232 RABELAIS. [BOOK in.
on either of the opposite terms, and a gap being thereby opened for
the ushering in of injustice and iniquity through the various interpre-
tations of self-ended lawyers, being assuredly persuaded that the
infernal calumniator, who frequently transformed! himself into the
likeness of a messenger or angel of light, maketh use of these cross
glosses and expositions in the mouths and pens of his ministers and
servants, the perverse advocates, bribing judges, law-monging attor-
neys, prevaricating counsellors, and other such-like law-wresting
members of a court of justice, to turn by those means black to white,
green to grey, and what is straight to a crooked ply. For the more
expedient doing whereof, these diabolical ministers make both the
pleading parties believe that their cause is just and righteous ; for it
is well known that there is no cause, how bad soever, which doth
not find an advocate to patrocinate and defend it, else would there
be no process in the world, no suits at law, nor pleadings at the bar.
He did in these extremities, as I conceive, most humbly recommend
the direction of his judicial proceedings to the upright judge of
judges, God Almighty ; did submit himself to the conduct and
guideship of the blessed Spirit in the hazard and perplexity of the
definitive sentence, and, by this aleatory lot, did as it were implore
and explore the divine decree of his goodwill and pleasure, instead
of that which we call the final judgment of a court. To this
effect, to the better attaining to his purpose, which was to judge
righteously, he did, in my opinion, throw and turn the dice, to the
end that by the providence aforesaid the best chance might fall to
him whose action was uprightest, and backed with greatest reason.
In doing whereof he did not stray from the sense of Talmudists, who
say that there is so little harm in that manner of searching the truth,
that in the anxiety and perplexedness of human wits God oftentimes
manifesteth the secret pleasure of his divine will.
Furthermore, I will neither think nor say, nor can I believe, that
the unstraightness is so irregular, or the corruption so evident, of
those of the parliament of Mirelingois in Mirelingues, before whom
Bridlegoose was arraigned for prevarication, that they will maintain
it to be a worse practice to have the decision of a suit at law referred
to the chance and hazard of a throw of the dice, hab nab, or luck as
it will, than to have it remitted to and passed by the determination
of those whose hands are full of blood and hearts of wry affections.
CHAP. XLV.J RABELAIS. 233
Besides that, their principal direction in all law matters comes to their
hands from one Tribonian, a wicked, miscreant, barbarous, faithless
and perfidious knave, so pernicious, unjust, avaricious, and perverse
in his ways, that it was his ordinary custom to sell laws, edicts,
declarations, constitutions, and ordinances, as at an outroop or putsale,
to him who offered most for them. Thus did he shape measures for
the pleaders, and cut their morsels to them by and out of these little
parcels, fragments, bits, scantlings, and shreds of the law now in use,
altogether concealing, suppressing, disannulling, and abolishing the
remainder, which did make for the total law ; fearing that, if the
whole law were made manifest and laid open to the knowledge of
such as are interested in it, and the learned books of the ancient
doctors of the law upon the exposition of the Twelve Tables and
Praetorian Edicts, his villainous pranks, naughtiness, and vile impiety
should come to the public notice of the world. Therefore were it
better, in my conceit, that is to say, less inconvenient, that parties at
variance in any juridical case should in the dark march upon caltrops
than submit the determination of what is their right to such unhal-
lowed sentences and horrible decrees ; as Cato in his time wished and
advised that every judiciary court should be paved with caltrops.
CHAPTER XLV.
How Panurge taketh advice of Triboulet.
ON the sixth day thereafter Pantagruel was returned home at
the very same hour that Triboulet was by water come from Blois.
Panurge, at his arrival, gave him a hog's bladder puffed up with wind,
and resounding because of the hard peas that were within it. More-
over he did present him with a gilt wooden sword, a hollow budget
made of a tortoise shell, an osier-wattled wicker-bottle full of Breton
wine, and five-and-twenty apples of the orchard of Blandureau.
