Gargantua and Pantagruel
I have not a little looked about and sought for so necessary a part of a
commonwealth: ay, and I dare assure you that I have pried up and down with
the exactness of an informer; as ready to number, both to the right and
left, how many, and on what side, we might find most roasting cooks, as a
spy would be to reckon the bastions of a town. Now at Amiens, in four,
nay, five times less ground than we have trod in our contemplations, I
could have shown you above fourteen streets of roasting cooks, most
ancient, savoury, and aromatic. I cannot imagine what kind of pleasure you
can have taken in gazing on the lions and Africans (so methinks you call
their tigers) near the belfry, or in ogling the porcupines and estridges in
the Lord Philip Strozzi’s palace. Faith and truth I had rather see a good
fat goose at the spit. This porphyry, those marbles are fine; I say
nothing to the contrary; but our cheesecakes at Amiens are far better in my
mind. These ancient statues are well made; I am willing to believe it;
but, by St. Ferreol of Abbeville, we have young wenches in our country
which please me better a thousand times.
What is the reason, asked Friar John, that monks are always to be found in
kitchens, and kings, emperors, and popes are never there? Is there not,
said Rhizotome, some latent virtue and specific propriety hid in the
kettles and pans, which, as the loadstone attracts iron, draws the monks
there, and cannot attract emperors, popes, or kings? Or is it a natural
induction and inclination, fixed in the frocks and cowls, which of itself
leads and forceth those good religious men into kitchens, whether they will
or no? He would speak of forms following matter, as Averroes calls them,
answered Epistemon. Right, said Friar John.
I will not offer to solve this problem, said Pantagruel; for it is somewhat
ticklish, and you can hardly handle it without coming off scurvily; but I
will tell you what I have heard.
Antigonus, King of Macedon, one day coming into one of the tents, where his
cooks used to dress his meat, and finding there poet Antagoras frying a
conger, and holding the pan himself, merrily asked him, Pray, Mr. Poet, was
Homer frying congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon? Antagoras
readily answered: But do you think, sir, that when Agamemnon did them he
made it his business to know if any in his camp were frying congers? The
king thought it an indecency that a poet should be thus a-frying in a
kitchen; and the poet let the king know that it was a more indecent thing
for a king to be found in such a place. I’ll clap another story upon the
neck of this, quoth Panurge, and will tell you what Breton Villandry
answered one day to the Duke of Guise.
They were saying that at a certain battle of King Francis against Charles
the Fifth, Breton, armed cap-a-pie to the teeth, and mounted like St.
George, yet sneaked off, and played least in sight during the engagement.
Blood and oons, answered Breton, I was there, and can prove it easily; nay,
even where you, my lord, dared not have been. The duke began to resent
this as too rash and saucy; but Breton easily appeased him, and set them
all a-laughing. Egad, my lord, quoth he, I kept out of harm’s way; I was
all the while with your page Jack, skulking in a certain place where you
had not dared hide your head as I did. Thus discoursing, they got to their
ships, and left the island of Chely.
Chapter 4.XII.
How Pantagruel passed by the land of Pettifogging, and of the strange way
of living among the Catchpoles.
Steering our course forwards the next day, we passed through Pettifogging,
a country all blurred and blotted, so that I could hardly tell what to make
on’t. There we saw some pettifoggers and catchpoles, rogues that will hang
their father for a groat. They neither invited us to eat or drink; but,
with a multiplied train of scrapes and cringes, said they were all at our
service for the Legem pone.
One of our droggermen related to Pantagruel their strange way of living,
diametrically opposed to that of our modern Romans; for at Rome a world of
folks get an honest livelihood by poisoning, drubbing, lambasting,
stabbing, and murthering; but the catchpoles earn theirs by being thrashed;
so that if they were long without a tight lambasting, the poor dogs with
their wives and children would be starved. This is just, quoth Panurge,
like those who, as Galen tells us, cannot erect the cavernous nerve towards
the equinoctial circle unless they are soundly flogged. By St. Patrick’s
slipper, whoever should jerk me so, would soon, instead of setting me
right, throw me off the saddle, in the devil’s name.
The way is this, said the interpreter. When a monk, levite, close-fisted
usurer, or lawyer owes a grudge to some neighbouring gentleman, he sends to
him one of those catchpoles or apparitors, who nabs, or at least cites him,
serves a writ or warrant upon him, thumps, abuses, and affronts him
impudently by natural instinct, and according to his pious instructions;
insomuch, that if the gentleman hath but any guts in his brains, and is not
more stupid than a gyrin frog, he will find himself obliged either to apply
a faggot-stick or his sword to the rascal’s jobbernowl, give him the gentle
lash, or make him cut a caper out at the window, by way of correction.
This done, Catchpole is rich for four months at least, as if bastinadoes
were his real harvest; for the monk, levite, usurer, or lawyer will reward
him roundly; and my gentleman must pay him such swingeing damages that his
acres must bleed for it, and he be in danger of miserably rotting within a
stone doublet, as if he had struck the king.
