PAntagruel having wholly s • bdued the Land of Dypsodie, transported thereunto a Colony of Utopians, to the number of 9876543210 Men, besides the Women and little Children, Artificers of all Trades, and Professors of all Sciences; to people, cultivate and improve that Country, which otherways was ill inhabited, and in the greatest part thereof but a meer Desert and Wilderness; and did transport them so much for the excessive multitude of Men and Women which were in Utopia, multiplied (for number) like Grashoppers upon the face of the Land. You understand well enough, nor is it needful further to explain it to you, that the Utopian Men had so rank and fruitful Genetories, and that the Utopian Women carryed Matrixes so ample, so glutonous, so tenaciously retentive, and so Architectonically cellulated, that at the end of every Ninth Month Seven Children at the least (what Male what Female) were brought forth by every Married Woman, in imitation of the People of Israel in Egypt, if Anthony de Lira be to be trusted. Nor yet was this Transplantation made so much for the Fertility of the Soil, the Wholsomness of the Air, or Commodity of the Country of Dypsodie, as to retain that Rebellious People within the bounds of their Duty and Obedience, by this new Transport of his ancient and most faithful Subjects, who from all time out of mind, never knew, acknowledged, owned or served any other Soveraign Lord but him; and who likewise from the very instant of their Birth, as soon as they were entred into this World, had, with the Milk of their Mothers and Nurses, sucked in the Sweetness, Humanity and Mildness of his Government, to which they were all of them so nourished and habituated, that there was nothing surer, than that they would sooner abandon their Lives, than swerve from this singular and primitive Obedience naturally due to their Prince, whithersoever they should be dispersed or removed.

And not only should they, and their Children successively descending from their Blood, be such, but also would keep and maintain in this same Fealty, and obsequious Observance, all the Nations lately annexed to his Empire; which so truly came to pass, that therein he was not disappointed of his intent. For if the Utopians were before their Transplantation thither dutiful and faithful Subjects, the Dypsodes, after some few days conversing with them, were every whit as (if not more) loyal than they; and that by vertue of I know not what natural Fervency incident to all Humane Creatures at the beginning of any labour wherein they took delight; solemnly attesting the Heavens, and supreme Intelligences of their being only sorry, that no sooner unto their knowledge had arrived the great Renown of the good Pantagruel.

Remark therefore here (honest Drinkers) that the manner of preserving and retaining Countries newly Conquered in Obedience, is not (as hath been the Erronious Opinion of some Tyrannical Spirits to their own Detriment and Dishonour) to pillage, plunder, force, spoil, trouble, oppress, vex, disquiet, ruine and destroy the People, ruling, governing and keeping them in awe with Rods of Iron; and (in a word) eating and devouring them, after the fashion that Homer calls an unjust and wicked King, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that is to say, a Devourer of his People.

I will not bring you to this purpose the Testimony of Ancient Writers; it shall suffice to put you in mind of what your Fathers have seen thereof, and your selves too, if you be not very Babes. Newborn, they must be given suck to, rocked in a Cradle, and dandled. Trees newly planted must be supported, underpropped, strengthened and defended against all Tempests, Mischiefs, Injuries and Calamities. And one lately saved from a long and dangerous Sickness, and new upon his Recovery, must be forborn, spared and cherished, in such sort, that they may harbour in their own Breasts this Opinion, that there is not in the World a King or a Prince, who does not desire fewer Enemies, and more Friends.

Thus Osiris the great King of the Egyptians, conquered almost the whole Earth, not so much by Force of Arms, as by easing the People of their Troubles, teaching them how to live well, and honestly giving them good Laws, and using them with all possible Affability, Curtesie, Gentleness and Liberality: Therefore was he by all Men deservedly Entituled, The Great King Evergetes (that is to say Benefactor) which Style he obtained by vertue of the Command of Iupiter to Pamyla.

And in effect, Hesiod, in his Hierarchy placed the good Demons (call them Angels if you will, or Geniuses) as Intercessors and Mediators betwixt the Gods and Men, they being of a degree inferiour to the Gods, but superiour to Men; and for that through their Hands the Riches and Benefits we get from Heaven are dealt to us; and that they are continually doing us good, and still protecting us from evil. He saith, that they exercise the Offices of Kings; because to do always good, and never ill, is an Act most singularly Royal.

Just such another was the Emperor of the Universe, Alexander the Macedonian. After this manner was Hercules Sovereign Possessor of the whole Continent, relieving Men from monstrous Oppressions, Exactions and Tyrannies; governing them with Discretion, maintaining them in Equity and Justice, instructing them with seasonable Policies and wholsom Laws, convenient for, and suitable to the Soil, Climate and Disposition of the Country, supplying where was wanting, abating what was superfluous, and pardoning all that was past, with a sempiternal forgetfulness of all preceding Offences, as was the Amnestie of the Athenians, when by the Prowess, Valour and Industry of Thrasybulus, the Tyrants were exterminated; afterwards at Rome by Cicero exposed, and renewed under the Emperor Aurelian. These are the Philtres, Allurements, Iynges, Inveiglements, Baits, and Enticements of Love, by the means whereof that may be peaceably revived, which was painfully acquired. Nor can a Conqueror Reign more happily, whether he be a Monarch, Emperor, King, Prince or Philosopher, than by making his Justice to second his Valour. His Valour shows it self in Victory and Conquest; his Iustice will appear in the good Will and Affection of the People, when he maketh Laws, publisheth Ordinances, establisheth Religion, and doth what is right to every one, as the noble Poet Virgil writes of Octavian Augustus.

Therefore is it that Homer in his Iliads calleth a good Prince and great King 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that is, The Ornament of the People.

Such was the Consideration of Numa Pompilius the Second King of the Romans, a just Politician and wise Philosopher, when he ordained that to God Terminus, on the day of his Festival called Terminales, nothing should be Sacrificed that had died; teaching us thereby, that the Bounds, Limits and Frontiers of Kingdoms should be guarded, and preserved in Peace, Amity and Meekness, without polluting our Hands with Blood and Robbery: Who doth otherways, shall not only lose what he hath gained, but also be loaded with this Scandal and Reproach, That he is an unjust and wicked Purchaser, and his Acquests perish with him, Iuxta illud malae parta, male dilabuntur. And although during his whole Life-time, he should have peaceable possession thereof; yet if what hath been so acquired moulder away in the Hands of his Heirs the same Opproby, Scandal and Imputation will be charged upon the Defunct, and his Memory remain accursed for his unjust and unwarrantable Conquest, Iuxta illud, de male quaesitis vix gaudet tertius haeres.

Remark, likewise, Gentlemen, you Gouty Feoffees in this main Point worthy of your Observation, how by these means Pantagruel of one Angel made two, which was a Contingency opposite to the Council of Charlemaine, who made two Devils of one, when he transplanted▪ the Saxons into Flanders, and the Flemins into Saxony. For not being able to keep in such Subjection the Saxons, whose Dominion he had joyned to the Empire, but that ever and anon they would break forth into open Rebellion, if he should casually be drawn into Spain, or other remote Kingdoms: He caused them to be brought unto his own Country of Flanders, the Inhabitants whereof did naturally obey him; and transported the Haynaults and Flemens, his ancient loving Subjects, into Saxony, not mistrusting their Loyalty, now that they were transplanted into a strange Land. But it hapned that the Saxons persisted in their Rebellion and primitive Obstinacy; and the Flemins dwelling in Saxony did imbibe the stubborn Manners and Conditions of the Saxons.

WHilst Pantagruel was giving Order for the Government of all Dypsodie, he assigned to Panurge the Lairdship of Salmygoudin, which was yearly worth 6789106789 Ryals of certain Rent, besides the uncertain Revenue of the Locusts and Periwinkles, amounting one year with another to the value of 435768, or 2435769 French Crowns of Berry. Sometimes it did amount to 1230554321 Seraphs when it was a good Year, and that Locusts and Periwinkles were in request; but that was not every Year.

Now his Worship, the new Laird, husbanded this his Estate so providently well and prudently, that in less than fourteen days he wasted and dilapidated all the certain and uncertain Revenue of his Lairdship for three whole Years: Yet did not he properly dilapidate it, as you might say, in founding of Monasteries, building of Churches, erecting of Colledges, and setting up of Hospitals, or casting his Bacon-Flitches to the Dogs; but spent it in a thousand little Banquets and jolly Collations, keeping open House for all Comers and Goers; yea, to all good Fellows, young Girls, and pretty Wenches; felling Timber, burning the great Logs for the Sale of the Ashes, borrowing Money before-hand, buying dear, selling cheap, and eating his Corn (as it were) whilst it was but Grass.

Pantagruel being advertised of this his Lavishness, was in good sooth no way offended at the matter, angry nor sorry; for I once told you, and again tell it you, that he was the best, little, great Goodman that ever girded a Sword to his Side; he took all things in good part, and interpreted every Action to the best Sence: He never vexed nor disquieted himself with the least pretence of Dislike to any thing; because he knew that he must have most grosly abandoned the Divine Mansion of Reason, if he had permitted his Mind to be never so little grieved, afflicted or altered at any occasion whatsoever. For all the Goods that the Heaven covereth, and that the Earth containeth in all their Dimensions of Heighth, Depth, Breadth and Length, are not of so much worth, as that we should for them disturb or disorder our Affections, trouble or perplex our Senses or Spirits.

He drew only Panurge aside, and then making to him a sweet Remonstrance and mild Admonition, very gently represented before him in strong Arguments, That if he should continue in such an unthrifty course of living, and not become a better Mesnagier, it would prove altogether impossible for him, or at least hughly difficult at any time to make him rich. Rich! answered Panurge, Have you fixed your Thoughts there? Have you undertaken the Task to enrich me in this World? Set your Mind to live merrily in the Name of God and good Folks, let no other Cark nor Care be harboured within the Sacro sanctified Domicile of your Celestial Brain. May the Calmness and Tranquility thereof be never incommodated with, or over-shadowed by any frowning Clouds of sullen Imaginations and displeasing Annoyance. For if you live joyful, meery, jocund and glad, I cannot be but rich enough. Every body cries up thrift, thrift, and good Husbandry; but many speak of Robin Hood that never shot in his Bow; and talk of that Vertue of Mesnagery, who know not what belong to it. It is by me that they must be advised. From me therefore take this Advertisement and Information, that what is imputed to me for a Vice, hath been done in imitation of the University and Parliament of Paris, places in which is to be found the true Spring and Source of the lively Idea of Pantheology, and all manner of Justice. Let him be counted an Heretick that doubteth thereof, and doth not firmly believe it: Yet they in one day eat up their Bishop, or the Revenue of the Bishoprick (is it not all one) for a whole year; yea, sometimes for two. This is done on the day he makes his Entry, and is installed: Nor is there any place for an Excuse; for he cannot avoid it, unless he would be houted at and stoned for his Parsimony.

It hath been also esteemed an act flowing from the Habit of the Four Cardinal Vertues. Of Prudence in borrowing Money before-hand; for none knows what may fall out; who is able to tell if the World shall last yet three years? But although it should continue longer, is there any Man so foolish, as to have the Confidence to promise himself three years?

Of Commutative Iustice, in buying dear (I say upon trust) and selling good cheap, (that is, for ready Money) what says Cato in his Book of Husbandry to this purpose? The Father of a Family (says he) must be a perpetual Seller; by which means it is impossible but that at last he shall become rich, if he have of vendible Ware enough still ready for sale.

Of Distributive Iustice it doth partake, in giving Entertainment to good (remark good) and gentle Fellows, whom Fortune had Shipwrack'd (like Ulysse:) upon the Rock of a hungry Stomach without provision of Sustenance: And likewise to the good (remark the good) and young Wenches: For according to the Sentence of Hippocrates, Youth is impatient of Hunger, chiefly if it be vigorous, lively, frolick, brisk, stirring and bouncing; which wanton Lasses willingly and heartily devote themselves to the pleasure of Honest Men; and are in so far both Platonick and Ciceronian, that they do a • knowledge their being born into this World, not to be for themselves alone, but that in their proper Persons their Acquaintance may claim one share, and their Friends another.

The Vertue of Fortitude appears therein by the cutting down and overthrowing of the great Trees, like a second Mil • making Havock of the dark Forests, which did serve only to furnish Dens, Caves, and Shelter to Wolves, wild Boars and Foxes; and afford Receptacles, withdrawing Corners and Refuges to Robbers, Thieves and Murtherers; lurking holes and sculking places for Cut-throat Assassinators; secret obscure Shops for Coiners of false money, and safe Retreats for Hereticks, laying them even and level with the plain Champian Fields and pleasant Heathy Ground, at the sound of the Hau-bois and Bagpipes playing, reeks with the high and stately Timber, and preparing Seats and Benches for the Eve of the dreadful day of Judgment.

I gave thereby proof of my Temperance in eating my Corn whilst it was but Grass, like an Hermit feeding upon Sallets and Roots, that so affranchising my self from the Yoak of sensual Appetites to the utter disclaiming of their Sovereignty, I might the better reserve somewhat in store, for the relief of the lame, blind, cripple, maimed, needy, poor and wanting Wretches.

In taking this course I save the Expence of the Weed-grubbers, who gain Money; of the Reapers in Harvest-time, who drink lustily, and without Water; of Gleaners, who will expect their Cakes and Bannocks of Threshers, who leave no Garlick, Scallions, Leeks nor Onyons in our Gardens, (by the Authority of Thestilis in Virgil) and of the Millers, who are generally Thieves; and of the Bakers, who are little better; is the small Saving or Frugality; besides the mischief and damage of the Field-mice, the decay of Barns, and the destruction usually made by Weesils and other Vermin.

Of Corn in the Blade. You may make good green Sauce of a light Concoction, and easie Digestion, which recreates the Brain, and exhilerates the Animal Spirits, rejoyceth the Sight, openeth the Appetite, delighteth the taste, comforteth the Heart, tickleth the Tongue, cheareth the Countenance, striking a fresh and lively Colour, strengthening the Muscles, tempers the Blood, disburthens the Midrif, refresheth the Liver, disobstructs the Spleen, easeth the Kidneys, suppleth the Reins, quickens the Joynts of the Back, cleanseth the Urine-Conduits, dilates the Spermatick Vessels, shortens the Cremasters, purgeth the Bladder, puffeth up the Genitories, correcteth the prepuce, hardens the Nut, and rectifies that Member. It will make you have a current Belly to trot, fart, dung, piss, sneeze, cough, spit, belch, spew, yawn, snuff, blow, breath, snort, sweat, and set taunt your Robin, with a thousand other rare advantages. I understand you very well (says Pantagruel) you would thereby infer, that those of a mean Spirit and shallow Capacity, have not the skill to spend much in a short time: You are not the first in whose Conceit that Heresie hath entred: Nero maintained it, and above all Mortals admired most his Unkle Caius Caligula, for having in few days, by a most wonderfully pregnant Invention, totally spent all the Goods and Patrimony which Tiberius had left him.

But instead of observing the Sumptuous Supper-curbing Laws of the Romans, to wit, the Orchia, the Fannia, the Didia, the Licinia, the Cornelia, the Lepidiana, the Antia, and of the Corinthians; by the which they were inhibited, under pain of great punishment, not to spend more in one year than their annual Revenue did amount to. You have offered up the Oblation of Protervia, which was with the Romans such a Sacrifice as the Paschal Lamb was amongst the Iews, wherein all that was eatable was to be eaten, and the remainder to be thrown into the Fire, without reserving any thing for the next day. I may very justly say of you, as Cato did of Albidius, who after that he had by a most extravagant Expence wasted all the Means and Possessions he had to one only House, he fairly set it on Fire, that he might the better say, Consummatum est. Even just as since his time St. Thomas Aquinas did when he had eaten up the whole Lamprey, although there was no necessity in it.