If he be such a fool, quoth Carpalin, as to be won with apples,
there is no more wit in his pate than in the head of an ordinary
234 RABELAIS. [BOOK m.
cabbage. Triboulet girded the sword and scrip to his side, took the
bladder in his hand, ate some few of the apples, and drunk up all the
wine. Panurge very wistly and heedfully looking upon him said,
I never yet saw a fool, and I have seen ten thousand francs worth of
that kind of cattle, who did not love to drink heartily, and by good
long draughts. When Triboulet had done with his drinking, Panurge
laid out before him and exposed the sum of the business wherein he
was to require his advice, in eloquent and choicely-sorted terms,
adorned with flourishes of rhetoric. But, before he had altogether
done, Triboulet with his fist gave him a bouncing whirret between
the shoulders, rendered back into his hand again the empty bottle,
fillipped and flirted him on the nose with the hog's bladder, and
lastly, for a final resolution, shaking and wagging his head strongly
and disorderly, he answered nothing else but this, By God, God, mad
fool, beware the monk, Buzansay hornpipe ! These words thus
finished, he slipped himself out of the company, went aside, and,
rattling the bladder, took a huge delight in the melody of the rickling
crackling noise of the peas. After which time it lay not in the power
of them all to draw out of his chaps the articulate sound of one
syllable, insomuch that, when Panurge went about to interrogate
him further, Triboulet drew his wooden sword, and would have
stuck him therewith. I have fished fair now, quoth Panurge, and
brought my pigs to a fine market. Have I not got a brave deter-
mination of all my doubts, and a response in all things agreeable to
the oracle that gave it ? He is a great fool, that is not to be denied,
yet is he a greater fool who brought him hither to me, That bolt,
quoth Carpalin, levels point-blank at me, but of the three I am the
greatest fool, who did impart the secret of my thoughts to such an
idiot ass and native ninny.
Without putting ourselves to any stir or trouble in the least,
quoth Pantagruel, let us maturely and seriously consider and perpend
the gestures and speech which he hath made and uttered. In them,
veritably, quoth he, have I remarked and observed some excellent
and notable mysteries ; yea, of such important worth and weight,
that I shall never henceforth be astonished, nor think strange, why
the Turks with a great deal of worship and reverence honour and
respect natural fools equally with their primest doctors, muftis,
divines, and prophets. Did not you take heed, quoth he, a little
CHAP. XLV.] RABELAIS. 235
before he opened his mouth to speak, what a shogging, shaking, and
wagging his head did keep ? By the approved doctrine of the ancient
philosophers, the customary ceremonies of the most expert magicians,
and the received opinions of the learnedest lawyers, such a brangling
agitation and moving should by us all be judged to proceed from,
and be quickened and suscitated by the coming and inspiration of the
prophetizing and fatidical spirit, which, entering briskly and on a
sudden into a shallow receptacle of a debile substance (for, as you
know, and as the proverb shows it, a little head containeth not much
brains), was the cause of that commotion. This is conform to what
is avouched by the most skilful physicians, when they affirm that
shakings and tremblings fall upon the members of a human body,
partly because of the heaviness and violent impetuosity of the burden
and load that is carried, and, other part, by reason of the weakness
and imbecility that is in the virtue of the bearing organ. A manifest
example whereof appeareth in those who, fasting, are not able to
carry to their head a great goblet full of wine without a trembling
and a shaking in the hand that holds it. This of old was accounted
a prefiguration and mystical pointing out of the Pythian divineress,
who used always, before the uttering of a response from the oracle,
to shake a branch of her domestic laurel. Lampridius also testifieth
that the Emperor Heliogabalus, to acquire unto himself the reputation
of a soothsayer, did, on several holy days of prime solemnity, in the
presence of the fanatic rabble, make the head of his idol by some
slight within the body thereof publicly to shake. Plautus, in his
Asinaria, declareth likewise, that Saurias, whithersoever he walked,
like one quite distracted of his wits kept such a furious lolling and
mad-like shaking of his head, that he commonly affrighted those
who casually met with him in his way. The said author in another
place, showing a reason why Charmides shook and brangled his head,
assevered that he was transported and in an ecstasy. Catullus after
the same manner maketh mention, in his Berecynthia and Atys, of
the place wherein the Menades, Bacchical women, she-priests of the
Lyaean god, and demented prophetesses, carrying ivy boughs in their
hands, did shake their heads. As in the like case, amongst the Galli,
the gelded priests of Cybele were wont to do in the celebrating of
their festivals. Whence, too, according to the sense of the ancient
theologues, she herself has her denomination ; for nvfticrrav signifieth
236 RABELAIS. [BOOK in.
to turn round, whirl about, shake the head, and play the part of one
that is wry-necked.
