Gargantua and Pantagruel
conveniences and comforts, and such like. The preachers of Varennes, saith
Panurge, detest and abhor the second marriages, as altogether foolish and
dishonest.
Foolish and dishonest? quoth Pantagruel. A plague take such preachers!
Yea but, quoth Panurge, the like mischief also befall the Friar Charmer,
who, in a full auditory making a sermon at Pereilly, and therein
abominating the reiteration of marriage and the entering again in the bonds
of a nuptial tie, did swear and heartily give himself to the swiftest devil
in hell, if he had not rather choose, and would much more willingly
undertake the unmaidening or depucelating of a hundred virgins, than the
simple drudgery of one widow. Truly I find your reason in that point right
good and strongly grounded.
But what would you think, if the cause why this exemption or immunity was
granted had no other foundation but that, during the whole space of the
said first year, they so lustily bobbed it with their female consorts, as
both reason and equity require they should do, that they had drained and
evacuated their spermatic vessels; and were become thereby altogether
feeble, weak, emasculated, drooping, and flaggingly pithless; yea, in such
sort that they in the day of battle, like ducks which plunge over head and
ears, would sooner hide themselves behind the baggage, than, in the company
of valiant fighters and daring military combatants, appear where stern
Bellona deals her blows and moves a bustling noise of thwacks and thumps?
Nor is it to be thought that, under the standard of Mars, they will so much
as once strike a fair stroke, because their most considerable knocks have
been already jerked and whirrited within the curtains of his sweetheart
Venus.
In confirmation whereof, amongst other relics and monuments of antiquity,
we now as yet often see, that in all great houses, after the expiring of
some few days, these young married blades are readily sent away to visit
their uncles, that in the absence of their wives reposing themselves a
little they may recover their decayed strength by the recruit of a fresh
supply, the more vigorous to return again and face about to renew the
duelling shock and conflict of an amorous dalliance, albeit for the greater
part they have neither uncle nor aunt to go to.
Just so did the King Crackart, after the battle of the Cornets, not cashier
us (speaking properly), I mean me and the Quail-caller, but for our
refreshment remanded us to our houses; and he is as yet seeking after his
own. My grandfather’s godmother was wont to say to me when I was a boy,--
Patenostres et oraisons
Sont pour ceux-la, qui les retiennent.
Ung fiffre en fenaisons
Est plus fort que deux qui en viennent.
Not orisons nor patenotres
Shall ever disorder my brain.
One cadet, to the field as he flutters,
Is worth two, when they end the campaign.
That which prompteth me to that opinion is, that the vine-planters did
seldom eat of the grapes, or drink of the wine of their labour, till the
first year was wholly elapsed. During all which time also the builders did
hardly inhabit their new-structured dwelling-places, for fear of dying
suffocated through want of respiration; as Galen hath most learnedly
remarked, in the second book of the Difficulty of Breathing. Under favour,
sir, I have not asked this question without cause causing and reason truly
very ratiocinant. Be not offended, I pray you.
Chapter 3.VII.
How Panurge had a flea in his ear, and forbore to wear any longer his
magnificent codpiece.
Panurge, the day thereafter, caused pierce his right ear after the Jewish
fashion, and thereto clasped a little gold ring, of a ferny-like kind of
workmanship, in the beazil or collet whereof was set and enchased a flea;
and, to the end you may be rid of all doubts, you are to know that the flea
was black. O, what a brave thing it is, in every case and circumstance of
a matter, to be thoroughly well informed! The sum of the expense hereof,
being cast up, brought in, and laid down upon his council-board carpet, was
found to amount to no more quarterly than the charge of the nuptials of a
Hircanian tigress; even, as you would say, 600,000 maravedis. At these
vast costs and excessive disbursements, as soon as he perceived himself to
be out of debt, he fretted much; and afterwards, as tyrants and lawyers use
to do, he nourished and fed her with the sweat and blood of his subjects
and clients.
He then took four French ells of a coarse brown russet cloth, and therein
apparelling himself, as with a long, plain-seamed, and single-stitched
gown, left off the wearing of his breeches, and tied a pair of spectacles
to his cap. In this equipage did he present himself before Pantagruel; to
whom this disguise appeared the more strange, that he did not, as before,
see that goodly, fair, and stately codpiece, which was the sole anchor of
hope wherein he was wonted to rely, and last refuge he had midst all the
waves and boisterous billows which a stormy cloud in a cross fortune would
raise up against him. Honest Pantagruel, not understanding the mystery,
asked him, by way of interrogatory, what he did intend to personate in that
new-fangled prosopopoeia. I have, answered Panurge, a flea in mine ear,
and have a mind to marry. In a good time, quoth Pantagruel, you have told
me joyful tidings. Yet would not I hold a red-hot iron in my hand for all
the gladness of them. But it is not the fashion of lovers to be accoutred
in such dangling vestments, so as to have their shirts flagging down over
their knees, without breeches, and with a long robe of a dark brown mingled
hue, which is a colour never used in Talarian garments amongst any persons
of honour, quality, or virtue. If some heretical persons and schismatical
sectaries have at any time formerly been so arrayed and clothed (though
many have imputed such a kind of dress to cosenage, cheat, imposture, and
an affectation of tyranny upon credulous minds of the rude multitude), I
will nevertheless not blame them for it, nor in that point judge rashly or
sinistrously of them. Everyone overflowingly aboundeth in his own sense
and fancy; yea, in things of a foreign consideration, altogether
extrinsical and indifferent, which in and of themselves are neither
commendable nor bad, because they proceed not from the interior of the
thoughts and heart, which is the shop of all good and evil; of goodness, if
it be upright, and that its affections be regulated by the pure and clean
spirit of righteousness; and, on the other side, of wickedness, if its
inclinations, straying beyond the bounds of equity, be corrupted and
depraved by the malice and suggestions of the devil. It is only the
novelty and new-fangledness thereof which I dislike, together with the
contempt of common custom and the fashion which is in use.