ON the contrary, be pleased to represent unto your Fancy another World, wherein every one lendeth, and every one oweth, all are Debtors, and all Creditors. O how great will that Harmony be, which shall thereby result from the regular Motions of the Heavens! Me thinks I hear it every whit as well as ever Plato did. What Sympathy will there be amongst the Elements? O how delectable then unto Nature will be our own Works and Productions? Whilst Ceres appeareth loaden with Corn, Bacchus with Wines, Flora with Flowers, Pomona with Fruits, and Iuno fair in a clear Air, wholsom and pleasant: I lose my self in this high Contemplation.

Then will among the Race of Mankind Peace, Love, Benevolence, Fidelity, Tranquility, Rest, Banquets, Feastings, Joy, Gladness, Gold, Silver, single Money, Chains, Rings, with other Ware, and Chaffer of that nature be found to trot from hand to hand; no Suits at Law, no Wars, no Strife, Debate, nor wrangling; none will be there an Usurer, none will be there a Pinch-penny; a Scrape-good Wretch, or churlish hard-hearted Refuser. Good God! Will not this be the Golden Age in the Reign of Saturn? The true Idea of the Olympick Regions, wherein all Vertues cease; Charity alone ruleth, governeth, domineereth and triumpheth? All will be fair and goodly People there, all just and vertuous.

O happy World! O People of that World most happy! Yea, thrice and four times blessed is that People! I think in very deed that I am amongst them, and swear to you, by my good Forsooth, that if this glorious aforesaid World had a Pope, abounding with Cardinals, that so he might have the Association of a Sacred Colledge, in the space of very few years you should be sure to see the Sancts much thicker in the Roll, more numerous, wonder-working and mirifick, more Services, more Vows, more Staves and Wax-Candles than are all those in the Nine Bishopricks of Britany, St. Yves only excepted. Consider (Sir) I pray you, how the noble Patelin, having a mind to Deity, and extol even to the Third Heavens the Father of William Iosseaume, said no more but this, And he did lend his Goods to those who were desirous of them.

O the fine Saying! Now let our Microcosm be fancied conform to this Model in all its Members; lending, borrowing and owing, (that is to say) according to its own Nature: For Nature hath not to any other end created Man, but to owe, borrow and lend; no greater is the Harmony amongst the Heavenly Spheres, than that which shall be found in its wellordered Policy. The Intention of the Founder of this Microcosm is, to have a Soul therein to be entertained, which •• lodged there, as a Guest with its Host, it may live there for a while. Life consisteth in Blood, Blood is the Seat of the Soul; therefore the chiefest Work of the Microcosm, is, to be making Blood continually.

At this Forge are exercised all the Members of the Body; none is exempted from Labour, each operates apart, and doth its proper Office. And such is their Hierarchy, that perpetually the one borrows from the other, the one lends the other, and the one is the others Debtor. The stuff and matter convenient which Nature giveth to be turned into Blood is Bread and Wine. All kind of nourishing Victuals is understood to be comprehended in these two, and from hence in the Gothish Tongue is called Companage. To find out this Meat and Drink, to prepare and boil it, the Hands are put to Work, the Feet do walk and bear up the whole Bulk of the Corporal Mass; the Eyes guide and conduct all; the Appetite in the Orifice of the Stomach, by means of little sowrish black Humour (called Melancholy) which is transmitted thereto from the Milt, giveth warning to shut in the Food. The Tongue doth make the first Essay, and tastes it; the Teeth do chaw it, and the Stomach doth receive, digest and chylifie it; the Mesaraick Veins suck out of it what is good and fit, leaving behind the Excrements, which are, through special Conduits for that purpose, voided by an expulsive Faculty; thereafter it is carried to the Liver, where it being changed again, it by the vertue of that new Transmutation becomes Blood. What Joy, conjecture you, will then be found amongst those Officers, when they see this Rivolet of Gold, which is their sole Restorative? No greater is the Joy of Alchimists, when after long Travel, Toil and Expence, they see in their Furnaces the Transmutation: Then is it that every Member doth prepare it self, and strive a-new to purifie and to refine this Treasure. The Kidneys through the emulgent Veins draw that Aquosity from thence which you call Urine, and there send it away through the Ureters to be slipt downwards; where, in a lower Recepticle, and proper for it, (to wit, the Bladder) it is kept, and stayeth there until an opportunity to void it out in his due time. The Spleen draweth from the Blood its Terrestrial part, viz. The Grounds, Lees or thick Substance setled in the bottom thereof, which you term Melancholy: The Bottle of the Gall substracts from thence all the superfluous Choler; whence it is brought to another Shop or Work-house to be yet better purified and fined, that is, the Heart, which by its agitation of Diastolick and Systolick Motions so neatly subtilizeth and inflames it, that in the right side Ventricle it is brought to perfection, and through the Veins is sent to all the Members; each parcel of the Body draws it then unto its self, and after its own fashion is cherished and alimented by it: Feet, Hands, Thighs, Arms, Eyes, Ears, Back, Breast, yea, all; and then it is, that who before were Lender • , now become Debtors. The Heart doth in its left side Ventricle so thinnifie the Blood, that it thereby obtains the Name of Spiritual; which being sent through the Arteries to all the Members of the Body, serveth to warm and winnow the other Blood which runneth through the Veins: The Lights never cease with its Lappets and Bellows to cool and refresh it; in acknowledgment of which good the Heart through the Arterial Vein imparts unto it the choicest of its Blood: At last it is made so fine and subtle within the Rete Mirabilis, that thereafter those Animal Spirits are framed and composed of it; by means whereof the Imagination, Discourse, Judgment, Resolution, Deliberation, Ratrocination and Memory have their Rise, Actings and Operations.

Cops body, I sink, I drown, I perish, I wander astray, and quite fly out of my self, when I enter into the Consideration of the profound Abyss of this World, thus lending, thus owing. Believe me, it is a Divine thing to lend, to owe an Heroick Vertue. Yet is not this all; this little World thus lending, owing and borrowing, is so good and charitable, that no sooner is the above-specified Alimentation finished, but that it forthwith projecteth, and hath already forecast, how it shall lend to those who are not as yet born, and by that Loan endeavour, what it may, to eternize it self, and multiply in Images like the Pattern, that is, Children. To this end every Member hath of the choicest and most precious of its Nourishment, pare and cut off a Portion, then instantly dispatcheth it downwards to that place, where Nature hath prepared for it very fit Vessels and Receptacles, through which descending to the Genitories by long Ambages, Circuits and Flexuosities, it receiveth a competent Form, and Rooms apt enough both in the Man and Woman for the future Conservation and perpetuating of Humane kind. All this is done by Loans and Debts of the one unto the other; and hence have we this word, the Debt of Marriage. Nature doth reckon Pain to the Refuser, with a most grievous Vexation to his Members, and an outragious Fury amidst his Senses. But on the other part, to the Lender a set Reward, accompanied with Pleasure, Joy, Solace, Mirth and merry Glee.

I Understand you very well, (quoth Pantagruel) and take you to be very good at Topicks, and throughly affectioned to your own Cause: But preach it up, and patrocinate it; prattle on it, and defend it as much as you will, even from hence to the next Whitsuntide, if you please so to do, yet in the end will you be astonished to find how you shall have gained no ground at all upon me, nor perswaded me by your fair Speeches and smooth Talk to enter never so little into the Thraldom of Debt. You shall owe to none (saith the Holy Apostle) any thing save Love, Friendship and a mutual Benevolence.

You serve me here, I confess, with fine Graphides and Diatyposes, Descriptions and Figures, which truly please me very well: But let me tell you, if you will represent unto your Fancy an impudent blustering Bully and an importunate Borrower, entring afresh and newly into a Town already advertised of his Manners, you shall find that at his Ingress the Citizens will be more hideously affrighted and amazed, and in a greater terror and fear, dread and trembling, than if the Pest it self should step into it in the very same Garb and Accoutrement wherein the Tyanaean Philosopher found it within the City of Ephesus. And I am fully confirmed in the Opinion, that the Persians erred not, when they said, That the Second Vice was to Lie, the first being that of owing Money. For in very truth, Debts and Lying are ordinarily joyned together. I will nevertheless not from hence infer, that none must owe any thing, or lend any thing. For who so rich can be, that sometimes may not owe; or who can be so poor, that sometimes may not lend?

Let the occasion notwithstanding in that case (as Plato very wisely sayeth, and ordaineth in his Laws) be such, that none be permitted to draw any Water out of his Neighbour's Well, until first, they by continual digging and delving into their own proper Ground, shall have hit upon a kind of Potters Earth, which is called Ceramite, and there had found no source or drop of Water; for that sort of Earth, by reason of its Substance, which is fat, strong, firm and close; so retaineth its Humidity, that it doth not easily evaporate it by any outward excursion or evaporation.

In good sooth, it is a great shame to choose rather to be still borrowing in all places from every one, than to work and win. Then only in my Judgment should one lend, when the diligent, toiling and industrious Person is no longer able by his labour to make any Purchase unto himself, or otherwise, when by mischance he hath suddenly fallen into an unexpected loss of his Goods.

Howsoever let us leave this Discourse, and from henceforwards do not hang upon Creditors, nor tie your self to them; I make account for the time past to rid you freely of them, and from their Bondage to deliver you. The least I should in this point, (quoth Panurge) is to thank you, though it be the most I can do: And if Gratitude and Thanksgiving be to be estimated and prized by the Affection of the Benefactor, that is to be done infinitely and sempiternally; for the love which you bear me of your own accord and free Grace, without any merit of mine, goeth far beyond the reach of any price or value; it transcends all weight, all number, all measure, it is endless and everlasting; therefore should I offer to commensurate and adjust it, either to the size and proportion of your own noble and gracious Deeds, or yet to the Contentment and Delight of the obliged Receivers, I would come off but very faintly and flaggingly. You have verily done me a great deal of good, and multiplied your Favours on me more frequently than was fitting to one of my condition. You have been more bountiful towards me than I have deserved, and your Courtesies have by far surpassed the extent of my merits, I must needs confess it. But it is not, as you suppose, in the proposed matter: For there it is not where I itch, it is not there where it fretteth, hurts or vexeth me; for henceforth being quit and out of Debt, what Countenance will I be able to keep? You may imagine that it will become me very ill, for the first month, because I have never hitherto been brought up or accustomed to it, I am very much afraid of it. Furthermore, there shall not one hereafter, Native of the Country of Salmigondy, but he shall level the Shot towards my Nose; all the back-cracking Fellows of the World, in discharging of their Postern Petarades, use commonly to say, Voila pour les quitters; that is, For the quit. My Life will be of very short continuance, I do foresee it, I recommend to you the making of my Epitaph; for I perceive I will die confected in the very stinch of Farts. If at any time to come, by way of restorative to such good Women as shall happen to be troubled with the grievous pain of the Wind-Cholick, the ordinary Medicaments prove nothing effectual, the Mummy of all my befarted Body will streight be as a present Remedy appointed by the Physicians; whereof they taking any small Modicum, it will incontinently for their Ease afford them a Rattle of Bum-shot, like a Sal of Muskets.

Therefore would I beseech you to leave me some few Centuries of Debts; as King Louis the Eleventh, exempting from Suits in Law the Reverend Milles d' Illiers, Bishop of Chartre, was by the said Bishop most earnestly sollicited to leave him some few for the Exercise of his mind. I had rather give them all my Revenue of the Periwinkles, together with the other Incomes of the Locusts, albeit I should not thereby have any parcel abated from off the principal Sums which I owe. Let us wave this matter (quoth Pantagruel) I have told it you over again.

PAnurge the day thereafter, caused pierce his right Ear, after the Pewish Fashion, and thereto clasped a little Gold Ring, of a Fearny-like kind of Workmanship, in the Beazil or Collet whereof was set and inchased a Flea; and to the end you may be rid of all Doubts, you are to know that the Flea was black. O what a brave thing it is, in every case and circumstance of a matter, to be throughly well informed! The Sum of the Expence hereof, being cast up, brought in, and laid down upon his Council-board Carpet, was found to amount to no more quarterly than the Charge of the Nuptials of a Hircanian Tigress; even as you would say 600000 Maravedis. At these vast Costs and excessive Disbursements, as soon as he perceived himself to be out of Debt, he fretted much; and afterwards, as Tyrants and Lawyers use to do, he nourish'd and fed her with the Sweat and Blood of his Subjects and Clients.

He then took four French Ells of a course brown Russet Cloth, and therein apparelling himself, as with a long, plain-seemed and single-stitched Gown, left off the wearing of his Breeches, and tied a pair of Spectacles to his Cap. In this Equipage did he present himself before Pantagruel; to whom this ▪Disguise appeared the more strange, that he did not, as before, see that goodly, fair and stately Codpiece, which was the sole Anchor of Hope, wherein he was wonted to rely, and last Refuge he had 'midst all the Waves and boysterous Billows, which a stormy Cloud in a cross Fortune would raise up against him. Honest Pantagruel, not understanding the Mystery, asked him by way of interrogatory; what he did intend to personate in that new-fangled Prosopopeia? I have (answered Panurge) a Flea in mine Ear, and have a mind to marry. In a good time (quoth Pantagruel) you have told me joyful Tidings; yet would not I hold a red hot Iron in my hand for all the Gladness of them. But it is not the fashion of Lovers to be accoutred in such dangling Vestments, so as to have their Shirts • lagging down over their Knees, without Breeches, and with a long Robe of a dark brown mingled Hue, which is a Colour never used, in Talarian Garments amongst any Persons of Honour, Quality or Vertue. If some Heretical Persons and Schismatical Sectaries have at any time formerly been so arrayed and cloathed, (though many have imputed such a kind of Dress to Cosenage, Cheat, Imposture, and an Affectation of Tyranny upon credulous Minds of the rude Multitude) I will nevertheless not blame them for it, nor in that point judge rashly or sinistrously of them; every one overflowingly aboundeth in his own Sense and Fancy: Yea, in things of a Foreign Consideration, altogether extrinsical and indifferent, which in and of themselves are neither commendable nor bad, because they proceed not from the Interior of the Thoughts and Heart, which is the Shop of all Good and Evil. Of Goodness, if it be upright, and that its Affections be regulated by the pure and clean Spirit of Righteousness; and on the other side, of Wickedness, if its Inclinations, straying beyond the bounds of Equity be corrupted and depraved by the Malice and Suggestions of the Devil. It is only the Novelty and new-fangledness thereof which I dislike, together with the Contempt of common Custom, and the Fashion which is in use.

