Gargantua and Pantagruel
doth receive, digest, and chylify it. The mesaraic veins suck out of it
what is good and fit, leaving behind the excrements, which are, through
special conduits for that purpose, voided by an expulsive faculty.
Thereafter it is carried to the liver, where it being changed again, it by
the virtue of that new transmutation becomes blood. What joy, conjecture
you, will then be found amongst those officers when they see this rivulet
of gold, which is their sole restorative? No greater is the joy of
alchemists, when after long travail, toil, and expense they see in their
furnaces the transmutation. Then is it that every member doth prepare
itself, and strive anew to purify and to refine this treasure. The kidneys
through the emulgent veins draw that aquosity from thence which you call
urine, and there send it away through the ureters to be slipped downwards;
where, in a lower receptacle, and proper for it, to wit, the bladder, it is
kept, and stayeth there until an opportunity to void it out in his due
time. The spleen draweth from the blood its terrestrial part, viz., the
grounds, lees, or thick substance settled in the bottom thereof, which you
term melancholy. The bottle of the gall subtracts from thence all the
superfluous choler; whence it is brought to another shop or work-house to
be yet better purified and fined, that is, the heart, which by its
agitation of diastolic and systolic motions so neatly subtilizeth and
inflames it, that in the right side ventricle it is brought to perfection,
and through the veins is sent to all the members. Each parcel of the body
draws it then unto itself, and after its own fashion is cherished and
alimented by it. Feet, hands, thighs, arms, eyes, ears, back, breast, yea,
all; and then it is, that who before were lenders, now become debtors. The
heart doth in its left side ventricle so thinnify the blood, that it
thereby obtains the name of spiritual; which being sent through the
arteries to all the members of the body, serveth to warm and winnow the
other blood which runneth through the veins. The lights never cease with
its lappets and bellows to cool and refresh it, in acknowledgment of which
good the heart, through the arterial vein, imparts unto it the choicest of
its blood. At last it is made so fine and subtle within the rete mirabile,
that thereafter those animal spirits are framed and composed of it, by
means whereof the imagination, discourse, judgment, resolution,
deliberation, ratiocination, and memory have their rise, actings, and
operations.
Cops body, I sink, I drown, I perish, I wander astray, and quite fly out of
myself when I enter into the consideration of the profound abyss of this
world, thus lending, thus owing. Believe me, it is a divine thing to
lend,--to owe, an heroic virtue. Yet is not this all. This little world
thus lending, owing, and borrowing, is so good and charitable, that no
sooner is the above-specified alimentation finished, but that it forthwith
projecteth, and hath already forecast, how it shall lend to those who are
not as yet born, and by that loan endeavour what it may to eternize itself,
and multiply in images like the pattern, that is, children. To this end
every member doth of the choicest and most precious of its nourishment pare
and cut off a portion, then instantly despatcheth it downwards to that
place where nature hath prepared for it very fit vessels and receptacles,
through which descending to the genitories by long ambages, circuits, and
flexuosities, it receiveth a competent form, and rooms apt enough both in
man and woman for the future conservation and perpetuating of human kind.
All this is done by loans and debts of the one unto the other; and hence
have we this word, the debt of marriage. Nature doth reckon pain to the
refuser, with a most grievous vexation to his members and an outrageous
fury amidst his senses. But, on the other part, to the lender a set
reward, accompanied with pleasure, joy, solace, mirth, and merry glee.
Chapter 3.V.
How Pantagruel altogether abhorreth the debtors and borrowers.
I understand you very well, quoth Pantagruel, and take you to be very good
at topics, and thoroughly affectioned to your own cause. But preach it up,
and patrocinate it, prattle on it, and defend it as much as you will, even
from hence to the next Whitsuntide, if you please so to do, yet in the end
you will be astonished to find how you shall have gained no ground at all
upon me, nor persuaded me by your fair speeches and smooth talk to enter
never so little into the thraldom of debt. You shall owe to none, saith
the holy Apostle, anything save love, friendship, and a mutual benevolence.
You serve me here, I confess, with fine graphides and diatyposes,
descriptions and figures, which truly please me very well. But let me tell
you, if you will represent unto your fancy an impudent blustering bully and
an importunate borrower, entering afresh and newly into a town already
advertised of his manners, you shall find that at his ingress the citizens
will be more hideously affrighted and amazed, and in a greater terror and
fear, dread, and trembling, than if the pest itself should step into it in
the very same garb and accoutrement wherein the Tyanean philosopher found
it within the city of Ephesus. And I am fully confirmed in the opinion,
that the Persians erred not when they said that the second vice was to lie,
the first being that of owing money. For, in very truth, debts and lying
are ordinarily joined together. I will nevertheless not from hence infer
that none must owe anything or lend anything. For who so rich can be that
sometimes may not owe, or who can be so poor that sometimes may not lend?
