HOW THE AWFUL WAR BETWEEN THE BUNMAKERS OF LERNE AND GARGANTUA'S COUNTRY WAS BEGUN.
While Gargantua, studying day after day, was finding out that the tasks he had at first thought to be so hard were so easy that they became more a pastime than anything else, and while he was growing to be a skilful soldier and a most learned gentleman, his old father, King Grandgousier, without his knowing it, had got into a terrible muss with certain Bunmakers of Lerne.
This is how it happened.
It was vintage-time, when the great purple grapes, bursting with their ripeness, were to be gathered, and when the Shepherds of Grandgousier's kingdom used to watch the vines like hawks to prevent the starlings from pecking at the juicy clusters. This vintage-time always made business for the Bunmakers of Lerne. Even when in the best of humor, however, they were always a peppery-touch-me-if-you-dare sort of fellows. They brought their buns to market along the great highway, in ten or eleven big carts, which filled the air around them with the sweetest odors. Of course, trudging along through the white dust of the road, they were sure to meet King Grandgousier's Shepherds watching their vines, who always made it a rule to step out politely to the edge of the highway, hats in hand, to beg the Bunmakers to give them some of their fine, smoking buns in exchange for their money.
I dare say the Shepherds knew what they were doing. Never were there such buns as the Bunmakers of Lerne had the fame, all around that region, of making. Taken at breakfast with ripe grapes they were a dish fit for a King's table!
By ill luck, this year above all other years, the Bunmakers chose to show how hot and peppery they could be. Being asked by the Shepherds in the usual polite way to sell their buns, they not only refused outright, but they began to call the honest Shepherds all the bad names they could think of. There was one Shepherd named Forgier,—a good man, and a gay one besides,—who, stepping forward, said in a mild voice to the Bunmakers:—
THE BUNMAKERS OF LERNE.
"Friends, this is not acting like neighbors. Haven't you always come by the highway? Haven't you always found us ready to give you good silver and copper for your buns? And haven't you always had from us in return our fine cheeses, which give their richness to your buns?"