5. XXVII…

5. XXVII

How we came to the island of Sandals; and of the order of Semiquaver Friars.

Thence we went to the island of Sandals, whose inhabitants live on nothing but ling-broth. However, we were very kindly received and entertained by Benius the Third, king of the island, who, after he had made us drink, took us with him to show us a spick-and-span new monastery which he had contrived for the Semiquaver Friars; so he called the religious men whom he had there. For he said that on t’other side the water lived friars who styled themselves her sweet ladyship’s most humble servants. Item, the goodly Friar-minors, who are semibreves of bulls; the smoked-herring tribe of Minim Friars; then the Crotchet Friars. So that these diminutives could be no more than Semiquavers. By the statutes, bulls, and patents of Queen Whims, they were all dressed like so many house-burners, except that, as in Anjou your bricklayers use to quilt their knees when they tile houses, so these holy friars had usually quilted bellies, and thick quilted paunches were among them in much repute. Their codpieces were cut slipper-fashion, and every monk among them wore two--one sewed before and another behind --reporting that some certain dreadful mysteries were duly represented by this duplicity of codpieces.

They wore shoes as round as basins, in imitation of those who inhabit the sandy sea. Their chins were close-shaved, and their feet iron-shod; and to show they did not value fortune, Benius made them shave and poll the hind part of their polls as bare as a bird’s arse, from the crown to the shoulder-blades; but they had leave to let their hair grow before, from the two triangular bones in the upper part of the skull.

Thus did they not value fortune a button, and cared no more for the goods of this world than you or I do for hanging. And to show how much they defied that blind jilt, all of them wore, not in their hands like her, but at their waist, instead of beads, sharp razors, which they used to new-grind twice a day and set thrice a night.

Each of them had a round ball on their feet, because Fortune is said to have one under hers.

The flap of their cowls hanged forward, and not backwards, like those of others. Thus none could see their noses, and they laughed without fear both at fortune and the fortunate; neither more nor less than our ladies laugh at barefaced trulls when they have those mufflers on which they call masks, and which were formerly much more properly called charity, because they cover a multitude of sins.

The hind part of their faces were always uncovered, as are our faces, which made them either go with their belly or the arse foremost, which they pleased. When their hind face went forwards, you would have sworn this had been their natural gait, as well on account of their round shoes as of the double codpiece, and their face behind, which was as bare as the back of my hand, and coarsely daubed over with two eyes and a mouth, such as you see on some Indian nuts. Now, if they offered to waddle along with their bellies forwards, you would have thought they were then playing at blindman’s buff. May I never be hanged if ‘twas not a comical sight.

Their way of living was thus: about owl-light they charitably began to boot and spur one another. This being done, the least thing they did was to sleep and snore; and thus sleeping, they had barnacles on the handles of their faces, or spectacles at most.

You may swear we did not a little wonder at this odd fancy; but they satisfied us presently, telling us that the day of judgment is to take mankind napping; therefore, to show they did not refuse to make their personal appearance as fortune’s darlings use to do, they were always thus booted and spurred, ready to mount whenever the trumpet should sound.

At noon, as soon as the clock struck, they used to awake. You must know that their clock-bell, church-bells, and refectory-bells were all made according to the pontial device, that is, quilted with the finest down, and their clappers of fox-tails.

Having then made shift to get up at noon, they pulled off their boots, and those that wanted to speak with a maid, alias piss, pissed; those that wanted to scumber, scumbered; and those that wanted to sneeze, sneezed. But all, whether they would or no (poor gentlemen!), were obliged largely and plentifully to yawn; and this was their first breakfast (O rigorous statute!). Methought ‘twas very comical to observe their transactions; for, having laid their boots and spurs on a rack, they went into the cloisters. There they curiously washed their hands and mouths; then sat them down on a long bench, and picked their teeth till the provost gave the signal, whistling through his fingers; then every he stretched out his jaws as much as he could, and they gaped and yawned for about half-an-hour, sometimes more, sometimes less, according as the prior judged the breakfast to be suitable to the day.

After that they went in procession, two banners being carried before them, in one of which was the picture of Virtue, and that of Fortune in the other. The last went before, carried by a semi-quavering friar, at whose heels was another, with the shadow or image of Virtue in one hand and an holy-water sprinkle in the other--I mean of that holy mercurial water which Ovid describes in his Fasti. And as the preceding Semiquaver rang a handbell, this shaked the sprinkle with his fist. With that says Pantagruel, This order contradicts the rule which Tully and the academics prescribed, that Virtue ought to go before, and Fortune follow. But they told us they did as they ought, seeing their design was to breech, lash, and bethwack Fortune.

During the processions they trilled and quavered most melodiously betwixt their teeth I do not know what antiphones, or chantings, by turns. For my part, ‘twas all Hebrew-Greek to me, the devil a word I could pick out on’t; at last, pricking up my ears, and intensely listening, I perceived they only sang with the tip of theirs. Oh, what a rare harmony it was! How well ‘twas tuned to the sound of their bells! You’ll never find these to jar, that you won’t. Pantagruel made a notable observation upon the processions; for says he, Have you seen and observed the policy of these Semiquavers? To make an end of their procession they went out at one of their church doors and came in at the other; they took a deal of care not to come in at the place whereat they went out. On my honour, these are a subtle sort of people, quoth Panurge; they have as much wit as three folks, two fools and a madman; they are as wise as the calf that ran nine miles to suck a bull, and when he came there ‘twas a steer. This subtlety and wisdom of theirs, cried Friar John, is borrowed from the occult philosophy. May I be gutted like an oyster if I can tell what to make on’t. Then the more ‘tis to be feared, said Pantagruel; for subtlety suspected, subtlety foreseen, subtlety found out, loses the essence and very name of subtlety, and only gains that of blockishness. They are not such fools as you take them to be; they have more tricks than are good, I doubt.

After the procession they went sluggingly into the fratery-room, by the way of walk and healthful exercise, and there kneeled under the tables, leaning their breasts on lanterns. While they were in that posture, in came a huge Sandal, with a pitchfork in his hand, who used to baste, rib-roast, swaddle, and swinge them well-favouredly, as they said, and in truth treated them after a fashion. They began their meal as you end yours, with cheese, and ended it with mustard and lettuce, as Martial tells us the ancients did. Afterwards a platterful of mustard was brought before every one of them, and thus they made good the proverb, After meat comes mustard.

Their diet was this:

O’ Sundays they stuffed their puddings with puddings, chitterlings, links, Bologna sausages, forced-meats, liverings, hogs’ haslets, young quails, and teals. You must also always add cheese for the first course, and mustard for the last.

O’ Mondays they were crammed with peas and pork, cum commento, and interlineary glosses.

O’ Tuesdays they used to twist store of holy-bread, cakes, buns, puffs, lenten loaves, jumbles, and biscuits.

O’ Wednesdays my gentlemen had fine sheep’s heads, calves’ heads, and brocks’ heads, of which there’s no want in that country.

O’ Thursdays they guzzled down seven sorts of porridge, not forgetting mustard.

O’ Fridays they munched nothing but services or sorb-apples; neither were these full ripe, as I guessed by their complexion.

O’ Saturdays they gnawed bones; not that they were poor or needy, for every mother’s son of them had a very good fat belly-benefice.

As for their drink, ‘twas an antifortunal; thus they called I don’t know what sort of a liquor of the place.

When they wanted to eat or drink, they turned down the back-points or flaps of their cowls forwards below their chins, and that served ‘em instead of gorgets or slabbering-bibs.

When they had well dined, they prayed rarely all in quavers and shakes; and the rest of the day, expecting the day of judgment, they were taken up with acts of charity, and particularly--

O’ Sundays, rubbers at cuffs.

O’ Mondays, lending each other flirts and fillips on the nose.

O’ Tuesdays, clapperclawing one another.

O’ Wednesdays, sniting and fly-flapping.

O’ Thursdays, worming and pumping.

O’ Fridays, tickling.

O’ Saturdays, jerking and firking one another.

Such was their diet when they resided in the convent, and if the prior of the monk-house sent any of them abroad, then they were strictly enjoined neither to touch nor eat any manner of fish as long as they were on sea or rivers, and to abstain from all manner of flesh whenever they were at land, that everyone might be convinced that, while they enjoyed the object, they denied themselves the power, and even the desire, and were no more moved with it than the Marpesian rock.

All this was done with proper antiphones, still sung and chanted by ear, as we have already observed.

When the sun went to bed, they fairly booted and spurred each other as before, and having clapped on their barnacles e’en jogged to bed too. At midnight the Sandal came to them, and up they got, and having well whetted and set their razors, and been a-processioning, they clapped the tables over themselves, and like wire-drawers under their work fell to it as aforesaid.

Friar John des Entoumeures, having shrewdly observed these jolly Semiquaver Friars, and had a full account of their statutes, lost all patience, and cried out aloud: Bounce tail, and God ha’ mercy guts; if every fool should wear a bauble, fuel would be dear. A plague rot it, we must know how many farts go to an ounce. Would Priapus were here, as he used to be at the nocturnal festivals in Crete, that I might see him play backwards, and wriggle and shake to the purpose. Ay, ay, this is the world, and t’other is the country; may I never piss if this be not an antichthonian land, and our very antipodes. In Germany they pull down monasteries and unfrockify the monks; here they go quite kam, and act clean contrary to others, setting new ones up, against the hair.

5. XXVIII

How Panurge asked a Semiquaver Friar many questions, and was only answered in monosyllables.

Panurge, who had since been wholly taken up with staring at these royal Semiquavers, at last pulled one of them by the sleeve, who was as lean as a rake, and asked him,--

Hearkee me, Friar Quaver, Semiquaver, Demisemiquavering quaver, where is the punk?

The Friar, pointing downwards, answered, There.

Pan. Pray, have you many? Fri. Few.

Pan. How many scores have you? Fri. One.

Pan. How many would you have? Fri. Five.

Pan. Where do you hide ‘em? Fri. Here.

Pan. I suppose they are not all of one age; but, pray, how is their shape? Fri. Straight.

Pan. Their complexion? Fri. Clear.

Pan. Their hair? Fri. Fair.

Pan. Their eyes? Fri. Black.

Pan. Their features? Fri. Good.

Pan. Their brows? Fri. Small.

Pan. Their graces? Fri. Ripe.

Pan. Their looks? Fri. Free.

Pan. Their feet? Fri. Flat.

Pan. Their heels? Fri. Short.

Pan. Their lower parts? Fri. Rare.

Pan. And their arms? Fri. Long.

Pan. What do they wear on their hands? Fri. Gloves.

Pan. What sort of rings on their fingers? Fri. Gold.

Pan. What rigging do you keep ‘em in? Fri. Cloth.

Pan. What sort of cloth is it? Fri. New.

Pan. What colour? Fri. Sky.

Pan. What kind of cloth is it? Fri. Fine.

Pan. What caps do they wear? Fri. Blue.

Pan. What’s the colour of their stockings? Fri. Red.

Pan. What wear they on their feet? Fri. Pumps.

Pan. How do they use to be? Fri. Foul.

Pan. How do they use to walk? Fri. Fast.

Pan. Now let us talk of the kitchen, I mean that of the harlots, and without going hand over head let’s a little examine things by particulars. What is in their kitchens? Fri. Fire.

Pan. What fuel feeds it? Fri. Wood.

Pan. What sort of wood is’t? Fri. Dry.

Pan. And of what kind of trees? Fri. Yews.

