Gargantua and Pantagruel
diametrically opposite to the other, and signifies that you despise wine,
and having mastered it, as it were, tread it under foot.
I am no scholar, quoth Friar John, for which I’m heartily sorry, yet I find
by my breviary that in the Revelation a woman was seen with the moon under
her feet, which was a most wonderful sight. Now, as Bigot explained it to
me, this was to signify that she was not of the nature of other women; for
they have all the moon at their heads, and consequently their brains are
always troubled with a lunacy. This makes me willing to believe what you
said, dear Madam Lantern.
Chapter 5.XXXV.
How we went underground to come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle, and how
Chinon is the oldest city in the world.
We went underground through a plastered vault, on which was coarsely
painted a dance of women and satyrs waiting on old Silenus, who was
grinning o’ horseback on his ass. This made me say to Pantagruel, that
this entry put me in mind of the painted cellar in the oldest city in the
world, where such paintings are to be seen, and in as cool a place.
Which is the oldest city in the world? asked Pantagruel. ‘Tis Chinon, sir,
or Cainon in Touraine, said I. I know, returned Pantagruel, where Chinon
lies, and the painted cellar also, having myself drunk there many a glass
of cool wine; neither do I doubt but that Chinon is an ancient town
--witness its blazon. I own ‘tis said twice or thrice:
Chinon,
Little town,
Great renown,
On old stone
Long has stood;
There’s the Vienne, if you look down;
If you look up, there’s the wood.
But how, continued he, can you make it out that ‘tis the oldest city in the
world? Where did you find this written? I have found it in the sacred
writ, said I, that Cain was the first that built a town; we may then
reasonably conjecture that from his name he gave it that of Cainon. Thus,
after his example, most other founders of towns have given them their
names: Athena, that’s Minerva in Greek, to Athens; Alexander to
Alexandria; Constantine to Constantinople; Pompey to Pompeiopolis in
Cilicia; Adrian to Adrianople; Canaan, to the Canaanites; Saba, to the
Sabaeans; Assur, to the Assyrians; and so Ptolemais, Caesarea, Tiberias,
and Herodium in Judaea got their names.
While we were thus talking, there came to us the great flask whom our
lantern called the philosopher, her holiness the Bottle’s governor. He was
attended with a troop of the temple-guards, all French bottles in wicker
armour; and seeing us with our javelins wrapped with ivy, with our
illustrious lantern, whom he knew, he desired us to come in with all manner
of safety, and ordered we should be immediately conducted to the Princess
Bacbuc, the Bottle’s lady of honour, and priestess of all the mysteries;
which was done.
Chapter 5.XXXVI.
How we went down the tetradic steps, and of Panurge’s fear.
We went down one marble step under ground, where there was a resting, or,
as our workmen call it, a landing-place; then, turning to the left, we went
down two other steps, where there was another resting-place; after that we
came to three other steps, turning about, and met a third; and the like at
four steps which we met afterwards. There quoth Panurge, Is it here? How
many steps have you told? asked our magnificent lantern. One, two, three,
four, answered Pantagruel. How much is that? asked she. Ten, returned he.
Multiply that, said she, according to the same Pythagorical tetrad. That
is, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, cried Pantagruel. How much is the whole?
said she. One hundred, answered Pantagruel. Add, continued she, the first
cube--that’s eight. At the end of that fatal number you’ll find the temple
gate; and pray observe, this is the true psychogony of Plato, so celebrated
by the Academics, yet so little understood; one moiety of which consists of
the unity of the two first numbers full of two square and two cubic
numbers. We then went down those numerical stairs, all under ground, and I
can assure you, in the first place, that our legs stood us in good stead;
for had it not been for ‘em, we had rolled just like so many hogsheads into
a vault. Secondly, our radiant lantern gave us just so much light as is in
St. Patrick’s hole in Ireland, or Trophonius’s pit in Boeotia; which caused
Panurge to say to her, after we had got down some seventy-eight steps:
Dear madam, with a sorrowful, aching heart, I most humbly beseech your
lanternship to lead us back. May I be led to hell if I be not half dead
with fear; my heart is sunk down into my hose; I am afraid I shall make
buttered eggs in my breeches. I freely consent never to marry. You have
given yourself too much trouble on my account. The Lord shall reward you
in his great rewarder; neither will I be ungrateful when I come out of this
cave of Troglodytes. Let’s go back, I pray you. I’m very much afraid this
is Taenarus, the low way to hell, and methinks I already hear Cerberus
bark. Hark! I hear the cur, or my ears tingle. I have no manner of
kindness for the dog, for there never is a greater toothache than when dogs
bite us by the shins. And if this be only Trophonius’s pit, the lemures,
hobthrushes, and goblins will certainly swallow us alive, just as they
devoured formerly one of Demetrius’s halberdiers for want of bridles. Art
thou here, Friar John? Prithee, dear, dear cod, stay by me; I’m almost
dead with fear. Hast thou got thy bilbo? Alas! poor pilgarlic’s
defenceless. I’m a naked man, thou knowest; let’s go back. Zoons, fear
nothing, cried Friar John; I’m by thee, and have thee fast by the collar;
eighteen devils shan’t get thee out of my clutches, though I were unarmed.
Never did a man yet want weapons who had a good arm with as stout a heart.