Let the occasion, notwithstanding, in that case, as Plato very wisely
sayeth and ordaineth in his laws, be such that none be permitted to draw
any water out of his neighbour’s well until first they by continual digging
and delving into their own proper ground shall have hit upon a kind of
potter’s earth, which is called ceramite, and there had found no source or
drop of water; for that sort of earth, by reason of its substance, which is
fat, strong, firm, and close, so retaineth its humidity, that it doth not
easily evaporate it by any outward excursion or evaporation.
In good sooth, it is a great shame to choose rather to be still borrowing
in all places from everyone, than to work and win. Then only in my
judgment should one lend, when the diligent, toiling, and industrious
person is no longer able by his labour to make any purchase unto himself,
or otherwise, when by mischance he hath suddenly fallen into an unexpected
loss of his goods.
Howsoever, let us leave this discourse, and from henceforwards do not hang
upon creditors, nor tie yourself to them. I make account for the time past
to rid you freely of them, and from their bondage to deliver you. The
least I should in this point, quoth Panurge, is to thank you, though it be
the most I can do. And if gratitude and thanksgiving be to be estimated
and prized by the affection of the benefactor, that is to be done
infinitely and sempiternally; for the love which you bear me of your own
accord and free grace, without any merit of mine, goeth far beyond the
reach of any price or value. It transcends all weight, all number, all
measure; it is endless and everlasting; therefore, should I offer to
commensurate and adjust it, either to the size and proportion of your own
noble and gracious deeds, or yet to the contentment and delight of the
obliged receivers, I would come off but very faintly and flaggingly. You
have verily done me a great deal of good, and multiplied your favours on me
more frequently than was fitting to one of my condition. You have been
more bountiful towards me than I have deserved, and your courtesies have by
far surpassed the extent of my merits, I must needs confess it. But it is
not, as you suppose, in the proposed matter. For there it is not where I
itch, it is not there where it fretteth, hurts, or vexeth me; for,
henceforth being quit and out of debt, what countenance will I be able to
keep? You may imagine that it will become me very ill for the first month,
because I have never hitherto been brought up or accustomed to it. I am
very much afraid of it. Furthermore, there shall not one hereafter, native
of the country of Salmigondy, but he shall level the shot towards my nose.
All the back-cracking fellows of the world, in discharging of their postern
petarades, use commonly to say, Voila pour les quittes, that is, For the
quit. My life will be of very short continuance, I do foresee it. I
recommend to you the making of my epitaph; for I perceive I will die
confected in the very stench of farts. If, at any time to come, by way of
restorative to such good women as shall happen to be troubled with the
grievous pain of the wind-colic, the ordinary medicaments prove nothing
effectual, the mummy of all my befarted body will straight be as a present
remedy appointed by the physicians; whereof they, taking any small modicum,
it will incontinently for their ease afford them a rattle of bumshot, like
a sal of muskets.
Therefore would I beseech you to leave me some few centuries of debts; as
King Louis the Eleventh, exempting from suits in law the Reverend Miles
d’Illiers, Bishop of Chartres, was by the said bishop most earnestly
solicited to leave him some few for the exercise of his mind. I had rather
give them all my revenue of the periwinkles, together with the other
incomes of the locusts, albeit I should not thereby have any parcel abated
from off the principal sums which I owe. Let us waive this matter, quoth
Pantagruel, I have told it you over again.
Chapter 3.VI.
Why new married men were privileged from going to the wars.
But, in the interim, asked Panurge, by what law was it constituted,
ordained, and established, that such as should plant a new vineyard, those
that should build a new house, and the new married men, should be exempted
and discharged from the duty of warfare for the first year? By the law,
answered Pantagruel, of Moses. Why, replied Panurge, the lately married?
As for the vine-planters, I am now too old to reflect on them; my
condition, at this present, induceth me to remain satisfied with the care
of vintage, finishing and turning the grapes into wine. Nor are these
pretty new builders of dead stones written or pricked down in my Book of
Life. It is all with live stones that I set up and erect the fabrics of my
architecture, to wit, men. It was, according to my opinion, quoth
Pantagruel, to the end, first, that the fresh married folks should for the
first year reap a full and complete fruition of their pleasures in their
mutual exercise of the act of love, in such sort, that in waiting more at
leisure on the production of posterity and propagating of their progeny,
they might the better increase their race and make provision of new heirs.
That if, in the years thereafter, the men should, upon their undergoing of
some military adventure, happen to be killed, their names and coats-of-arms
might continue with their children in the same families. And next, that,
the wives thereby coming to know whether they were barren or fruitful--for
one year’s trial, in regard of the maturity of age wherein of old they
married, was held sufficient for the discovery--they might pitch the more
suitably, in case of their first husband’s decease, upon a second match.
The fertile women to be wedded to those who desire to multiply their issue;
and the sterile ones to such other mates, as, misregarding the storing of
their own lineage, choose them only for their virtues, learning, genteel
behaviour, domestic consolation, management of the house, and matrimonial