Gargantua and Pantagruel
extricate your doubts, let us try all courses, and leave no stone unturned
nor wind unsailed by. Take good heed to what I am to say unto you. The
swans, which are fowls consecrated to Apollo, never chant but in the hour
of their approaching death, especially in the Meander flood, which is a
river that runneth along some of the territories of Phrygia. This I say,
because Aelianus and Alexander Myndius write that they had seen several
swans in other places die, but never heard any of them sing or chant before
their death. However, it passeth for current that the imminent death of a
swan is presaged by his foregoing song, and that no swan dieth until
preallably he have sung.
After the same manner, poets, who are under the protection of Apollo, when
they are drawing near their latter end do ordinarily become prophets, and
by the inspiration of that god sing sweetly in vaticinating things which
are to come. It hath been likewise told me frequently, that old decrepit
men upon the brinks of Charon’s banks do usher their decease with a
disclosure all at ease, to those that are desirous of such informations, of
the determinate and assured truth of future accidents and contingencies. I
remember also that Aristophanes, in a certain comedy of his, calleth the
old folks Sibyls, Eith o geron Zibullia. For as when, being upon a pier by
the shore, we see afar off mariners, seafaring men, and other travellers
alongst the curled waves of azure Thetis within their ships, we then
consider them in silence only, and seldom proceed any further than to wish
them a happy and prosperous arrival; but when they do approach near to the
haven, and come to wet their keels within their harbour, then both with
words and gestures we salute them, and heartily congratulate their access
safe to the port wherein we are ourselves. Just so the angels, heroes, and
good demons, according to the doctrine of the Platonics, when they see
mortals drawing near unto the harbour of the grave, as the most sure and
calmest port of any, full of repose, ease, rest, tranquillity, free from
the troubles and solicitudes of this tumultuous and tempestuous world; then
is it that they with alacrity hail and salute them, cherish and comfort
them, and, speaking to them lovingly, begin even then to bless them with
illuminations, and to communicate unto them the abstrusest mysteries of
divination. I will not offer here to confound your memory by quoting
antique examples of Isaac, of Jacob, of Patroclus towards Hector, of Hector
towards Achilles, of Polymnestor towards Agamemnon, of Hecuba, of the
Rhodian renowned by Posidonius, of Calanus the Indian towards Alexander the
Great, of Orodes towards Mezentius, and of many others. It shall suffice
for the present that I commemorate unto you the learned and valiant knight
and cavalier William of Bellay, late Lord of Langey, who died on the Hill
of Tarara, the 10th of January, in the climacteric year of his age, and of
our supputation 1543, according to the Roman account. The last three or
four hours of his life he did employ in the serious utterance of a very
pithy discourse, whilst with a clear judgment and spirit void of all
trouble he did foretell several important things, whereof a great deal is
come to pass, and the rest we wait for. Howbeit, his prophecies did at
that time seem unto us somewhat strange, absurd, and unlikely, because
there did not then appear any sign of efficacy enough to engage our faith
to the belief of what he did prognosticate. We have here, near to the town
of Villomere, a man that is both old and a poet, to wit, Raminagrobis, who
to his second wife espoused my Lady Broadsow, on whom he begot the fair
Basoche. It hath been told me he is a-dying, and so near unto his latter
end that he is almost upon the very last moment, point, and article thereof.
Repair thither as fast as you can, and be ready to give an attentive ear to
what he shall chant unto you. It may be that you shall obtain from him what
you desire, and that Apollo will be pleased by his means to clear your
scruples. I am content, quoth Panurge. Let us go thither, Epistemon, and
that both instantly and in all haste, lest otherwise his death prevent our
coming. Wilt thou come along with us, Friar John? Yes, that I will, quoth
Friar John, right heartily to do thee a courtesy, my billy-ballocks; for I
love thee with the best of my milt and liver.
Thereupon, incontinently, without any further lingering, to the way they
all three went, and quickly thereafter--for they made good speed--arriving
at the poetical habitation, they found the jolly old man, albeit in the
agony of his departure from this world, looking cheerfully, with an open
countenance, splendid aspect, and behaviour full of alacrity. After that
Panurge had very civilly saluted him, he in a free gift did present him
with a gold ring, which he even then put upon the medical finger of his
left hand, in the collet or bezel whereof was enchased an Oriental
sapphire, very fair and large. Then, in imitation of Socrates, did he make
an oblation unto him of a fair white cock, which was no sooner set upon the
tester of his bed, than that, with a high raised head and crest, lustily
shaking his feather-coat, he crowed stentoriphonically loud. This done,
Panurge very courteously required of him that he would vouchsafe to favour
him with the grant and report of his sense and judgment touching the future
destiny of his intended marriage. For answer hereto, when the honest old
man had forthwith commanded pen, paper, and ink to be brought unto him, and
that he was at the same call conveniently served with all the three, he
wrote these following verses:
Take, or not take her,
Off, or on:
Handy-dandy is your lot.
When her name you write, you blot.
‘Tis undone, when all is done,
Ended e’er it was begun:
Hardly gallop, if you trot,
Set not forward when you run,
Nor be single, though alone,
Take, or not take her.
