Gargantua and Pantagruel
an eleven thousand and nine hundred pound weight of rhubarb, besides other
confuse jumblings of sundry drugs. You must understand that by the advice
of the physicians it was ordained that what did offend his stomach should
be taken away; and therefore they made seventeen great balls of copper,
each whereof was bigger than that which is to be seen on the top of St.
Peter’s needle at Rome, and in such sort that they did open in the midst
and shut with a spring. Into one of them entered one of his men carrying a
lantern and a torch lighted, and so Pantagruel swallowed him down like a
little pill. Into seven others went seven country-fellows, having every
one of them a shovel on his neck. Into nine others entered nine
wood-carriers, having each of them a basket hung at his neck, and so were
they swallowed down like pills. When they were in his stomach, every one
undid his spring, and came out of their cabins. The first whereof was he
that carried the lantern, and so they fell more than half a league into a
most horrible gulf, more stinking and infectious than ever was Mephitis, or
the marshes of the Camerina, or the abominably unsavoury lake of Sorbona,
whereof Strabo maketh mention. And had it not been that they had very well
antidoted their stomach, heart, and wine-pot, which is called the noddle,
they had been altogether suffocated and choked with these detestable
vapours. O what a perfume! O what an evaporation wherewith to bewray the
masks or mufflers of young mangy queans. After that, with groping and
smelling they came near to the faecal matter and the corrupted humours.
Finally, they found a montjoy or heap of ordure and filth. Then fell the
pioneers to work to dig it up, and the rest with their shovels filled the
baskets; and when all was cleansed every one retired himself into his ball.
This done, Pantagruel enforcing himself to vomit, very easily brought them
out, and they made no more show in his mouth than a fart in yours. But,
when they came merrily out of their pills, I thought upon the Grecians
coming out of the Trojan horse. By this means was he healed and brought
unto his former state and convalescence; and of these brazen pills, or
rather copper balls, you have one at Orleans, upon the steeple of the Holy
Cross Church.
Chapter 2.XXXIV.
The conclusion of this present book, and the excuse of the author.
Now, my masters, you have heard a beginning of the horrific history of my
lord and master Pantagruel. Here will I make an end of the first book. My
head aches a little, and I perceive that the registers of my brain are
somewhat jumbled and disordered with this Septembral juice. You shall have
the rest of the history at Frankfort mart next coming, and there shall you
see how Panurge was married and made a cuckold within a month after his
wedding; how Pantagruel found out the philosopher’s stone, the manner how
he found it, and the way how to use it; how he passed over the Caspian
mountains, and how he sailed through the Atlantic sea, defeated the
Cannibals, and conquered the isles of Pearls; how he married the daughter
of the King of India, called Presthan; how he fought against the devil and
burnt up five chambers of hell, ransacked the great black chamber, threw
Proserpina into the fire, broke five teeth to Lucifer, and the horn that
was in his arse; how he visited the regions of the moon to know whether
indeed the moon were not entire and whole, or if the women had three
quarters of it in their heads, and a thousand other little merriments all
veritable. These are brave things truly. Good night, gentlemen.
Perdonate mi, and think not so much upon my faults that you forget your
own.
If you say to me, Master, it would seem that you were not very wise in
writing to us these flimflam stories and pleasant fooleries; I answer you,
that you are not much wiser to spend your time in reading them.
Nevertheless, if you read them to make yourselves merry, as in manner of
pastime I wrote them, you and I both are far more worthy of pardon than a
great rabble of squint-minded fellows, dissembling and counterfeit saints,
demure lookers, hypocrites, pretended zealots, tough friars, buskin-monks,
and other such sects of men, who disguise themselves like masquers to
deceive the world. For, whilst they give the common people to understand
that they are busied about nothing but contemplation and devotion in
fastings and maceration of their sensuality--and that only to sustain and
aliment the small frailty of their humanity--it is so far otherwise that,
on the contrary, God knows what cheer they make; Et Curios simulant, sed
Bacchanalia vivunt. You may read it in great letters in the colouring of
their red snouts, and gulching bellies as big as a tun, unless it be when
they perfume themselves with sulphur. As for their study, it is wholly
taken up in reading of Pantagruelian books, not so much to pass the time
merrily as to hurt someone or other mischievously, to wit, in articling,
sole-articling, wry-neckifying, buttock-stirring, ballocking, and
diabliculating, that is, calumniating. Wherein they are like unto the poor
rogues of a village that are busy in stirring up and scraping in the ordure
and filth of little children, in the season of cherries and guinds, and
that only to find the kernels, that they may sell them to the druggists to
make thereof pomander oil. Fly from these men, abhor and hate them as much
as I do, and upon my faith you will find yourselves the better for it. And
if you desire to be good Pantagruelists, that is to say, to live in peace,
joy, health, making yourselves always merry, never trust those men that
always peep out at one hole.
End of Book II.
BOOK III.
THE THIRD BOOK
Francois Rabelais to the Soul of the Deceased Queen of Navarre.