The Colour (answered Panurge) is convenient, for it is conform to that of my Council-Board Carpet, therefore will I henceforth hold me with it, and more narrowly and circumspectly than ever hitherto I have done, look to my Affairs and Business. Seeing I am once out of Debt, you never yet saw Man more unpleasing then I will be, if God help me not. Lo here be my Spectacles. To see me afar off, you would readily say, that it were Eryar Burgess. I believe certainly, that in the next ensuing Year, I shall once more preach the Croisade, Bounce Buckram. Do you see this Russet? doubt not but there lurketh under it some hid Property and occult Vertue, known to very few in the World. I did not take it on before this Morning; and nevertheless, am already in a rage of Lust, mad after a Wife, and vehemently hot upon untying the Codpiece-point, I itch, I tingle, I wriggle, and long exceedingly to be married; that without the danger of Cudgel-blows, I may labour my▪ Female Copes-mate with the hard push of a Bull-horned Devil. O the provident and thrifty Husband that I then will be! After my Death, with all Honour and Respect due to my Frugality, will they burn the Sacred Bulk of my Body, of purpose to preserve the Ashes thereof, in memory of the choicest Pattern that ever was, of a perfectly wary, and compleat Housholder. Cops-body, this is not the Carpet whereon my Treasurer shall be allowed to play false in his Accompts with me, by setting down an X for an V, or an L for an S; for in that case, should I make a hail of Fisti-cuffs to fly into his face. Look upon me (Sir) both before and behind, it is made after the manner of a Toge, which was the ancient fashion of the Romans in time of Peace. I took the Mode, Shape, and Form thereof in Trajan's Column at Rome, as also in the Triumphant Arch of Septimus Severus. I am tired of the Wars, weary of wearing Buff-coats, Cassocks, and Hoquetons. My Shoulders are pitifully worn, and bruised with the carrying of Harness; let Armour cease, and the Long Robe bear sway: at least it must be so for the whole space of the succeeding Years. If I be married as yesterday, by the Mosaick Law, you evidenced, in what concerneth the Breeches: my great Aunt Laurence did long ago tell me, that the Breeches were only ordained for the use of the Codpiece, and to no other end; which I, upon a no less forcible consequence, give Credit to, every whit as well, as to the Saying of the fine Fellow Galen, who in his Ninth Book Of the Use, and Employment of our Members, alledgeth, That the Head was made for the Eyes: for Nature might have placed our Heads in our Knees or Elbows, but having before-hand determined that the Eyes should serve to discover things from afar, she for the better enabling them to execute their designed Office, fixed them in the Head (as on the top of a long Pole) in the most eminent part of all the Body: no otherwise then we see the Phares, or high Towers erected in the Mouths of Havens, that Navigators may the further off perceive with ease the Lights of the nightly Fires and Lanterns. And because I would gladly, for some short while (a Year at least) take a little rest and breathing-time from the toylsome Labour of the Military Profession; that is to say, be married, I have desisted from wearing any more a Codpiece, and consequently have laid aside my Breeches: for the Codpiece is the principal and most especial Piece of Armour that a Warriour doth carry; and therefore do I maintain even to the Fire (exclusively, understand you me) that no Turks can properly be said to be armed Men, in regard that Codpieces are by their Law forbidden to be worn.

WIll you maintain (quoth Pantagruel) that the Codpiece is the chief piece of a Military Harness? It is a new kind of Doctrine very paradoxical: for we say at Spurs begins the arming of a Man. Sir, I maintain it, (answered Panurge) and not wrongfully do I maintain it. Behold how Nature having a servent desire after its Production of Plants, Trees, Shrubs, Herbs, Sponges, and plant Animals, to eternize, and continue them unto all Succession of Ages (in their several Kinds, or Sorts at least, although the Individuals perish) unruinable, and in an everlasting Being, hath most curiously armed and fenced their Buds, Sprouts, Shutes, and Seeds, wherein the above-mentioned perpetuity consisteth, by strengthning, covering, guarding, and fortifying them with an admirable industry, with Husks, Cases, Scurfs, and Swads, Hulls, Cods, Stones, Films, Cartels, Shells▪ Ears, Rinds, Barks, Skins, Ridges, and Prickles, which serve them instead o • strong, fair, and natural Codpieces: as is manifestly apparent in Pease, Beans, Fasels, Pomegranates, Peaches, Cottons, Gourds, Pumpions, Melons, Corn, Lemons, Almonds, Walnuts, Filberts, and Chestnuts; as likewise in all Plants, Slips, or Sets whatsoever, wherein it is plainly and evidently seen, that the Sperm and Semenae is more closely veiled, overshadowed, corroborated, and throughly harnessed than any other part, portion, or parcel of the whole.

Nature nevertheless did not after that manner provide for the sempiternizing of Human Race: but on the contrary created Man naked, tender, and frail, without either offensive or defensive Arms; and that in the Estate of Innocence, in the first Age of all, which was the Golden Season; not as a Plant, but living Creature, born for Peace, not War, and brought forth into the World with an unquestionable Right and Title to the plenary fruition and enjoyment of all Fruits and Vegetables; as also to a certain calm and gentle Rule and Dominion over all Kinds of Beasts, Fowls, Fishes, Reptils, and Insects. Yet afterwards it hapning in the time of the Iron Age, under the Reign of Iupiter, when to the multiplication of mischievous Actions, wickedness and malice began to take root and footing within the then perverted Hearts of Men, that the Earth began to bring forth Nettles, Thistles, Thorns, Bryars, and such other stubborn and rebellious Vegetables to the Nature of Man; nor scarce was there any Animal, which by a fatal disposition did not then revolt from him, and tacitly conspire, and covenant with one another to serve him no longer, (nor in case of their ability to resist) to do him any manner of Obedience, but rather (to the uttermost of their power) to annoy him with all the hurt and harm they could. The Man then, that he might maintain his primimitive Right and Prerogative, and continue his Sway and Dominion over all, both Vegetable and Sensitive Creatures; and knowing of a truth, that he could not be well accommodated as he ought, without the servitude and subjection of several Animals, bethought himself, that of necessity he must needs put on Arms, and make provision of Harness against Wars, and Violence. By the holy Saint Babingoose, (cried out Pantagruel) you are become, since the last Rain, a great Lifre lofre, Philosopher, I should say. Take Notice, Sir, (quoth Panurge) when Dame Nature had prompted him to his own Arming, what part of the Body it was, where, by her Inspiration, he clapped on the first Harness: It was forsooth by the double pluck of my little Dog the Ballock, and good Senor Don Priapos Stabo-stando, which done, he was content, and sought no more. This is certified by the Testimony of the great Hebrew Captain Philosopher Moyses, who affirmeth, That he fenced that Member with a brave and gallant Codpiece, most exquisitely framed, and by right curious Devices of a notably pregnant Invention, made up and composed of Fig-tree-leaves, which by reason of their solid stiffness, incisory notches, curled frisling, sleeked smoothness, large ampleness, together with their colour, smell, vertue, and faculty, were exceeding proper, and fit for the covering and arming of the Sachels of Generation, the hideously big Lorram Cullions being from thence only excepted; which swaggring down to the lowermost bottom of the Breeches, cannot abide (for being quite out of all order and method) the stately fashion of the high and lofty Codpiece; as is manifest, by the Noble Valentin Viardiere, whom I found at Nancie, on the First Day of May (the more flauntingly to gallantrize it afterwards) rubbing his Ballocks, spread out upon a Table after the manner of a Spanish Cloak. Wherefore it is, that none should henceforth say, who would not speak improperly, when any Country-Bumpkin hyeth to the Wars, Have a care, (my Roysters, of the Wine-pot, that is the Scull, but have a care (my Royster) of the Milk-pot; that is, the Testicles. By the whole Rabble of the horned Fiends of Hell, the Head being cut off, that single Person only thereby dieth: but if the Ballocks be marred, the whole Race of Humane Kind would forthwith perish, and be lost for ever.

This was the motive which incited the goodly Writer Galen, Lib. 1. De Spermate, to aver with boldness, That it • vere better (that is to say, a less evil) to have no Heart at all, than to be quite destitute of Genitories: for there is laid up, conserved, and put in store, as in a Secessive Repository, and Sacred Warehouse, the Semenae, and Original Source of the whole Off-spring of Mankind. Therefore would I be apt to believe, for less than a hundred Franks, that those are the very same Stones, by means whereof Deucalion and Pyrrha restored the Humane Race, in peopling with Men and Women the World, which a little before that, had been drowned in the overflowing Waves of a Poetical Deluge. This stirred up the valiant Iustinian, L. 1. 4. De Cagotis tollendis, to collocate his Summum Bonum, in Braguibus, & Braguetis. For this, and other Causes, the Lord Humphry de Merville, following of his King to a certain Warlike Expedition, whilst he was in trying upon his own Person a new Suit of Armour, for of his old rusty Harness he could make no more use, by reason that some few Years since, the Skin of his Belly was a great way removed from his Kidneys, his Lady thereupon in the profound musing of a contemplative Spirit, very maturely considering that he had but small care of the Staff of Love, and Packet of Marriage, seeing he did no otherways arm that part of the Body, then with Links of Mail, advised him to shield, fence, and gabionate it with a big tilting Helmet, which she had lying in her Closet, to her otherways utterly unprofitable. On this Lady was penned these subsequent Verses; which are extant in the Third Book of the Shitbrana of paultry Wenches.

Leave off then (Sir) from being astonished, and wonder no more at this new manner of decking and trimming up of my self as you now see me.

TO this Pantagruel replying nothing, Panurge prosecuted the Discourse he had already broached, and therewithal fetching, as far from the bottom of his Heart, a very deep sigh, said, My Lord and Master, you have heard the Design I am upon, which is to marry, if by some disastrous mischance, all the Holes in the World be not shut up, stopped, closed, and bush'd. I humbly beseech you for the Affection which of a long time you have born me, to give me your best Advice therein. Then (answered Pantagruel) seeing you have so decreed, taken deliberation thereon, and that the matter is fully determined, what need is there of any further Ta • k thereof, but forthwith to put it into execution what you have resolved. Yea, but (quoth Panurge) I would be loath to act any thing therein without your Counsel had thereto. It is my Judgment also (quoth Pantagruel) and I advise you to it. Nevertheless (quoth Panurge) if I understood aright that it were much better for me to remain a Batchellor as I am, than to run headlong upon new hair-brain'd Undertakings of Conjugal Adventure, I would rather choose not to marry, quoth Pantagruel. Then do not marry. Yea, but (quoth Panurge) would you have me so solitarily drive out the whole Course of my Life, without the Comfort of a Matrimonial Consort? You know it is written, Vae soli, and a single Person is never seen to reap the Joy and Solace that is found with married Folks. Then marry, in the Name of God, quoth Pantagruel. But if (quoth Panurge) my Wife should make me a Cuckold; as it is not unknown unto you, how this hath been a very plentiful Year in the production of that kind of Cattel; I would fly out, and grow impatient, beyond all measure and mean. I love Cuckolds with my Heart, for they seem unto me to be of a right honest Conversation, and I, truly, do very willingly frequent their Company: but should I die for it, I would not be one of their number, that is a Point for me of a two-sore prickling Point. Then do not marry (quoth Pantagruel) for without all controversie, this Sentence of Seneca is infallibly true, What thou to others shalt have done, others will do the like to thee. Do you (quoth Panurge) aver that without all exceptions? Yes, truly, (quoth Pantagruel) without all exception. Ho, ho (says Panurge) by the Wrath of a little Devil, his meaning is, either in this World, or in the other, which is to come. Yet seeing I can no more want a Wife, then a blind Man his Staff, the Funnel must be in agitation, without which manner of Occupation I cannot live. Were it not a great deal better for me to apply and associate my self to some one honest, lovely, and vertuous Woman, then (as I do) by a new change of Females every Day, run a hazard of being Bastinadoed, or (which is worse) of the Great Pox, if not of both together: For never (be it spoken, by their Husbands leave and favour) had I enjoyment yet of an honest Woman. Marry then in God's Name, quoth Pantagruel. But if (quoth Panurge) it were the Will of God, and that my Destiny did unluckily lead me to marry an honest Woman who should beat me, I would be stor'd with more than two third parts of the Patience of Iob, if I were not stark mad by it, and quite distracted with such rugged Dealings: for it hath been told me, that those exceeding honest Women have ordinarily very wicked Head-pieces; therefore is it that their Family lacketh not for good Vinegar. Yet in that case should it go worse with me, if I did not then in such sort bang her Back and Breast, so thumpingly bethwack her Gillets, to wit, her Arms, Legs, Head, Lights, Liver, and Milt, with her other Intrails, and mangle, jag, and flash her Coats, so after the Cross billet fashion, that the greatest Devil of Hell should wait at the Gate for the reception of her damned Soul. I could make a shift for this Year to wave such molestation and disquiet, and be content to lay aside that trouble, and not to be engaged in it.

Do not marry then, answered Pantagruel. Yea, but (quoth Panurge) considering the Condition wherein I now am, out of Debt and Unmarried; mark what I say, free from all Debt, in an ill hour (for were I deeply on the Score, my Creditors would be but too careful of my Paternity) but being quit, and not married, no Body will be so regardful of me, or carry towards me a Love like that which is said to be in a Conjugal Affection. And if by some mishap I should fall sick, I would be lookt to very waywardly. The wise Man saith, Where there is no Woman (I mean the Mother of a Family, and Wife in the Union of a lawful Wedlock) the Crazy and Diseased are in danger of being ill used, and of having much brabling and strife about them: as by clear Experience hath been made apparent in the Persons of Popes, Legates, Cardinals, Bishops, Abbots, Priors, Priests and Monks: but there, assure your self, you shall not find me. Marry then in the Name of God, answered Pantagruel. But if (quoth Panurge) being ill at ease, and possibly thrô that Distemper, made unable to discharge the Matrimonial Duty that is incumbent to an active Husband, my Wife, impatient of that drooping Sickness, and faint Fits, of a pining Languishment, should abandon and prostitute herself to the Embraces of another Man, and not only then not help and assist me in my extremity and need, but withal flout at, and make sport of that my grievous Distress and Calamity; or peradventure, (which is worse) imbezzle my Goods, and steal from me, as I have seen it oftentimes besal unto the lot of many other Men, it were enough to undo me utterly, to fill brimfull the Cup of my Misfortune, and make me play the Mad-pate Reeks of Bedlam. Do not marry then (quoth Pantagruel). Yea, but (saith Panurge) I shall never by any other means come to have lawful Sons and Daughters, in whom I may harbour some hope of perpetuating my Name and Arms, and to whom also I may leave and bequeath my Inheritances and purchased Goods, (of which latter sort you need not doubt, but that in some one or other of these Mornings, I will make a fair and goodly show) that so I may chear up and make merry, when otherways I should be plunged into a pievish sullen Mood of pensive sullenness, as I do perceive daily by the gentle and loving Carriage of your kind and gracious Father towards you; as all honest Folks use to do at their own Homes, and private Dwelling-houses. For being free from Debt, and yet not married, if casually I should fret and be angry, although the cause of my Grief and Displeasure were never so just, I am afraid instead of Consolation, that I should meet with nothing else but Scoffs▪ Frumps, Gibes, and Mocks at my disastrous Fortune. Marry then in the Name of God, quoth Pantagruel.

IT would be sooner done (quoth Panurge) and more expeditely, if we should trie the matter at the chance of three fair Dice. (Quoth Pantagruel) that fort of Lottery is deceitful, abusive, illicitous, and exceedingly scandalous; never trust in it; the accursed Book of the Recreation of Dice was a great while ago excogitated in Achaia near Bourre, by that ancient Enemy to Mankind, the Infernal Calumniator, who before the Statue or Massive Image of the Bourraick Hercules, did of old, and doth in several places of the World as yet, make many simple Souls to err and fall into his Snares. You know how my Father Gargantua hath forbidden it over all his Kingdoms and Dominions; how he hath caused burn the Moulds and Draughts thereof, and altogether suppressed, abolished, driven forth and cast it out of the Land, as a most dangerous Plague and Infection to any well-polished State or Commonwealth. What I have told you of Dice, I say the same of the Play at Cockall. It is a Lottery of the like Guile and Deceitfulness; and therefore do not for convincing of me, alledge in opposition to this my Opinion, or bring in the Example of the fortunate Cast of Teberius, within the Fountain of Appona, at the Oracle of Gerion. These are the baited Hooks by which the Devil attracts and draweth unto him the foolish Souls of silly People into eternal Perdition.

Nevertheless to satisfie your Humour in some measure, I am content you throw three Dice upon this Table, that according to the number of the Blots which shall happen to be cast up, we may hit upon a Verse of that Page, which in the setting open of the Book you shall have pitched upon.

