Gargantua and Pantagruel
court should be pleased to give by B.mol express command to the pox not to
run about any longer in gleaning up of coppersmiths and tinkers; for the
jobbernolls had already a pretty good beginning in their dance of the
British jig called the estrindore, to a perfect diapason, with one foot in
the fire, and their head in the middle, as goodman Ragot was wont to say.
Ha, my masters, God moderates all things, and disposeth of them at his
pleasure, so that against unlucky fortune a carter broke his frisking whip,
which was all the wind-instrument he had. This was done at his return from
the little paltry town, even then when Master Antitus of Cressplots was
licentiated, and had passed his degrees in all dullery and blockishness,
according to this sentence of the canonists, Beati Dunces, quoniam ipsi
stumblaverunt. But that which makes Lent to be so high, by St. Fiacre of
Bry, is for nothing else but that the Pentecost never comes but to my cost;
yet, on afore there, ho! a little rain stills a great wind, and we must
think so, seeing that the sergeant hath propounded the matter so far above
my reach, that the clerks and secondaries could not with the benefit
thereof lick their fingers, feathered with ganders, so orbicularly as they
were wont in other things to do. And we do manifestly see that everyone
acknowledgeth himself to be in the error wherewith another hath been
charged, reserving only those cases whereby we are obliged to take an
ocular inspection in a perspective glass of these things towards the place
in the chimney where hangeth the sign of the wine of forty girths, which
have been always accounted very necessary for the number of twenty pannels
and pack-saddles of the bankrupt protectionaries of five years’ respite.
Howsoever, at least, he that would not let fly the fowl before the
cheesecakes ought in law to have discovered his reason why not, for the
memory is often lost with a wayward shoeing. Well, God keep Theobald
Mitain from all danger! Then said Pantagruel, Hold there! Ho, my friend,
soft and fair, speak at leisure and soberly without putting yourself in
choler. I understand the case,--go on. Now then, my lord, said
Kissbreech, the foresaid good woman saying her gaudez and audi nos, could
not cover herself with a treacherous backblow, ascending by the wounds and
passions of the privileges of the universities, unless by the virtue of a
warming-pan she had angelically fomented every part of her body in covering
them with a hedge of garden-beds; then giving in a swift unavoidable thirst
(thrust) very near to the place where they sell the old rags whereof the
painters of Flanders make great use when they are about neatly to clap on
shoes on grasshoppers, locusts, cigals, and such like fly-fowls, so strange
to us that I am wonderfully astonished why the world doth not lay, seeing
it is so good to hatch.
Here the Lord of Suckfist would have interrupted him and spoken somewhat,
whereupon Pantagruel said unto him, St! by St. Anthony’s belly, doth it
become thee to speak without command? I sweat here with the extremity of
labour and exceeding toil I take to understand the proceeding of your
mutual difference, and yet thou comest to trouble and disquiet me. Peace,
in the devil’s name, peace. Thou shalt be permitted to speak thy bellyful
when this man hath done, and no sooner. Go on, said he to Kissbreech;
speak calmly, and do not overheat yourself with too much haste.
I perceiving, then, said Kissbreech, that the Pragmatical Sanction did make
no mention of it, and that the holy Pope to everyone gave liberty to fart
at his own ease, if that the blankets had no streaks wherein the liars were
to be crossed with a ruffian-like crew, and, the rainbow being newly
sharpened at Milan to bring forth larks, gave his full consent that the
good woman should tread down the heel of the hip-gut pangs, by virtue of a
solemn protestation put in by the little testiculated or codsted fishes,
which, to tell the truth, were at that time very necessary for
understanding the syntax and construction of old boots. Therefore John
Calf, her cousin gervais once removed with a log from the woodstack, very
seriously advised her not to put herself into the hazard of quagswagging in
the lee, to be scoured with a buck of linen clothes till first she had
kindled the paper. This counsel she laid hold on, because he desired her
to take nothing and throw out, for Non de ponte vadit, qui cum sapientia
cadit. Matters thus standing, seeing the masters of the chamber of
accompts or members of that committee did not fully agree amongst
themselves in casting up the number of the Almany whistles, whereof were
framed those spectacles for princes which have been lately printed at
Antwerp, I must needs think that it makes a bad return of the writ, and
that the adverse party is not to be believed, in sacer verbo dotis. For
that, having a great desire to obey the pleasure of the king, I armed
myself from toe to top with belly furniture, of the soles of good
venison-pasties, to go see how my grape-gatherers and vintagers had pinked
and cut full of small holes their high-coped caps, to lecher it the better,
and play at in and in. And indeed the time was very dangerous in coming
from the fair, in so far that many trained bowmen were cast at the muster
and quite rejected, although the chimney-tops were high enough, according to
the proportion of the windgalls in the legs of horses, or of the malanders,
which in the esteem of expert farriers is no better disease, or else the
story of Ronypatifam or Lamibaudichon, interpreted by some to be the tale of
a tub or of a roasted horse, savours of apocrypha, and is not an authentic
history. And by this means there was that year great abundance, throughout
all the country of Artois, of tawny buzzing beetles, to the no small profit
of the gentlemen-great-stick-faggot-carriers, when they did eat without
disdaining the cocklicranes, till their belly was like to crack with it
again. As for my own part, such is my Christian charity towards my
neighbours, that I could wish from my heart everyone had as good a voice; it
would make us play the better at the tennis and the balloon. And truly, my
lord, to express the real truth without dissimulation, I cannot but say that
those petty subtle devices which are found out in the etymologizing of
pattens would descend more easily into the river of Seine, to serve for ever
at the millers’ bridge upon the said water, as it was heretofore decreed by
the king of the Canarians, according to the sentence or judgment given
thereupon, which is to be seen in the registry and records within the
clerk’s office of this house.