Quoth Panurge, I know an excellent remedy against this used by the Lord of
Basche. What is it? said Pantagruel. The Lord of Basche, said Panurge,
was a brave, honest, noble-spirited gentleman, who, at his return from the
long war in which the Duke of Ferrara, with the help of the French, bravely
defended himself against the fury of Pope Julius the Second, was every day
cited, warned, and prosecuted at the suit and for the sport and fancy of
the fat prior of St. Louant.
One morning, as he was at breakfast with some of his domestics (for he
loved to be sometimes among them) he sent for one Loire, his baker, and his
spouse, and for one Oudart, the vicar of his parish, who was also his
butler, as the custom was then in France; then said to them before his
gentlemen and other servants: You all see how I am daily plagued with
these rascally catchpoles. Truly, if you do not lend me your helping hand,
I am finally resolved to leave the country, and go fight for the sultan, or
the devil, rather than be thus eternally teased. Therefore, to be rid of
their damned visits, hereafter, when any of them come here, be ready, you
baker and your wife, to make your personal appearance in my great hall, in
your wedding clothes, as if you were going to be affianced. Here, take
these ducats, which I give you to keep you in a fitting garb. As for you,
Sir Oudart, be sure you make your personal appearance there in your fine
surplice and stole, not forgetting your holy water, as if you were to wed
them. Be you there also, Trudon, said he to his drummer, with your pipe
and tabor. The form of matrimony must be read, and the bride kissed; then
all of you, as the witnesses used to do in this country, shall give one
another the remembrance of the wedding, which you know is to be a blow with
your fist, bidding the party struck remember the nuptials by that token.
This will but make you have the better stomach to your supper; but when you
come to the catchpole’s turn, thrash him thrice and threefold, as you would
a sheaf of green corn; do not spare him; maul him, drub him, lambast him,
swinge him off, I pray you. Here, take these steel gauntlets, covered with
kid. Head, back, belly, and sides, give him blows innumerable; he that
gives him most shall be my best friend. Fear not to be called to an
account about it; I will stand by you; for the blows must seem to be given
in jest, as it is customary among us at all weddings.
Ay, but how shall we know the catchpole? said the man of God. All sorts of
people daily resort to this castle. I have taken care of that, replied the
lord. When some fellow, either on foot, or on a scurvy jade, with a large
broad silver ring on his thumb, comes to the door, he is certainly a
catchpole; the porter having civilly let him in, shall ring the bell; then
be all ready, and come into the hall, to act the tragi-comedy whose plot I
have now laid for you.
That numerical day, as chance would have it, came an old fat ruddy
catchpole. Having knocked at the gate, and then pissed, as most men will
do, the porter soon found him out, by his large greasy spatterdashes, his
jaded hollow-flanked mare, his bagful of writs and informations dangling at
his girdle, but, above all, by the large silver hoop on his left thumb.
The porter was civil to him, admitted him in kindly, and rung the bell
briskly. As soon as the baker and his wife heard it, they clapped on their
best clothes, and made their personal appearance in the hall, keeping their
gravities like a new-made judge. The dominie put on his surplice and
stole, and as he came out of his office, met the catchpole, had him in
there, and made him suck his face a good while, while the gauntlets were
drawing on all hands; and then told him, You are come just in pudding-time;
my lord is in his right cue. We shall feast like kings anon; here is to be
swingeing doings; we have a wedding in the house; here, drink and cheer up;
pull away.
While these two were at it hand-to-fist, Basche, seeing all his people in
the hall in their proper equipage, sends for the vicar. Oudart comes with
the holy-water pot, followed by the catchpole, who, as he came into the
hall, did not forget to make good store of awkward cringes, and then served
Basche with a writ. Basche gave him grimace for grimace, slipped an angel
into his mutton-fist, and prayed him to assist at the contract and
ceremony; which he did. When it was ended, thumps and fisticuffs began to
fly about among the assistants; but when it came to the catchpole’s turn,
they all laid on him so unmercifully with their gauntlets that they at last
settled him, all stunned and battered, bruised and mortified, with one of
his eyes black and blue, eight ribs bruised, his brisket sunk in, his
omoplates in four quarters, his under jawbone in three pieces; and all this
in jest, and no harm done. God wot how the levite belaboured him, hiding
within the long sleeve of his canonical shirt his huge steel gauntlet lined
with ermine; for he was a strong-built ball, and an old dog at fisticuffs.
The catchpole, all of a bloody tiger-like stripe, with much ado crawled
home to L’Isle Bouchart, well pleased and edified, however, with Basche’s
kind reception; and, with the help of the good surgeons of the place, lived
as long as you would have him. From that time to this, not a word of the
business; the memory of it was lost with the sound of the bells that rung
with joy at his funeral.
Chapter 4.XIII.
How, like Master Francis Villon, the Lord of Basche commended his servants.
The catchpole being packed off on blind Sorrel--so he called his one-eyed
mare--Basche sent for his lady, her women, and all his servants, into the
arbour of his garden; had wine brought, attended with good store of
pasties, hams, fruit, and other table-ammunition, for a nunchion; drank
with them joyfully, and then told them this story:
Master Francis Villon in his old age retired to St. Maxent in Poitou, under
the patronage of a good honest abbot of the place. There to make sport for
the mob, he undertook to get the Passion acted, after the way, and in the