Have you any Dice in your Pocket? A whole Bag full, answered Panurge, that is Provision against the Devil, as is expounded by Merlin Coccajus, Lib. 2. De Patria Diabolorum, the Devil would be sure to take me napping, and very much at unawares, if he should find me without Dice. With this the three Dice being taken out, produced and thrown, they fell so pat upon the lower Points, that the Cast was Five, Six and Five. These are (quoth Panurge) Sixteen in all. Let us take the Sixteenth Line of the Page, the number pleaseth me very well; I hope we shall have a prosperous and happy Chance. May I be thrown amidst all the Devils of Hell, even as a great Bowl cast athwart at a Set of Nine Pins, or Cannon-ball shot among a Batalion of Foot, in case so many times I do not boult my future Wife the first Night of our Marriage. Of that, forsooth, I make no doubt at all: (quoth Pantagruel) You needed not to have rapped forth such a horrid Imprecation, the sooner to procure Credit for the Performance of so small a business, seeing possibly the first Bout will be amiss, and that you know is usually at Tennis called Fifteen. At the next justling Turn you may readily amend that Fault, and so compleat your Reckoning of Sixteen. Is it so (quoth Panurge) that you understand the matter? and must my Words be thus interpreted? Nay, believe me, never yet was any Solecism committed by that valiant Champion, who often hath for me in Belly-dale stood Centry at the Hypogastrian Crany. Did you ever hitherto find me in the Confraternity of the Faulty? Never, I trow; never, nor ever shall, for ever and a day. I do the Feat like a goodly Friar, or Father Confessor without Default: And therein am I willing to be judged by the Players. He had no sooner spoke these Words, than the Works of Virgil were brought in: But before the Book was laid open, Panurge said to Pantagruel, My Heart, like the Furch of a Hart in▪ Rut, doth beat within my Breast. Be pleased to feel and grope my Pulse a little on this Artery of my Left Arm; at its frequent Rise and Fall you would say that they swinge and belabour me after the manner of a Probationer posed, and put to a peremptory Trial in the Examination of his Sufficiency for the Discharge of the Learned Duty of a Graduate in some Eminent Degree in the Colledge of the Sorbonists.

But would not you hold it expedient, before we proceeded any further, that we should invocate Hercules and the Tenitian Goddesses, who in the Chamber of Lots are said to Rule, sit in Judgment, and bear a Presidential Sway? Neither him nor them, (answered Pantagruel) only open up the Leaves of the Book with your Fingers, and set your Nails a work.

THen at the opening of the Book in the Sixteenth Row of the Lines of the disclosed Page, did Panurge encounter upon this following Verse:

This Response (quoth Pantagruel) maketh not very much for your benefit or advantage: for it plainly signifies and denoteth, that your Wife shall be a Strumpet, and your self by consequence a Cuckold; the Goddess, whom you shall not find propitious nor favourable unto you, is Minerva, a most redoubtable and dreadful Virgin, a powerful and fulminating Goddess, an Enemy to Cuckolds, and effeminate Youngsters, to Cuckold-makers and Adulterers: the God is Iupiter, a terrible and Thunder-striking God from Heaven; and withal, it is to be remarked, that conform to the Doctrine of the ancient Hetrurians, the Manubes (for so did they call the darting Hurls, or slinging Casts of the Vulcanian Thunderbolts) did only appertain to her, and to Iupiter her Father Capital. This was verified in the Conflagration of the Ships of Ajax Oileus, nor doth this fulminating Power belong to any other of the Olympick Gods; Men therefore stand not in such fear of them. Moreover, I will tell you, and you may take it as extracted out of the profoundest Mysteries of Mythology, that when the Giants had enterprized the waging of a War against the Power of the Coelestial Orbs, the Gods at first did laugh at those Attempts, and scorn'd such despicable Enemies, who were in their conceit, not strong enough to cope in Feats of Warfare with their Pages: but when they saw by the Gigantine labour the high Hill Pelion set on lofty Ossa, and that the Mount Olympus was made shake to be erected on the top of both.

Then was it that Iupiter held a Parliament, or General Convention, wherein it was unanimously resolved upon, and condescended to by all the Gods, that they should worthily and valiantly stand to their Defence. And because they had often seen Battles lost by the cumbersome lets and disturbing incumbrances of Women, confusedly hudled in amongst Armies, it was at that time Decreed and Enacted, That they should expel and drive out of Heaven into Aegypt, and the Confines of Nile, that whole Crue of Goddesses disguized in the shapes of Weezils, Polcats, Bats, Shrew-Mice, Ferrets, Fulmarts, and other such like odd Transformations, only Minerva was reserved to participate with Iupiter in the • orrifick fulminating Power; as being the Goddess both of War and Learning, of Arts and Arms, of Counsel and Dispatch; a Goddess armed from her Birth, a Goddess dreaded in Heaven, in the Air, by Sea and Land. By the Belly of Saint Buff (quoth Panurge) should I be Vulcan, whom the Poet blazons! Nay, I am neither a Cripple, Coyner of false Money, nor Smith as he was.

My Wife possibly will be as comely and handsome as ever was his Venus, but not a Whore like her, nor I a Cuckold like him.

The crook-leg'd slovenly Slave, made himself to be declared a Cuckold by a definitive Sentence, and Judgment, in the open view of all the Gods: for this cause ought you to interpret the aforementioned Verse quite contrary to what you have said. This Lot importeth, that my Wife will be honest, vertuous, chast, loyal, and faithful; not armed, surly, waiward▪ cross, giddy, humorous, heady, hai • brain'd, or extracted out of the Brains, as was the Goddess Pallas: nor shall this fai • jolly Iupiter be my Corrival, he shall never dip his Bread in my Broath, though we should sit together at one Table.

Consider his Exploits and gallant Actions, he was the manifest Ruffian, Wencher, Whoremonger, and most infamous Cuckold-maker that ever breathed: he did always lecher it like a Boar, and no wonder, for he was foster'd by a Sow in the Isle of Candia, (if Agathocles the Babylonian be not a Lyar) and more rammishly lascivious then a Buck, whence it is that he is said by others, to have been suckled and fed with the Milk of the Amalthaean Goat. By the vertue of Acheron, he jusled, bulled, and last auriated in one day the third part of the World, Beasts and People, Floods and Mountains, that was Europa.

For this grand subagitatory Atchievement, the Animonians caused, draw, delineate, and paint him in the figure and shape of a Ram, ramming, and horned Ram. But I know well enough how to shield and preserve my self from that horned Champion: he will not, trust me, have to deal in my Person, with a sottish, dunsical Amphytrion; nor with a silly witless Argus, for all his hundred Spectacles; nor yet with the cowardly Meacock Acrisius; the simple Goosecap Lyrus of Thebes; the doating Blockhead Agenor; the flegmatick Pea-Goose Aesop; rough • ooted Lycaon; the luskish mishapen Corytus of Tuscany; nor with the large back'd and strong reined Atlas: let him alter, change, transform, and metamorphose himself into a hundred various shapes and figures; into a Swan, a Bull, a Satyr, a Showre of Gold, or into a Cuckow, as he did when he unmaiden'd his Sister Iuno; into an Eagle, Ram, or Dove, as when he was enamoured of the Virgin Phthia, who then dwelt in the Aegea • Territory; into Fire, a Serpent; yea, even into a Flea, into Epicurian and Democratical Atomes, or more Magistronostralistically, into those sly Intentions of the Mind, which in the Schools are called Second No • ions, I'll catch him in the nick, and take • im napping.

And would you know what I would do unto him, even that which to his Father Coelum, Saturn did, (Seneca foretold it of me, and Lactantius hath confirmed it) what the Goddess Rhea did to Athis; I would make him two Stone lighter, rid him of his Cyprian Cimbals, and cut so close and neatly by the Breech, that there should not remain thereof so much as one—, so cleanly would I shave him: and disable him for ever from being Pope; for Testiculos non habet. Hold there, said Pantagruel, Hoc, soft and fair (my Lad • ) enough of that, cast up, turn over the Leaves, and try your Fortune for the second time. Then did he fall upon this ensuing Verse.

This importeth (quoth Pantagruel) that she will soundly bang your Back and Belly. Clean and quite contrary (answered Panurge) it is of me that he prognosticates, in saying that I will beat her like a Tyger, if she vex me. Sir Martin Wagstaff will perform that Office, and in default of a Cudgel, the Devil gulp him, if I should not eat her up quick, as Candaul the Lydian King did his Wife, whom he ravened and devoured.

You are very stout, says Pantagruel, and couragious, Hercules himself durst hardly adventure to scuffle with you in this your raging Fury: nor is it strange; for the Ian is worth two and two in fight against Hercules are too too strong. Am I a Ian? quoth Panurge. No, no, (answered Pantagruel) my Mind was only running upon the lurch and tricktrack. Thereafter did he hit, at the third opening of the Book, upon this Verse.

This portendeth (quoth Pantagruel) that she will steal your Goods, and rob you. Hence this, according to these three drawn Lots, will be your future Destiny, (I clearly see it) you will be a Cuckold, you will be beaten, and you will be robbed. Nay, it is quite otherways, (quoth Panurge) for it is certain that this Verse presageth, that she will love me with a perfect liking: nor did the Satyr▪ writing Poet lye in proof hereof, when he affirmed, That a Woman burning with extream Affection, takes sometimes pleasure to steal from her Sweetheart. And what I pray you? a Glove, a Point, or some such trifling Toy of no importance, to make him keep a gentle kind of stirring in the research and quest thereof: in like manner these small scolding Debates, and petty brabling Contentions, which frequently we see spring up, and for a certain space boyl very hot betwixt a couple of high-spirited Lovers, are nothing else but recreative Diversions for their refreshment, spurs to, and incentives of a more fervent Amity than ever. As for example: We do sometimes see Cutlers with Hammers mawl their finest Whetstones, therewith to sharpen their Iron Tools the better.

And therefore do I think, that these three Lots make much for my advantage; which if not, I from their Sentence totally appeal. There is no appellation (quoth Pantagruel) from the Decrees of Fate or Destiny, of Lot or Chance: as is recorded by our ancient Lawyers, witness Baldus, Lib. ult. Cap. de Leg. The reason hereof is, Fortune doth not acknowledge a Superiour, to whom an Appeal may be made from her, or any of her Substitutes. And in this case the Pupil cannot be restored to his Right in full, as openly by the said Author is alledged in L. ait praetor, Paragrult. H. de minor.

PAntagruel, when this Discourse was ended, held for a pretty while his Peace, seeming to be exceeding sad and pensive, then said to Panurge, the malignant Spirit misleads, beguileth and seduceth you. I have read that in times past the surest and most veritable Oracles were not those which either were delivered in Writing, or utter'd by word of Mouth in speaking: For many times, in their Interpretation, right witty, learned and ingenious Men have been deceived thro' Amphibolories, Equivoks, and Obscurity of Words, no less than by the brevity of their Sentences. For which cause Apollo, the God of Vaticination, was Surnamed 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Those which were represented then by Signs and outward Gestures were accounted the truest and the most infallible. Such was the Opinion of Heraclitus: And Iupitur did himself in this manner give forth in Amon frequently Predictions: Nor was he single in this Practice; for Apollo did the like amongst the Assyrians. His prophesying thus unto those People, moved them to paint him with a large long Beard, and Cloaths beseeming an old setled Person, of a most posed, stayed and grave Behaviour; not naked, young and beardless, as he was pourtrayed most usually amongst the Graecians. Let us make trial of this kind of Fatidicency; and go you take Advice of some dumb Person without any speaking. I am content, (quoth Panurge.) But, says Pantagruel, it were requisite that the Dumb you consult with be such as have been deaf from the hour of their Nativity, and consequently dumb; for none can be so lively, natural, and kindly dumb, as he who never heard.

How is it, (quoth Panurge) that you conceive this matter? If you apprehend it so, that never any spoke, who had not before heard the Speech of others, I will from that Antecedent bring you to infer very logically a most absurd and paradoxical Conclusion. But let it pass; I will not insist on it. You do not then believe what Herodotus wrote of two Children, who at the special Command and Appointment of Psammeticus King of Egypt, having been kept in a petty Country Cottage, where they were nourished and entertained in a perpetual silence, did at last, after a certain long space of time, pronounce this word Bee, which in the Phrygian Language signifieth Bread, Nothing less (quoth Pantagruel) do I believe, than that it is a meer abusing of our Understandings to give Credit to the words of those, who say that there is any such thing as a Natural Language. All Speeches have had their primary Origin from the Arbitrary Institutions, Accords and Agreements of Nations in their respective Condescendments to what should be noted and betokened by them. An Articulate Voice (according to the Dialecticians) hath naturally no signification at all; for that the sence and meaning thereof did totally depend upon the good will and pleasure of the first Deviser and Imposer of it. I do not tell you this without a Cause; for Bartholus, Lib. 5. de Verb. Oblig. very seriously reporteth, that even in his time there was in Cugubia one named Sir Nello de Gabrielis, who although he by a sad mischance became altogether deaf, understood nevertheless every one that talked in the Italian Dialect howsoever he expressed himself; and that only by looking on his external Gestures, and casting an attentive Eye upon the divers motions of his Lips and Chaps. I have read, I remember also, in a very literate and eloquent Author, that Turidates King of Armenia, in the days of Nero, made a Voyage to Rome, where he was received with great Honour and Solemnity, and with all manner of Pomp and Magnificence: Yea, to the end there might be a sempiternal Amity and Correspondence preserved betwixt him and the Roman Senate; there was no remarkable thing in the whole City which was not shown unto him.

At his Departure the Emperor bestowed upon him many ample Donatives of an inestimable Value: And besides, the more entirely to testifie his Affection towards him, heartily intrusted him to be pleased to make choice of any whatsoever thing in Rome was most agreeable to his Fancy; with a Promise juramentally confirmed, That he should not be refused of his Demand. Thereupon, after a suitable Return of Thanks for a so gracious Offer, he required a certain Iackpudding, whom he had seen to act his part most egregiously upon the Stage, and whose meaning (albeit he knew not what it was he had spoken) he understood perfectly enough by the Signs and Gesticulations which he had made. And for this Suit of his, in that he asked nothing else, he gave this Reason, That in the several wide and spacious Dominions, which were reduced under the Sway and Authority of his Sovereign Government, there were sundry Countries and Nations much differing from one another in Language, with whom, whether he was to speak unto them, or give any Answer to their Requests, he was always necessitated to make use of divers sorts of Truchmen and Interpreters: Now with this Man alone, sufficient for supplying all their places, will that great Inconveniency hereafter be totally removed; seeing he is such a fine Gesticulator, and in the Practice of Chirology an Artist so compleat, expert and dextrous, that with his very Fingers he doth speak. Howsoever you are to pitch upon such a dumb Bone as is deaf by nature, and from his Birth; to the end that his Gestures and Signs may be the more vively and truly Prophetick, and not counterfeit by the intermixture of some adulterate Lustre and Affectation. Yet whether this dumb Person shall be of the Male or Female Sex is in your Option, lieth at your Discretion, and altogether dependeth on your own Election.

I would more willingly (quoth Panurge) consult with and be advised by a Dumb Woman, were it not that I am affraid of two things. The first is, That the greater part of Women, whatever it be that they see, do always represent unto their Fancies, think and imagine, that it hath some relation to the sugred entring of the goodly Ithypallos, and graffing in the Cleft of the overturned Tree, the quick-set Imp of the Pin of Copulation. Whatever Signs, Shews or Gestures we shall make, or whatever our Behaviour, Carriage or Demeanour shall happen to be in their view and Presence, they will interpret the whole in reference to the act of Androgynation, and the culbatizing Exercise, by which means we shall be abusively disappointed of our Designs, in regard that she will take all our Signs for nothing else but Tokens and Representations of our Desire to entice her unto the Lists of a Cyprian Combat, or Catsenconny Skirmish.

Do you remember what hapned at Rome two hundred and threescore Years after the Foundation thereof? A young Roman Gentleman encountring by chance at the Foot of Mount Celion with a beautiful Latin Lady named Verona, who from her very Cradle upwards had always been both deaf and dumb, very civilly asked her, (not without a Chironomatick Italianising of his Demand, with various Jectigation of his Fingers, and other Gesticulations, as yet customary amongst the Speakers of that Country) what Senators in her Descent from the top of the Hill she had met with going up thither. For you are to conceive, that he knowing no more of her Deafness than Dumbness, was ignorant of both. She in the mean time, who neither heard nor understood so much as one word of what he had said, streight imagin'd, by all that she could apprehend in the lovely Gesture of his manual Signs, that what he then required of her was, what her self had a great mind to, even that which a Young Man doth naturally desire of a Woman. Then was it, that by Signs (which in all occurrences of Venerial Love are incomparably more attractive, valid and efficacious than Words) she beckned to him to come along with her to her House; which when he had done, she drew him aside to a privy Room, and then made a most lively alluring Sign unto him, to shew that the Game did please her. Whereupon, without any more Advertisement, or so much as the uttering of one Word on either side, they fell to, and bringuardised it lustily.