Pan. What are the faggots and brushes of? Fri. Holm.

Pan. What wood d’ye burn in your chambers? Fri. Pine.

Pan. And of what other trees? Fri. Lime.

Pan. Hearkee me; as for the buttocks, I’ll go your halves. Pray, how do you feed ‘em? Fri. Well.

Pan. First, what do they eat? Fri. Bread.

Pan. Of what complexion? Fri. White.

Pan. And what else? Fri. Meat.

Pan. How do they love it dressed? Fri. Roast.

Pan. What sort of porridge? Fri. None.

Pan. Are they for pies and tarts? Fri. Much.

Pan. Then I’m their man. Will fish go down with them? Fri. Well.

Pan. And what else? Fri. Eggs.

Pan. How do they like ‘em? Fri. Boiled.

Pan. How must they be done? Fri. Hard.

Pan. Is this all they have? Fri. No.

Pan. What have they besides, then? Fri. Beef.

Pan. And what else? Fri. Pork.

Pan. And what more? Fri. Geese.

Pan. What then? Fri. Ducks.

Pan. And what besides? Fri. Cocks.

Pan. What do they season their meat with? Fri. Salt.

Pan. What sauce are they most dainty for? Fri. Must.

Pan. What’s their last course? Fri. Rice.

Pan. And what else? Fri. Milk.

Pan. What besides? Fri. Peas.

Pan. What sort? Fri. Green.

Pan. What do they boil with ‘em? Fri. Pork.

Pan. What fruit do they eat? Fri. Good.

Pan. How? Fri. Raw.

Pan. What do they end with? Fri. Nuts.

Pan. How do they drink? Fri. Neat.

Pan. What liquor? Fri. Wine.

Pan. What sort? Fri. White.

Pan. In winter? Fri. Strong.

Pan. In the spring. Fri. Brisk.

Pan. In summer? Fri. Cool.

Pan. In autumn? Fri. New.

Buttock of a monk! cried Friar John; how plump these plaguy trulls, these arch Semiquavering strumpets, must be! That damned cattle are so high fed that they must needs be high-mettled, and ready to wince and give two ups for one go-down when anyone offers to ride them below the crupper.

Prithee, Friar John, quoth Panurge, hold thy prating tongue; stay till I have done.

Till what time do the doxies sit up? Fri. Night.

Pan. When do they get up? Fri. Late.

Pan. May I ride on a horse that was foaled of an acorn, if this be not as honest a cod as ever the ground went upon, and as grave as an old gate-post into the bargain. Would to the blessed St. Semiquaver, and the blessed worthy virgin St. Semiquavera, he were lord chief president (justice) of Paris! Ods-bodikins, how he’d despatch! With what expedition would he bring disputes to an upshot! What an abbreviator and clawer off of lawsuits, reconciler of differences, examiner and fumbler of bags, peruser of bills, scribbler of rough drafts, and engrosser of deeds would he not make! Well, friar, spare your breath to cool your porridge. Come, let’s now talk with deliberation, fairly and softly, as lawyers go to heaven. Let’s know how you victual the venereal camp. How is the snatchblatch? Fri. Rough.

Pan. How is the gateway? Fri. Free.

Pan. And how is it within? Fri. Deep.

Pan. I mean, what weather is it there? Fri. Hot.

Pan. What shadows the brooks? Fri. Groves.

Pan. Of what’s the colour of the twigs? Fri. Red.

Pan. And that of the old? Fri. Grey.

Pan. How are you when you shake? Fri. Brisk.

Pan. How is their motion? Fri. Quick.

Pan. Would you have them vault or wriggle more? Fri. Less.

Pan. What kind of tools are yours? Fri. Big.

Pan. And in their helves? Fri. Round.

Pan. Of what colour is the tip? Fri. Red.

Pan. When they’ve even used, how are they? Fri. Shrunk.

Pan. How much weighs each bag of tools? Fri. Pounds.

Pan. How hang your pouches? Fri. Tight.

Pan. How are they when you’ve done? Fri. Lank.

Pan. Now, by the oath you have taken, tell me, when you have a mind to cohabit, how you throw ‘em? Fri. Down.

Pan. And what do they say then? Fri. Fie.

Pan. However, like maids, they say nay, and take it; and speak the less, but think the more, minding the work in hand; do they not? Fri. True.

Pan. Do they get you bairns? Fri. None.

Pan. How do you pig together? Fri. Bare.

Pan. Remember you’re upon your oath, and tell me justly and bona fide how many times a day you monk it? Fri. Six.

Pan. How many bouts a-nights? Fri. Ten.

Catso, quoth Friar John, the poor fornicating brother is bashful, and sticks at sixteen, as if that were his stint. Right, quoth Panurge, but couldst thou keep pace with him, Friar John, my dainty cod? May the devil’s dam suck my teat if he does not look as if he had got a blow over the nose with a Naples cowl-staff.

Pan. Pray, Friar Shakewell, does your whole fraternity quaver and shake at that rate? Fri. All.

Pan. Who of them is the best cock o’ the game? Fri. I.

Pan. Do you never commit dry-bobs or flashes in the pan? Fri. None.

Pan. I blush like any black dog, and could be as testy as an old cook when I think on all this; it passes my understanding. But, pray, when you have been pumped dry one day, what have you got the next? Fri. More.

Pan. By Priapus, they have the Indian herb of which Theophrastus spoke, or I’m much out. But, hearkee me, thou man of brevity, should some impediment, honestly or otherwise, impair your talents and cause your benevolence to lessen, how would it fare with you, then? Fri. Ill.

Pan. What would the wenches do? Fri. Rail.

Pan. What if you skipped, and let ‘em fast a whole day? Fri. Worse.

Pan. What do you give ‘em then? Fri. Thwacks.

Pan. What do they say to this? Fri. Bawl.

Pan. And what else? Fri. Curse.

Pan. How do you correct ‘em? Fri. Hard.

Pan. What do you get out of ‘em then? Fri. Blood.

Pan. How’s their complexion then? Fri. Odd.

Pan. What do they mend it with? Fri. Paint.

Pan. Then what do they do? Fri. Fawn.

Pan. By the oath you have taken, tell me truly what time of the year do you do it least in? Fri. Now (August.).

Pan. What season do you do it best in? Fri. March.

Pan. How is your performance the rest of the year? Fri. Brisk.

Then quoth Panurge, sneering, Of all, and of all, commend me to Ball; this is the friar of the world for my money. You’ve heard how short, concise, and compendious he is in his answers. Nothing is to be got out of him but monosyllables. By jingo, I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.

Damn him, cried Friar John, that’s as true as I am his uncle. The dog yelps at another gate’s rate when he is among his bitches; there he is polysyllable enough, my life for yours. You talk of making three bites of a cherry! God send fools more wit and us more money! May I be doomed to fast a whole day if I don’t verily believe he would not make above two bites of a shoulder of mutton and one swoop of a whole pottle of wine. Zoons, do but see how down o’ the mouth the cur looks! He’s nothing but skin and bones; he has pissed his tallow.

Truly, truly, quoth Epistemon, this rascally monastical vermin all over the world mind nothing but their gut, and are as ravenous as any kites, and then, forsooth, they tell us they’ve nothing but food and raiment in this world. ‘Sdeath, what more have kings and princes?

5. XXIX

How Epistemon disliked the institution of Lent.

Pray did you observe, continued Epistemon, how this damned ill-favoured Semiquaver mentioned March as the best month for caterwauling? True, said Pantagruel; yet Lent and March always go together, and the first was instituted to macerate and bring down our pampered flesh, to weaken and subdue its lusts, to curb and assuage the venereal rage.

By this, said Epistemon, you may guess what kind of a pope it was who first enjoined it to be kept, since this filthy wooden-shoed Semiquaver owns that his spoon is never oftener nor deeper in the porringer of lechery than in Lent. Add to this the evident reasons given by all good and learned physicians, affirming that throughout the whole year no food is eaten that can prompt mankind to lascivious acts more than at that time.

As, for example, beans, peas, phasels, or long-peason, ciches, onions, nuts, oysters, herrings, salt-meats, garum (a kind of anchovy), and salads wholly made up of venereous herbs and fruits, as--

Rocket, Parsley, Hop-buds, Nose-smart, Rampions, Figs, Taragon, Poppy, Rice, Cresses, Celery, Raisins, and others.

It would not a little surprise you, said Pantagruel, should a man tell you that the good pope who first ordered the keeping of Lent, perceiving that at that time o’ year the natural heat (from the centre of the body, whither it was retired during the winter’s cold) diffuses itself, as the sap does in trees, through the circumference of the members, did therefore in a manner prescribe that sort of diet to forward the propagation of mankind. What makes me think so, is that by the registers of christenings at Touars it appears that more children are born in October and November than in the other ten months of the year, and reckoning backwards ‘twill be easily found that they were all made, conceived, and begotten in Lent.

I listen to you with both my ears, quoth Friar John, and that with no small pleasure, I’ll assure you. But I must tell you that the vicar of Jambert ascribed this copious prolification of the women, not to that sort of food that we chiefly eat in Lent, but to the little licensed stooping mumpers, your little booted Lent-preachers, your little draggle-tailed father confessors, who during all that time of their reign damn all husbands that run astray three fathom and a half below the very lowest pit of hell. So the silly cod’s-headed brothers of the noose dare not then stumble any more at the truckle-bed, to the no small discomfort of their maids, and are even forced, poor souls, to take up with their own bodily wives. Dixi; I have done.

You may descant on the institution of Lent as much as you please, cried Epistemon; so many men so many minds; but certainly all the physicians will be against its being suppressed, though I think that time is at hand. I know they will, and have heard ‘em say were it not for Lent their art would soon fall into contempt, and they’d get nothing, for hardly anybody would be sick.

All distempers are sowed in lent; ‘tis the true seminary and native bed of all diseases; nor does it only weaken and putrefy bodies, but it also makes souls mad and uneasy. For then the devils do their best, and drive a subtle trade, and the tribe of canting dissemblers come out of their holes. ‘Tis then term-time with your cucullated pieces of formality that have one face to God and another to the devil; and a wretched clutter they make with their sessions, stations, pardons, syntereses, confessions, whippings, anathematizations, and much prayer with as little devotion. However, I’ll not offer to infer from this that the Arimaspians are better than we are in that point; yet I speak to the purpose.

Well, quoth Panurge to the Semiquaver friar, who happened to be by, dear bumbasting, shaking, trilling, quavering cod, what thinkest thou of this fellow? Is he a rank heretic? Fri. Much.

Pan. Ought he not to be singed? Fri. Well.

Pan. As soon as may be? Fri. Right.

Pan. Should not he be scalded first? Fri. No.

Pan. How then, should he be roasted? Fri. Quick.

Pan. Till at last he be? Fri. Dead.

Pan. What has he made you? Fri. Mad.

Pan. What d’ye take him to be? Fri. Damned.

Pan. What place is he to go to? Fri. Hell.

Pan. But, first, how would you have ‘em served here? Fri. Burnt.

Pan. Some have been served so? Fri. Store.

Pan. That were heretics? Fri. Less.

Pan. And the number of those that are to be warmed thus hereafter is? Fri. Great.

Pan. How many of ‘em do you intend to save? Fri. None.

Pan. So you’d have them burned? Fri. All.