And, therefore, my lord, I do most humbly require, that by your lordship
there may be said and declared upon the case what is reasonable, with
costs, damages, and interests. Then said Pantagruel, My friend, is this
all you have to say? Kissbreech answered, Yes, my lord, for I have told
all the tu autem, and have not varied at all upon mine honour in so much as
one single word. You then, said Pantagruel, my Lord of Suckfist, say what
you will, and be brief, without omitting, nevertheless, anything that may
serve to the purpose.
Chapter 2.XII.
How the Lord of Suckfist pleaded before Pantagruel.
Then began the Lord Suckfist in manner as followeth. My lord, and you my
masters, if the iniquity of men were as easily seen in categorical judgment
as we can discern flies in a milkpot, the world’s four oxen had not been so
eaten up with rats, nor had so many ears upon the earth been nibbled away
so scurvily. For although all that my adversary hath spoken be of a very
soft and downy truth, in so much as concerns the letter and history of the
factum, yet nevertheless the crafty slights, cunning subtleties, sly
cozenages, and little troubling entanglements are hid under the rosepot,
the common cloak and cover of all fraudulent deceits.
Should I endure that, when I am eating my pottage equal with the best, and
that without either thinking or speaking any manner of ill, they rudely
come to vex, trouble, and perplex my brains with that antique proverb which
saith,
Who in his pottage-eating drinks will not,
When he is dead and buried, see one jot.
And, good lady, how many great captains have we seen in the day of battle,
when in open field the sacrament was distributed in luncheons of the
sanctified bread of the confraternity, the more honestly to nod their
heads, play on the lute, and crack with their tails, to make pretty little
platform leaps in keeping level by the ground? But now the world is
unshackled from the corners of the packs of Leicester. One flies out
lewdly and becomes debauched; another, likewise, five, four, and two, and
that at such random that, if the court take not some course therein, it
will make as bad a season in matter of gleaning this year as ever it made,
or it will make goblets. If any poor creature go to the stoves to
illuminate his muzzle with a cowsherd or to buy winter-boots, and that the
sergeants passing by, or those of the watch, happen to receive the
decoction of a clyster or the fecal matter of a close-stool upon their
rustling-wrangling-clutter-keeping masterships, should any because of that
make bold to clip the shillings and testers and fry the wooden dishes?
Sometimes, when we think one thing, God does another; and when the sun is
wholly set all beasts are in the shade. Let me never be believed again, if
I do not gallantly prove it by several people who have seen the light of
the day.
In the year thirty and six, buying a Dutch curtail, which was a middle-sized
horse, both high and short, of a wool good enough and dyed in grain, as the
goldsmiths assured me, although the notary put an &c. in it, I told really
that I was not a clerk of so much learning as to snatch at the moon with my
teeth; but, as for the butter-firkin where Vulcanian deeds and evidences
were sealed, the rumour was, and the report thereof went current, that
salt-beef will make one find the way to the wine without a candle, though it
were hid in the bottom of a collier’s sack, and that with his drawers on he
were mounted on a barbed horse furnished with a fronstal, and such arms,
thighs, and leg-pieces as are requisite for the well frying and broiling of
a swaggering sauciness. Here is a sheep’s head, and it is well they make a
proverb of this, that it is good to see black cows in burnt wood when one
attains to the enjoyment of his love. I had a consultation upon this point
with my masters the clerks, who for resolution concluded in frisesomorum
that there is nothing like to mowing in the summer, and sweeping clean away
in water, well garnished with paper, ink, pens, and penknives, of Lyons upon
the river of Rhone, dolopym dolopof, tarabin tarabas, tut, prut, pish; for,
incontinently after that armour begins to smell of garlic, the rust will go
near to eat the liver, not of him that wears it, and then do they nothing
else but withstand others’ courses, and wryneckedly set up their bristles
‘gainst one another, in lightly passing over their afternoon’s sleep, and
this is that which maketh salt so dear. My lords, believe not when the said
good woman had with birdlime caught the shoveler fowl, the better before a
sergeant’s witness to deliver the younger son’s portion to him, that the
sheep’s pluck or hog’s haslet did dodge and shrink back in the usurers’
purses, or that there could be anything better to preserve one from the
cannibals than to take a rope of onions, knit with three hundred turnips,
and a little of a calf’s chaldern of the best allay that the alchemists have
provided, (and) that they daub and do over with clay, as also calcinate and