Gargantua and Pantagruel
to fill brimful the cup of my misfortune, and make me play the mad-pate
reeks of Bedlam. Do not marry then, quoth Pantagruel. Yea but, said
Panurge, I shall never by any other means come to have lawful sons and
daughters, in whom I may harbour some hope of perpetuating my name and
arms, and to whom also I may leave and bequeath my inheritances and
purchased goods (of which latter sort you need not doubt but that in some
one or other of these mornings I will make a fair and goodly show), that so
I may cheer up and make merry when otherwise I should be plunged into a
peevish sullen mood of pensive sullenness, as I do perceive daily by the
gentle and loving carriage of your kind and gracious father towards you; as
all honest folks use to do at their own homes and private dwelling-houses.
For being free from debt, and yet not married, if casually I should fret
and be angry, although the cause of my grief and displeasure were never so
just, I am afraid, instead of consolation, that I should meet with nothing
else but scoffs, frumps, gibes, and mocks at my disastrous fortune. Marry
then, in the name of God, quoth Pantagruel.
Chapter 3.X.
How Pantagruel representeth unto Panurge the difficulty of giving advice in
the matter of marriage; and to that purpose mentioneth somewhat of the
Homeric and Virgilian lotteries.
Your counsel, quoth Panurge, under your correction and favour, seemeth unto
me not unlike to the song of Gammer Yea-by-nay. It is full of sarcasms,
mockeries, bitter taunts, nipping bobs, derisive quips, biting jerks, and
contradictory iterations, the one part destroying the other. I know not,
quoth Pantagruel, which of all my answers to lay hold on; for your
proposals are so full of ifs and buts, that I can ground nothing on them,
nor pitch upon any solid and positive determination satisfactory to what is
demanded by them. Are not you assured within yourself of what you have a
mind to? The chief and main point of the whole matter lieth there. All
the rest is merely casual, and totally dependeth upon the fatal disposition
of the heavens.
We see some so happy in the fortune of this nuptial encounter, that their
family shineth as it were with the radiant effulgency of an idea, model, or
representation of the joys of paradise; and perceive others, again, to be
so unluckily matched in the conjugal yoke, that those very basest of devils
which tempt the hermits that inhabit the deserts of Thebais and Montserrat
are not more miserable than they. It is therefore expedient, seeing you
are resolved for once to take a trial of the state of marriage, that, with
shut eyes, bowing your head, and kissing the ground, you put the business
to a venture, and give it a fair hazard, in recommending the success of the
residue to the disposure of Almighty God. It lieth not in my power to give
you any other manner of assurance, or otherwise to certify you of what
shall ensue on this your undertaking. Nevertheless, if it please you, this
you may do. Bring hither Virgil’s poems, that after having opened the
book, and with our fingers severed the leaves thereof three several times,
we may, according to the number agreed upon betwixt ourselves, explore the
future hap of your intended marriage. For frequently by a Homeric lottery
have many hit upon their destinies; as is testified in the person of
Socrates, who, whilst he was in prison, hearing the recitation of this
verse of Homer, said of Achilles in the Ninth of the Iliads--
Emati ke tritato Phthien eribolon ikoimen,
We, the third day, to fertile Pthia came--
thereby foresaw that on the third subsequent day he was to die. Of the
truth whereof he assured Aeschines; as Plato, in Critone, Cicero, in Primo,
de Divinatione, Diogenes Laertius, and others, have to the full recorded in
their works. The like is also witnessed by Opilius Macrinus, to whom,
being desirous to know if he should be the Roman emperor, befell, by chance
of lot, this sentence in the Eighth of the Iliads--
O geron, e mala de se neoi teirousi machetai,
Ze de bin lelutai, chalepon de se geras opazei.
Dotard, new warriors urge thee to be gone.
Thy life decays, and old age weighs thee down.
In fact, he, being then somewhat ancient, had hardly enjoyed the
sovereignty of the empire for the space of fourteen months, when by
Heliogabalus, then both young and strong, he was dispossessed thereof,
thrust out of all, and killed. Brutus doth also bear witness of another
experiment of this nature, who willing, through this exploratory way by
lot, to learn what the event and issue should be of the Pharsalian battle
wherein he perished, he casually encountered on this verse, said of
Patroclus in the Sixteenth of the Iliads--
Alla me moir oloe, kai Letous ektanen uios.
Fate, and Latona’s son have shot me dead.
And accordingly Apollo was the field-word in the dreadful day of that
fight. Divers notable things of old have likewise been foretold and known
by casting of Virgilian lots; yea, in matters of no less importance than
the obtaining of the Roman empire, as it happened to Alexander Severus,
who, trying his fortune at the said kind of lottery, did hit upon this
verse written in the Sixth of the Aeneids--
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.
Know, Roman, that thy business is to reign.
He, within very few years thereafter, was effectually and in good earnest
created and installed Roman emperor. A semblable story thereto is related
of Adrian, who, being hugely perplexed within himself out of a longing
humour to know in what account he was with the Emperor Trajan, and how
large the measure of that affection was which he did bear unto him, had
recourse, after the manner above specified, to the Maronian lottery, which
by haphazard tendered him these lines out of the Sixth of the Aeneids--
Quis procul ille autem, ramis insignis olivae
Sacra ferens? Nosco crines incanaque menta
Regis Romani.