The other Cause of my being averse from consulting with dumb Women, is, that to our Signs they would make no answer at all, but suddenly fall backwards in a divarication posture, to intimate thereby unto us the reality of their consent to the supposed motion of our tacit Demands. Or if they should chance to make any contre-signs responsory to our Propositions, they would prove so foolish, impertinent, and ridiculous, that by them our selves should easily judge their thoughts to have no excursion beyond the duffling Academy. You know very well how at Croquiniole, when the religious Nun, sister Fatbum, was made big with Child by the young Stifly-Stantor, her Pregnancy came to be known, and she cited by the Abbess, and in a full Convention of the Convent, accused of Incest. Her excuse was, That she did not consent thereto, but that it was done by the violence and impetuous force of the Friar Stifly-stand-to't. Hereto the Abbess very austerely replying, Thou naughty wicked Girl, why didst thou not cry, a Rape, a Rape, then should all of us have run to thy Succour. Her answer was, That the Rape was committed in the Dorter, where she durst not cry, because it was a place of sempiternal Silence. But (quoth the Abbess) thou roguish Wench, why didst not thou then make some sign to those that were in the next Chamber beside thee? To this she answered, That with her Buttocks she made a sign unto them, as vigorously as she could, yet never one of them did so much as offer to come to her help and assistance. But (quoth the Abbess) thou scurvy baggage, why didst not thou tell it me immediately after the perpetration of the Fact, that so we might orderly, regularly, and canonically have accused him? I would have done so, had the case been mine, for the clearer manifestation of mine Innocency. I truly, Madam, would have done the like with all my heart and soul, (quoth Sister Fatbum) but that fearing I should remain in Sin, and in the hazard of Eternal Damnation, if prevented by a sudden Death, I did confess my self to the Father Fryar before he went out of the Room, who for my Penance, enjoyned me not to tell it, or reveal the matter unto any. It were a most enormous and horrid Offence, detestable before God and the Angels, to reveal a Confession: such an abominable Wickedness would have possibly brought down Fire from Heaven, wherewith to have burnt the whole Nunnery, and sent us all headlong to the bottomless Pit, to bear company with Corah, Dathan, and Abiram. You will not (quoth Pantagruel) with all your Jesting make me laugh; I know that all Monks, Fryars, and Nuns had rather violate and infringe the highest of the Commandments of God, then break the least of their Provincial Statutes.

Take you therefore Goatsnose, a Man very fit for your present purpose; for he is, and hath been, both dumb and deaf from the very remotest Infancy of his Childhood.

I Never thought (said Pantagruel) to have encountred with any Man so headstrong in his Apprehensions, or in his Opinions so wilful, as I have found you to be, and see you are. Nevertheless, the better to clear and extricate your Doubts, let us try all courses, and leave no stone unturned, nor wind unsailed by. Take good heed to what I am to say unto you, the Swans, which are Fouls consecrated to Apollo, never chant but in the hour of their approaching Death, especially in the Meander Flood, which is a River that runneth along some of the Territories of Phrygia. This I say, because Elianus and Alexander Wyndius write, that they had seen several Swans in other places die, but never heard any of them sing, or chant before their death. However, it passeth for current that the imminent death of a Swan is presaged by his foregoing Song, and that no Swan dieth until preallably he have Sung.

After the same manner Poets, who are under the protection of Apollo, when they are drawing near their latter end, do ordinarily become Prophets, and by the inspiration of that God sing sweetly, in vaticinating things which are to come. It hath been likeways told me frequently, That old decrepit Men upon the Brinks of Charon's Banks, do usher their Decease with a disclosure, all at ease (to those that are desirous of such Informations) of the determinate and assured truth of future Accidents and Contingencies. I remember also that Aristophanes, in a certain Comedy of his, calleth folks Sybils, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , for as when being upon a Pee • by the Shore, we see afar off Mariners, Sea faring men, and other Travellers alongst the curled Waves of Azure Thetis within their Ships, we then consider them in silence only, and seldom proceed any further than to wish them a happy and prosperous Arrival: but when they do approach near to the Haven, and come to wet their Keels within their Harbour, then both with words and gestures we salute them, and heartily congratulate their Access safe to the Port wherein we are our selves. Just so the Angels, Heroes, and good Demons (according to the Doctrine of Platonicks) when they see Mortals drawing near unto the Harbour of the Grave, as the most sure and calmest Port of any, full of Repose, Ease, Rest, Tranquility; free from the Troubles and Sollicitudes of this tumultuous and tempestuous World; then is it that they with alacrity Hale and Salute them, Cherish and Comfort them, and speaking to them lovingly, begin even then to bless them with Illuminations, and to communicate unto them the abstrusest Mysteries of Divination. I will not offer here to confound your Memory by quoting antick Examples of Isaac, of Iacob, of Patroclus towards Hector, of Hector towards Achilles, of Polymnester towards Agamemnon, of Hecuba, of the Phodian renowned by Possidonius, of Calanus the Indian towards Alexander the Great, of Orodes towards Mezentius, and of many others; it shall suffice for the present, that I commemorate unto you the learned and valiant Knight and Cavalier William of Ballay▪ late Lord of Langcy, who died on the Hill of Tarara, the Tenth of Ianuary, in the Climacterick year of his Age, and of our Supputation 1543. according to the Roman Account. The last three or four hours of his Life he did imploy in the serious utterance of a very pithy Discourse, whilst with a clear Judgment, and Spirit void of all Trouble, he did foretell several important Things, whereof a great deal is come to pass, and the rest we wait for. Howbeit, his Prophesies did at that time seem unto us somewhat strange, absurd, and unlikely; because there did not then appear any sign of efficacy enough to engage our Faith to the belief of what he did prognosticate▪

We have hear near to the Town of Villomer, a Man that is both Old and a Poet, to wit, Raminogrobis, who to his Second Wife espoused my Lady Broadsow, on whom he begot the fair Basoche▪ it hath been told me, he is a dying, and so near unto his latter end, that he is almost upon the very last moment, point, and article thereof; repair thither as fast as you can, and be ready to give an attentive Ear to what he shall chant unto you: it may be, that you shall obtain from him what you desire, and that Apollo will be pleased, by his means, to clear your scruples. I am content (quoth Panurge) let us go thither Epistemon, and that both instantly and in all hast, least otherways his Death prevent our coming. Wilt thou come along with us, Fryar Ihon? Yes, that I will, (quoth Fryar Ihon) right heartily to do thee a Courtesie, my Billy-ballocks; for I love thee with the best of my Milt and Liver. Thereupon, incontinently, without any further lingring to the way, they all three went, and quickly thereafter (for they made good speed) arriving at the Poetical Habitation, they found the jolly Old Man, albeit in the Agony of his Departure from this World, looking chearfully, with an open Countenance, splendid Aspect, and Behaviour full of alacrity. After that Panurge had very civilly saluted him, he in a free Gift did present him with a Gold▪Ring, which he even then put upon the Medical Finger of his Left Hand, in the Collet or Bezle whereof was inchased an Oriental Saphire, very fair and large. Then, in imitation of Socrates, did he make an Oblation unto him of a fair White Cock; which was no sooner set upon the Tester of his Bed, then that with a high raised Head and Crest, lustily shaking his Feather-Coat, he crowed Stentoriphonically loud. This done, Panurge very courteously required of him, that he would vouchsafe to favour him with the Grant and Report of his Sence and Judgment, touching the future Destiny of his intended Marriage. For answer hereto, when the honest Old Man had forthwith commanded Pen, Paper, and Ink to be brought unto him, and that he was at the same Call conveniently served with all the three, he wrote these following Verses▪

These Lines he gave out of his own Hands unto them, saying unto them, Go my Lads in Peace, the great God of the highest Heavens be your Guardian and Preserver; and do not offer any more to trouble or disquiet me with this or any other Business whatsoever. I have this same very day (which is the last both of May▪ and of me) with a great deal of labour, toyl, and difficulty, •• ased out of my House a rabble of filthy, unclean, and plagui • y pestilentious Rake • elts, black Beasts, dusk, dun, white, ash-coloured, speckled, and a foul Vermine of other hues, whose obtrusive importunity would not permit me to die at my own case: for by fraudulent and deceitful pricklings, ravenous, Harpy-like graspings, waspish stingings, and such-like unwelcome Approaches, forged in the Shop of I know not what kind of Insatiabilities; they went about to withdraw, and call me out of those sweet Thoughts, wherein I was already beginning to repose myself, and acquiesce in the Contemplation and Vision; yea, almost in the very touch and tast of the Happiness and Felicity which the good God hath prepared for his faithful Saints, and Elect in the other Life, and State of Immortality. Turn out of their Courses, and eschew them, step forth of their ways, and do not resemble them, mean while, let me be no more troubled by you, but leave me now in silence, I beseech you.

I Understand thee well enough, said Friar Ihon; but time makes all things plain. The most durable Marbre or Porphyr is subject to Old Age and Decay. Though for the present thou possibly be not weary of the Exercise, yet is it like, I will hear thee confess a few years hence, that thy Cods hang dangling downwards for want of a better Truss. I see thee waxing a little hoar-headed already; thy Beard by the Distinctions of grey, white, tawny and black, hath to my thinking the resemblance of a Map of the Terrestrial Globe, or Geographical Cart. Look attentively upon, and take Inspection of what I shall show unto thee. Behold there Asia, here are Tygris and Euphrates. Lo there Africk; here is the Mountain of the Moon, yonder thou mayst perceive the Fenny Marsh of Nilus. On this side lieth Europe: Dost thou not see the Abby of Tileme? This little Tuft, which is altogether white, is the Hyperborean Hills. By the thirst of my Throple, Friend, when Snow is on the Mountains, I say the Head and the Chin, there is not then any considerable Heat to be expected in the Valleys and Low-Countries of the Codpiece. By the Kibes of thy Heels (quoth Panurge) thou dost not understand the Topicks. When Snow is on the tops of the Hills, Lightning, Thunder. Tempest, Whirlwinds, Storms, Hurricanes, and all the Devils of Hell rage in the Valleys. Wouldst thou see the experience thereof, go to the Territory of the Swissers, and earnestly perpend with thy self there the Situation of the Lake of Wendelberliok, about four Leagues distant from Berne, on the Syon-side of the Land. Thou twittest me with my Grey Heirs, yet considerest not how I am of the Nature of Leeks, which with a white Head carry a green, fresh, streight, and vigorous Tail.

The truth is nevertheless, (why should I deny it) that I now and then discern in my self some indicative Signs of Old Age. Tell this, I prithee, to no body, but let it be kept very close and secret betwixt us two; for I find the Wine much sweeter now, more savoury to my taste, and unto my Palate of a better relish than formerly I was wont to do; and withal, besides mine accustomed manner, I have a more dreadful Apprehension than I ever heretofore have had of lighting on bad Wine. Note and observe that this doth argue and portend I know not what of the West and Occident of my time, and signifieth that the South and Meridian of mine Age is past. But what then? my Gentle Companion, that doth but betoken that I will hereafter drink so much the more. That is not, the Devil hale it, the thing that I fear; nor is there where my Shoo pinches. The thing that I doubt most, aud have greatest reason to dread and suspect, is, that through some long absence of our King Pantagruel (to whom I must needs bear Company, should he go to all the Devils of Berathrum) my future Wife shall make me a Cuckold. This is, in truth, the long and the short on't: For I am by all those whom I have spoke to menac'd and threatned with a Horned Fortune; and all of them affirm, it is the Lot to which from Heaven I am predestinated. Every one (answered Friar Ihon) that would be a Cuckold, is not one: If it be thy Fate to be hereafter of the number of that Horned Cattle, then may I conclude with an Ergo, thy Wife will be beautiful, and Ergo, thou wilt be kindly used by her: Likewise with this Ergo thou shalt be blissed with the fruition of many Friends and Well-willers: And finally with this other Ergo thou shalt be saved, and have a place in Paradise. These are Monachal Topicks and Maxims of the Cloyster: Thou mayst take more liberty to sin: Thou shalt be more at ease than ever: There will be nevertheless left for thee, nothing diminished, but thy Goods shall increase notably: And if so be it was preordinated for thee, wouldst thou be so impious as not to acquiesce in thy Destiny? Speak thou jaded Cod,

Balockatso to the Devil, my dear Friend Panurge, seeing it is so decreed by the Gods, wouldst thou invert the course of the Planets, and make them retrograde? Wouldst thou disorder all the Coelestial Spheres? blame the Intelligences, blunt the Spindles, joynt the Wherves, slander the Spinning Quills, reproach the Bobbins, revile the Clew-bottoms, and finally ravel and untwist all the Threads of both the warp and the waft of the weer'd Sister Parques? What a Pox to thy Bones dost thou mean, stony Cod? thou wouldst if thou couldst, a great deal worse than the Gyants of old intended to have done. Come hither, Billicullion; Whether wouldst thou be Jealous without cause, or be a Cuckold and know nothing of it? Neither the one nor the other (quoth Panurge) would I choose to be: But if I get an inkling of the matter, I will provide well enough, or there shall not be one stick of Wood within Five hundred Leagues about me, whereof to make a Cudgel. In good Faith (Fryar Ihon) I speak now seriously unto thee, I think it will be my best not to marry: Hearken to what the Bells do tell me, now that we are nearer to them: Do not Marry, Marry not, not, not, not, not; Marry, Marry not, not, not, not, not: If thou Marry, thou wilt miscarry, carry, carry; thou'lt repent it, resent it, sent it: if thou Marry, thou a Cuckold, a Cou-cou-Cuckoe, Cou-cou-Cuckold thou shalt be. By the worthy Wrath of God I begin to be angry; this Campa • lian Oracle fretteth me to the Guts, a March-Hare was never in such a Chaff as I am. O how I am vexed! you Monks and Fryars of the Cowl-pated, and Hood-poll'd Fraternity, have you no Remedy nor Salve against this Malady of Graffing Horns in Heads? Hath Nature so abandoned Humane-kind, and of her help left us so destitute, that married Men cannot know how to sail through the Seas of this mortal Life, and be safe from the Whirlpools, Quicksands, Rocks, and Banks, that lie alongst the Coast of Cornwall.

I will (said Fryar Ihon) shew thee a way, and teach thee an expedient, by means whereof thy Wife shall never make thee a Cuckold without thy knowledge, and thine own consent. Do me the favour, I pray thee, (quoth Panurge) my pretty soft downy Cod; now tell it, Billy, tell it, I beseech thee. Take (quoth Fryar Ihon) Hans Carvel's Ring upon thy Finger, who was the King of Melinda's chief Jeweller; besides that, this Hans Carvel had the Reputation of being very skilful and expert in the Lapidary's Profession, he was a studious, learned, and ingenious Man, a Scientifick Person, full of Knowledge, a great Philosopher, of a sound Judgment, of a prime Wit, good Sence, clear Spirited, an honest Creature, Courteous, Charitable, Giver of Alms, and of a Jovial Humour, a Boon Companion, and a Merry Blade, if ever there was any in the World: He was somewhat Gorbellied, had a little Shake in his Head, and in effect unwieldy of his Body; in his Old Age he took to Wife the Bayliff of Concordat's Daughter, a young, fair, jolly, gallant, spruce, frisk, brisk, neat, feat, smirk, smug, compt, quaint, gay, fine, trixy, trim, decent, proper, graceful, handsome, beautiful, comely; and kind, a little too much to her Neighbours and Acquaintance.

