Gargantua and Pantagruel
Among the rest, several elephants in various postures; twelve of which were
the six males and six females that were brought to Rome by their governor
in the time of Germanicus, Tiberius’s nephew. Some of them were learned
elephants, some musicians, others philosophers, dancers, and showers of
tricks; and all sat down at table in good order, silently eating and
drinking like so many fathers in a fratery-room.
With their snouts or proboscises, some two cubits long, they draw up water
for their own drinking, and take hold of palm leaves, plums, and all manner
of edibles, using them offensively or defensively as we do our fists; with
them tossing men high into the air in fight, and making them burst with
laughing when they come to the ground.
They have joints (in their legs), whatever some men, who doubtless never
saw any but painted, may have written to the contrary. Between their teeth
they have two huge horns; thus Juba called ‘em, and Pausanias tells us they
are not teeth, but horns; however, Philostratus will have ‘em to be teeth,
and not horns. ‘Tis all one to me, provided you will be pleased to own
them to be true ivory. These are some three or four cubits long, and are
fixed in the upper jawbone, and consequently not in the lowermost. If you
hearken to those who will tell you to the contrary, you will find yourself
damnably mistaken, for that’s a lie with a latchet; though ‘twere Aelian,
that long-bow man, that told you so, never believe him, for he lies as fast
as a dog can trot. ‘Twas in this very island that Pliny, his brother
tell-truth, had seen some elephants dance on the rope with bells, and whip
over the tables, presto, begone, while people were at feasts, without so
much as touching the toping topers or the topers toping.
I saw a rhinoceros there, just such a one as Harry Clerberg had formerly
showed me. Methought it was not much unlike a certain boar which I had
formerly seen at Limoges, except the sharp horn on its snout, that was
about a cubit long; by the means of which that animal dares encounter with
an elephant, that is sometimes killed with its point thrust into its belly,
which is its most tender and defenceless part.
I saw there two and thirty unicorns. They are a curst sort of creatures,
much resembling a fine horse, unless it be that their heads are like a
stag’s, their feet like an elephant’s, their tails like a wild boar’s, and
out of each of their foreheads sprouts out a sharp black horn, some six or
seven feet long; commonly it dangles down like a turkey-cock’s comb. When
a unicorn has a mind to fight, or put it to any other use, what does it do
but make it stand, and then ‘tis as straight as an arrow.
I saw one of them, which was attended with a throng of other wild beasts,
purify a fountain with its horn. With that Panurge told me that his
prancer, alias his nimble-wimble, was like the unicorn, not altogether in
length indeed, but in virtue and propriety; for as the unicorn purified
pools and fountains from filth and venom, so that other animals came and
drank securely there afterwards, in the like manner others might water
their nags, and dabble after him without fear of shankers, carnosities,
gonorrhoeas, buboes, crinkams, and such other plagues caught by those who
venture to quench their amorous thirst in a common puddle; for with his
nervous horn he removed all the infection that might be lurking in some
blind cranny of the mephitic sweet-scented hole.
Well, quoth Friar John, when you are sped, that is, when you are married,
we will make a trial of this on thy spouse, merely for charity sake, since
you are pleased to give us so beneficial an instruction.
Ay, ay, returned Panurge, and then immediately I’ll give you a pretty
gentle aggregative pill of God, made up of two and twenty kind stabs with a
dagger, after the Caesarian way. Catso, cried Friar John, I had rather
take off a bumper of good cool wine.
I saw there the golden fleece formerly conquered by Jason, and can assure
you, on the word of an honest man, that those who have said it was not a
fleece but a golden pippin, because melon signifies both an apple and a
sheep, were utterly mistaken.
I saw also a chameleon, such as Aristotle describes it, and like that which
had been formerly shown me by Charles Maris, a famous physician of the
noble city of Lyons on the Rhone; and the said chameleon lived on air just
as the other did.
I saw three hydras, like those I had formerly seen. They are a kind of
serpent, with seven different heads.
I saw also fourteen phoenixes. I had read in many authors that there was
but one in the whole world in every century; but, if I may presume to speak
my mind, I declare that those who said this had never seen any, unless it
were in the land of Tapestry; though ‘twere vouched by Claudian or
Lactantius Firmianus.
I saw the skin of Apuleius’s golden ass.
I saw three hundred and nine pelicans.
Item, six thousand and sixteen Seleucid birds marching in battalia, and
picking up straggling grasshoppers in cornfields.
Item, some cynamologi, argatiles, caprimulgi, thynnunculs, onocrotals, or
bitterns, with their wide swallows, stymphalides, harpies, panthers,
dorcasses, or bucks, cemades, cynocephalises, satyrs, cartasans, tarands,
uri, monopses, or bonasi, neades, steras, marmosets, or monkeys, bugles,
musimons, byturoses, ophyri, screech-owls, goblins, fairies, and griffins.
I saw Mid-Lent o’ horseback, with Mid-August and Mid-March holding its
stirrups.
I saw some mankind wolves, centaurs, tigers, leopards, hyenas,
camelopardals, and orixes, or huge wild goats with sharp horns.
I saw a remora, a little fish called echineis by the Greeks, and near it a
tall ship that did not get ahead an inch, though she was in the offing with
top and top-gallants spread before the wind. I am somewhat inclined to
believe that ‘twas the very numerical ship in which Periander the tyrant
happened to be when it was stopped by such a little fish in spite of wind
and tide. It was in this land of Satin, and in no other, that Mutianus had
seen one of them.