I wonder, said Epistemon to Panurge, what pleasure you can find in talking thus with this lousy tatterdemalion of a monk. I vow, did I not know you well, I might be ready to think you had no more wit in your head than he has in both his shoulders. Come, come, scatter no words, returned Panurge; everyone as they like, as the woman said when she kissed her cow. I wish I might carry him to Gargantua; when I’m married he might be my wife’s fool. And make you one, cried Epistemon. Well said, quoth Friar John. Now, poor Panurge, take that along with thee, thou’rt e’en fitted; ‘tis a plain case thou’lt never escape wearing the bull’s feather; thy wife will be as common as the highway, that’s certain.

5. XXX

How we came to the land of Satin.

Having pleased ourselves with observing that new order of Semiquaver Friars, we set sail, and in three days our skipper made the finest and most delightful island that ever was seen. He called it the island of Frieze, for all the ways were of frieze.

In that island is the land of Satin, so celebrated by our court pages. Its trees and herbage never lose their leaves or flowers, and are all damask and flowered velvet. As for the beasts and birds, they are all of tapestry work. There we saw many beasts, birds on trees, of the same colour, bigness, and shape of those in our country; with this difference, however, that these did eat nothing, and never sung or bit like ours; and we also saw there many sorts of creatures which we never had seen before.

Among the rest, several elephants in various postures; twelve of which were the six males and six females that were brought to Rome by their governor in the time of Germanicus, Tiberius’s nephew. Some of them were learned elephants, some musicians, others philosophers, dancers, and showers of tricks; and all sat down at table in good order, silently eating and drinking like so many fathers in a fratery-room.

With their snouts or proboscises, some two cubits long, they draw up water for their own drinking, and take hold of palm leaves, plums, and all manner of edibles, using them offensively or defensively as we do our fists; with them tossing men high into the air in fight, and making them burst with laughing when they come to the ground.

They have joints (in their legs), whatever some men, who doubtless never saw any but painted, may have written to the contrary. Between their teeth they have two huge horns; thus Juba called ‘em, and Pausanias tells us they are not teeth, but horns; however, Philostratus will have ‘em to be teeth, and not horns. ‘Tis all one to me, provided you will be pleased to own them to be true ivory. These are some three or four cubits long, and are fixed in the upper jawbone, and consequently not in the lowermost. If you hearken to those who will tell you to the contrary, you will find yourself damnably mistaken, for that’s a lie with a latchet; though ‘twere Aelian, that long-bow man, that told you so, never believe him, for he lies as fast as a dog can trot. ‘Twas in this very island that Pliny, his brother tell-truth, had seen some elephants dance on the rope with bells, and whip over the tables, presto, begone, while people were at feasts, without so much as touching the toping topers or the topers toping.

I saw a rhinoceros there, just such a one as Harry Clerberg had formerly showed me. Methought it was not much unlike a certain boar which I had formerly seen at Limoges, except the sharp horn on its snout, that was about a cubit long; by the means of which that animal dares encounter with an elephant, that is sometimes killed with its point thrust into its belly, which is its most tender and defenceless part.

I saw there two and thirty unicorns. They are a curst sort of creatures, much resembling a fine horse, unless it be that their heads are like a stag’s, their feet like an elephant’s, their tails like a wild boar’s, and out of each of their foreheads sprouts out a sharp black horn, some six or seven feet long; commonly it dangles down like a turkey-cock’s comb. When a unicorn has a mind to fight, or put it to any other use, what does it do but make it stand, and then ‘tis as straight as an arrow.

I saw one of them, which was attended with a throng of other wild beasts, purify a fountain with its horn. With that Panurge told me that his prancer, alias his nimble-wimble, was like the unicorn, not altogether in length indeed, but in virtue and propriety; for as the unicorn purified pools and fountains from filth and venom, so that other animals came and drank securely there afterwards, in the like manner others might water their nags, and dabble after him without fear of shankers, carnosities, gonorrhoeas, buboes, crinkams, and such other plagues caught by those who venture to quench their amorous thirst in a common puddle; for with his nervous horn he removed all the infection that might be lurking in some blind cranny of the mephitic sweet-scented hole.

Well, quoth Friar John, when you are sped, that is, when you are married, we will make a trial of this on thy spouse, merely for charity sake, since you are pleased to give us so beneficial an instruction.

Ay, ay, returned Panurge, and then immediately I’ll give you a pretty gentle aggregative pill of God, made up of two and twenty kind stabs with a dagger, after the Caesarian way. Catso, cried Friar John, I had rather take off a bumper of good cool wine.

I saw there the golden fleece formerly conquered by Jason, and can assure you, on the word of an honest man, that those who have said it was not a fleece but a golden pippin, because melon signifies both an apple and a sheep, were utterly mistaken.

I saw also a chameleon, such as Aristotle describes it, and like that which had been formerly shown me by Charles Maris, a famous physician of the noble city of Lyons on the Rhone; and the said chameleon lived on air just as the other did.

I saw three hydras, like those I had formerly seen. They are a kind of serpent, with seven different heads.

I saw also fourteen phoenixes. I had read in many authors that there was but one in the whole world in every century; but, if I may presume to speak my mind, I declare that those who said this had never seen any, unless it were in the land of Tapestry; though ‘twere vouched by Claudian or Lactantius Firmianus.

I saw the skin of Apuleius’s golden ass.

I saw three hundred and nine pelicans.

Item, six thousand and sixteen Seleucid birds marching in battalia, and picking up straggling grasshoppers in cornfields.

Item, some cynamologi, argatiles, caprimulgi, thynnunculs, onocrotals, or bitterns, with their wide swallows, stymphalides, harpies, panthers, dorcasses, or bucks, cemades, cynocephalises, satyrs, cartasans, tarands, uri, monopses, or bonasi, neades, steras, marmosets, or monkeys, bugles, musimons, byturoses, ophyri, screech-owls, goblins, fairies, and griffins.

I saw Mid-Lent o’ horseback, with Mid-August and Mid-March holding its stirrups.

I saw some mankind wolves, centaurs, tigers, leopards, hyenas, camelopardals, and orixes, or huge wild goats with sharp horns.

I saw a remora, a little fish called echineis by the Greeks, and near it a tall ship that did not get ahead an inch, though she was in the offing with top and top-gallants spread before the wind. I am somewhat inclined to believe that ‘twas the very numerical ship in which Periander the tyrant happened to be when it was stopped by such a little fish in spite of wind and tide. It was in this land of Satin, and in no other, that Mutianus had seen one of them.

Friar John told us that in the days of yore two sorts of fishes used to abound in our courts of judicature, and rotted the bodies and tormented the souls of those who were at law, whether noble or of mean descent, high or low, rich or poor: the first were your April fish or mackerel (pimps, panders, and bawds); the others your beneficial remoras, that is, the eternity of lawsuits, the needless lets that keep ‘em undecided.

I saw some sphynges, some raphes, some ounces, and some cepphi, whose fore-feet are like hands and their hind-feet like man’s.

Also some crocutas and some eali as big as sea-horses, with elephants’ tails, boars’ jaws and tusks, and horns as pliant as an ass’s ears.

The crocutas, most fleet animals, as big as our asses of Mirebalais, have necks, tails, and breasts like a lion’s, legs like a stag’s, have mouths up to the ears, and but two teeth, one above and one below; they speak with human voices, but when they do they say nothing.

Some people say that none e’er saw an eyrie, or nest of sakers; if you’ll believe me, I saw no less than eleven, and I’m sure I reckoned right.

I saw some left-handed halberds, which were the first that I had ever seen.

I saw some manticores, a most strange sort of creatures, which have the body of a lion, red hair, a face and ears like a man’s, three rows of teeth which close together as if you joined your hands with your fingers between each other; they have a sting in their tails like a scorpion’s, and a very melodious voice.

I saw some catablepases, a sort of serpents, whose bodies are small, but their heads large, without any proportion, so that they’ve much ado to lift them up; and their eyes are so infectious that whoever sees ‘em dies upon the spot, as if he had seen a basilisk.

I saw some beasts with two backs, and those seemed to me the merriest creatures in the world. They were most nimble at wriggling the buttocks, and more diligent in tail-wagging than any water-wagtails, perpetually jogging and shaking their double rumps.

I saw there some milched crawfish, creatures that I never had heard of before in my life. These moved in very good order, and ‘twould have done your heart good to have seen ‘em.

5. XXXI

How in the land of Satin we saw Hearsay, who kept a school of vouching.

We went a little higher up into the country of Tapestry, and saw the Mediterranean Sea open to the right and left down to the very bottom; just as the Red Sea very fairly left its bed at the Arabian Gulf to make a lane for the Jews when they left Egypt.

There I found Triton winding his silver shell instead of a horn, and also Glaucus, Proteus, Nereus, and a thousand other godlings and sea monsters.

I also saw an infinite number of fish of all kinds, dancing, flying, vaulting, fighting, eating, breathing, billing, shoving, milting, spawning, hunting, fishing, skirmishing, lying in ambuscado, making truces, cheapening, bargaining, swearing, and sporting.

In a blind corner we saw Aristotle holding a lantern in the posture in which the hermit uses to be drawn near St. Christopher, watching, prying, thinking, and setting everything down.

Behind him stood a pack of other philosophers, like so many bums by a head-bailiff, as Appian, Heliodorus, Athenaeus, Porphyrius, Pancrates, Arcadian, Numenius, Possidonius, Ovidius, Oppianus, Olympius, Seleucus, Leonides, Agathocles, Theophrastus, Damostratus, Mutianus, Nymphodorus, Aelian, and five hundred other such plodding dons, who were full of business, yet had little to do; like Chrysippus or Aristarchus of Soli, who for eight-and-fifty years together did nothing in the world but examine the state and concerns of bees.

I spied Peter Gilles among these, with a urinal in his hand, narrowly watching the water of those goodly fishes.

When we had long beheld everything in this land of Satin, Pantagruel said, I have sufficiently fed my eyes, but my belly is empty all this while, and chimes to let me know ‘tis time to go to dinner. Let’s take care of the body lest the soul abdicate it; and to this effect let’s taste some of these anacampserotes [‘An herb, the touching of which is said to reconcile lovers.’--Motteux.) that hang over our heads. Psha, cried one, they are mere trash, stark naught, o’ my word; they’re good for nothing.

I then went to pluck some mirobolans off of a piece of tapestry whereon they hung, but the devil a bit I could chew or swallow ‘em; and had you had them betwixt your teeth you would have sworn they had been thrown silk; there was no manner of savour in ‘em.

One might be apt to think Heliogabalus had taken a hint from thence, to feast those whom he had caused to fast a long time, promising them a sumptuous, plentiful, and imperial feast after it; for all the treat used to amount to no more than several sorts of meat in wax, marble, earthenware, painted and figured tablecloths.

While we were looking up and down to find some more substantial food, we heard a loud various noise, like that of paper-mills (or women bucking of linen); so with all speed we went to the place whence the noise came, where we found a diminutive, monstrous, misshapen old fellow, called Hearsay. His mouth was slit up to his ears, and in it were seven tongues, each of them cleft into seven parts. However, he chattered, tattled, and prated with all the seven at once, of different matters, and in divers languages.

He had as many ears all over his head and the rest of his body as Argus formerly had eyes, and was as blind as a beetle, and had the palsy in his legs.

About him stood an innumerable number of men and women, gaping, listening, and hearing very intensely. Among ‘em I observed some who strutted like crows in a gutter, and principally a very handsome bodied man in the face, who held then a map of the world, and with little aphorisms compendiously explained everything to ‘em; so that those men of happy memories grew learned in a trice, and would most fluently talk with you of a world of prodigious things, the hundredth part of which would take up a man’s whole life to be fully known.