Hereupon it fell out, after the expiring of a scantling of Weeks, that Master Carvel became as jealous as a Tygar, and entred into a very profound suspition, that his new-married Gixy did keep a Buttockstirring with others: to prevent which inconveniency, he did tell her many tragical Stories of the total Ruine of several Kingdoms by Adultery; did read unto her the Legend of chast Wives; then made some Lectures to her in the praise of the choice Vertue of Pucidity, and did present her with a Book in Commendation of Conjugal Fidelity: wherein the wickedness of all licentious Women was odiously detested; and withal, he gave her a Chain enriched with pure Oriental Saphires. Notwithstanding all this, he found her always more and more inclined to the reception of her Neighbour Copes-mates, that day by day his Jealousie increased; in sequel whereof, one Night as he was lying by her, whilst in his Sleep the rambling Fancies of the leacherous Deportments of his Wife, did take up the Celluls of his Brain, he dreamt that he encountred with the Devil, to whom he had discovered to the full the buzzing of his Head, and suspicion that his Wife did tread her Shooe awry; the Devil, he thought, in this perplexity, did for his comfort, give him a Ring, and therewithal did kindly put it on his Middle-finger, saying, Hans Carvel, I give thee this Ring, whilst thou carriest it upon that Finger, thy Wife shall never carnally be known by any other then thy self, without thy special knowledge and consent. Grammercy (quoth Hans Carvel) my Lord Devil, I renounce Mahomet, if ever it shall come off my Finger. The Devil vanished, as is his Custom, and then Hans Carvel full of Joy awaking, found that his Middlefinger was as far as it could reach within the What-do-you-call-it of his Wife. I did forget to tell thee, how his Wife, as soon as she had felt the Finger there, said in recoyling her Buttocks, Off, yes, nay, tut, pish, tush, aye, Lord, that is not the thing which should be put up in that place. With this Hans Carvel thought that some pilferring Fellow was about to take the Ring from him.

Is not this an Infallible and Sovereign Antidote? therefore, if thou wilt believe me, in imitation of this Example, never fail to have continually the Ring of thy Wife's Commodity upon thy Finger. When that was said, their Discourse and their Way ended.

NO sooner were they come into the Royal Palace, but they, to the full, made Report unto Pantagruel of the Success of their Expedition; they shew him the Response of Paminagrobis. When Pantagruel had read it over and over again, the▪oftner he perused it, being the better pleased therewith; he said, in addressing his Speech to Panurge, I have not as yet seen any Answer framed to your Demand, which affordeth me more Contentment: for in this his succinct Copy of Verses, he summarily, and briefly, yet fully enough expresseth, how he would have us to understand, that every one in the Project and Enterprize of Marriage, ought to be his own Carver, sole Arbitrator of his proper Thoughts, and from himself alone take Counsel in the main and peremptory closure of what his Determination should be, in either his assent to, or dissent from it. Such always hath been my Opinion to you, and when at first you spoke thereof to me, I truly told you this same very thing; but tacitly you scorned my Advice, and would not harbour it within your mind. I know for certain, and therefore may I with the greater confidence utter my conception of it, that Phil •• ty, or Self love, is that which blinds your Judgment, and deceiveth you.

Let us do otherways, and that is this: Whatever we are, or have, consisteth in Three Things: the Soul, the Body, and the Goods: now for the preservation of these Three, there are Three sorts of Learned Men ordained, each respectively to have care of that one which is recommended to his charge. Theologues are appointed for the Soul, Physitians for the Welfare of the Body, and Lawyers for the Safety of our Goods: hence it is, that it is my Resolution to have on Sunday next with me at Dinner, a Divine, a Physician, and a Lawyer, that with those Three assembled thus together, we may in every Point and Particle, confer at large of your Perplexity. By Saint Picot (answered Panurge) we never shall do any good that way: I see it already, and you see your self how the World is vilely abused, as when with a Fox-tayl one claps another's Breech, to cajole him. We give our Souls to keep to the Theologues, who for the greater part are Hereticks: Our Bodies we commit to the Physitians, who never themselves take any Physick: and then we intrust our Goods to Lawyers, who never go to Law against one another. You speak like a Courtier (quoth Pantagruel) but the first Point of your Assertion is to be denied: for we daily see how good Theologues make it their chief Business, their whole and sole Employment, by their Deeds, their Words, and Writings, to extirpate Errors and Heresies out of the Hearts of Men; and in their stead profoundly plant the true and lively Faith. The Second Point you spoke of I commend: for whereas the Professors of the Art of Medicine, give so good order to the Prophylactick, or Conservative part of their Faculty, in what concerneth their proper Healths, that they stand in no need of making use of the other Branch, which is the Curative, or Therapentick, by Medicaments. As for the Thi •• , I grant it to be true: for Learned Advocates and Counsellors at Law, are so much taken up with the Affairs of others in their Consultations, Pleadings, and such-like Patrocinations of those who are their▪Clients, that they have no leisure to attend any Controversies of their own. Therefore, on the next ensuing Sunday, let the Divine be our godly Father Hippothadee, the Physitian our▪ honest Master Rondibilis, and the Legist our good Friend Bridlegoose: nor will it be (to my thinking) amiss, that we enter into the Pythagorick Field, and choose for an Assistant to the Three aforenamed Doctors, our ancient faithful Acquaintance, the Philosopher Trouillogan; especially seeing a perfect Philosopher, such as is Trouiilogan, is able positively to resolve all whatsoever Doubts you can propose. Carpalin, have you a care to have them here all Four on Sunday next at Dinner, without fail.

I believe (quoth Epistemon) that throughout the whole Country, in all the Corners thereof, you could not have pitched upon such other Four: which I speak not so much in regard of the most excellent Qualifications and Accomplishments wherewith all of them are endowed for the respective Discharge and Management of each his own Vocation and Calling, (wherein without all doubt or controversie, they are the Paragons of the Land, and surpass all others) as for that Rondibilis is marrried now, who before was not: Hippothadee was not before, nor is yet: Bridlegoose was married once, but is not now: and Trouillogan is married now, who wedded was to another Wife before. Sir, if it may stand with your good liking, I will ease Carpalin of some parcel of his Labour, and invite Bridlegoose my self, with whom I of a long time have had a very intimate familiarity, and unto whom I am to speak on the behalf of a pretty hopeful Youth, who now studieth at Tholouse, under the most learned, vertuous Doctor Boissonnet. Do what you deem most expedient (quoth Pantagruel) and tell me, if my Recommendation can in any thing be steadable for the promoval of the good of that Youth, or otherways serve for bettering of the Dignity and Office of the worthy Boissonet, whom I do so love and respect, for one of the ablest and most sufficient in his way, that any where are extant. Sir, I will use therein my best Endeavours, and heartily bestir my self about it.

THere remaineth as yet, quoth Panurge going on in his Discourse, one small scruple to be cleared: you have seen heretofore, I doubt not, in the Roman Standards, S. P. Q. R. Si, Peu, Que, Rien: Shall not I be a Cuckold? By the Haven of Safety, cried out Rondibilis, what is this you ask of me? If you shall be a Cuckold: My Noble Friend, I am married, and you are like to be so very speedily: therefore be pleased from my Experiment in the matter, to write in your Brain, with a Steel-pen, this subsequent Ditton, There is no married Man who doth not run the hazard of being made a Cuckold. Cuckoldry naturally attendeth Marriage; the Shadow doth not more naturally follow the Body, then Cuckoldry ensueth after Marriage, to place fair Horns upon the Husband's Heads.

And when you shall happen to hear any Man pronounce these three Words: He is Married: if you then say he is, hath been, shall be, or may be a Cuckold, you will not be accounted an unskilful Artist in framing of true Consequences. Tripes and Bowels of all the Devils, cries Panurge, what do you tell me? My dear Friend, (answered Rondibilis) as Hippocrates, on a time, was in the very nick of setting forwards from Lango to Polystilo, to Visit the Philosopher Democritus, he wrote a familiar Letter to his Friend Dionoys, wherein he desired him, That he would during the interval of his absence, carry his Wife to the House of her Father and Mother, who were an honourable Couple, and of good Repute; because I would not have her at my Home, (said he) to make abode in Solitude: yet notwithstanding this her Residence beside her Parents, do not fail (quoth he) with a most heedful care and circumspection to pry into her ways, and to espy what places she shall go to with her Mother, and who those be that shall repair unto her: Not (quoth he) that I do mistrust her Vertue, or that I seem to have any diffidence of her Pudicity, and chaste Behaviour; for of that I have frequently had good and real proofs: but I must freely tell you, She is a Woman: there lies the suspition.

My worthy Friend, the Nature of Women is set forth before our Eyes, and represented to us by the Moon, in divers other things, as well as in this, that they squat, sculck, constrain their own Inclinations, and with all the Cunning they can, dissemble and play the Hypocrite in the sight and presence of their Husbands; who come no sooner to be out of the way, but that forthwith they take their advantage, pass the time merrily, desist from all labour, frolick it, gad abroad; lay aside their counterfeit Garb, and openly declare and manifest the interiour of their Dispositions; even as the Moon, when she is in Conjunction with the Sun, is neither seen in the Heavens, nor on the Earth, but in her Opposition, when remotest from him, shineth in her greatest fulness, and wholly appeareth in her brightest splendour whilst it is Night: Thus Women are but Women.

When I say Womankind, I speak of a Sex so frail, so variable, so changeable, so fickle, inconstant, and imperfect, that in my Opinion, Nature (under favour nevertheless of the prime Honour and Reverence which is due unto her) did in a manner mistake the Road which she had traced formerly, and stray exceedingly from that Excellence of Providential Judgment, by the which she had created and formed all other things, when she built, framed, and made up the Woman. And having thought upon it a Hundred and five times, I know not what else to determine therein, save only that in the devising, hammering, forging, and composing of the Woman, she hath had a much tenderer regard, and by a great deal more respectful heed to the delightful Consortship, and sociable Delectation of the Man, than to the Perfection and Accomplishment of the individual Womanishness, or Muliebrity. The Divine Philosopher Plato, was doubtful in what Rank of living Creatures to place and collocate them, whither amongst the Rational Animals, by elevating them to an upper Seat in the Specifical Classis of Humanity; or with the Irrational, by degrading them to a lower Bench on the opposite side, of a Brutal kind, and meer Bestiality: for Nature hath posited in a privy, secret, and intestine place of their Bodies, a sort of Member (by some not impertinently termed an Animal) which is not to be found in Men. Therein sometimes are engendred certain Humors so saltish, brackish, clammy, sharp, nipping, tearing, prickling, and most eagerly tickling, that by their stinging Acrimony, rending Nitrosity, figging Itch, wrigling Mordicancy, and smarting Salsitude, (for the said Member is altogether sinewy, and of a most quick and lively feeling) their whole Body is shaken and ebrangled, their Senses totally ravished and transported, the operations of their Judgment and Understanding utterly confounded, and all disordinate Passions and Perturbations of the Mind thoroughly and absolutely allowed, admitted, and approved of; yea, in such sort, that if Nature had not been so favourable unto them, as to have sprinkled their Forehead with a little Tincture of Bashfulness and Modesty, you should see them in a so frantick mood run mad after Lechery, and hye apace up and down with hast and Lust, in quest of, and to fix some Chamber-Standard in their Paphian Ground, that never did the Pretides, Mimallonides, nor Lyaean Thyads deport themselves in the time of their Bacchanalian Festivals, more shamelesly, or with a so affronted and brazen-faced Impudency; because this terrible Animal is knit unto, and hath an Union with all the chief and most principal parts of the Body, as to Anatomists is evident. Let it not here be thought strange that I should call it an Animal, seeing therein I do no otherwise than follow and adhere to the Doctrine of the Academick and Peripatetick Philosophers. For if a proper Motion be a certain mark and infallible token of the Life and Animation of the Mover, (as Aristotle writeth) and that any such thing as moveth of its self ought to be held Animated, and of a Living Nature; then assuredly Plato with very good reason did give it the Denomination of an Animal; for that he perceived and observed in it the proper and self-stirring motions of Suffocation, Precipitation, Corrugation, and of Indignation, so extreamly violent, that oftentimes by them is taken and removed from the Women all other sense and moving whatsoever, as if she were in a swounding Lipothymy, benumming Sincop, Epileptick, Apoplectick Palsey, and true resemblance of a palefaced Death.

Furthermore, in the said Member there is a manifest discerning Faculty of Scents and Odours very perceptible to Women, who feel it fly from what is rank and unsavoury, and follow fragrant and Aromatick Smells. It is not unknown to me how Cl. Gallen striveth with might and main, to prove that these are not proper and particular Notions proceeding intrinsically from the thing it self, but accidentally, and by chance. Nor hath it escaped my notice, how others of that Sect have laboured hardly, yea, to the utmost of their Abilities, to demonstrate that it is not a sensitive discerning or perception in it of the difference of Wafts and Smells, but meerly a various manner of Vertue and Efficacy, passing forth and flowing from the diversity of odoriferous Substances applied near unto it. Nevertheless, if you will studiously examine, and seriously ponder and weigh in Critolaus's Balance the strength of their Reasons and Arguments, you shall find that they, not only in this, but in several other matters also of the like nature, have spoken at random, and rather out of an ambitious Envy to check and reprehend their Betters, than for any design to make enquiry into the solid Truth.

I will not launch my little Skif any further into the wide Ocean of this Dispute, only will I tell you that the Praise and Commendation is not mean and slender which is due to those honest and good Women, who living chastly and without blame, have had the power and vertue to curb, range and subdue that unbridled, heady and wild Animal to an obedient, submissive and obsequious yielding unto Reason. Therefore here will I make an end of my Discourse thereon, when I shall have told you, that the said Animal being once satiated (if it be possible that it can be contented or satisfied) by that Aliment, which Nature hath provided for it out of the Epididymal Store-house of Man, all its former and irregular and disordered Motions are at an end, laid and asswaged; all its vehement and unruly Longings lulled, pacified and quieted; and all the furious and raging Lusts, Appetites and Desires thereof appeased, suppressed, calmed and extinguished. For this cause let it seem nothing strange unto you, if we be in a perpetual Danger of being Cuckolds; that is to say, such of us as have not wherewithal fully to satisfie the Appetite and Expectation of that vo • acious Animal. Ods Fish! (quoth Panurge) have you no preventive Cure in all your Medicinal Art for hindring ones Head to be Horny-graffed at home, whilst his Feet are plodding abroad? Yes that I have▪ my gallant Friend, (answered Rondibilis) and that which is a Sovereign Remedy, whereof I frequently make use my self; and that▪ you may the better relish, it is set down and written in the Book of a most famous Author, whose Renown is of a standing of two thousand Years. Hearken and take good heed. You are (quoth Panurge) by Cocks-Hobby, a right honest Man, and I love you with all my heart; eat a little of this Quince-Pye, it is very proper and convenient for the shutting up of the Orifice of the Ventricle of the Stomach, because of a kind of astringent Stypticity, which is in that sort of Fruit, and is helpful to the first Concoction. But what? I think I speak Latin before Clerks. Stay, fill, I give you somewhat to drink out of this Nestorian Goblet. Will you have another Draught of white Hippocras? Be not afraid of the Squinzy, No: There is neither Squinant, Ginger nor Grains in it; only a little choice Cinnamon, and some of the best refined Sugar, with the delicious Whitewine of the Growth of that Vine, which was set in the Slips of the great Sorbaple, above the Wallnut-tree.

YOU speak wisely, quoth Panurge, if the Moon were green Cheese; such a Tale once piss'd my Goose: I do not think but that I am let down into that dark Pit, in the lowermost bottom whereof the truth was hid, according to the saying of Heraclitus. I see no whit at all, I hear nothing, understand as little, my Senses are altogether dull'd and blunted; truly I do very shrewdly suspect that I am enchanted. I will now alter the former style of my Discourse, and talk to him in another Strain. Our trusty Friend, stir not, nor imburse any; but let us vary the Chance, and speak without Disjunctives: I see already that these loose and ill-joined Members of an Eununciation do vex, trouble and perplex you.