Friar John told us that in the days of yore two sorts of fishes used to
abound in our courts of judicature, and rotted the bodies and tormented the
souls of those who were at law, whether noble or of mean descent, high or
low, rich or poor: the first were your April fish or mackerel (pimps,
panders, and bawds); the others your beneficial remoras, that is, the
eternity of lawsuits, the needless lets that keep ‘em undecided.
I saw some sphynges, some raphes, some ounces, and some cepphi, whose
fore-feet are like hands and their hind-feet like man’s.
Also some crocutas and some eali as big as sea-horses, with elephants’
tails, boars’ jaws and tusks, and horns as pliant as an ass’s ears.
The crocutas, most fleet animals, as big as our asses of Mirebalais, have
necks, tails, and breasts like a lion’s, legs like a stag’s, have mouths up
to the ears, and but two teeth, one above and one below; they speak with
human voices, but when they do they say nothing.
Some people say that none e’er saw an eyrie, or nest of sakers; if you’ll
believe me, I saw no less than eleven, and I’m sure I reckoned right.
I saw some left-handed halberds, which were the first that I had ever seen.
I saw some manticores, a most strange sort of creatures, which have the
body of a lion, red hair, a face and ears like a man’s, three rows of teeth
which close together as if you joined your hands with your fingers between
each other; they have a sting in their tails like a scorpion’s, and a very
melodious voice.
I saw some catablepases, a sort of serpents, whose bodies are small, but
their heads large, without any proportion, so that they’ve much ado to lift
them up; and their eyes are so infectious that whoever sees ‘em dies upon
the spot, as if he had seen a basilisk.
I saw some beasts with two backs, and those seemed to me the merriest
creatures in the world. They were most nimble at wriggling the buttocks,
and more diligent in tail-wagging than any water-wagtails, perpetually
jogging and shaking their double rumps.
I saw there some milched crawfish, creatures that I never had heard of
before in my life. These moved in very good order, and ‘twould have done
your heart good to have seen ‘em.
Chapter 5.XXXI.
How in the land of Satin we saw Hearsay, who kept a school of vouching.
We went a little higher up into the country of Tapestry, and saw the
Mediterranean Sea open to the right and left down to the very bottom; just
as the Red Sea very fairly left its bed at the Arabian Gulf to make a lane
for the Jews when they left Egypt.
There I found Triton winding his silver shell instead of a horn, and also
Glaucus, Proteus, Nereus, and a thousand other godlings and sea monsters.
I also saw an infinite number of fish of all kinds, dancing, flying,
vaulting, fighting, eating, breathing, billing, shoving, milting, spawning,
hunting, fishing, skirmishing, lying in ambuscado, making truces,
cheapening, bargaining, swearing, and sporting.
In a blind corner we saw Aristotle holding a lantern in the posture in
which the hermit uses to be drawn near St. Christopher, watching, prying,
thinking, and setting everything down.
Behind him stood a pack of other philosophers, like so many bums by a
head-bailiff, as Appian, Heliodorus, Athenaeus, Porphyrius, Pancrates,
Arcadian, Numenius, Possidonius, Ovidius, Oppianus, Olympius, Seleucus,
Leonides, Agathocles, Theophrastus, Damostratus, Mutianus, Nymphodorus,
Aelian, and five hundred other such plodding dons, who were full of
business, yet had little to do; like Chrysippus or Aristarchus of Soli, who
for eight-and-fifty years together did nothing in the world but examine the
state and concerns of bees.
I spied Peter Gilles among these, with a urinal in his hand, narrowly
watching the water of those goodly fishes.
When we had long beheld everything in this land of Satin, Pantagruel said,
I have sufficiently fed my eyes, but my belly is empty all this while, and
chimes to let me know ‘tis time to go to dinner. Let’s take care of the
body lest the soul abdicate it; and to this effect let’s taste some of
these anacampserotes [‘An herb, the touching of which is said to reconcile
lovers.’--Motteux.) that hang over our heads. Psha, cried one, they are
mere trash, stark naught, o’ my word; they’re good for nothing.
I then went to pluck some mirobolans off of a piece of tapestry whereon
they hung, but the devil a bit I could chew or swallow ‘em; and had you had
them betwixt your teeth you would have sworn they had been thrown silk;
there was no manner of savour in ‘em.
One might be apt to think Heliogabalus had taken a hint from thence, to
feast those whom he had caused to fast a long time, promising them a
sumptuous, plentiful, and imperial feast after it; for all the treat used
to amount to no more than several sorts of meat in wax, marble,
earthenware, painted and figured tablecloths.
While we were looking up and down to find some more substantial food, we
heard a loud various noise, like that of paper-mills (or women bucking of
linen); so with all speed we went to the place whence the noise came, where
we found a diminutive, monstrous, misshapen old fellow, called Hearsay.
His mouth was slit up to his ears, and in it were seven tongues, each of
them cleft into seven parts. However, he chattered, tattled, and prated
with all the seven at once, of different matters, and in divers languages.
He had as many ears all over his head and the rest of his body as Argus
formerly had eyes, and was as blind as a beetle, and had the palsy in his
legs.
About him stood an innumerable number of men and women, gaping, listening,