Among the rest they descanted with great prolixity on the pyramids and hieroglyphics of Egypt, of the Nile, of Babylon, of the Troglodytes, the Hymantopodes, or crump-footed nation, the Blemiae, people that wear their heads in the middle of their breasts, the Pigmies, the Cannibals, the Hyperborei and their mountains, the Egypanes with their goat’s feet, and the devil and all of others; every individual word of it by hearsay.

I am much mistaken if I did not see among them Herodotus, Pliny, Solinus, Berosus, Philostratus, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and God knows how many other antiquaries.

Then Albert, the great Jacobin friar, Peter Tesmoin, alias Witness, Pope Pius the Second, Volaterranus, Paulus Jovius the valiant, Jemmy Cartier, Chaton the Armenian, Marco Polo the Venetian, Ludovico Romano, Pedro Aliares, and forty cartloads of other modern historians, lurking behind a piece of tapestry, where they were at it ding-dong, privately scribbling the Lord knows what, and making rare work of it; and all by hearsay.

Behind another piece of tapestry (on which Naboth and Susanna’s accusers were fairly represented), I saw close by Hearsay, good store of men of the country of Perce and Maine, notable students, and young enough.

I asked what sort of study they applied themselves to; and was told that from their youth they learned to be evidences, affidavit-men, and vouchers, and were instructed in the art of swearing; in which they soon became such proficients, that when they left that country, and went back into their own, they set up for themselves and very honestly lived by their trade of evidencing, positively giving their testimony of all things whatsoever to those who feed them most roundly to do a job of journey-work for them; and all this by hearsay.

You may think what you will of it; but I can assure you they gave some of us corners of their cakes, and we merrily helped to empty their hogsheads. Then, in a friendly manner, they advised us to be as sparing of truth as possibly we could if ever we had a mind to get court preferment.

5. XXXII

How we came in sight of Lantern-land.

Having been but scurvily entertained in the land of Satin, we went o’ board, and having set sail, in four days came near the coast of Lantern-land. We then saw certain little hovering fires on the sea.

For my part, I did not take them to be lanterns, but rather thought they were fishes which lolled their flaming tongues on the surface of the sea, or lampyrides, which some call cicindelas, or glowworms, shining there as ripe barley does o’ nights in my country.

But the skipper satisfied us that they were the lanterns of the watch, or, more properly, lighthouses, set up in many places round the precinct of the place to discover the land, and for the safe piloting in of some outlandish lanterns, which, like good Franciscan and Jacobin friars, were coming to make their personal appearance at the provincial chapter.

However, some of us were somewhat suspicious that these fires were the forerunners of some storm, but the skipper assured us again they were not.

5. XXXIII

How we landed at the port of the Lychnobii, and came to Lantern-land.

Soon after we arrived at the port of Lantern-land, where Pantagruel discovered on a high tower the lantern of Rochelle, that stood us in good stead, for it cast a great light. We also saw the lantern of Pharos, that of Nauplion, and that of Acropolis at Athens, sacred to Pallas.

Near the port there’s a little hamlet inhabited by the Lychnobii, that live by lanterns, as the gulligutted friars in our country live by nuns; they are studious people, and as honest men as ever shit in a trumpet. Demosthenes had formerly lanternized there.

We were conducted from that place to the palace by three obeliscolichnys [‘A kind of beacons.’--Motteux.), military guards of the port, with high-crowned hats, whom we acquainted with the cause of our voyage, and our design, which was to desire the queen of the country to grant us a lantern to light and conduct us during our voyage to the Oracle of the Holy Bottle.

They promised to assist us in this, and added that we could never have come in a better time, for then the lanterns held their provincial chapter.

When we came to the royal palace we had audience of her highness the Queen of Lantern-land, being introduced by two lanterns of honour, that of Aristophanes and that of Cleanthes (Motteux adds here--‘Mistresses of the ceremonies.’). Panurge in a few words acquainted her with the causes of our voyage, and she received us with great demonstrations of friendship, desiring us to come to her at supper-time that we might more easily make choice of one to be our guide; which pleased us extremely. We did not fail to observe intensely everything we could see, as the garbs, motions, and deportment of the queen’s subjects, principally the manner after which she was served.

The bright queen was dressed in virgin crystal of Tutia wrought damaskwise, and beset with large diamonds.

The lanterns of the royal blood were clad partly with bastard-diamonds, partly with diaphanous stones; the rest with horn, paper, and oiled cloth.

The cresset-lights took place according to the antiquity and lustre of their families.

An earthen dark-lantern, shaped like a pot, notwithstanding this took place of some of the first quality; at which I wondered much, till I was told it was that of Epictetus, for which three thousand drachmas had been formerly refused.

Martial’s polymix lantern (Motteux gives a footnote:--‘A lamp with many wicks, or a branch’d candlestick with many springs coming out of it, that supply all the branches with oil.’) made a very good figure there. I took particular notice of its dress, and more yet of the lychnosimity formerly consecrated by Canopa, the daughter of Tisias.

I saw the lantern pensile formerly taken out of the temple of Apollo Palatinus at Thebes, and afterwards by Alexander the Great (carried to the town of Cymos). (The words in brackets have been omitted by Motteux.)

I saw another that distinguished itself from the rest by a bushy tuft of crimson silk on its head. I was told ‘twas that of Bartolus, the lantern of the civilians.

Two others were very remarkable for glister-pouches that dangled at their waist. We were told that one was the greater light and the other the lesser light of the apothecaries.

When ‘twas supper-time, the queen’s highness first sat down, and then the lady lanterns, according to their rank and dignity. For the first course they were all served with large Christmas candles, except the queen, who was served with a hugeous, thick, stiff, flaming taper of white wax, somewhat red towards the tip; and the royal family, as also the provincial lantern of Mirebalais, who were served with nutlights; and the provincial of Lower Poitou, with an armed candle.

After that, God wot, what a glorious light they gave with their wicks! I do not say all, for you must except a parcel of junior lanterns, under the government of a high and mighty one. These did not cast a light like the rest, but seemed to me dimmer than any long-snuff farthing candle whose tallow has been half melted away in a hothouse.

After supper we withdrew to take some rest, and the next day the queen made us choose one of the most illustrious lanterns to guide us; after which we took our leave.

5. XXXIV

How we arrived at the Oracle of the Bottle.

Our glorious lantern lighting and directing us to heart’s content, we at last arrived at the desired island where was the Oracle of the Bottle. As soon as friend Panurge landed, he nimbly cut a caper with one leg for joy, and cried to Pantagruel, Now we are where we have wished ourselves long ago. This is the place we’ve been seeking with such toil and labour. He then made a compliment to our lantern, who desired us to be of good cheer, and not be daunted or dismayed whatever we might chance to see.

To come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle we were to go through a large vineyard, in which were all sorts of vines, as the Falernian, Malvoisian, the Muscadine, those of Taige, Beaune, Mirevaux, Orleans, Picardent, Arbois, Coussi, Anjou, Grave, Corsica, Vierron, Nerac, and others. This vineyard was formerly planted by the good Bacchus, with so great a blessing that it yields leaves, flowers, and fruit all the year round, like the orange trees at Suraine.

Our magnificent lantern ordered every one of us to eat three grapes, to put some vine-leaves in his shoes, and take a vine-branch in his left hand.

At the end of the close we went under an arch built after the manner of those of the ancients. The trophies of a toper were curiously carved on it.

First, on one side was to be seen a long train of flagons, leathern bottles, flasks, cans, glass bottles, barrels, nipperkins, pint pots, quart pots, pottles, gallons, and old-fashioned semaises (swingeing wooden pots, such as those out of which the Germans fill their glasses); these hung on a shady arbour.

On another side was store of garlic, onions, shallots, hams, botargos, caviare, biscuits, neat’s tongues, old cheese, and such like comfits, very artificially interwoven, and packed together with vine-stocks.

On another were a hundred sorts of drinking glasses, cups, cisterns, ewers, false cups, tumblers, bowls, mazers, mugs, jugs, goblets, talboys, and such other Bacchic artillery.

On the frontispiece of the triumphal arch, under the zoophore, was the following couplet:

You who presume to move this way, Get a good lantern, lest you stray.

We took special care of that, cried Pantagruel when he had read them; for there is not a better or a more divine lantern than ours in all Lantern-land.

This arch ended at a fine large round alley covered over with the interlaid branches of vines, loaded and adorned with clusters of five hundred different colours, and of as many various shapes, not natural, but due to the skill of agriculture; some were golden, others bluish, tawny, azure, white, black, green, purple, streaked with many colours, long, round, triangular, cod-like, hairy, great-headed, and grassy. That pleasant alley ended at three old ivy-trees, verdant, and all loaden with rings. Our enlightened lantern directed us to make ourselves hats with some of their leaves, and cover our heads wholly with them, which was immediately done.

Jupiter’s priestess, said Pantagruel, in former days would not like us have walked under this arbour. There was a mystical reason, answered our most perspicuous lantern, that would have hindered her; for had she gone under it, the wine, or the grapes of which ‘tis made, that’s the same thing, had been over her head, and then she would have seemed overtopped and mastered by wine. Which implies that priests, and all persons who devote themselves to the contemplation of divine things, ought to keep their minds sedate and calm, and avoid whatever might disturb and discompose their tranquillity, which nothing is more apt to do than drunkenness.

You also, continued our lantern, could not come into the Holy Bottle’s presence, after you have gone through this arch, did not that noble priestess Bacbuc first see your shoes full of vine-leaves; which action is diametrically opposite to the other, and signifies that you despise wine, and having mastered it, as it were, tread it under foot.

I am no scholar, quoth Friar John, for which I’m heartily sorry, yet I find by my breviary that in the Revelation a woman was seen with the moon under her feet, which was a most wonderful sight. Now, as Bigot explained it to me, this was to signify that she was not of the nature of other women; for they have all the moon at their heads, and consequently their brains are always troubled with a lunacy. This makes me willing to believe what you said, dear Madam Lantern.

5. XXXV

How we went underground to come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle, and how Chinon is the oldest city in the world.

We went underground through a plastered vault, on which was coarsely painted a dance of women and satyrs waiting on old Silenus, who was grinning o’ horseback on his ass. This made me say to Pantagruel, that this entry put me in mind of the painted cellar in the oldest city in the world, where such paintings are to be seen, and in as cool a place.

Which is the oldest city in the world? asked Pantagruel. ‘Tis Chinon, sir, or Cainon in Touraine, said I. I know, returned Pantagruel, where Chinon lies, and the painted cellar also, having myself drunk there many a glass of cool wine; neither do I doubt but that Chinon is an ancient town --witness its blazon. I own ‘tis said twice or thrice:

Chinon, Little town, Great renown, On old stone Long has stood; There’s the Vienne, if you look down; If you look up, there’s the wood.

But how, continued he, can you make it out that ‘tis the oldest city in the world? Where did you find this written? I have found it in the sacred writ, said I, that Cain was the first that built a town; we may then reasonably conjecture that from his name he gave it that of Cainon. Thus, after his example, most other founders of towns have given them their names: Athena, that’s Minerva in Greek, to Athens; Alexander to Alexandria; Constantine to Constantinople; Pompey to Pompeiopolis in Cilicia; Adrian to Adrianople; Canaan, to the Canaanites; Saba, to the Sabaeans; Assur, to the Assyrians; and so Ptolemais, Caesarea, Tiberias, and Herodium in Judaea got their names.