Semblably Titus Livius writeth that, in the solemnization time
of the Bacchanalian holidays at Rome, both men and women seemed
to prophetize and vaticinate, because of an affected kind of wagging
of the head, shrugging of the shoulders, and jectigation of the whole
body, which they used then most punctually. For the common
voice of the philosophers, together with the opinion of the people,
asserteth for an irrefragable truth that vaticination is seldom by the
heavens bestowed on any without the concomitancy of a little frenzy
and a head-shaking, not only when the said presaging virtue is infused,
but when the person also therewith inspired declareth and manifesteth
it unto others. The learned lawyer Julian, being asked on a time
if that slave might be truly esteemed to be healthful and in a good
plight who had not only conversed with some furious, maniac, and
enraged people, but in their company had also prophesied, yet without
a noddle-shaking concussion, answered that, seeing there was no head-
wagging at the time of his predictions, he might be held for sound
and compotent enough. Is it not daily seen how schoolmasters,
teachers, tutors, and instructors of children shake the heads of their
disciples, as one would do a pot in holding it by the lugs, that by
this erection, vellication, stretching, and pulling their ears, which,
according to the doctrine of the sage Egyptians, is a member conse-
crated to the memory, they may stir them up to recollect their
scattered thoughts, bring home those fancies of theirs which perhaps
have been extravagantly roaming abroad upon strange and uncouth
objects, and totally range their judgments, which possibly by dis-
ordinate affections have been made wild, to the rule and pattern of
a wise, discreet, virtuous, and philosophical discipline. All which
Virgil acknowledgeth to be true, in the branglement of Apollo
Cynthius.
CHAP. XLVI.] RABELAIS. 237
CHAPTER XLVI.
How Pantagruel and Panurge diversely interpret the
words of Triboulet.
HE says you are a fool. And what kind of fool ? A mad fool,
who in your old age would enslave yourself to the bondage of matri-
mony, and shut your pleasures up within a wedlock whose key some
ruffian carries in his codpiece. He says furthermore, Beware of the
monk. Upon mine honour, it gives me in my mind that you will
be cuckolded by a monk. Nay, I will engage mine honour, which
is the most precious pawn I could have in my possession although I
were sole and peaceable dominator over all Europe, Asia, and Africa,
that, if you marry, you will surely be one of the horned brotherhood
of Vulcan. Hereby may you perceive how much I do attribute to
the wise foolery of our morosoph Triboulet. The other oracles and
responses did in the general prognosticate you a cuckold, without
descending so near to the point of a particular determination as to
pitch upon what vocation amongst the several sorts of men he should
profess who is to be the copesmate of your wife and hornifier of your
proper self. Thus noble Triboulet tells it us plainly, from whose
words we may gather with all ease imaginable that your cuckoldry is
to be infamous, and so much the more scandalous that your conjugal
bed will be incestuously contaminated with the filthiness of a monkery
lecher. Moreover, he says that you will be the hornpipe of Buzansay,
that is to say, well-horned, hornified, and cornuted. And, as
Triboulet's uncle asked from Louis the Twelfth, for a younger
brother of his own who lived at Blois, the hornpipes of Buzansay,
for the organ pipes, through the mistake of one word for another,
even so, whilst you think to marry a wise, humble, calm, discreet,
and honest wife, you shall unhappily stumble upon one witless, proud,
loud, obstreperous, bawling, clamorous, and more unpleasant than any
Buzansay hornpipe. Consider withal how he flirted you on the nose
with the bladder, and gave you a sound thumping blow with his fist
238 RABELAIS. [BOOK in.
upon the ridge of the back. This denotates and presageth that you
shall be banged, beaten, and fillipped by her, and that also she will
steal of your goods from you, as you stole the hog's bladder from the
little boys of Vaubreton.
Flat contrary, quoth Panurge; not that I would impudently
exempt myself from being a vassal in the territory of folly. I hold
of that jurisdiction, and am subject thereto, I confess it. And why
should I not ? For the whole world is foolish. In the old Lorraine
language, fou for tou y all and fool, were the same thing. Besides, it
is avouched by Solomon that infinite is the number of fools. From
an infinity nothing can be deducted or abated, nor yet, by the
testimony of Aristotle, can anything thereto be added or subjoined.