Before you eat, begin to fast;
For what shall be was never past.
Say, unsay, gainsay, save your breath:
Then wish at once her life and death.
Take, or not take her.
These lines he gave out of his own hands unto them, saying unto them, Go,
my lads, in peace! the great God of the highest heavens be your guardian
and preserver! and do not offer any more to trouble or disquiet me with
this or any other business whatsoever. I have this same very day, which is
the last both of May and of me, with a greal deal of labour, toil, and
difficulty, chased out of my house a rabble of filthy, unclean, and
plaguily pestilentious rake-hells, black beasts, dusk, dun, white,
ash-coloured, speckled, and a foul vermin of other hues, whose obtrusive
importunity would not permit me to die at my own ease; for by fraudulent
and deceitful pricklings, ravenous, harpy-like graspings, waspish
stingings, and such-like unwelcome approaches, forged in the shop of I know
not what kind of insatiabilities, they went about to withdraw and call me
out of those sweet thoughts wherein I was already beginning to repose
myself and acquiesce in the contemplation and vision, yea, almost in the
very touch and taste of the happiness and felicity which the good God hath
prepared for his faithful saints and elect in the other life and state of
immortality. Turn out of their courses and eschew them, step forth of
their ways and do not resemble them; meanwhile, let me be no more troubled
by you, but leave me now in silence, I beseech you.
Chapter 3.XXII.
How Panurge patrocinates and defendeth the Order of the Begging Friars.
Panurge, at his issuing forth of Raminagrobis’s chamber, said, as if he had
been horribly affrighted, By the virtue of God, I believe that he is an
heretic; the devil take me, if I do not! he doth so villainously rail at
the Mendicant Friars and Jacobins, who are the two hemispheres of the
Christian world; by whose gyronomonic circumbilvaginations, as by two
celivagous filopendulums, all the autonomatic metagrobolism of the Romish
Church, when tottering and emblustricated with the gibble-gabble gibberish
of this odious error and heresy, is homocentrically poised. But what harm,
in the devil’s name, have these poor devils the Capuchins and Minims done
unto him? Are not these beggarly devils sufficiently wretched already?
Who can imagine that these poor snakes, the very extracts of ichthyophagy,
are not thoroughly enough besmoked and besmeared with misery, distress, and
calamity? Dost thou think, Friar John, by thy faith, that he is in the
state of salvation? He goeth, before God, as surely damned to thirty
thousand basketsful of devils as a pruning-bill to the lopping of a
vine-branch. To revile with opprobrious speeches the good and courageous
props and pillars of the Church,--is that to be called a poetical fury? I
cannot rest satisfied with him; he sinneth grossly, and blasphemeth against
the true religion. I am very much offended at his scandalizing words and
contumelious obloquy. I do not care a straw, quoth Friar John, for what he
hath said; for although everybody should twit and jerk them, it were but a
just retaliation, seeing all persons are served by them with the like sauce:
therefore do I pretend no interest therein. Let us see, nevertheless, what
he hath written. Panurge very attentively read the paper which the old man
had penned; then said to his two fellow-travellers, The poor drinker doteth.
Howsoever, I excuse him, for that I believe he is now drawing near to the
end and final closure of his life. Let us go make his epitaph. By the
answer which he hath given us, I am not, I protest, one jot wiser than I
was. Hearken here, Epistemon, my little bully, dost not thou hold him to be
very resolute in his responsory verdicts? He is a witty, quick, and subtle
sophister. I will lay an even wager that he is a miscreant apostate. By
the belly of a stalled ox, how careful he is not to be mistaken in his
words. He answered but by disjunctives, therefore can it not be true which
he saith; for the verity of such-like propositions is inherent only in one
of its two members. O the cozening prattler that he is! I wonder if
Santiago of Bressure be one of these cogging shirks. Such was of old, quoth
Epistemon, the custom of the grand vaticinator and prophet Tiresias, who
used always, by way of a preface, to say openly and plainly at the beginning
of his divinations and predictions that what he was to tell would either
come to pass or not. And such is truly the style of all prudently presaging
prognosticators. He was nevertheless, quoth Panurge, so unfortunately
misadventurous in the lot of his own destiny, that Juno thrust out both his
eyes.
Yes, answered Epistemon, and that merely out of a spite and spleen for
having pronounced his award more veritable than she, upon the question
which was merrily proposed by Jupiter. But, quoth Panurge, what archdevil
is it that hath possessed this Master Raminagrobis, that so unreasonably,
and without any occasion, he should have so snappishly and bitterly
inveighed against these poor honest fathers, Jacobins, Minors, and Minims?
It vexeth me grievously, I assure you; nor am I able to conceal my
indignation. He hath transgressed most enormously; his soul goeth
infallibly to thirty thousand panniersful of devils. I understand you not,
quoth Epistemon, and it disliketh me very much that you should so absurdly
and perversely interpret that of the Friar Mendicants which by the harmless
poet was spoken of black beasts, dun, and other sorts of other coloured
animals. He is not in my opinion guilty of such a sophistical and
fantastic allegory as by that phrase of his to have meant the Begging
Brothers. He in downright terms speaketh absolutely and properly of fleas,