While we were thus talking, there came to us the great flask whom our lantern called the philosopher, her holiness the Bottle’s governor. He was attended with a troop of the temple-guards, all French bottles in wicker armour; and seeing us with our javelins wrapped with ivy, with our illustrious lantern, whom he knew, he desired us to come in with all manner of safety, and ordered we should be immediately conducted to the Princess Bacbuc, the Bottle’s lady of honour, and priestess of all the mysteries; which was done.

5. XXXVI

How we went down the tetradic steps, and of Panurge’s fear.

We went down one marble step under ground, where there was a resting, or, as our workmen call it, a landing-place; then, turning to the left, we went down two other steps, where there was another resting-place; after that we came to three other steps, turning about, and met a third; and the like at four steps which we met afterwards. There quoth Panurge, Is it here? How many steps have you told? asked our magnificent lantern. One, two, three, four, answered Pantagruel. How much is that? asked she. Ten, returned he. Multiply that, said she, according to the same Pythagorical tetrad. That is, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, cried Pantagruel. How much is the whole? said she. One hundred, answered Pantagruel. Add, continued she, the first cube--that’s eight. At the end of that fatal number you’ll find the temple gate; and pray observe, this is the true psychogony of Plato, so celebrated by the Academics, yet so little understood; one moiety of which consists of the unity of the two first numbers full of two square and two cubic numbers. We then went down those numerical stairs, all under ground, and I can assure you, in the first place, that our legs stood us in good stead; for had it not been for ‘em, we had rolled just like so many hogsheads into a vault. Secondly, our radiant lantern gave us just so much light as is in St. Patrick’s hole in Ireland, or Trophonius’s pit in Boeotia; which caused Panurge to say to her, after we had got down some seventy-eight steps:

Dear madam, with a sorrowful, aching heart, I most humbly beseech your lanternship to lead us back. May I be led to hell if I be not half dead with fear; my heart is sunk down into my hose; I am afraid I shall make buttered eggs in my breeches. I freely consent never to marry. You have given yourself too much trouble on my account. The Lord shall reward you in his great rewarder; neither will I be ungrateful when I come out of this cave of Troglodytes. Let’s go back, I pray you. I’m very much afraid this is Taenarus, the low way to hell, and methinks I already hear Cerberus bark. Hark! I hear the cur, or my ears tingle. I have no manner of kindness for the dog, for there never is a greater toothache than when dogs bite us by the shins. And if this be only Trophonius’s pit, the lemures, hobthrushes, and goblins will certainly swallow us alive, just as they devoured formerly one of Demetrius’s halberdiers for want of bridles. Art thou here, Friar John? Prithee, dear, dear cod, stay by me; I’m almost dead with fear. Hast thou got thy bilbo? Alas! poor pilgarlic’s defenceless. I’m a naked man, thou knowest; let’s go back. Zoons, fear nothing, cried Friar John; I’m by thee, and have thee fast by the collar; eighteen devils shan’t get thee out of my clutches, though I were unarmed. Never did a man yet want weapons who had a good arm with as stout a heart. Heaven would sooner send down a shower of them; even as in Provence, in the fields of La Crau, near Mariannes, there rained stones (they are there to this day) to help Hercules, who otherwise wanted wherewithal to fight Neptune’s two bastards. But whither are we bound? Are we a-going to the little children’s limbo? By Pluto, they’ll bepaw and conskite us all. Or are we going to hell for orders? By cob’s body, I’ll hamper, bethwack, and belabour all the devils, now I have some vine-leaves in my shoes. Thou shalt see me lay about me like mad, old boy. Which way? where the devil are they? I fear nothing but their damned horns; but cuckoldy Panurge’s bull-feather will altogether secure me from ‘em. Lo! in a prophetic spirit I already see him, like another Actaeon, horned, horny, hornified. Prithee, quoth Panurge, take heed thyself, dear frater, lest, till monks have leave to marry, thou weddest something thou dostn’t like, as some cat-o’-nine-tails or the quartan ague; if thou dost, may I never come safe and sound out of this hypogeum, this subterranean cave, if I don’t tup and ram that disease merely for the sake of making thee a cornuted, corniferous property; otherwise I fancy the quartan ague is but an indifferent bedfellow. I remember Gripe-men-all threatened to wed thee to some such thing; for which thou calledest him heretic.

Here our splendid lantern interrupted them, letting us know this was the place where we were to have a taste of the creature, and be silent; bidding us not despair of having the word of the Bottle before we went back, since we had lined our shoes with vine-leaves.

Come on then, cried Panurge, let’s charge through and through all the devils of hell; we can but perish, and that’s soon done. However, I thought to have reserved my life for some mighty battle. Move, move, move forwards; I am as stout as Hercules, my breeches are full of courage; my heart trembles a little, I own, but that’s only an effect of the coldness and dampness of this vault; ‘tis neither fear nor ague. Come on, move on, piss, pish, push on. My name’s William Dreadnought.

5. XXXVII

How the temple gates in a wonderful manner opened of themselves.

After we were got down the steps, we came to a portal of fine jasper, of Doric order, on whose front we read this sentence in the finest gold, EN OINO ALETHEIA--that is, In wine truth. The gates were of Corinthian-like brass, massy, wrought with little vine-branches, finely embossed and engraven, and were equally joined and closed together in their mortise without padlock, key-chain, or tie whatsoever. Where they joined, there hanged an Indian loadstone as big as an Egyptian bean, set in gold, having two points, hexagonal, in a right line; and on each side, towards the wall, hung a handful of scordium (garlic germander).

There our noble lantern desired us not to take it amiss that she went no farther with us, leaving us wholly to the conduct of the priestess Bacbuc; for she herself was not allowed to go in, for certain causes rather to be concealed than revealed to mortals. However, she advised us to be resolute and secure, and to trust to her for the return. She then pulled the loadstone that hung at the folding of the gates, and threw it into a silver box fixed for that purpose; which done, from the threshold of each gate she drew a twine of crimson silk about nine feet long, by which the scordium hung, and having fastened it to two gold buckles that hung at the sides, she withdrew.

Immediately the gates flew open without being touched; not with a creaking or loud harsh noise like that made by heavy brazen gates, but with a soft pleasing murmur that resounded through the arches of the temple.

Pantagruel soon knew the cause of it, having discovered a small cylinder or roller that joined the gates over the threshold, and, turning like them towards the wall on a hard well-polished ophites stone, with rubbing and rolling caused that harmonious murmur.

I wondered how the gates thus opened of themselves to the right and left, and after we were all got in, I cast my eye between the gates and the wall to endeavour to know how this happened; for one would have thought our kind lantern had put between the gates the herb aethiopis, which they say opens some things that are shut. But I perceived that the parts of the gates that joined on the inside were covered with steel, and just where the said gates touched when they were opened I saw two square Indian loadstones of a bluish hue, well polished, and half a span broad, mortised in the temple wall. Now, by the hidden and admirable power of the loadstones, the steel plates were put into motion, and consequently the gates were slowly drawn; however, not always, but when the said loadstone on the outside was removed, after which the steel was freed from its power, the two bunches of scordium being at the same time put at some distance, because it deadens the magnes and robs it of its attractive virtue.

On the loadstone that was placed on the right side the following iambic verse was curiously engraven in ancient Roman characters:

Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.

Fate leads the willing, and th’ unwilling draws.

The following sentence was neatly cut in the loadstone that was on the left:

ALL THINGS TEND TO THEIR END.

5. XXXVIII

Of the Temple’s admirable pavement.

When I had read those inscriptions, I admired the beauty of the temple, and particularly the disposition of its pavement, with which no work that is now, or has been under the cope of heaven, can justly be compared; not that of the Temple of Fortune at Praeneste in Sylla’s time, or the pavement of the Greeks, called asarotum, laid by Sosistratus at Pergamus. For this here was wholly in compartments of precious stones, all in their natural colours: one of red jasper, most charmingly spotted; another of ophites; a third of porphyry; a fourth of lycophthalmy, a stone of four different colours, powdered with sparks of gold as small as atoms; a fifth of agate, streaked here and there with small milk-coloured waves; a sixth of costly chalcedony or onyx-stone; and another of green jasper, with certain red and yellowish veins. And all these were disposed in a diagonal line.

At the portico some small stones were inlaid and evenly joined on the floor, all in their native colours, to embellish the design of the figures; and they were ordered in such a manner that you would have thought some vine-leaves and branches had been carelessly strewed on the pavement; for in some places they were thick, and thin in others. That inlaying was very wonderful everywhere. Here were seen, as it were in the shade, some snails crawling on the grapes; there, little lizards running on the branches. On this side were grapes that seemed yet greenish; on another, some clusters that seemed full ripe, so like the true that they could as easily have deceived starlings and other birds as those which Zeuxis drew.

Nay, we ourselves were deceived; for where the artist seemed to have strewed the vine-branches thickest, we could not forbear walking with great strides lest we should entangle our feet, just as people go over an unequal stony place.

I then cast my eyes on the roof and walls of the temple, that were all pargetted with porphyry and mosaic work, which from the left side at the coming in most admirably represented the battle in which the good Bacchus overthrew the Indians; as followeth.

5. XXXIX

How we saw Bacchus’s army drawn up in battalia in mosaic work.

At the beginning, divers towns, hamlets, castles, fortresses, and forests were seen in flames; and several mad and loose women, who furiously ripped up and tore live calves, sheep, and lambs limb from limb, and devoured their flesh. There we learned how Bacchus, at his coming into India, destroyed all things with fire and sword.

Notwithstanding this, he was so despised by the Indians that they did not think it worth their while to stop his progress, having been certainly informed by their spies that his camp was destitute of warriors, and that he had only with him a crew of drunken females, a low-built, old, effeminate, sottish fellow, continually addled, and as drunk as a wheelbarrow, with a pack of young clownish doddipolls, stark naked, always skipping and frisking up and down, with tails and horns like those of young kids.

For this reason the Indians had resolved to let them go through their country without the least opposition, esteeming a victory over such enemies more dishonourable than glorious.

In the meantime Bacchus marched on, burning everything; for, as you know, fire and thunder are his paternal arms, Jupiter having saluted his mother Semele with his thunder, so that his maternal house was ruined by fire. Bacchus also caused a great deal of blood to be spilt; which, when he is roused and angered, principally in war, is as natural to him as to make some in time of peace.

Thus the plains of the island of Samos are called Panema, which signifies bloody, because Bacchus there overtook the Amazons, who fled from the country of Ephesus, and there let ‘em blood, so that they all died of phlebotomy. This may give you a better insight into the meaning of an ancient proverb than Aristotle has done in his problems, viz., Why ‘twas formerly said, Neither eat nor sow any mint in time of war. The reason is, that blows are given then without any distinction of parts or persons, and if a man that’s wounded has that day handled or eaten any mint, ‘tis impossible, or at least very hard, to stanch his blood.

After this, Bacchus was seen marching in battalia, riding in a stately chariot drawn by six young leopards. He looked as young as a child, to show that all good topers never grow old. He was as red as a cherry, or a cherub, which you please, and had no more hair on his chin than there’s in the inside of my hand. His forehead was graced with pointed horns, above which he wore a fine crown or garland of vine-leaves and grapes, and a mitre of crimson velvet, having also gilt buskins on.

