GARGANTUA AT PLAY.
From the time he was three years old to the time he had grown to be a boy of five, Gargantua was brought up, by the strict command of his father, just like all the other children of the Kingdom. His education was very simple. It was:
Drinking, eating, and sleeping;
Eating, sleeping, and drinking;
Sleeping, drinking, and eating.
If he loved any one thing more than to play in the mud, that was to roll and wallow about in the mire. He would go home with his shoes all run down at the heels, and his face and clothes well streaked with dirt. Gargantua, therefore, was not more favored than the other little boys of the kingdom who were not so rich as he was; but there was one advantage which he did have. From his earliest babyhood he saw so many horses in the Royal Stables that he got to know a fine horse almost as well as his father did. Whenever he saw a horse he would clap his fat hands together, and shout at the top of his lungs. It was thought that—being a Prince who was, in time, to become a King—he should be taught to ride well. So they made him, when he was a little fellow of four years, so fine, so strong, and so wonderful a wooden horse that there had never been seen its like up to that date, and there never has been found in any young prince's play-house or toy-shop since.
GARGANTUA'S HORSE.
This surprising horse must have been a piece of rare workmanship, because, whenever its young master wanted it to do anything, it was bound to do it. He could make it leap forward, jump backward, rear skyward, and waltz, all at one time. He could make it trot, gallop, rack, pace, gambol, and amble, just as the humor took him. But this was only half of what that horse could do. Gargantua, at a word, could make it change the color of its hair. One day its hide would be milk-white; the next day, bay; the next, black; the next, sorrel; the next, dapple-gray; the next, mouse-color; the next, piebald; the next, a soft brown deer-color.
But this was not all.
Gargantua learned to be so skilful that he thought that he might just as well make a horse to suit himself as to have a horse bought for him. So he sat knitting his great eyebrows till he finally found how he could make a hunting-nag out of a big post; one for every day, out of the beam of a wine-press; one with housings for his room, out of a great oak-tree; and, out of different kinds of wood in his father's kingdom, he made ten or twelve spare horses, and had seven for the mail.