Now go on, in the Name of God, Should I marry?

WHen Pantagruel had withdrawn himself, he by a little sloping Window in one of the Galleries, perceived Panurge in a Lobbey not far from thence, walking alone, with the Gesture, Carriage, and Garb of a fond Dotard, raving, wagging, and shaking his Hands, dandling, lolling, and nodding with his Head, like a Cow bellowing for her Calf; and having then called him nearer, spoke unto him thus: You are at this present (as I think) not unlike to a Mouse intangled in a snare, who the more that she goeth about to rid and unwind herself out of the Gin wherein she is caught, by endeavouring to clear and deliver her feet from the Pitch whereto they stick, the • oulier she is bewrayed with it, and the more strongly pestered therein; even so is it with you: for the more that you labour, strive, and inforce your self to disincumber, and extricate your Thoughts out of the implicating Involutions and Fetterings of the grievous and lamentable Gins and Springs of Anguish and Perplexity; the greater difficulty there is in the relieving of you, and you remain faster bound then ever: nor do I know for the removal of this Inconveniency, any Remedy but one.

Take heed; I have often heard it said in a Vulgar Proverb, The Wise may be instructed by a Fool. Seeing the Answers and Responses of sage and judicious Men, have in no manner of way satisfied you, take Advice of some Fool; and possibly by so doing, you may come to get that Councel which will be agreeable to your own Heart's desire and contentment. You know how by the Advice and Councel and Prediction of Fools, many Kings, Princes, States, and Commonwealths have been preserved, several Battels gained, and divers doubts of a most perplexed Intricacy resolved: I am not so diffident of your Memory, as to hold it needful to refresh it with a Quotation of Examples; nor do I so far undervalue your Judgment, but that I think it will acquiesce in the Reason of this my subsequent Discourse.

As he who narrowly takes heed to what concerns the dextrous Management of his private Affairs, domestick Businesses, and those Adoes which are confined within the streight-lac'd compass of one Family: who is attentive, vigilant, and active in the oeconomick Rule of his own House; whose frugal Spirit never strays from home; who loseth no occasion, whereby he may purchase to himself more Riches, and build up new Heaps of Treasure on his former Wealth; and who knows warily how to prevent the Inconveniencies of Poverty, is called a worldly Wise Man, though perhaps in the Second Judgment of the Intelligences which are above, he be esteemed a Fool. So on the contrary, is he most like (even in the thoughts of all Coelestial Spirits) to be not only sage, but to presage Events to come by Divine Inspiration, who laying quite aside those Cares which are conducible to his Body, or his Fortunes, and as it were departing from himself, rids all his Senses of Terrene Affections, and clears his Fancies of those plodding Studies, which harbour in the Minds of Thriving Men: all which Neglects of Sublunary Things are vulgarly imputed Folly.

After this manner, the Son of Picus, King of the Latins, that great Southsayer Faunus, was called Fatuus, by the witless Rabble of the common People. The like we daily see practised amongst the Comick Players, whose Drammatick Rolls, in distribution of the Personages, appoint the acting of the Fool to him who is the wisest of the Troop. In approbation also of this fashion, the Mathematicians allow the very same Horoscope to Princes▪ and to Sots. Whereof a right pregnant instance by them is given in the Nativities of Aeneas and Choroebus; the latter of which two is by Euphorion said to have been a Fool: and yet had with the former the same Aspects, and heavenly Genethlick Influences.

I shall not, I suppose, swerve much from the purpose in hand, if I relate unto you, what Ihon Andrew said upon the Return of a Papal Writ, which was directed to the Mayor of Rochel; and Burgesses after him by Panorm, upon the same Pontifical Canon; Barbatia, on the Pandects, and recently by Iason, in his Councels, concerning Seyny Ihon the noted Fool of Paris, and Caillets, fore-great Grandfather. The Case is this:

At Paris, in the Roast-meat Cookery of the Petit Chastelet, before the Cook-Shop of one of the Roast-meat Sellers of that Lane, a certain hungry Porter was eating his Bread, after he had by Parcels kept it a while above the Reek and Steam of a fat Goose on the Spit, turning at a great Fire, and found it so besmoaked with the Vapour, to be savoury; which the Cook observing, took no notice, till after having ravined his Penny Loaf, whereof no Morsel had been unsmoakified, he was about discamping and going away; but by your leave, as the Fellow thought to have departed thence shot-free, the Master-Cook laid hold upon him by the Gorget, demanded payment for the Smoak of his Roastmeat. The Porter answered, that he had sustained no loss at all; that by what he had done there was no Diminution made of the Flesh, that he had taken nothing of his, and that therefore he was not indebted to him in any thing: As for the Smoak in question, that, although he had not been there; it would howsoever have been evaporated: besides that, before that time it had never been seen nor heard, that Roast-meat Smoak was sold upon the Streets of Paris. The Cook hereto replied, That he was not obliged nor any way bound to feed and nourish for nought a Porter whom he had never seen before with the Smoak of his Roastmeat; and thereupon swore, that if he would not forthwith content and satisfie him with present Payment for the Repast which he had thereby got, that he would take his crooked Staves from off his Back; which instead of having Loads thereafter laid upon them, should serve for Fuel to his Kitchin Fires. Whilst he was going about so to do, and to have pulled them to him by one of the bottom Rungs, which he had caught in his Hand, the sturdy Porter got out of his Gripes, drew forth the knotty Cudgel, and stood to his own Defence. The Altercation waxed hot in Words, which moved the gaping Hoydons of the sottish Parisians to run from all parts thereabouts to see what the issue would be of that babling Strife and Contention. In the interim of this Dispute, to very good purpose Seiny Ihon the Fool and Citizen of Paris, hapned to be there, whom the Cook perceiving, said to the Porter, Wilt thou refer and submit unto the noble Seiny Thon, the Decision of the Difference and Controversie which is betwixt us? Yes, by the Blood of a Goose, answered the Porter, I am content. Seiny Ihon the Fool, finding that the Cook and Porter had compromised the Determination of their Variance and Debate to the Discretion of his Award and Arbitriment; after that the Reasons on either side whereupon was grounded the mutual fierceness of their brawling Jar had been to the full displayed and laid open before him, commanded the Porter to draw out of the Fab of his Belt a piece of Money, if he had it. Whereupon the Porter immediately without delay, in Reverence to the Authority of such a Judicious Umpire, put the tenth part of a Silver Phillip into his hand. This little Phillip Seiny Ihon took, then set it on his Left Shoulder, to try by feeling if it was of a sufficient weight; after that, laying it on the palm of his hand he made it ring and tingle, to understand by the Ear if it was of a good Alloy in the Metal whereof it was composed: Thereafter he put it to the Ball or Apple of his Left Eye, to explore by the sight if it was well stamped▪ and marked; all which being done, in a profound Silence of the whole doltish People, who were there Spectators of this Pageantry, to the great Hope of the Cooks, and Despair of the Porters Prevalency in the Suit that was in agitation, he finally caused the Porter to make it sound several times upon the Stall of the Cooks Shop. Then with a Presidential Majesty holding his Bable (Scepter-like) in his Hand, muffling his Head with a Hood of Martern Skins, each side whereof had the resemblance of an Apes Face, sprucified up with Ears of pasted Paper, and having about his Neck a bucked Ruff, raised, furrowed, and ridged, with Ponting Sticks of the shape and fashion of small Organ Pipes; he first with all the force of his Lungs Coughed two or three times, and then with an audible Voice pronounced this following Sentence, The Court declareth, that the Porter, who ate his Bread at the Smoak of the roast, hath civilly paid the Cook with the sound of his Money: And the said Court Ordaineth, that every one return to his own home, and attend his proper business, without Cost and Charges, and for a Cause. This Verdict, Award and Arbitriment of the Parisian Fool, did appear so equitable, yea, so admirable to the aforesaid Doctors, that they very much doubted, if the matter had been brought before the Sessions for Iustice of the said place, or that the Judges of the Rota at Rome had been Umpires therein; or yet that the Areopagites themselves had been the Deciders thereof, if by any one part, or all of them together, it had been so judicially sententiated and awarded. Therefore advise if you will be counselled by a Fool.

BY my Soul, quoth Panurge, that Overture pleaseth me exceedingly well; I will therefore lay hold thereon, and embrace it. At the very motioning thereof my very Right Entral seemeth to be widened and enlarged, which was but just now hard bound, contracted and costive: but as we have hitherto made choice of the purest and most refined Cream of Wisdom and Sapience for our Counsel, so would I now have to preside and bear the prime Sway in our Consultation, as were a Fool in the supream degree. Triboulet (quoth Pantagruel) is compleatly foolish, as I conceive. Yes truly (answered Panurge) he is properly and totally a Fool, a

Pantagruel. Panurge. Fatal f. Jovial f. Natural f. Mercurial f. Celectial f. Lunatick f. Erratick f. Ducal f. Excentrick f. Common f. Aetherial and Junonian f. Lordly f.   Palatin f. Arctick f. Principal f. Heroick f. Pretorian f. Gemial f. Ellected f. Inconstant f. Courtly f. Earthly f. Primipilary f. Solacious and sporting f. Triumphant f.   Vulgar f. Jocund and wanton f. Domestick f.   Exemplary s. Pimpled f. Rare outlandish f. Freckled f. Satrapal f. Bell-tinging f. Civil f. Laughing and lecherous f. Popular f.   Familiar f. Nimming and filching f. Notable f.   Favourized f. Unpressed f. Latinized f. First broached f. Ordinary f. Augustal f. Transcendent f. Cesarine f. Rising f. Imperial f. Papal f. Royal f. Consistorian f. Patriarchal f. Conclavist f. Original f. Bullist f. Loyal f. Synodal f. Episcopal f. Doting and raving f. Doctoral f. Singular and surpassing f. Monachal f.   Fiscal f. Special and excelling f. Extravagant f.   Writhed f. Metaphysical f. Canonical f. Scatical f. Such another f. Predicamental and Catagorick f. Graduated f.   Commensal f. Predicable and enunciatory f. Primolicentiated f.   Trainbairing f. Decumane and Superlative f. Supererrogating f.   Collateral f. Dutiful and officious f. Haunch and side f.   Nestling, ninny and youngling f. Optical and perspective f. Flitting, giddy and unsteddy f. Algoristick f.   Algebraical f. Brancher, novice and Cockney f. Cabalistical & Massoretical f. Hagard, cross and froward f. Talmudical f.   Algamalized f. Gentle, mild and tractable f. Compendious f.   Abbreviated f. Mail-coated f. Hyperbolical f. Pilfring and purloining f. Anatomastical f.   Allegorical f. Tail-grown f. Tropological f. Gray-peckled f.   Pleonasmical f. Micher pincrust f. Capital f. Heteroclit f. Hair brained f. Summist f. Cordial f. Abbridging f. Intimate f. Morrish f. Hepatick f. Leaden-sealed f. Cushotten and swilling f. Mandatory f.   Compassionate f. Splenetick f. Titulary f. Windy f. Crooching, showking, ducking f. Ligitimate f.   Azymathal f. Grim, stern, harsh, and wayward f. Almicautarized f.   Proportioned f. Well-hung & timbred f. Chinnified f.   Swollen and puffed up f. Ill-clawed, pounced and pawed f. Overcockrifed lid and lified f. Well-stoned f.   Crabbed and unpleasing f. Corallery f.   Eastern f. Winded and tainted f. Sublime f.   Crimson f. Kitchin-haunting f. Ingrained f. Lofty and stately f. City f. Spitrack f. Basely acoutred f. Architrave f. Mast-headed f. Pedestal f. Modal f. Tetragonal f. Second notial f. Renowned f. Chearful and buxom f. Reumatick f.   Flaunting and braggadochio f. Solemn f.   Annual f. Egregious f. Festival f. Humorous and capricious f. Recreative f.   Boorish and counterfeit f. Rude, gross and absurd f. Pleasant f. Large measured f. Priviledged f. Bable f. Rustical f. Down-right f. Proper and peculiar f. Broad-listed f.   Downsical-bearing f. Ever ready f.   Diapatonal f. Stale and overworn f. Resolute f.   Hieroglyphical f. Sawcy and swaggering f. Authentick f.   Worty f. Full bulked f. Precious f. Gallant and vainglorious f. Fanatick f.   Fantastical f. Gorgeous and gawdy f. Symphatiok f.   Panick f. Continual and intermitting f. Limbicked and distilled f.     Rebasing & roundling f. Comportable f.   Wretched & heartless f. Prototypal and precedenting f. Fooded f. Prating f. Thick and threefold f. Catechetick f.   Cacodoxical f. Damasked f. Meridional f. Fearny f. Nocturnal f. Unleavened f. Occidental f. Barytonant f. Trifling f. Pink and spot-poudered f. Astrological and Figure-flinging f. Musket-proof f. Cenethliack & Horoscopal f. Pedantick f.   Strouting f. Knavish f. Wood f. Idiot f. Greedy f. Blockish f. Senseless f. Beetle-headed f. Godderlich f. Crotesk f. Obstinate f. Impertinent f. Contradictory f. Quarrelsom f. Pedagogical f. Unmannerly f. Daft f. Captious and Sophistical f. Drunken f.   Peevish f. Soritick f. Prodigal f. Catholoproton f. Rash f. Hoti and Diots f. Plodding f. Aplos and Catati f.

FOR this Cause (quoth Bridlegoose) going on in his Discourse, I temporise and apply my self to the Times, as your other Worships use to do, waiting patiently for the Maturity of the Process, full Growth and Perfection thereof in all its Members; to wit, the Writings and the Bags. Arg. in L. fin. Major. C. commodus, & de cons. de 1. c. solemnitates, & ibi gl. A Suit in Law at its Production, Birth and first beginning, seemeth to me as unto your other Worships, shapeless, without Form or Fashion, incompleat, ugly and imperfect, even as a Bare, at his first coming into the World, hath neither Hands, Skin, Hair nor Head, but is meerly an inform, rude and ill-favoured peice and lump of Flesh; and would remain still so, if his Dam out of the abundance of her Affection to her hopeful Cub, did not with much liking put his Members into that Figure and shape which Nature had provided for those of an Arctick and Ursinal kind. Ut Not. Doct. F. ad L. aliquia 2. in si. Just so when I see, as your other Worships do, Processes and Suits in Law at their first bringing forth, to be numberless, without shape, deformed and disfigured; for that then they consist only of one or two Writings, or Copies of Instruments, through which Defect they appear unto me as to your other Worships, foul, loathsom, filthy and mis-shapen Beasts. But when there are Heaps of these Legiformal Papers packed, piled, laid up together, impoaked, insacheled, and put up in Bags, then is it that with a good reason we may term that Suit; to which, as pieces, parcels, parts, portions and members thereof, they do pertain and belong, well-formed and fashioned, big limmed, strong set, and in all and each of its Dimensions most compleatly membred: Because forma dat. esse. rei L. si is qui F. ad leg. falcid. in C. cum delicta extra de rescript. Barbaria consil. Lib. 2. And before him, Balsus in C. ult. extra decons. & L. Iulianus exhib. & F. ad L. quaesitum F. de leg. 3. The manner is such as is set down in gl. p. quaest. 1 C. Paulus.