Abstracted soul, ravished with ecstasies,
Gone back, and now familiar in the skies,
Thy former host, thy body, leaving quite,
Which to obey thee always took delight,--
Obsequious, ready,--now from motion free,
Senseless, and as it were in apathy,
Wouldst thou not issue forth for a short space,
From that divine, eternal, heavenly place,
To see the third part, in this earthy cell,
Of the brave acts of good Pantagruel?
The Author’s Prologue.
Good people, most illustrious drinkers, and you, thrice precious gouty
gentlemen, did you ever see Diogenes, and cynic philosopher? If you have
seen him, you then had your eyes in your head, or I am very much out of my
understanding and logical sense. It is a gallant thing to see the
clearness of (wine, gold,) the sun. I’ll be judged by the blind born so
renowned in the sacred Scriptures, who, having at his choice to ask
whatever he would from him who is Almighty, and whose word in an instant is
effectually performed, asked nothing else but that he might see. Item, you
are not young, which is a competent quality for you to philosophate more
than physically in wine, not in vain, and henceforwards to be of the
Bacchic Council; to the end that, opining there, you may give your opinion
faithfully of the substance, colour, excellent odour, eminency, propriety,
faculty, virtue, and effectual dignity of the said blessed and desired
liquor.
If you have not seen him, as I am easily induced to believe that you have
not, at least you have heard some talk of him. For through the air, and
the whole extent of this hemisphere of the heavens, hath his report and
fame, even until this present time, remained very memorable and renowned.
Then all of you are derived from the Phrygian blood, if I be not deceived.
If you have not so many crowns as Midas had, yet have you something, I know
not what, of him, which the Persians of old esteemed more of in all their
otacusts, and which was more desired by the Emperor Antonine, and gave
occasion thereafter to the Basilico at Rohan to be surnamed Goodly Ears.
If you have not heard of him, I will presently tell you a story to make
your wine relish. Drink then,--so, to the purpose. Hearken now whilst I
give you notice, to the end that you may not, like infidels, be by your
simplicity abused, that in his time he was a rare philosopher and the
cheerfullest of a thousand. If he had some imperfection, so have you, so
have we; for there is nothing, but God, that is perfect. Yet so it was,
that by Alexander the Great, although he had Aristotle for his instructor
and domestic, was he held in such estimation, that he wished, if he had not
been Alexander, to have been Diogenes the Sinopian.
When Philip, King of Macedon, enterprised the siege and ruin of Corinth,
the Corinthians having received certain intelligence by their spies that he
with a numerous army in battle-rank was coming against them, were all of
them, not without cause, most terribly afraid; and therefore were not
neglective of their duty in doing their best endeavours to put themselves
in a fit posture to resist his hostile approach and defend their own city.
Some from the fields brought into the fortified places their movables,
bestial, corn, wine, fruit, victuals, and other necessary provision.
Others did fortify and rampire their walls, set up little fortresses,
bastions, squared ravelins, digged trenches, cleansed countermines, fenced
themselves with gabions, contrived platforms, emptied casemates, barricaded
the false brays, erected the cavaliers, repaired the counterscarps,
plastered the curtains, lengthened ravelins, stopped parapets, morticed
barbacans, assured the portcullises, fastened the herses, sarasinesques,
and cataracts, placed their sentries, and doubled their patrol. Everyone
did watch and ward, and not one was exempted from carrying the basket.
Some polished corslets, varnished backs and breasts, cleaned the
headpieces, mail-coats, brigandines, salads, helmets, morions, jacks,
gushets, gorgets, hoguines, brassars, and cuissars, corslets, haubergeons,
shields, bucklers, targets, greaves, gauntlets, and spurs. Others made
ready bows, slings, crossbows, pellets, catapults, migrains or fire-balls,
firebrands, balists, scorpions, and other such warlike engines expugnatory
and destructive to the Hellepolides. They sharpened and prepared spears,
staves, pikes, brown bills, halberds, long hooks, lances, zagayes,
quarterstaves, eelspears, partisans, troutstaves, clubs, battle-axes,
maces, darts, dartlets, glaives, javelins, javelots, and truncheons. They
set edges upon scimitars, cutlasses, badelairs, backswords, tucks, rapiers,
bayonets, arrow-heads, dags, daggers, mandousians, poniards, whinyards,
knives, skeans, shables, chipping knives, and raillons.
Every man exercised his weapon, every man scoured off the rust from his
natural hanger; nor was there a woman amongst them, though never so
reserved or old, who made not her harness to be well furbished; as you know
the Corinthian women of old were reputed very courageous combatants.
Diogenes seeing them all so warm at work, and himself not employed by the
magistrates in any business whatsoever, he did very seriously, for many
days together, without speaking one word, consider and contemplate the
countenance of his fellow-citizens.
Then on a sudden, as if he had been roused up and inspired by a martial
spirit, he girded his cloak scarfwise about his left arm, tucked up his
sleeves to the elbow, trussed himself like a clown gathering apples, and,
giving to one of his old acquaintance his wallet, books, and opistographs,
away went he out of town towards a little hill or promontory of Corinth
called (the) Cranie; and there on the strand, a pretty level place, did he
roll his jolly tub, which served him for a house to shelter him from the
injuries of the weather: there, I say, in a great vehemency of spirit, did