if it be done towards the left. You, quoth Panurge, do take always
the matter at the worst, and continually, like another Davus, casteth
in new disturbances and obstructions ; nor ever yet did I know
this old paltry Terpsion worthy of citation but in points only of
cosenage and imposture. Nevertheless, quoth Pantagruel, Cicero



CHAP, xx.] RABELAIS. 133

hath written I know not what to the same purpose in his Second
Book of Divination.

Panurge then, turning himself towards Goatsnose, made this sign
unto him. He inverted his eyelids upwards, wrenched his jaws from
the right to the left side, and drew forth his tongue half out of his
mouth. This done, he posited his left hand wholly open, the mid-
finger wholly excepted, which was perpendicularly placed upon the
palm thereof, and set it just in the room where his codpiece had been.
Then did he keep his right hand altogether shut up in a fist, save only
the thumb, which he straight turned backwards directly under the
right armpit, and settled it afterwards on that most eminent part of
the buttocks which the Arabs call the Al-Katim. Suddenly there-
after he made this interchange : he held his right hand after the
manner of the left, and posited it on the place wherein his codpiece
sometime was, and retaining his left hand in the form and fashion
of the right, he placed it upon his Al-Katim. This altering of hands
did he reiterate nine several times ; at the last whereof he reseated
his eyelids into their own first natural position. Then doing the
like also with his jaws and tongue, he did cast a squinting look upon
Goatsnose, diddering and shivering his chaps, as apes use to do
nowadays, and rabbits, whilst, almost starved with hunger, they are
eating oats in the sheaf.

Then was it that Goatsnose, lifting up into the air his right hand
wholly open and displayed, put the thumb thereof, even close unto
its first articulation, between the two third joints of the middle and
ring fingers, pressing about the said thumb thereof very hard with
them both, and, whilst the remanent joints were contracted and
shrunk in towards the wrist, he stretched forth with as much straight-
ness as he could the fore and little fingers. That hand thus framed
and disposed {of he laid and posited upon Panurge's navel, moving
withal continually the aforesaid thumb, and bearing up, supporting,
or under-propping that hand upon the above-specified fore and little
fingers, as upon two legs. Thereafter did he make in this posture
his hand by .little and little, and by degrees and pauses, successively
to mount from athwart the belly to the stomach, from whence he
made it to ascend to the breast, even upwards to Panurge's neck,
still gaining ground, till, having reached his chin, he had put within
the concave of his mouth his afore-mentioned thumb ; then fiercely



134 RABELAIS. [BOOK in.

brandishing the whole hand, which he made to rub and grate against
his nose, he heaved it further up, and made the fashion as if with the
thumb thereof he would have put out his eyes. With this Panurge
grew a little angry, and went about to withdraw and rid himself from
this ruggedly untoward dumb devil. But Goatsnose in the meantime,
prosecuting the intended purpose of his prognosticatory response,
touched very rudely, with the above-mentioned shaking thumb, now
his eyes, then his forehead, and after that the borders and corners of
his cap. At last Panurge cried out, saying, Before God, master fool,
if you do not let me alone, or that you will presume to vex me any
more, you shall receive from the best hand I have a mask wherewith
to cover your rascally scroundrel face, you paltry shitten varlet.
Then said Friar John, He is deaf, and doth not understand what thou
sayest unto him. Bulliballock, make sign to him of a hail of fisticuffs
upon the muzzle.

What the devil, quoth Panurge, means this busy restless fellow ?
What is it that this polypragmonetic ardelion to all the fiends of
hell doth aim at ? He hath almost thrust out mine eyes, as if he had
been to poach them in a skillet with butter and eggs. By God, da
jurandi^ I will feast you with flirts and raps on the snout, interlarded
with a double row of bobs and finger-filli pings ! Then did he leave
him in giving him by way of salvo a volley of farts for his farewell.
Goatsnose, perceiving Panurge thus to slip away from him, got before
him, and, by mere strength enforcing him to stand, made this sign
unto him. He let fall his right arm toward his knee on the same
side as low as he could, and, raising all the fingers of that hand into a
close fist, passed his dexter thumb betwixt the foremost and mid fingers
thereto belonging. Then scrubbing and swingeing a little with his left
hand alongst and upon the uppermost in the very bough of the elbow
of the said dexter arm, the whole cubit thereof, by leisure, fair and
softly, at these thumpatory warnings, did raise and elevate itself even
to the elbow, and above it ; on a sudden did he then let it fall down
as low as before, and after that, at certain intervals and such spaces
of time, raising and abasing it, he made a show thereof to Panurge.
This so incensed Panurge that he forthwith lifted his hand to have
stricken him the dumb roister and given him a sound whirret on the
ear, but that the respect and reverence which he carried to the pre-
sence of Pantagruel restrained his choler and kept his fury within