Like your other Worships, also the Sergeants, Catchpoles, Pursevants, Messengers, Summoners, Apparitors, Ushers, Door-keepers, Pettifoggers, Attorneys, Proctors, Commissioners, Justices of the Peace, Judge Delegates, Arbitrators, Overseers, Sequestrators, Advocates, Inquisitors, Jurors, Searchers, Examiners, Notaries, Tabellions, Scribes, Scriveners, Clerks, Pregnatories, Secondaries, and Expedanean Judges, de quibus tit. est L. 3. C. by sucking very much, and that exceeding forcibly, and licking at the Purses of the pleading Parties, they, to the Suits already begot and engendred, form, fashion and frame Head, Feet, Claws, Talons, Beaks, Bills, Teeth, Hands, Veins, Sinews, Arteries, Muscles, Humours, and so forth, through all the Simulary and Dissimilary Parts of the whole; which Parts, Particles, Pendicles and Appurtenances, are the Law. poaks and Bags, Gl. de Cons. d. 3. C. accepisti qualis vestis erit, talia cornua gerit. Hic notandum est. That in this respect the Pleaders, Litigants and Law-Suiters are happier than the Officers, Ministers and Administrators of Justice: For beatus est dare quam accipere. F. Com. L. 3. extra de celcb. Miss. cum Matthae & 24. Quaest. 1. Cap. Od. Gl.

Thus becometh the Action or Process, by their care and industry, to be of a compleat and goodly bulk, well shaped, ••• med, formed, and fashioned according to the Canonical Gloss.

Which Speech hath been more clearly explained by Alb. de Res. in verbo Roma.

The Reason whereof is thought to be this:

Ut est Gl. in L. quum H. F. de Transact. Nor is this all, for the inconvenience of the contrary is set down in H. C. de Allu. L. F.

In confirmation whereof we find, that the true Etymology and Exposition of the word Process is Purchase, viz. of good store of Money to the Lawyers, and of many Poaks, id est, Prou-Sacks, to the Pleaders, upon which Subject we have most Coelestial Quips, Gybes, and Girds.

Yea, but (asked Trinquamelle) how do you proceed, (my Friend) in Criminal Causes, the culpable and guilty Party being taken and seized upon, Flagrante Crimine? Even as your other Worships use to do (answered Bridlegoose): First, I permit the Plaintiff to depart from the Court, enjoyning him not to presume to return thither, till he preallably, should have taken a good sound and profound Sleep, which is to serve for the prime Entry and Introduction to the Legal carrying on of the Business. In the next place, a formal Report is to be made to me of his having slept. Thirdly, I issue forth a Warrant to convent him before me. Fourthly, He is to produce a sufficient and authentick Attestation, of his having thoroughly and entirely sleeped, conform to the Gloss. 22. Quest. 7. Si quis cum.

Being thus far advanced in the Formality of the Process, I find that this Consopiating Act engendreth another Act, whence ariseth the articulating of a Member; that again produceth a Third Act, fashionative of another Member; which Third bringing forth a Fourth, Procreative of another Act: New Members in a no fewer Number are shapen and framed, one still breeding, and begetting another (as Link after Link, the Coat of Mail at length is made) till thus, Piece after Piece, by little and little, like Information upon Information, the Process be compleatly well formed, and perfect in all his Members. Finally, having proceeded this length, I have recourse to my Dice nor is it to be thought, that this interruption, respit, or interpellation, is by me occasioned without very good reason inducing me thereunto, and a notable Experience of a most convincing and irrefragable force.

I remember, on a time, that in the Camp at Stockholm, there was a certain Gaseon named Gratianauld, Native of the Town of Saint Sever, who having lost all his Money at Play, and consecutively being very angry thereat, as you know, Pecunia est alius sanguis ut ait Anto. de Burtio, MC. accedens 2. extra ut lit. non contest & Bald. in L. si tuis C. de op. Lib. per not. & L. advocati. C. de advo. diu. Iud. pecunia est vita hominis & optimus fide jusser in necessitatibus: Did, at his coming forth of the Gaming-House, in the presence of the whole Company that was there, with a very loud Voice, speak in his own Language these following words: Pap. cap. de bious nillots que maux depipes rous tresire: aresque de pergudes sont les mires bingt, & quovatre bagnelles, ta pla donne rien pies cruz & Patacts, Scy de Gum de bons aulx, qui boille trequar ambe Iou à Belsambiz. Finding that none would make him any Answer, he passed from thence to that part of the Leaguer, where the huff, snuff, honder-sponder, swash-buckling High Germans were, to whom he renewed these very Terms, provoking them to fight with him; but all the Return he had from them to his stout Challenge, was only, Der Gasconner that schich, usz. mitt. cim. iedem zesclage aberer ist genegrer au stac • e • darum liebem fram ve hend serg au inverm hausraut. Finding also, that none of that Band of Teutonick Soldiers offered himself to the Combat; he passed to that Quarter of the Leaguer where the French Free-booting Adventures were encamped, and reiterating unto them, what he had before repeated to the Dutch Warriours, challenged them likewise to fight with him, and therewithal made some pretty little Gasconado frisking Gambols, to oblige them the more cheerfully and gallantly to cope with him in the Lists of a Duellizing Engagement; but no Answer at all was made unto him. Whereupon the Gascon despairing of meeting with any Antagonists, departed from thence, and laying himself down, not far from the Pavilions of the grand Christian Cavalier, Crissie fell fast asleep. When he had throughly sleeped an hour or two, another adventurous and all hazarding Blade of the Forlorn Hope of the lavishingly wasting Gamesters, having also lost all his Moneys, sallied forth with a Sword in his Hand, of a firm Resolution to fight with the aforesaid Gascon, seeing he had lost as well as he.

Saith the Gl. de poenitent. distinct. 2. C. sunt plures. To this effect having made enquiry and search for him throughout the whole Camp, and in sequel thereof found him asleep, he said unto him, Up, ho, good Fellow, in Name of all the Devils of Hell rise up, rise up, get up; I have lost my Money as well as thou hast done, let us therefore go fight lustily together, grapple and scuffle it to some purpose: Thou may'st see that; and look, my Tuck is no longer then thy Rapier. The Gascon altogether astonished at his unexpected provocation, without altering his former Dialect, spoke thus: Cap de Saint Arnault, qu'au segs tu qui me rebeillez? Que mande taberne te gire: Ho Saint Siobe Cab. de Gascoigne tapla do my Iou, quand à quest ta quam me bringu estae. The ventrous Royster inviteth him again to the Duel; but the Gascon, without condescending to his desire, said only this: Hepauvres Iet' esquinerie ares que son plat reposat: vene impaur que te pansat comme Iou peusse truquete. Thus in forgetting his loss, he forgot the eagerness which he had to fight. In conclusion, after that the other had likeways steeped a little, they instead of fighting, and possibly killing one another, went joyntly to a Sutler's Tent, where they drank together very amicably, each upon the pawn of his Sword. Thus by a little Sleep was pacified the ardent fury of two warlike Champions. There, Gossip, comes the Golden Word of Ihon Andn. in Cap. ult. de Sent. & rejudio. L. Sexto.

ON the sixth Day thereafter Pantagruel was returned home, at the very same hour that Triboulet was by Water come from Blois. Panurge at his Arrival gave him a Hogs Bladder, puffed up with Wind, and resounding, because of the hard Pease that were within it: Moreover he did present him with a guilt Wooden Sword, a hollow Budget made of a Tortoise shell, an Osier Watled Wicker-Bottle full of Briton Wine, and Five and Twenty Apples of the Orchard of Blanduco.

If he be such a Fool (quoth Carpalin) as to be won with Apples, there is no more Wit in his Pate than in the Head of an ordinary Cabbage. Triboulet girded the Sword and Scrip to his side, took the Bladder in his Hand, ate some few of the Apples, and drunk up all the Wine▪ Panurge very wistly and heedfully looking upon him, said, I never yet saw a Fool, (and I have seen ten thousand Franks worth of that kind of Cattle) who did not love to drink heartily, and by good long Draughts. When Triboulet had done with his Drinking, Panurge laid out before him, and exposed the Sum of the business, wherein he was to require his Advice in eloquent and choicely-sorted Terms, adorned with Flourishes of Rhetorick. But before he had altogether done, Triboulet with his Fist gave him a bouncing Whirret between the Shoulders, rendred back into his Hand again the empty Bottle, filipped and fli • ted him on the Nose with the Hogs Bladder; and lastly, for a final resolution, shaking and wagging his Head strongly and disorderly, he answered nothing else but this, By God, God; mad Fool, beware the Monk: Buzansay, Hornepipe. These Words thus finished, he slipped himself out of the Company, went aside, and ratling the Bladder, took a huge Delight in the Melody of the rickling, crackling noise of the Pease; after which time it lay not in the power of them all to draw out of his Chaps the Articulate Sound of one Syllable; insomuch that when Panurge went about to interrogate him further, Triboulet drew his Wooden Sword, and would have stuck him therewith. I have fished fair now, (quoth Panurge) and brought my Pigs to a fine Market. Have I not got a brave Determination of all my Doubts, and a Responce in all things agreeable to the Oracle that gave it? He is a great Fool that is not to be denied; yet is he a greater Fool who brought him hither to me. That Bolt, quoth Carpalin, levels point blank at me; but of the three I am the greatest Fool, who did impart the Secret of my Thoughts to such an Idiot Ass and Native Ninny.

Without putting our selves to any stir or trouble in the least, (quoth Pantagruel) let us maturely and seriously consider and perpend the Gestures and Speech which he hath made and uttered: In them veritably (quoth he) have I remarked and observed some excellent and notable Mysteries; yea, of such important and worth and weight, that I shall never henceforth be astonished, nor think strange, why the Turks with a great deal of Worship and Reverence, Honour and Respect Natural Fools, equally with their Primest Doctors, Mufties, Divines and Prophets. Did not you take heed (quoth he) a little before he opened his Mouth to speak, what a shogging, shaking and wagging his Head did keep? By the approved Doctrine of the ancient Philosophers, the customary Ceremonies of the most expert Magicians, and the received Opinions of the learnedest Lawyers, such a brangling Agitation and Moving should by us all be judged to proceed from, and be quickned and suscitated by the coming and Inspiration of the Prophetizing and Fatielical Spirit, which entring briskly, and on a sudden, into a shallow Receptacle of a debil Substance (for as you know, and as the Proverb shews it, a little Head containeth not much Brains) was the cause of that Commotion. This is conform to what is avouched by the most skilful Physicians, when they affirm, that Shakings and Tremblings fall upon the Members of a Humane Body, partly because of the Heaviness and violent Impetuosity of the Burthen and Load that is carried, and other part, by reason of the Weakness and Imbecillity that is in the vertue of the bearing Organ: A manifest Example whereof appeareth in those, who fasting, are not able to carry to their Head a great Gobletfull of Wine without a trembling and a shaking in the Hand that holds it. This of old was accounted a Prefiguration and mystical pointing out of the Pythian Divineress, who used always before the uttering of a Responce from the Oracle, to shake a Branch of her Domestick Lawrel. Lampridius also testifieth, that the Emperor Heliogabulus, to acquire unto himself the Reputation of a Sooth-sayer, did, on several Holy Days of prime Solemnity, in the Presence of the Fanatick Rabble, make the Head of his Idol, by some slight within the Body thereof, publickly to shake. Plautus, in his Asserie, declareth likeways, that Saurius, whithersoever he walked like one quite distracted of his Wits, keepeth such a furious lolling and mad-like shaking of his Head, that he commonly affrighted those who casually met with him in his Way. The said Author in another place shewing a Reason why Charmides shook and brangled his Head, assevered that he was transported, and in an Extasie. Catullus after the same manner maketh mention in his Berecynthia and Atys, of the place wherein the Menades, Bacchical Women, She-Priests of the Lyaean God, and demented Prophetesses, carrying Ivy Boughs in their hands, did shake their Heads. As in the like case amongst the Gauls, the guelded Priests of Cybele were wont to do in the celebrating of some Festivals, which according to the sense of the ancient Theologues, have from thence had their Denomination; for 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 signifieth to turn round, whirl about, shake the Head, and play the part of one that is wry-necked.

Semblably Titus Livius writeth, that in the Solemnization time of the Bacchanalian Fobedayes at Rome, both Men and Women seemed to Prophetize and Vaticinate, because of an affected kind of wagging of the Head, shrugging of the Shoulders, and Jectigation of the whole Body, which they used then most punctually. For the common Voice of the Philosophers, together with the Opinion of the People, asserteth for an irrefragable Truth, that Vaticination is seldom by the Heavens bestowed on any, without the Concomitancy of a little Phrensie, and a Head shaking, not only when the said presaging Vertue is infused, but when the Person also therewith inspired declareth and manifesteth it unto others. The Learned Lawyer Iulien, being asked on a time, if that Slave might be truly esteemed to be healthful and in a good plight, who had not only convers'd with some furious, maniack and enraged People, but in their Company had also prophesied, yet without a Noddle-shaking Concussion, answered, That seeing there was no Headwagging at the time of his Predictions, he might be held for sound and compotent enough. Is it not daily seen how Schoolmasters, Teachers, Tutors and Instructors of Children, shake the Heads of their Disciples, (as one would do a Pot in holding it by the Lugs) that by this Erection, Vellication, stretching and pulling their Ears, (which according to the Doctrine of the sage Egyptians, is a Member consecrated to the Memory) they may stir them up to recollect their scatter'd Thoughts, bring home those Fancies of theirs, which perhaps have been extravagantly roaming abroad upon strange and uncouth Objects, and totally range their Judgments, which possibly by disordinate Affections have been made wild, to the Rule and Pattean of a wise, discreet, vertuous and Philosophical Discipline: All which Virgil acknowledgeth to be true, in the branglement of Apollo Cynthius.

HE says you are a Fool; and what kind of Fool? A mad Fool, who in your old Age would enslave your self to the Bondage of Matrimony, and shut your Pleasures up within a Wedlock, whose Key some Ruffian carries in his Codpiece. He says furthermore, beware of the Monk. Upon mine Honour, it gives me in my mind, that you will be cuckolded by a Monk. Nay, I will engage mine Honour, which is the most precious Pawn I could have in my Possession, although I were sole and peaceable Dominator over all Europe, Asia, and Africk, that if you marry, you will surely be one of the Horned Brotherhood of Vulcan. Hereby may you perceive how much I do attribute to the wise Foolery of our Morosoph Triboulet. The other Oracles and Responses did in the general prognosticate you a Cuckold, without descending so near to the point of a particular Determination, as to pitch upon what Vocation, amongst the several sorts of Men, he should profess who is to be the Copesmate of your Wife, and Hornifyer of your proper self. Thus noble Triboulet tells it us plainly, from whose Words we may gather with all ease imaginary, that your Cuckoldry is to be infamous, and so much the more scandalous, that your Conjugal Bed will be incestuously contaminated with the Filthiness of a Monkery Lecher. Moreover he says, that you will be the Hornepipe of Buzansay. That is to say, well horned, hornified and cornuted: And as Triboulet's Unkle asked from Lewis the Twelfth, for a younger Brother of his own who lived at Blois, the Hornepipes of Buzansay, for the Organ Pipes, through the mistake of one Word for another: Even so, whilst you think to marry a wise, humble, calm, discreet and honest Wife, you shall unhappily stumble upon one witless, proud, lowd, obstreperous, bawling, clamourous, and more unpleasant than any Buzansay-hornepipe. Consider withal, how he flirted you on the Nose with the Bladder, and gave you a sound thumping Blow with his Fist upon the ridge of the Back. This denotates and presageth, that you shall be banged, beaten and filipped by her; and that also she will steal of your Goods from you, as you stole the Hogs Bladder from the little Boys of Vaubreton. Plat contrary (quoth Panurge) not that I would impudently exempt my self from being a Vassal in the Territory of Folly; I hold of that Jurisdiction, and am subject thereto, I confess it; and why should I not? for the whole World is foolish. In the old Lorrain Language (fou for oou) All and Fool were the same thing. Besides it is avouched by Solomon, that infinite is the number of Fools: From an Infinity nothing can be deducted or abated; nor yet by the Testimony of Aristotle, can any thing thereto be added or subjoyned. Therefore were I a mad Fool, if being a Fool I should not hold my self a Fool. After the same manner of speaking, we may averr the number of the mad and enraged Folks to be infinite. Avicenne maketh no Bones to assert, that the several kinds of Madness are infinite.