But who is he, conspicuous from afar,
With olive boughs, that doth his offerings bear?
By the white hair and beard I know him plain,
The Roman king.
Shortly thereafter was he adopted by Trajan, and succeeded to him in the
empire. Moreover, to the lot of the praiseworthy Emperor Claudius befell
this line of Virgil, written in the Sixth of his Aeneids--
Tertia dum Latio regnantem viderit aestas.
Whilst the third summer saw him reign, a king
In Latium.
And in effect he did not reign above two years. To the said Claudian also,
inquiring concerning his brother Quintilius, whom he proposed as a
colleague with himself in the empire, happened the response following in
the Sixth of the Aeneids--
Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata.
Whom Fate let us see,
And would no longer suffer him to be.
And it so fell out; for he was killed on the seventeenth day after he had
attained unto the management of the imperial charge. The very same lot,
also, with the like misluck, did betide the Emperor Gordian the younger.
To Claudius Albinus, being very solicitous to understand somewhat of his
future adventures, did occur this saying, which is written in the Sixth of
the Aeneids--
Hic rem Romanam magno turbante tumultu
Sistet Eques, &c.
The Romans, boiling with tumultuous rage,
This warrior shall the dangerous storm assuage:
With victories he the Carthaginian mauls,
And with strong hand shall crush the rebel Gauls.
Likewise, when the Emperor D. Claudius, Aurelian’s predecessor, did with
great eagerness research after the fate to come of his posterity, his hap
was to alight on this verse in the First of the Aeneids--
Hic ego nec metas rerum, nec tempora pono.
No bounds are to be set, no limits here.
Which was fulfilled by the goodly genealogical row of his race. When Mr.
Peter Amy did in like manner explore and make trial if he should escape the
ambush of the hobgoblins who lay in wait all-to-bemaul him, he fell upon
this verse in the Third of the Aeneids--
Heu! fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum!
Oh, flee the bloody land, the wicked shore!
Which counsel he obeying, safe and sound forthwith avoided all these
ambuscades.
Were it not to shun prolixity, I could enumerate a thousand such like
adventures, which, conform to the dictate and verdict of the verse, have by
that manner of lot-casting encounter befallen to the curious researchers of
them. Do not you nevertheless imagine, lest you should be deluded, that I
would upon this kind of fortune-flinging proof infer an uncontrollable and
not to be gainsaid infallibility of truth.
Chapter 3.XI.
How Pantagruel showeth the trial of one’s fortune by the throwing of dice
to be unlawful.
It would be sooner done, quoth Panurge, and more expeditely, if we should
try the matter at the chance of three fair dice. Quoth Pantagruel, That
sort of lottery is deceitful, abusive, illicitous, and exceedingly
scandalous. Never trust in it. The accursed book of the Recreation of
Dice was a great while ago excogitated in Achaia, near Bourre, by that
ancient enemy of mankind, the infernal calumniator, who, before the statue
or massive image of the Bourraic Hercules, did of old, and doth in several
places of the world as yet, make many simple souls to err and fall into his
snares. You know how my father Gargantua hath forbidden it over all his
kingdoms and dominions; how he hath caused burn the moulds and draughts
thereof, and altogether suppressed, abolished, driven forth, and cast it
out of the land, as a most dangerous plague and infection to any
well-polished state or commonwealth. What I have told you of dice, I say
the same of the play at cockall. It is a lottery of the like guile and
deceitfulness; and therefore do not for convincing of me allege in
opposition to this my opinion, or bring in the example of the fortunate cast
of Tiberius, within the fountain of Aponus, at the oracle of Gerion. These
are the baited hooks by which the devil attracts and draweth unto him the
foolish souls of silly people into eternal perdition.
Nevertheless, to satisfy your humour in some measure, I am content you
throw three dice upon this table, that, according to the number of the
blots which shall happen to be cast up, we may hit upon a verse of that
page which in the setting open of the book you shall have pitched upon.
Have you any dice in your pocket? A whole bagful, answered Panurge. That
is provision against the devil, as is expounded by Merlin Coccaius, Lib.
2. De Patria Diabolorum. The devil would be sure to take me napping, and
very much at unawares, if he should find me without dice. With this, the
three dice being taken out, produced, and thrown, they fell so pat upon the
lower points that the cast was five, six, and five. These are, quoth
Panurge, sixteen in all. Let us take the sixteenth line of the page. The
number pleaseth me very well; I hope we shall have a prosperous and happy
chance. May I be thrown amidst all the devils of hell, even as a great
bowl cast athwart at a set of ninepins, or cannon-ball shot among a
battalion of foot, in case so many times I do not boult my future wife the
first night of our marriage! Of that, forsooth, I make no doubt at all,
quoth Pantagruel. You needed not to have rapped forth such a horrid
imprecation, the sooner to procure credit for the performance of so small a
business, seeing possibly the first bout will be amiss, and that you know
is usually at tennis called fifteen. At the next justling turn you may
readily amend that fault, and so complete your reckoning of sixteen. Is it
so, quoth Panurge, that you understand the matter? And must my words be
thus interpreted? Nay, believe me never yet was any solecism committed by