Gargantua and Pantagruel
out the lower end of his cradle, which notwithstanding was made of a great
post five foot in square; and as soon as he had gotten out his feet, he
slid down as well as he could till he had got his soles to the ground, and
then with a mighty force he rose up, carrying his cradle upon his back,
bound to him like a tortoise that crawls up against a wall; and to have
seen him, you would have thought it had been a great carrick of five
hundred tons upon one end. In this manner he entered into the great hall
where they were banqueting, and that very boldly, which did much affright
the company; yet, because his arms were tied in, he could not reach
anything to eat, but with great pain stooped now and then a little to take
with the whole flat of his tongue some lick, good bit, or morsel. Which
when his father saw, he knew well enough that they had left him without
giving him anything to eat, and therefore commanded that he should be
loosed from the said chains, by the counsel of the princes and lords there
present. Besides that also the physicians of Gargantua said that, if they
did thus keep him in the cradle, he would be all his lifetime subject to
the stone. When he was unchained, they made him to sit down, where, after
he had fed very well, he took his cradle and broke it into more than five
hundred thousand pieces with one blow of his fist that he struck in the
midst of it, swearing that he would never come into it again.
Chapter 2.V.
Of the acts of the noble Pantagruel in his youthful age.
Thus grew Pantagruel from day to day, and to everyone’s eye waxed more and
more in all his dimensions, which made his father to rejoice by a natural
affection. Therefore caused he to be made for him, whilst he was yet
little, a pretty crossbow wherewith to shoot at small birds, which now they
call the great crossbow at Chantelle. Then he sent him to the school to
learn, and to spend his youth in virtue. In the prosecution of which
design he came first to Poictiers, where, as he studied and profited very
much, he saw that the scholars were oftentimes at leisure and knew not how
to bestow their time, which moved him to take such compassion on them, that
one day he took from a long ledge of rocks, called there Passelourdin, a
huge great stone, of about twelve fathom square and fourteen handfuls
thick, and with great ease set it upon four pillars in the midst of a
field, to no other end but that the said scholars, when they had nothing
else to do, might pass their time in getting up on that stone, and feast it
with store of gammons, pasties, and flagons, and carve their names upon it
with a knife, in token of which deed till this hour the stone is called the
lifted stone. And in remembrance hereof there is none entered into the
register and matricular book of the said university, or accounted capable
of taking any degree therein, till he have first drunk in the caballine
fountain of Croustelles, passed at Passelourdin, and got up upon the lifted
stone.
Afterwards, reading the delectable chronicles of his ancestors, he found
that Geoffrey of Lusignan, called Geoffrey with the great tooth,
grandfather to the cousin-in-law of the eldest sister of the aunt of the
son-in-law of the uncle of the good daughter of his stepmother, was
interred at Maillezais; therefore one day he took campos (which is a little
vacation from study to play a while), that he might give him a visit as
unto an honest man. And going from Poictiers with some of his companions,
they passed by the Guge (Leguge), visiting the noble Abbot Ardillon; then
by Lusignan, by Sansay, by Celles, by Coolonges, by Fontenay-le-Comte,
saluting the learned Tiraqueau, and from thence arrived at Maillezais,
where he went to see the sepulchre of the said Geoffrey with the great
tooth; which made him somewhat afraid, looking upon the picture, whose
lively draughts did set him forth in the representation of a man in an
extreme fury, drawing his great Malchus falchion half way out of his
scabbard. When the reason hereof was demanded, the canons of the said
place told him that there was no other cause of it but that Pictoribus
atque Poetis, &c., that is to say, that painters and poets have liberty to
paint and devise what they list after their own fancy. But he was not
satisfied with their answer, and said, He is not thus painted without a
cause, and I suspect that at his death there was some wrong done him,
whereof he requireth his kindred to take revenge. I will inquire further
into it, and then do what shall be reasonable. Then he returned not to
Poictiers, but would take a view of the other universities of France.
Therefore, going to Rochelle, he took shipping and arrived at Bordeaux,
where he found no great exercise, only now and then he would see some
mariners and lightermen a-wrestling on the quay or strand by the
river-side. From thence he came to Toulouse, where he learned to dance very
well, and to play with the two-handed sword, as the fashion of the scholars
of the said university is to bestir themselves in games whereof they may
have their hands full; but he stayed not long there when he saw that they
did cause burn their regents alive like red herring, saying, Now God forbid
that I should die this death! for I am by nature sufficiently dry already,
without heating myself any further.
He went then to Montpellier, where he met with the good wives of Mirevaux,
and good jovial company withal, and thought to have set himself to the
study of physic; but he considered that that calling was too troublesome
and melancholic, and that physicians did smell of glisters like old devils.
Therefore he resolved he would study the laws; but seeing that there were
but three scald- and one bald-pated legist in that place, he departed from
thence, and in his way made the bridge of Guard and the amphitheatre of
Nimes in less than three hours, which, nevertheless, seems to be a more
divine than human work. After that he came to Avignon, where he was not
above three days before he fell in love; for the women there take great
delight in playing at the close-buttock game, because it is papal ground.