Therefore were I a mad fool if, being a fool, I should not hold
myself a fool. After the same manner of speaking, we may aver the
number of the mad and enraged folks to be infinite. Avicenna
maketh no bones to assert that the several kinds of madness are
infinite. Though this much of Triboulet's words tend little to my
advantage, howbeit the prejudice which I sustain thereby be common
with me to all other men, yet the rest of his talk and gesture maketh
altogether for me. He said to my wife, Be wary of the monkey;
that is as much as if she should be cheery, and take as much delight
in a monkey as ever did the Lesbia of Catullus in her sparrow; who
will for his recreation pass his time no less joyfully at the exercise of
snatching flies than heretofore did the merciless fly-catcher Domitian.
Withal he meant, by another part of his discourse, that she should be
of a jovial country-like humour, as gay and pleasing as a harmonious
hornpipe of Saulieau or Buzansay. The veridical Triboulet did
therein hint at what I liked well, as perfectly knowing the inclinations
and propensions of my mind, my natural disposition, and the bias of
my interior passions and affections. For you may be assured that
my humour is much better satisfied and contented with the pretty,
frolic, rural, dishevelled shepherdesses, whose bums through their
coarse canvas smocks smell of the clover grass of the field, than with
those great ladies in magnific courts, with their flandan top-knots
and sultanas, their polvil, pastilles, and cosmetics. The homely
sound, likewise, of a rustical hornpipe is more agreeable to my ears
than the curious warbling and musical quavering of lutes, theorbos,
viols, rebecs, and violins. He gave me a lusty rapping thwack on
CHAP. XLVII.] RABELAIS. 239
my back, what then ? Let it pass, in the name and for the love of
God, as an abatement of and deduction from so much of my future
pains in purgatory. He did it not out of any evil intent. He
thought, belike, to have hit some of the pages. He is an honest
fool, and an innocent changeling. It is a sin to harbour in the heart
any bad conceit of him. As for myself, I heartily pardon him. He
flirted me on the nose. In that there is no harm; for it importeth
nothing else but that betwixt my wife and me there will occur some
toyish wanton tricks which usually happen to all new-married folks.
CHAPTER XLVII.
How Pantagruel and Panurge resolved to make a visit to
the oracle of the holy bottle.
THERE is as yet another point, quoth Panurge, which you have
not at all considered on, although it be the chief and principal head
of the matter. He put the bottle in my hand and restored it me
again. How interpret you that passage ? What is the meaning
of that ? He possibly, quoth Pantagruel, signifieth thereby that your
wife will be such a drunkard as shall daily take in her liquor kindly,
and ply the pots and bottles apace. Quite otherwise, quoth Panurge ;
for the bottle was empty. I swear to you, by the prickling brambly
thorn of St. Fiacre in Brie, that our unique morosoph, whom I
formerly termed the lunatic Triboulet, referreth me, for attaining to
the final resolution of my scruple, to the response-giving bottle.
Therefore do I renew afresh the first vow which I made, and here
in your presence protest and make oath, by Styx and Acheron, to
carry still spectacles in my cap, and never to wear a codpiece in
my breeches, until upon the enterprise in hand of my nuptial under-
taking I shall have obtained an answer from the holy bottle. I am
acquainted with a prudent, understanding, and discreet gentleman,
and besides a very good friend of mine, who knoweth the land,
country, and place where its temple and oracle is built and posited.
He will guide and conduct us thither sure and safely. Let us
240 RABELAIS. [BOOK m.
go thither, I beseech you. Deny me not, and say not nay ; reject
not the suit I make unto you, I entreat you. I will be to you an
Achates, a Dam is, and heartily accompany you all along in the
whole voyage, both in your going forth and coming back. I have of
a long time known you to be a great lover of peregrination, desirous
still to learn new things, and still to see what you had never seen
before.
Very willingly, quoth Pantagruel, I condescend to your request.
But before we enter in upon our progress towards the accomplish-
ment of so far a journey, replenished and fraught with eminent perils,
full of innumerable hazards, and every way stored with evident and
manifest dangers, What dangers ? quoth Pan urge, interrupting him.