He had not one man with him that looked like a man; his guards and all his forces consisted wholly of Bassarides, Evantes, Euhyades, Edonides, Trietherides, Ogygiae, Mimallonides, Maenades, Thyades, and Bacchae, frantic, raving, raging, furious, mad women, begirt with live snakes and serpents instead of girdles, dishevelled, their hair flowing about their shoulders, with garlands of vine-branches instead of forehead-cloths, clad with stag’s or goat’s skins, and armed with torches, javelins, spears, and halberds whose ends were like pineapples. Besides, they had certain small light bucklers that gave a loud sound if you touched ‘em never so little, and these served them instead of drums. They were just seventy-nine thousand two hundred and twenty-seven.

Silenus, who led the van, was one on whom Bacchus relied very much, having formerly had many proofs of his valour and conduct. He was a diminutive, stooping, palsied, plump, gorbellied old fellow, with a swingeing pair of stiff-standing lugs of his own, a sharp Roman nose, large rough eyebrows, mounted on a well-hung ass. In his fist he held a staff to lean upon, and also bravely to fight whenever he had occasion to alight; and he was dressed in a woman’s yellow gown. His followers were all young, wild, clownish people, as hornified as so many kids and as fell as so many tigers, naked, and perpetually singing and dancing country-dances. They were called tityri and satyrs, and were in all eighty-five thousand one hundred and thirty-three.

Pan, who brought up the rear, was a monstrous sort of a thing; for his lower parts were like a goat’s, his thighs hairy, and his horns bolt upright; a crimson fiery phiz, and a beard that was none of the shortest. He was a bold, stout, daring, desperate fellow, very apt to take pepper in the nose for yea and nay.

In his left hand he held a pipe, and a crooked stick in his right. His forces consisted also wholly of satyrs, aegipanes, agripanes, sylvans, fauns, lemures, lares, elves, and hobgoblins, and their number was seventy-eight thousand one hundred and fourteen. The signal or word common to all the army was Evohe.

5. XL

How the battle in which the good Bacchus overthrew the Indians was represented in mosaic work.

In the next place we saw the representation of the good Bacchus’s engagement with the Indians. Silenus, who led the van, was sweating, puffing, and blowing, belabouring his ass most grievously. The ass dreadfully opened its wide jaws, drove away the flies that plagued it, winced, flounced, went back, and bestirred itself in a most terrible manner, as if some damned gad-bee had stung it at the breech.

The satyrs, captains, sergeants, and corporals of companies, sounding the orgies with cornets, in a furious manner went round the army, skipping, capering, bounding, jerking, farting, flying out at heels, kicking and prancing like mad, encouraging their companions to fight bravely; and all the delineated army cried out Evohe!

First, the Maenades charged the Indians with dreadful shouts, and a horrid din of their brazen drums and bucklers; the air rung again all around, as the mosaic work well expressed it. And pray for the future don’t so much admire Apelles, Aristides the Theban, and others who drew claps of thunder, lightnings, winds, words, manners, and spirits.

We then saw the Indian army, who had at last taken the field to prevent the devastation of the rest of their country. In the front were the elephants, with castles well garrisoned on their backs. But the army and themselves were put into disorder; the dreadful cries of the Bacchae having filled them with consternation, and those huge animals turned tail and trampled on the men of their party.

There you might have seen gaffer Silenus on his ass, putting on as hard as he could, striking athwart and alongst, and laying about him lustily with his staff after the old fashion of fencing. His ass was prancing and making after the elephants, gaping and martially braying, as it were to sound a charge, as he did when formerly in the Bacchanalian feasts he waked the nymph Lottis, when Priapus, full of priapism, had a mind to priapize while the pretty creature was taking a nap.

There you might have seen Pan frisk it with his goatish shanks about the Maenades, and with his rustic pipe excite them to behave themselves like Maenades.

A little further you might have blessed your eyes with the sight of a young satyr who led seventeen kings his prisoners; and a Bacchis, who with her snakes hauled along no less than two and forty captains; a little faun, who carried a whole dozen of standards taken from the enemy; and goodman Bacchus on his chariot, riding to and fro fearless of danger, making much of his dear carcass, and cheerfully toping to all his merry friends.

Finally, we saw the representation of his triumph, which was thus: first, his chariot was wholly lined with ivy gathered on the mountain Meros; this for its scarcity, which you know raises the price of everything, and principally of those leaves in India. In this Alexander the Great followed his example at his Indian triumph. The chariot was drawn by elephants joined together, wherein he was imitated by Pompey the Great at Rome in his African triumph. The good Bacchus was seen drinking out of a mighty urn, which action Marius aped after his victory over the Cimbri near Aix in Provence. All his army were crowned with ivy; their javelins, bucklers, and drums were also wholly covered with it; there was not so much as Silenus’s ass but was betrapped with it.

The Indian kings were fastened with chains of gold close by the wheels of the chariot. All the company marched in pomp with unspeakable joy, loaded with an infinite number of trophies, pageants, and spoils, playing and singing merry epiniciums, songs of triumph, and also rural lays and dithyrambs.

At the farthest end was a prospect of the land of Egypt; the Nile with its crocodiles, marmosets, ibides, monkeys, trochiloses, or wrens, ichneumons, or Pharoah’s mice, hippopotami, or sea-horses, and other creatures, its guests and neighbours. Bacchus was moving towards that country under the conduct of a couple of horned beasts, on one of which was written in gold, Apis, and Osiris on the other; because no ox or cow had been seen in Egypt till Bacchus came thither.

5. XLI

How the temple was illuminated with a wonderful lamp.

Before I proceed to the description of the Bottle, I’ll give you that of an admirable lamp that dispensed so large a light over all the temple that, though it lay underground, we could distinguish every object as clearly as above it at noonday.

In the middle of the roof was fixed a ring of massive gold, as thick as my clenched fist. Three chains somewhat less, most curiously wrought, hung about two feet and a half below it, and in a triangle supported a round plate of fine gold whose diameter or breadth did not exceed two cubits and half a span. There were four holes in it, in each of which an empty ball was fastened, hollow within, and open o’ top, like a little lamp; its circumference about two hands’ breadth. Each ball was of precious stone; one an amethyst, another an African carbuncle, the third an opal, and the fourth an anthracites. They were full of burning water five times distilled in a serpentine limbec, and inconsumptible, like the oil formerly put into Pallas’ golden lamp at Acropolis of Athens by Callimachus. In each of them was a flaming wick, partly of asbestine flax, as of old in the temple of Jupiter Ammon, such as those which Cleombrotus, a most studious philosopher, saw, and partly of Carpasian flax (Ozell’s correction. Motteux reads, ‘which Cleombrotus, a most studious philosopher, and Pandelinus of Carpasium had, which were,’ &c.), which were rather renewed than consumed by the fire.

About two foot and a half below that gold plate, the three chains were fastened to three handles that were fixed to a large round lamp of most pure crystal, whose diameter was a cubit and a half, and opened about two hands’ breadths o’ top; by which open place a vessel of the same crystal, shaped somewhat like the lower part of a gourd-like limbec, or an urinal, was put at the bottom of the great lamp, with such a quantity of the afore-mentioned burning water, that the flame of the asbestine wick reached the centre of the great lamp. This made all its spherical body seem to burn and be in a flame, because the fire was just at the centre and middle point, so that it was not more easy to fix the eye on it than on the disc of the sun, the matter being wonderfully bright and shining, and the work most transparent and dazzling by the reflection of the various colours of the precious stones whereof the four small lamps above the main lamp were made, and their lustre was still variously glittering all over the temple. Then this wandering light being darted on the polished marble and agate with which all the inside of the temple was pargetted, our eyes were entertained with a sight of all the admirable colours which the rainbow can boast when the sun darts his fiery rays on some dropping clouds.

The design of the lamp was admirable in itself, but, in my opinion, what added much to the beauty of the whole, was that round the body of the crystal lamp there was carved in cataglyphic work a lively and pleasant battle of naked boys, mounted on little hobby-horses, with little whirligig lances and shields that seemed made of vine-branches with grapes on them; their postures generally were very different, and their childish strife and motions were so ingeniously expressed that art equalled nature in every proportion and action. Neither did this seem engraved, but rather hewed out and embossed in relief, or at least like grotesque, which, by the artist’s skill, has the appearance of the roundness of the object it represents. This was partly the effect of the various and most charming light, which, flowing out of the lamp, filled the carved places with its glorious rays.

Chapter 5.XLII [‘This and the next chapter make really but one, tho’ Mr. Motteux has made two of them; the first of which contains but eight lines, according to him, and ends at the words fantastic fountain.’--Ozell.).

How the Priestess Bacbuc showed us a fantastic fountain in the temple, and how the fountain-water had the taste of wine, according to the imagination of those who drank of it.

While we were admiring this incomparable lamp and the stupendous structure of the temple, the venerable priestess Bacbuc and her attendants came to us with jolly smiling looks, and seeing us duly accoutred, without the least difficulty took us into the middle of the temple, where, just under the aforesaid lamp, was the fine fantastic fountain. She then ordered some cups, goblets, and talboys of gold, silver, and crystal to be brought, and kindly invited us to drink of the liquor that sprung there, which we readily did; for, to say the truth, this fantastic fountain was very inviting, and its materials and workmanship more precious, rare, and admirable than anything Plato ever dreamt of in limbo.

Its basis or groundwork was of most pure and limpid alabaster, and its height somewhat more than three spans, being a regular heptagon on the outside, with its stylobates or footsteps, arulets, cymasults or blunt tops, and Doric undulations about it. It was exactly round within. On the middle point of each angle brink stood a pillar orbiculated in form of ivory or alabaster solid rings. These were seven in number, according to the number of the angles (This sentence, restored by Ozell, is omitted by Motteux.).

Each pillar’s length from the basis to the architraves was near seven hands, taking an exact dimension of its diameter through the centre of its circumference and inward roundness; and it was so disposed that, casting our eyes behind one of them, whatever its cube might be, to view its opposite, we found that the pyramidal cone of our visual line ended at the said centre, and there, by the two opposites, formed an equilateral triangle whose two lines divided the pillar into two equal parts.

That which we had a mind to measure, going from one side to another, two pillars over, at the first third part of the distance between them, was met by their lowermost and fundamental line, which, in a consult line drawn as far as the universal centre, equally divided, gave, in a just partition, the distance of the seven opposite pillars in a right line, beginning at the obtuse angle on the brink, as you know that an angle is always found placed between two others in all angular figures odd in number.

This tacitly gave us to understand that seven semidiameters are in geometrical proportion, compass, and distance somewhat less than the circumference of a circle, from the figure of which they are extracted; that is to say, three whole parts, with an eighth and a half, a little more, or a seventh and a half, a little less, according to the instructions given us of old by Euclid, Aristotle, Archimedes, and others.

The first pillar, I mean that which faced the temple gate, was of azure, sky-coloured sapphire.

The second, of hyacinth, a precious stone exactly of the colour of the flower into which Ajax’s choleric blood was transformed; the Greek letters A I being seen on it in many places.

The third, an anachite diamond, as bright and glittering as lightning.

The fourth, a masculine ruby balas (peach-coloured) amethystizing, its flame and lustre ending in violet or purple like an amethyst.

The fifth, an emerald, above five hundred and fifty times more precious than that of Serapis in the labyrinth of the Egyptians, and more verdant and shining than those that were fixed, instead of eyes, in the marble lion’s head near King Hermias’s tomb.

The sixth, of agate, more admirable and various in the distinctions of its veins, clouds, and colours than that which Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, so mightily esteemed.