Which his tutor and pedagogue Epistemon perceiving, he drew him out of that
place, and brought him to Valence in the Dauphiny, where he saw no great
matter of recreation, only that the lubbers of the town did beat the
scholars, which so incensed him with anger, that when, upon a certain very
fair Sunday, the people being at their public dancing in the streets, and
one of the scholars offering to put himself into the ring to partake of
that sport, the foresaid lubberly fellows would not permit him the
admittance into their society, he, taking the scholar’s part, so belaboured
them with blows, and laid such load upon them, that he drove them all
before him, even to the brink of the river Rhone, and would have there
drowned them, but that they did squat to the ground, and there lay close a
full half-league under the river. The hole is to be seen there yet.
After that he departed from thence, and in three strides and one leap came
to Angiers, where he found himself very well, and would have continued
there some space, but that the plague drove them away. So from thence he
came to Bourges, where he studied a good long time, and profited very much
in the faculty of the laws, and would sometimes say that the books of the
civil law were like unto a wonderfully precious, royal, and triumphant robe
of cloth of gold edged with dirt; for in the world are no goodlier books to
be seen, more ornate, nor more eloquent than the texts of the Pandects, but
the bordering of them, that is to say, the gloss of Accursius, is so
scurvy, vile, base, and unsavoury, that it is nothing but filthiness and
villainy.
Going from Bourges, he came to Orleans, where he found store of swaggering
scholars that made him great entertainment at his coming, and with whom he
learned to play at tennis so well that he was a master at that game. For
the students of the said place make a prime exercise of it; and sometimes
they carried him unto Cupid’s houses of commerce (in that city termed
islands, because of their being most ordinarily environed with other
houses, and not contiguous to any), there to recreate his person at the
sport of poussavant, which the wenches of London call the ferkers in and
in. As for breaking his head with over-much study, he had an especial care
not to do it in any case, for fear of spoiling his eyes. Which he the
rather observed, for that it was told him by one of his teachers, there
called regents, that the pain of the eyes was the most hurtful thing of any
to the sight. For this cause, when he one day was made a licentiate, or
graduate in law, one of the scholars of his acquaintance, who of learning
had not much more than his burden, though instead of that he could dance
very well and play at tennis, made the blazon and device of the licentiates
in the said university, saying,
So you have in your hand a racket,
A tennis-ball in your cod-placket,
A Pandect law in your cap’s tippet,
And that you have the skill to trip it
In a low dance, you will b’ allowed
The grant of the licentiate’s hood.
Chapter 2.VI.
How Pantagruel met with a Limousin, who too affectedly did counterfeit the
French language.
Upon a certain day, I know not when, Pantagruel walking after supper with
some of his fellow-students without that gate of the city through which we
enter on the road to Paris, encountered with a young spruce-like scholar
that was coming upon the same very way, and, after they had saluted one
another, asked him thus, My friend, from whence comest thou now? The
scholar answered him, From the alme, inclyte, and celebrate academy, which
is vocitated Lutetia. What is the meaning of this? said Pantagruel to one
of his men. It is, answered he, from Paris. Thou comest from Paris then,
said Pantagruel; and how do you spend your time there, you my masters the
students of Paris? The scholar answered, We transfretate the Sequan at the
dilucul and crepuscul; we deambulate by the compites and quadrives of the
urb; we despumate the Latial verbocination; and, like verisimilary
amorabons, we captat the benevolence of the omnijugal, omniform and
omnigenal feminine sex. Upon certain diecules we invisat the lupanares,
and in a venerian ecstasy inculcate our veretres into the penitissime
recesses of the pudends of these amicabilissim meretricules. Then do we
cauponisate in the meritory taberns of the Pineapple, the Castle, the
Magdalene, and the Mule, goodly vervecine spatules perforaminated with
petrocile. And if by fortune there be rarity or penury of pecune in our
marsupies, and that they be exhausted of ferruginean metal, for the shot we
dimit our codices and oppignerat our vestments, whilst we prestolate the
coming of the tabellaries from the Penates and patriotic Lares. To which
Pantagruel answered, What devilish language is this? By the Lord, I think
thou art some kind of heretick. My lord, no, said the scholar; for
libentissimally, as soon as it illucesceth any minutule slice of the day, I
demigrate into one of these so well architected minsters, and there,
irrorating myself with fair lustral water, I mumble off little parcels of
some missic precation of our sacrificuls, and, submurmurating my horary
precules, I elevate and absterge my anime from its nocturnal inquinations.
I revere the Olympicols. I latrially venere the supernal Astripotent. I
dilige and redame my proxims. I observe the decalogical precepts, and,
according to the facultatule of my vires, I do not discede from them one
late unguicule. Nevertheless, it is veriform, that because Mammona doth
not supergurgitate anything in my loculs, that I am somewhat rare and lent