It matters not how Pantagruel got his name. He was the same kind of baby that his father had been before him, and was pronounced by all to be a marvellous young Giant, indeed. The Wise Women took charge of him upon his birth, and after washing and dressing him, while gravely wagging their old gray heads, with their skinny fingers to their noses, muttered darkly, the one to the other:—
"Our young Prince is born all hairy like a bear! He will do wonderful things, and, if he lives, he will surely reach old age!"
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
THE STRANGE THINGS PANTAGRUEL DID AS A BABY.
Gargantua hardly knew whether he ought to cry because his beloved Queen Badebec was dead, or laugh because his son Pantagruel was alive.
"My good wife is dead, who was the most this and the most that, which ever was in the world," he would blubber at one time. "Ha! Badebec, my wife, I shall never see thee again! Thou hast left me, my pet, forever! Ah! my poor Pantagruel, thou hast lost thy good Mother, thy sweet nurse. Holos!"
The poor Giant burst into tears, which flowed down his cheeks as large as ostrich-eggs, and he cried like a cow. Then his humor would change, and he fell to laughing like a calf.
"Ho! ho! my little son, how pretty thou art, and how grateful I should be to God that he has given me such a son. Ho! ho! ho! how glad I am! Let us drink! Throw melancholy out of the window; bring here the best wines; rinse the glasses; lay the cloth; drive away the dogs; blow up that fire; light the candles; shut the door; skim the soup; call in the beggars, and give them what they want! I ought to be happy,—I am happy. Ho! ho! ho!"