The seventh, of syenites, transparent, of the colour of a beryl and the clear hue of Hymetian honey; and within it the moon was seen, such as we see it in the sky, silent, full, new, and in the wane.

These stones were assigned to the seven heavenly planets by the ancient Chaldaeans; and that the meanest capacities might be informed of this, just at the central perpendicular line, on the chapter of the first pillar, which was of sapphire, stood the image of Saturn in elutian (Motteux reads ‘Eliacim.’) lead, with his scythe in his hand, and at his feet a crane of gold, very artfully enamelled, according to the native hue of the saturnine bird.

On the second, which was of hyacinth, towards the left, Jupiter was seen in jovetian brass, and on his breast an eagle of gold enamelled to the life.

On the third was Phoebus of the purest gold, and a white cock in his right hand.

On the fourth was Mars in Corinthian brass, and a lion at his feet.

On the fifth was Venus in copper, the metal of which Aristonides made Athamas’s statue, that expressed in a blushing whiteness his confusion at the sight of his son Learchus, who died at his feet of a fall.

On the sixth was Mercury in hydrargyre. I would have said quicksilver, had it not been fixed, malleable, and unmovable. That nimble deity had a stork at his feet.

On the seventh was the Moon in silver, with a greyhound at her feet.

The size of these statues was somewhat more than a third part of the pillars on which they stood, and they were so admirably wrought according to mathematical proportion that Polycletus’s canon could hardly have stood in competition with them.

The bases of the pillars, the chapters, the architraves, zoophores, and cornices were Phrygian work of massive gold, purer and finer than any that is found in the rivers Leede near Montpellier, Ganges in India, Po in Italy, Hebrus in Thrace, Tagus in Spain, and Pactolus in Lydia.

The small arches between the pillars were of the same precious stone of which the pillars next to them were. Thus, that arch was of sapphire which ended at the hyacinth pillar, and that was of hyacinth which went towards the diamond, and so on.

Above the arches and chapters of the pillars, on the inward front, a cupola was raised to cover the fountain. It was surrounded by the planetary statues, heptagonal at the bottom, and spherical o’ top, and of crystal so pure, transparent, well-polished, whole and uniform in all its parts, without veins, clouds, flaws, or streaks, that Xenocrates never saw such a one in his life.

Within it were seen the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve months of the year, with their properties, the two equinoxes, the ecliptic line, with some of the most remarkable fixed stars about the antartic pole and elsewhere, so curiously engraven that I fancied them to be the workmanship of King Necepsus, or Petosiris, the ancient mathematician.

On the top of the cupola, just over the centre of the fountain, were three noble long pearls, all of one size, pear fashion, perfectly imitating a tear, and so joined together as to represent a flower-de-luce or lily, each of the flowers seeming above a hand’s breadth. A carbuncle jetted out of its calyx or cup as big as an ostrich’s egg, cut seven square (that number so beloved of nature), and so prodigiously glorious that the sight of it had like to have made us blind, for the fiery sun or the pointed lightning are not more dazzling and unsufferably bright.

Now, were some judicious appraisers to judge of the value of this incomparable fountain, and the lamp of which we have spoke, they would undoubtedly affirm it exceeds that of all the treasures and curiosities in Europe, Asia, and Africa put together. For that carbuncle alone would have darkened the pantarbe of Iarchus (Motteux reads ‘Joachas.’) the Indian magician, with as much ease as the sun outshines and dims the stars with his meridian rays.

Nor let Cleopatra, that Egyptian queen, boast of her pair of pendants, those two pearls, one of which she caused to be dissolved in vinegar, in the presence of Antony the Triumvir, her gallant.

Or let Pompeia Plautina be proud of her dress covered all over with emeralds and pearls curiously intermixed, she who attracted the eyes of all Rome, and was said to be the pit and magazine of the conquering robbers of the universe.

The fountain had three tubes or channels of right pearl, seated in three equilateral angles already mentioned, extended on the margin, and those channels proceeded in a snail-like line, winding equally on both sides.

We looked on them a while, and had cast our eyes on another side, when Bacbuc directed us to watch the water. We then heard a most harmonious sound, yet somewhat stopped by starts, far distant, and subterranean, by which means it was still more pleasing than if it had been free, uninterrupted, and near us, so that our minds were as agreeably entertained through our ears with that charming melody as they were through the windows of our eyes with those delightful objects.

Bacbuc then said, Your philosophers will not allow that motion is begot by the power of figures; look here, and see the contrary. By that single snail-like motion, equally divided as you see, and a fivefold infoliature, movable at every inward meeting, such as is the vena cava where it enters into the right ventricle of the heart; just so is the flowing of this fountain, and by it a harmony ascends as high as your world’s ocean.

She then ordered her attendants to make us drink; and, to tell you the truth of the matter as near as possible, we are not, heaven be praised! of the nature of a drove of calf-lollies, who (as your sparrows can’t feed unless you bob them on the tail) must be rib-roasted with tough crabtree and firked into a stomach, or at least into an humour to eat or drink. No, we know better things, and scorn to scorn any man’s civility who civilly invites us to a drinking bout. Bacbuc asked us then how we liked our tiff. We answered that it seemed to us good harmless sober Adam’s liquor, fit to keep a man in the right way, and, in a word, mere element; more cool and clear than Argyrontes in Aetolia, Peneus in Thessaly, Axius in Mygdonia, or Cydnus in Cilicia, a tempting sight of whose cool silver stream caused Alexander to prefer the short-lived pleasure of bathing himself in it to the inconveniences which he could not but foresee would attend so ill-termed an action.

This, said Bacbuc, comes of not considering with ourselves, or understanding the motions of the musculous tongue, when the drink glides on it in its way to the stomach. Tell me, noble strangers, are your throats lined, paved, or enamelled, as formerly was that of Pithyllus, nicknamed Theutes, that you can have missed the taste, relish, and flavour of this divine liquor? Here, said she, turning towards her gentlewomen, bring my scrubbing-brushes, you know which, to scrape, rake, and clear their palates.

They brought immediately some stately, swingeing, jolly hams, fine substantial neat’s tongues, good hung-beef, pure and delicate botargos, venison, sausages, and such other gullet-sweepers. And, to comply with her invitation, we crammed and twisted till we owned ourselves thoroughly cured of thirst, which before did damnably plague us.

We are told, continued she, that formerly a learned and valiant Hebrew chief, leading his people through the deserts, where they were in danger of being famished, obtained of God some manna, whose taste was to them, by imagination, such as that of meat was to them before in reality; thus, drinking of this miraculous liquor, you’ll find it taste like any wine that you shall fancy you drink. Come, then, fancy and drink. We did so, and Panurge had no sooner whipped off his brimmer but he cried, By Noah’s open shop, ‘tis vin de Beaune, better than ever was yet tipped over tongue, or may ninety-six devils swallow me. Oh! that to keep its taste the longer, we gentlemen topers had but necks some three cubits long or so, as Philoxenus desired to have, or, at least, like a crane’s, as Melanthius wished his.

On the faith of true lanterners, quoth Friar John, ‘tis gallant, sparkling Greek wine. Now, for God’s sake, sweetheart, do but teach me how the devil you make it. It seems to me Mirevaux wine, said Pantagruel; for before I drank I supposed it to be such. Nothing can be misliked in it, but that ‘tis cold; colder, I say, than the very ice; colder than the Nonacrian and Dercean (Motteux reads ‘Deraen.’) water, or the Conthoporian (Motteux, ‘Conthopian.’) spring at Corinth, that froze up the stomach and nutritive parts of those that drank of it.

Drink once, twice, or thrice more, said Bacbuc, still changing your imagination, and you shall find its taste and flavour to be exactly that on which you shall have pitched. Then never presume to say that anything is impossible to God. We never offered to say such a thing, said I; far from it, we maintain he is omnipotent.

5. XLIII

How the Priestess Bacbuc equipped Panurge in order to have the word of the Bottle.

When we had thus chatted and tippled, Bacbuc asked, Who of you here would have the word of the Bottle? I, your most humble little funnel, an’t please you, quoth Panurge. Friend, saith she, I have but one thing to tell you, which is, that when you come to the Oracle, you take care to hearken and hear the word only with one ear. This, cried Friar John, is wine of one ear, as Frenchmen call it.

She then wrapped him up in a gaberdine, bound his noddle with a goodly clean biggin, clapped over it a felt such as those through which hippocras is distilled, at the bottom of which, instead of a cowl, she put three obelisks, made him draw on a pair of old-fashioned codpieces instead of mittens, girded him about with three bagpipes bound together, bathed his jobbernowl thrice in the fountain; then threw a handful of meal on his phiz, fixed three cock’s feathers on the right side of the hippocratical felt, made him take a jaunt nine times round the fountain, caused him to take three little leaps and to bump his a-- seven times against the ground, repeating I don’t know what kind of conjurations all the while in the Tuscan tongue, and ever and anon reading in a ritual or book of ceremonies, carried after her by one of her mystagogues.

For my part, may I never stir if I don’t really believe that neither Numa Pompilius, the second King of the Romans, nor the Cerites of Tuscia, and the old Hebrew captain ever instituted so many ceremonies as I then saw performed; nor were ever half so many religious forms used by the soothsayers of Memphis in Egypt to Apis, or by the Euboeans, at Rhamnus (Motteux gives ‘or by the Embrians, or at Rhamnus.’), to Rhamnusia, or to Jupiter Ammon, or to Feronia.

When she had thus accoutred my gentleman, she took him out of our company, and led him out of the temple, through a golden gate on the right, into a round chapel made of transparent speculary stones, by whose solid clearness the sun’s light shined there through the precipice of the rock without any windows or other entrance, and so easily and fully dispersed itself through the greater temple that the light seemed rather to spring out of it than to flow into it.

The workmanship was not less rare than that of the sacred temple at Ravenna, or that in the island of Chemnis in Egypt. Nor must I forget to tell you that the work of that round chapel was contrived with such a symmetry that its diameter was just the height of the vault.

In the middle of it was an heptagonal fountain of fine alabaster most artfully wrought, full of water, which was so clear that it might have passed for element in its purity and singleness. The sacred Bottle was in it to the middle, clad in pure fine crystal of an oval shape, except its muzzle, which was somewhat wider than was consistent with that figure.

5. XLIV

How Bacbuc, the high-priestess, brought Panurge before the Holy Bottle.

There the noble priestess Bacbuc made Panurge stoop and kiss the brink of the fountain; then bade him rise and dance three ithymbi [‘Dances in the honour of Bacchus.’--Motteux.). Which done, she ordered him to sit down between two stools placed there for that purpose, his arse upon the ground. Then she opened her ceremonial book, and, whispering in his left ear, made him sing an epileny, inserted here in the figure of the bottle.

Bottle, whose Mysterious Deep Do’s ten thousand Secrets keep, With attentive Ear I wait; Ease my Mind, and speak my Fate. Soul of Joy! Like Bacchus, we More than India gain by thee. Truths unborn thy Juice reveals, Which Futurity conceals. Antidote to Frauds and Lies, Wine, that mounts us to the Skies, May thy Father Noah’s Brood Like him drown, but in thy Flood. Speak, so may the Liquid Mine Of Rubies, or of Diamonds shine. Bottle, whose Mysterious Deep Do’s ten thousand Secrets keep, With attentive Ear I wait; Ease my Mind, and speak my Fate.