CHAP, xxi.] RABELAIS. 135

bounds and limits. Then said Pantagruel, If the bare signs now vex
and trouble you, how much more grievously will you be perplexed
and disquieted with the real things which by them are represented
and signified ! All truths agree and are consonant with one another.
This dumb fellow prophesieth and foretelleth that you will be married,
cuckolded, beaten, and robbed. As for the marriage, quoth Panurge,
I yield thereto, and acknowledge the verity of that point of his pre-
diction ; as for the rest, I utterly abjure and deny it : and believe,
sir, I beseech you, if it may please you so to do, that in the matter of
wives and horses never any man was predestinated to a better fortune
than I.



CHAPTER XXI.

How Panurge consulteth with an old French poet, named
Raminagrobis.

' I NEVER thought, said Pantagruel, to have encountered with any
man so headstrong in his apprehensions, or in his opinions so wilful,
as I have found you to be and see you are. Nevertheless, the better
to clear and 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 .ffilianus 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. How-
ever, 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



136 RABELAIS. [BOOK m.

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, Ei0' 6 ytpu>v
2i/3vAAia. 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 tempes-
tuous 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 con-
found your memory by quoting antique examples of Isaac, of Jacob, of
Patroclus towards Hector, of Hector towards Achilles, of Polym-
nestor 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 loth 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 utter-
ance 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



CHAP, xxi.] RABELAIS. 137

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 j 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,

Ojf, or on :

Handy-dandy is your lot.
When her name you write, you blot.
'T/5 undone, when all is done,
Ended e'er it was begun :



138 RABELAIS. [BOOK m.

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.



CHAP, xxii.] RABELAIS. 139



CHAPTER 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 villain-
ously rail at the Mendicant Friars and Jacobins, who are the two
hemispheres of the Christian world ; by whose gyronomonic circum-
bilvaginations, as by two celivagous filopendulums, all the autonomatic
metagrobolism of the Romish Church, when tottering and emblustri-
cated 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



140 RABELAIS. [BOOK m.

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 respon-
sory 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, punies, hand worms, flies, gnats, and
other such-like scurvy vermin, whereof some are black, some dun,
some ash-coloured, some tawny, and some brown and dusky, all
noisome, molesting, tyrannous, cumbersome, and unpleasant creatures,
not only to sick and diseased folks, but to those also who are of a



CHAP, xxiii.] RABELAIS. 141

sound, vigorous, and healthful temperament and constitution. It is
not unlikely that he may have the ascarids, and the lumbrics, and
worms within the entrails of his body. Possibly doth he suffer, as it
is frequent and usual amongst the Egyptians, together with all those
who inhabit the Erythraean confines, and dwell along the shores and
coasts of the Red Sea, some sour prickings and smart stingings in his
arms and legs of those little speckled dragons which the Arabians
call meden. You are to blame for offering to expound his words
otherwise, and wrong the ingenuous poet, and outrageously abuse and
miscall the said fraters, by an imputation of baseness undeservedly
laid to their charge. We still should, in such like discourses of fatilo-
quent soothsayers, interpret all things to the best. Will you teach
me, quoth Panurge, how to discern flies among milk, or show your
father the way how to beget children ? He is, by the virtue of God,
an arrant heretic, a resolute, formal heretic ; I say, a rooted, com-
bustible heretic, one as fit to burn as the little wooden clock at
Rochelle. His soul goeth to thirty thousand cartsful of devils.
Would you know whither ? Cocks-body, my friend, straight under
Proserpina's close-stool, to the very middle of the self-same infernal
pan within which she, by an excrementitious evacuation, voideth the
faecal stuff of her stinking clysters, and that just upon the left side
of the great cauldron of three fathom height, hard by the claws and
talons of Lucifer, in the very darkest of the passage which leadeth
towards the black chamber of Demogorgon. O the villain !



