. By the pope’s sanctified two-pounders, cried Friar John, I do not much wonder at the meagre cheer which this old chuff finds among their worships. Do but look a little on the weather-beaten scratch-toby, friend Panurge; by the sacred tip of my cowl, I’ll lay five pounds to a hazel-nut the foul thief has the very looks of Gripe-me-now. These same fellows here, ignorant as they be, are as sharp and knowing as other folk. But were it my case, I would send him packing with a squib in his breech like a rogue as he is. By my oriental barnacles, quoth Panurge, honest friar, thou art in the right; for if we but examine that treacherous Review’s ill-favoured phiz, we find that the filthy snudge is yet more mischievous and ignorant than these ignorant wretches here, since they (honest dunces) grapple and glean with as little harm and pother as they can, without any long fiddle-cum-farts or tantalizing in the case; nor do they dally and demur in your suit, but in two or three words, whip-stitch, in a trice, they finish the vintage of the close, bating you all these damned tedious interlocutories, examinations, and appointments which fret to the heart’s blood your furred law-cats.
Chapter 5.XVII.—How we went forwards, and how Panurge had like to have been killed.
We put to sea that very moment, steering our course forwards, and gave Pantagruel a full account of our adventures, which so deeply struck him with compassion that he wrote some elegies on that subject to divert himself during the voyage. When we were safe in the port we took some refreshment, and took in fresh water and wood. The people of the place, who had the countenance of jolly fellows and boon companions, were all of them forward folks, bloated and puffed up with fat. And we saw some who slashed and pinked their skins to open a passage to the fat, that it might swell out at the slits and gashes which they made; neither more nor less than the shit-breech fellows in our country bepink and cut open their breeches that the taffety on the inside may stand out and be puffed up. They said that what they did was not out of pride or ostentation, but because otherwise their skins would not hold them without much pain. Having thus slashed their skin, they used to grow much bigger, like the young trees on whose barks the gardeners make incisions that they may grow the better.
Near the haven there was a tavern, which forwards seemed very fine and stately. We repaired thither, and found it filled with people of the forward nation, of all ages, sexes, and conditions; so that we thought some notable feast or other was getting ready, but we were told that all that throng were invited to the bursting of mine host, which caused all his friends and relations to hasten thither.
We did not understand that jargon, and therefore thought in that country by that bursting they meant some merry meeting or other, as we do in ours by betrothing, wedding, groaning, christening, churching (of women), shearing (of sheep), reaping (of corn, or harvest-home), and many other junketting bouts that end in -ing. But we soon heard that there was no such matter in hand.