The colour, answered Panurge, is convenient, for it is conform to that
of my council-board carpet; therefore will I henceforth hold me with it,
and more narrowly and circumspectly than ever hitherto I have done look to
my affairs and business. Seeing I am once out of debt, you never yet saw
man more unpleasing than I will be, if God help me not. Lo, here be my
spectacles. To see me afar off, you would readily say that it were Friar
(John) Burgess. I believe certainly that in the next ensuing year I shall
once more preach the Crusade. Bounce, buckram. Do you see this russet?
Doubt not but there lurketh under it some hid property and occult virtue
known to very few in the world. I did not take it on before this morning,
and, nevertheless, am already in a rage of lust, mad after a wife, and
vehemently hot upon untying the codpiece-point; I itch, I tingle, I
wriggle, and long exceedingly to be married, that, without the danger of
cudgel-blows, I may labour my female copes-mate with the hard push of a
bull-horned devil. O the provident and thrifty husband that I then will
be! After my death, with all honour and respect due to my frugality, will
they burn the sacred bulk of my body, of purpose to preserve the ashes
thereof, in memory of the choicest pattern that ever was of a perfectly
wary and complete householder. Cops body, this is not the carpet whereon
my treasurer shall be allowed to play false in his accounts with me, by
setting down an X for a V, or an L for an S. For in that case should I
make a hail of fisticuffs to fly into his face. Look upon me, sir, both
before and behind,--it is made after the manner of a toga, which was the
ancient fashion of the Romans in time of peace. I took the mode, shape,
and form thereof in Trajan’s Column at Rome, as also in the Triumphant Arch
of Septimus Severus. I am tired of the wars, weary of wearing buff-coats,
cassocks, and hoquetons. My shoulders are pitifully worn and bruised with
the carrying of harness. Let armour cease, and the long robe bear sway!
At least it must be so for the whole space of the succeeding year, if I be
married; as yesterday, by the Mosaic law, you evidenced. In what
concerneth the breeches, my great-aunt Laurence did long ago tell me, that
the breeches were only ordained for the use of the codpiece, and to no
other end; which I, upon a no less forcible consequence, give credit to
every whit, as well as to the saying of the fine fellow Galen, who in his
ninth book, Of the Use and Employment of our Members, allegeth that the
head was made for the eyes. For nature might have placed our heads in our
knees or elbows, but having beforehand determined that the eyes should
serve to discover things from afar, she for the better enabling them to
execute their designed office, fixed them in the head, as on the top of a
long pole, in the most eminent part of all the body--no otherwise than we
see the phares, or high towers erected in the mouths of havens, that
navigators may the further off perceive with ease the lights of the nightly
fires and lanterns. And because I would gladly, for some short while, a
year at least, take a little rest and breathing time from the toilsome
labour of the military profession, that is to say, be married, I have
desisted from wearing any more a codpiece, and consequently have laid aside
my breeches. For the codpiece is the principal and most especial piece of
armour that a warrior doth carry; and therefore do I maintain even to the
fire (exclusively, understand you me), that no Turks can properly be said
to be armed men, in regard that codpieces are by their law forbidden to be
worn.
Chapter 3.VIII.
Why the codpiece is held to be the chief piece of armour amongst warriors.
Will you maintain, quoth Pantagruel, that the codpiece is the chief piece
of a military harness? It is a new kind of doctrine, very paradoxical; for
we say, At spurs begins the arming of a man. Sir, I maintain it, answered
Panurge, and not wrongfully do I maintain it. Behold how nature, having a
fervent desire, after its production of plants, trees, shrubs, herbs,
sponges, and plant-animals, to eternize and continue them unto all
succession of ages (in their several kinds or sorts, at least, although the
individuals perish) unruinable, and in an everlasting being, hath most
curiously armed and fenced their buds, sprouts, shoots, and seeds, wherein
the above-mentioned perpetuity consisteth, by strengthening, covering,
guarding, and fortifying them with an admirable industry, with husks,
cases, scurfs and swads, hulls, cods, stones, films, cartels, shells, ears,
rinds, barks, skins, ridges, and prickles, which serve them instead of
strong, fair, and natural codpieces. As is manifestly apparent in pease,
beans, fasels, pomegranates, peaches, cottons, gourds, pumpions, melons,
corn, lemons, almonds, walnuts, filberts, and chestnuts; as likewise in all