CHAPTER XXIII.

How Panurge maketh the motion of a return to
Raminagrobis .

LET us return, quoth Panurge, not ceasing, to the uttermost of
our abilities, to ply him with wholesome admonitions for the further-
ance of his salvation. Let us go back, for God's sake ; let us go, in the
name of God. It will be a very meritorious work, and of great charity
in us to deal so in the matter, and provide so well for him that, albeit he



142 RABELAIS. [BOOK in.

come to lose both body and life, he may at least escape the risk and
danger of the eternal damnation of his soul. We will by our holy
persuasions bring him to a sense and feeling of his escapes, induce him to
acknowledge his faults, move him to a cordial repentance of his errors,
and stir up in him such a sincere contrition of heart for his offences, as
will prompt him with all earnestness to cry mercy, and to beg pardon
at the hands of the good fathers, as well of the absent as of such as
are present. Whereupon we will take instrument formally and
authentically extended, to the end he be not, after his decease,
declared an heretic, and condemned, as were the hobgoblins of the
provost's wife of Orleans, to the undergoing of such punishments,
pains, and tortures as are due to and inflicted on those that inhabit the
horrid cells of the infernal regions ; and withal incline, instigate, and
persuade him to bequeath and leave in legacy (by way of an amends
and satisfaction for the outrage and injury done to those good
religious fathers throughout all the convents, cloisters, and monas-
teries of this province), many bribes, a great deal of mass-singing,
store of obits, and that sempiternally, on the anniversary day of his
decease, every one of them all be furnished with a quintuple allow-
ance, and that the great borachio replenished with the best liquor
trudge apace along the tables, as well of the young duckling monkitoes,
lay brothers, and lowermost degree of the abbey lubbards, as of the
learned priests and reverend clerks, the very meanest of the novices
and mitiants unto the order being equally admitted to the benefit of
those funerary and obsequial festivals with the aged rectors and pro-
fessed fathers. This is the surest ordinary means whereby from
God he may obtain forgiveness. Ho, ho, I am quite mistaken ; I
digress from the purpose, and fly out of my discourse, as if my
spirits were a-wool-gathering. The devil take me, if I go thither !
Virtue God ! the chamber is already full of devils. O what a
swinging, thwacking noise is now amongst them ! O the terrible coil
that they keep ! Hearken, do you not hear the rustling, thumping
bustle of their strokes and blows, as they scuffle with one another,
like true devils indeed, who shall gulp up the Raminagrobis soul,
and be the first bringer of it, whilst it is hot, to Monsieur Lucifer ?
Beware, and get you hence ! for my part, I will not go thither. The
devil roast me if I go ! Who knows but that these hungry mad
devils may in the haste of their rage and fury of their impatience



CHAP, xxiii.] RABELAIS. 143

take a qui for a quo, and instead of Raminagrobis snatch up poor
Panurge frank and free ? Though formerly, when I was deep in
debt, they always failed. Get you hence ! I will not go thither.
Before God, the very bare apprehension thereof is like to kill me. To
be in a place where there are greedy, famished, and hunger-starved
devils ; amongst factious devils amidst trading and trafficking devils
O the Lord preserve me ! Get you hence ! I dare pawn my credit on
it, that no Jacobin, Cordelier, Carmelite, Capuchin, Theatin,or Minim
will bestow any personal presence at his interment. The wiser they,
because he hath ordained nothing for them in his latter will and
testament. The devil take me, if I go thither. If he be damned, to
his own loss and hindrance be it. What the deuce moved him to be
so snappish and depravedly bent against the good fathers of the true
religion ? Why did he cast them off, reject them, and drive them
quite out of his chamber, even in that very nick of time when he
stood in greatest need of the aid, suffrage, and assistance of their
devout prayers and holy admonitions ? Why did not he by testa-
ment leaye them, at least, some jolly lumps and cantles of substantial
meat, a parcel of cheek-puffing victuals, and a little belly-timber and