Dangers fly back, run from, and shun me whithersoever I go, seven
leagues around, as in the presence of the sovereign a subordinate
magistracy is eclipsed; or as clouds and darkness quite evanish at
the bright coming of a radiant sun; or as all sores and sicknesses
did suddenly depart at the approach of the body of St. Martin a
Quande. Nevertheless, quoth Pantagruel, before we adventure to
set forwards on the road of our projected and intended voyage, some
few points are to be discussed, expedited, and despatched. First, let
us send back Triboulet to Blois. Which was instantly done, after
that Pantagruel had given him a frieze coat. Secondly, our design
must be backed with the advice and counsel of the king my
father. And, lastly, it is most needful and expedient for us that we
search for and find out some sibyl to serve us for a guide, truchman,
and interpreter. To this Panurge made answer, that his friend
Xenomanes would abundantly suffice for the plenary discharge and
performance of the sibyl's office ; and that, furthermore, in passing
through the Lanternatory revelling country, they should take along
with them a learned and profitable Lanternesse, which would be no
less useful to them in their voyage than was the sibyl to ^Eneas in
his descent to the Elysian fields. Carpalin, in the interim, as he was
upon the conducting away of Triboulet, in his passing by hearkened
a little to the discourse they were upon; then spoke out, saying,
Ho, Panurge, master freeman, take my Lord Debitis at Calais
alongst with you, for he is goud-fallot, a good fellow. He will not
forget those who have been debitors; these are Lanternes. Thus
shall you not lack for both fallot and lanterne. I may safely with
CHAP. XLVII.J RABELAIS. 241
the little skill I have, quoth Pantagruel, prognosticate that by the
way we shall engender no melancholy. I clearly perceive it already.
The only thing that vexeth me is, that I cannot speak the
Lanternatory language. I shall, answered Panurge, speak for you all.
I understand it every whit as well as I do mine own maternal tongue ;
I have been no less used to it than to the vulgar French.
Briszmarg dalgotbrick nubstzne zos,
hquebsz prusq : albok crinqs zacbac.
Mizbe dilbarskz morp nipp stancz bos,
Strombtz, Panurge, walmap quost gruszbac.
Now guess, friend Epistemon, what this is. They are, quoth
Epistemon, names of errant devils, passant devils, and rampant devils.
These words of thine, dear friend of mine, are true, quoth Panurge;
yet are they terms used in the language of the court of the Lanternish
people. By the way, as we go upon our journey, I will make to thee
a pretty little dictionary, which, notwithstanding, shall not last you
much longer than a pair of new shoes. Thou shalt have learned it
sooner than thou canst perceive the dawning of the next subsequent
morning. What I have said in the foregoing tetrastich is thus
translated out of the Lanternish tongue into our vulgar dialect :
All miseries attended me, whilst I
A lover was, and had no good thereby.
Of better luck the married people tell ;
Panurge is one of those, and knows it well.
There is little more, then, quoth Pantagruel, to be done, but that
we understand what the will of the king my father will be therein,
and purchase his consent.
VOL. II.
242 RABELAIS. [BOOK in.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
How Gargantua showeth that the children ought not to
marry without the special knowledge and advice of
their fathers and mothers.
No sooner had Pantagruel entered in at the door of the great
hall of the castle, than that he encountered full butt with the good
honest Gargantua coming forth from the council board, unto whom
he made a succinct and summary narrative of what had passed and
occurred, worthy of his observation, in his travels abroad, since their
last interview ; then, acquainting him with the design he had in
hand, besought him that it might stand with his goodwill and
pleasure to grant him leave to prosecute and go through-stitch with
the enterprise which he had undertaken. The good man Gargantua,
having in one hand two great bundles of petitions endorsed and
answered, and in the other some remembrancing notes and bills, to
put him in mind of such other requests of supplicants, which, albeit
presented, had nevertheless been neither read nor heard, he gave both
to Ulric Gallet, his ancient and faithful Master of Requests ; then
drew aside Pantagruel, and, with a countenance more serene and
jovial than customary, spoke to him thus : I praise God, and have
great reason so to do, my most dear son, that he hath been pleased to
entertain in you a constant inclination to virtuous actions. I am
well content that the voyage which you have motioned to me be by
you accomplished, but withal I could wish you would have a mind
and desire to marry, for that I see you are of competent years.
Panurge in the meanwhile was in a readiness of preparing and pro-
viding for remedies, salves, and cures against all such lets, obstacles,
and impediments as he could in the height of his fancy conceive
might by Gargantua be cast in the way of their itinerary design. Is
it your pleasure, most dear father, that you speak ? answered Panta-
gruel. For my part, I have not yet thought upon it. In all this
affair I wholly submit and rest in your good liking and paternal
CHAP. XLVIII.] RABELAIS. 243
authority. For I shall rather pray unto God that he would throw
me down stark dead at your feet, in your pleasure, than that against