Heaven would sooner send down a shower of them; even as in Provence, in the
fields of La Crau, near Mariannes, there rained stones (they are there to
this day) to help Hercules, who otherwise wanted wherewithal to fight
Neptune’s two bastards. But whither are we bound? Are we a-going to the
little children’s limbo? By Pluto, they’ll bepaw and conskite us all. Or
are we going to hell for orders? By cob’s body, I’ll hamper, bethwack, and
belabour all the devils, now I have some vine-leaves in my shoes. Thou
shalt see me lay about me like mad, old boy. Which way? where the devil
are they? I fear nothing but their damned horns; but cuckoldy Panurge’s
bull-feather will altogether secure me from ‘em. Lo! in a prophetic spirit
I already see him, like another Actaeon, horned, horny, hornified.
Prithee, quoth Panurge, take heed thyself, dear frater, lest, till monks
have leave to marry, thou weddest something thou dostn’t like, as some
cat-o’-nine-tails or the quartan ague; if thou dost, may I never come safe
and sound out of this hypogeum, this subterranean cave, if I don’t tup and
ram that disease merely for the sake of making thee a cornuted, corniferous
property; otherwise I fancy the quartan ague is but an indifferent
bedfellow. I remember Gripe-men-all threatened to wed thee to some such
thing; for which thou calledest him heretic.
Here our splendid lantern interrupted them, letting us know this was the
place where we were to have a taste of the creature, and be silent; bidding
us not despair of having the word of the Bottle before we went back, since
we had lined our shoes with vine-leaves.
Come on then, cried Panurge, let’s charge through and through all the
devils of hell; we can but perish, and that’s soon done. However, I
thought to have reserved my life for some mighty battle. Move, move, move
forwards; I am as stout as Hercules, my breeches are full of courage; my
heart trembles a little, I own, but that’s only an effect of the coldness
and dampness of this vault; ‘tis neither fear nor ague. Come on, move on,
piss, pish, push on. My name’s William Dreadnought.
Chapter 5.XXXVII.
How the temple gates in a wonderful manner opened of themselves.
After we were got down the steps, we came to a portal of fine jasper, of
Doric order, on whose front we read this sentence in the finest gold,
EN OINO ALETHEIA--that is, In wine truth. The gates were of
Corinthian-like brass, massy, wrought with little vine-branches, finely
embossed and engraven, and were equally joined and closed together in their
mortise without padlock, key-chain, or tie whatsoever. Where they joined,
there hanged an Indian loadstone as big as an Egyptian bean, set in gold,
having two points, hexagonal, in a right line; and on each side, towards the
wall, hung a handful of scordium (garlic germander).
There our noble lantern desired us not to take it amiss that she went no
farther with us, leaving us wholly to the conduct of the priestess Bacbuc;
for she herself was not allowed to go in, for certain causes rather to be
concealed than revealed to mortals. However, she advised us to be resolute
and secure, and to trust to her for the return. She then pulled the
loadstone that hung at the folding of the gates, and threw it into a silver
box fixed for that purpose; which done, from the threshold of each gate she
drew a twine of crimson silk about nine feet long, by which the scordium
hung, and having fastened it to two gold buckles that hung at the sides,
she withdrew.
Immediately the gates flew open without being touched; not with a creaking
or loud harsh noise like that made by heavy brazen gates, but with a soft
pleasing murmur that resounded through the arches of the temple.
Pantagruel soon knew the cause of it, having discovered a small cylinder or
roller that joined the gates over the threshold, and, turning like them
towards the wall on a hard well-polished ophites stone, with rubbing and
rolling caused that harmonious murmur.
I wondered how the gates thus opened of themselves to the right and left,
and after we were all got in, I cast my eye between the gates and the wall
to endeavour to know how this happened; for one would have thought our kind
lantern had put between the gates the herb aethiopis, which they say opens
some things that are shut. But I perceived that the parts of the gates
that joined on the inside were covered with steel, and just where the said
gates touched when they were opened I saw two square Indian loadstones of a
bluish hue, well polished, and half a span broad, mortised in the temple
wall. Now, by the hidden and admirable power of the loadstones, the steel
plates were put into motion, and consequently the gates were slowly drawn;
however, not always, but when the said loadstone on the outside was
removed, after which the steel was freed from its power, the two bunches of
scordium being at the same time put at some distance, because it deadens
the magnes and robs it of its attractive virtue.
On the loadstone that was placed on the right side the following iambic
verse was curiously engraven in ancient Roman characters:
Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.
Fate leads the willing, and th’ unwilling draws.
The following sentence was neatly cut in the loadstone that was on the
left:
ALL THINGS TEND TO THEIR END.
Chapter 5.XXXVIII.
Of the Temple’s admirable pavement.
When I had read those inscriptions, I admired the beauty of the temple, and
particularly the disposition of its pavement, with which no work that is
now, or has been under the cope of heaven, can justly be compared; not that
of the Temple of Fortune at Praeneste in Sylla’s time, or the pavement of
the Greeks, called asarotum, laid by Sosistratus at Pergamus. For this
here was wholly in compartments of precious stones, all in their natural
colours: one of red jasper, most charmingly spotted; another of ophites; a
third of porphyry; a fourth of lycophthalmy, a stone of four different