When Panurge had sung, Bacbuc threw I don’t know what into the fountain, and straight its water began to boil in good earnest, just for the world as doth the great monastical pot at Bourgueil when ‘tis high holiday there. Friend Panurge was listening with one ear, and Bacbuc kneeled by him, when such a kind of humming was heard out of the Bottle as is made by a swarm of bees bred in the flesh of a young bull killed and dressed according to Aristaeus’s art, or such as is made when a bolt flies out of a crossbow, or when a shower falls on a sudden in summer. Immediately after this was heard the word Trinc. By cob’s body, cried Panurge, ‘tis broken, or cracked at least, not to tell a lie for the matter; for even so do crystal bottles speak in our country when they burst near the fire.

Bacbuc arose, and gently taking Panurge under the arms, said, Friend, offer your thanks to indulgent heaven, as reason requires. You have soon had the word of the Goddess-Bottle; and the kindest, most favourable, and certain word of answer that I ever yet heard her give since I officiated here at her most sacred oracle. Rise, let us go to the chapter, in whose gloss that fine word is explained. With all my heart, quoth Panurge; by jingo, I am just as wise as I was last year. Light, where’s the book? Turn it over, where’s the chapter? Let’s see this merry gloss.

5. XLV

How Bacbuc explained the word of the Goddess-Bottle.

Bacbuc having thrown I don’t know what into the fountain, straight the water ceased to boil; and then she took Panurge into the greater temple, in the central place, where there was the enlivening fountain.

There she took out a hugeous silver book, in the shape of a half-tierce, or hogshead, of sentences, and, having filled it at the fountain, said to him, The philosophers, preachers, and doctors of your world feed you up with fine words and cant at the ears; now, here we really incorporate our precepts at the mouth. Therefore I’ll not say to you, read this chapter, see this gloss; no, I say to you, taste me this fine chapter, swallow me this rare gloss. Formerly an ancient prophet of the Jewish nation ate a book and became a clerk even to the very teeth! Now will I have you drink one, that you may be a clerk to your very liver. Here, open your mandibules.

Panurge gaping as wide as his jaws would stretch, Bacbuc took the silver book--at least we took it for a real book, for it looked just for the world like a breviary--but in truth it was a breviary, a flask of right Falernian wine as it came from the grape, which she made him swallow every drop.

By Bacchus, quoth Panurge, this was a notable chapter, a most authentic gloss, o’ my word. Is this all that the trismegistian Bottle’s word means? I’ troth, I like it extremely; it went down like mother’s milk. Nothing more, returned Bacbuc; for Trinc is a panomphean word, that is, a word understood, used and celebrated by all nations, and signifies drink.

Some say in your world that sack is a word used in all tongues, and justly admitted in the same sense among all nations; for, as Aesop’s fable hath it, all men are born with a sack at the neck, naturally needy and begging of each other; neither can the most powerful king be without the help of other men, or can anyone that’s poor subsist without the rich, though he be never so proud and insolent; as, for example, Hippias the philosopher, who boasted he could do everything. Much less can anyone make shift without drink than without a sack. Therefore here we hold not that laughing, but that drinking is the distinguishing character of man. I don’t say drinking, taking that word singly and absolutely in the strictest sense; no, beasts then might put in for a share; I mean drinking cool delicious wine. For you must know, my beloved, that by wine we become divine; neither can there be a surer argument or a less deceitful divination. Your [‘Varro.’--Motteux) academics assert the same when they make the etymology of wine, which the Greeks call OINOS, to be from vis, strength, virtue, and power; for ‘tis in its power to fill the soul with all truth, learning, and philosophy.

If you observe what is written in Ionic letters on the temple gate, you may have understood that truth is in wine. The Goddess-Bottle therefore directs you to that divine liquor; be yourself the expounder of your undertaking.

It is impossible, said Pantagruel to Panurge, to speak more to the purpose than does this true priestess; you may remember I told you as much when you first spoke to me about it.

Trinc then: what says your heart, elevated by Bacchic enthusiasm?

With this quoth Panurge:

Trinc, trinc; by Bacchus, let us tope, And tope again; for, now I hope To see some brawny, juicy rump Well tickled with my carnal stump. Ere long, my friends, I shall be wedded, Sure as my trap-stick has a red-head; And my sweet wife shall hold the combat Long as my baws can on her bum beat. O what a battle of a-- fighting Will there be, which I much delight in! What pleasing pains then shall I take To keep myself and spouse awake! All heart and juice, I’ll up and ride, And make a duchess of my bride. Sing Io paean! loudly sing To Hymen, who all joys will bring. Well, Friar John, I’ll take my oath, This oracle is full of troth; Intelligible truth it bears, More certain than the sieve and shears.

5. XLVI

How Panurge and the rest rhymed with poetic fury.

What a pox ails the fellow? quoth Friar John. Stark staring mad, or bewitched, o’ my word! Do but hear the chiming dotterel gabble in rhyme. What o’ devil has he swallowed? His eyes roll in his loggerhead just for the world like a dying goat’s. Will the addle-pated wight have the grace to sheer off? Will he rid us of his damned company, to go shite out his nasty rhyming balderdash in some bog-house? Will nobody be so kind as to cram some dog’s-bur down the poor cur’s gullet? or will he, monk-like, run his fist up to the elbow into his throat to his very maw, to scour and clear his flanks? Will he take a hair of the same dog?

Pantagruel chid Friar John, and said:

Bold monk, forbear! this, I’ll assure ye, Proceeds all from poetic fury; Warmed by the god, inspired with wine, His human soul is made divine. For without jest, His hallowed breast, With wine possessed, Could have no rest Till he’d expressed Some thoughts at least Of his great guest. Then straight he flies Above the skies, And mortifies, With prophecies, Our miseries. And since divinely he’s inspired, Adore the soul by wine acquired, And let the tosspot be admired.

How, quoth the friar, the fit rhyming is upon you too? Is’t come to that? Then we are all peppered, or the devil pepper me. What would I not give to have Gargantua see us while we are in this maggotty crambo-vein! Now may I be cursed with living on that damned empty food, if I can tell whether I shall scape the catching distemper. The devil a bit do I understand which way to go about it; however, the spirit of fustian possesses us all, I find. Well, by St. John, I’ll poetize, since everybody does; I find it coming. Stay, and pray pardon me if I don’t rhyme in crimson; ‘tis my first essay.

Thou, who canst water turn to wine, Transform my bum, by power divine, Into a lantern, that may light My neighbour in the darkest night.

Panurge then proceeds in his rapture, and says:

From Pythian Tripos ne’er were heard More truths, nor more to be revered. I think from Delphos to this spring Some wizard brought that conjuring thing. Had honest Plutarch here been toping, He then so long had ne’er been groping To find, according to his wishes, Why oracles are mute as fishes At Delphos. Now the reason’s clear; No more at Delphos they’re, but here. Here is the tripos, out of which Is spoke the doom of poor and rich. For Athenaeus does relate This Bottle is the Womb of Fate; Prolific of mysterious wine, And big with prescience divine, It brings the truth with pleasure forth; Besides you ha’t a pennyworth. So, Friar John, I must exhort you To wait a word that may import you, And to inquire, while here we tarry, If it shall be your luck to marry.

Friar John answers him in a rage, and says:

How, marry! By St. Bennet’s boot, And his gambadoes, I’ll never do’t. No man that knows me e’er shall judge I mean to make myself a drudge; Or that pilgarlic e’er will dote Upon a paltry petticoat. I’ll ne’er my liberty betray All for a little leapfrog play; And ever after wear a clog Like monkey or like mastiff-dog. No, I’d not have, upon my life, Great Alexander for my wife, Nor Pompey, nor his dad-in-law, Who did each other clapperclaw. Not the best he that wears a head Shall win me to his truckle-bed.

Panurge, pulling off his gaberdine and mystical accoutrements, replied:

Wherefore thou shalt, thou filthy beast, Be damned twelve fathoms deep at least; While I shall reign in Paradise, Whence on thy loggerhead I’ll piss. Now when that dreadful hour is come, That thou in hell receiv’st thy doom, E’en there, I know, thou’lt play some trick, And Proserpine shan’t scape a prick Of the long pin within thy breeches. But when thou’rt using these capriches, And caterwauling in her cavern, Send Pluto to the farthest tavern For the best wine that’s to be had, Lest he should see, and run horn-mad. She’s kind, and ever did admire A well-fed monk or well-hung friar.

Go to, quoth Friar John, thou old noddy, thou doddipolled ninny, go to the devil thou’rt prating of. I’ve done with rhyming; the rheum gripes me at the gullet. Let’s talk of paying and going; come.

5. XLVII

How we took our leave of Bacbuc, and left the Oracle of the Holy Bottle.

Do not trouble yourself about anything here, said the priestess to the friar; if you be but satisfied, we are. Here below, in these circumcentral regions, we place the sovereign good, not in taking and receiving, but in bestowing and giving; so that we esteem ourselves happy, not if we take and receive much of others, as perhaps the sects of teachers do in your world, but rather if we impart and give much. All I have to beg of you is that you leave us here your names in writing, in this ritual. She then opened a fine large book, and as we gave our names one of her mystagogues with a gold pin drew some lines on it, as if she had been writing; but we could not see any characters.

This done, she filled three glasses with fantastic water, and giving them into our hands, said, Now, my friends, you may depart, and may that intellectual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, whom we call GOD, keep you in his almighty protection. When you come into your world, do not fail to affirm and witness that the greatest treasures and most admirable things are hidden underground, and not without reason.

Ceres was worshipped because she taught mankind the art of husbandry, and by the use of corn, which she invented, abolished that beastly way of feeding on acorns; and she grievously lamented her daughter’s banishment into our subterranean regions, certainly foreseeing that Proserpine would meet with more excellent things, more desirable enjoyments, below, than she her mother could be blessed with above.

What do you think is become of the art of forcing the thunder and celestial fire down, which the wise Prometheus had formerly invented? ‘Tis most certain you have lost it; ‘tis no more on your hemisphere; but here below we have it. And without a cause you sometimes wonder to see whole towns burned and destroyed by lightning and ethereal fire, and are at a loss about knowing from whom, by whom, and to what end those dreadful mischiefs were sent. Now, they are familiar and useful to us; and your philosophers who complain that the ancients have left them nothing to write of or to invent, are very much mistaken. Those phenomena which you see in the sky, whatever the surface of the earth affords you, and the sea, and every river contain, is not to be compared with what is hid within the bowels of the earth.

For this reason the subterranean ruler has justly gained in almost every language the epithet of rich. Now when your sages shall wholly apply their minds to a diligent and studious search after truth, humbly begging the assistance of the sovereign God, whom formerly the Egyptians in their language called The Hidden and the Concealed, and invoking him by that name, beseech him to reveal and make himself known to them, that Almighty Being will, out of his infinite goodness, not only make his creatures, but even himself known to them.

Thus will they be guided by good lanterns. For all the ancient philosophers and sages have held two things necessary safely and pleasantly to arrive at the knowledge of God and true wisdom; first, God’s gracious guidance, then man’s assistance.

So, among the philosophers, Zoroaster took Arimaspes for the companion of his travels; Aesculapius, Mercury; Orpheus, Musaeus; Pythagoras, Aglaophemus; and, among princes and warriors, Hercules in his most difficult achievements had his singular friend Theseus; Ulysses, Diomedes; Aeneas, Achates. You followed their examples, and came under the conduct of an illustrious lantern. Now, in God’s name depart, and may he go along with you!

THE END OF THE FIFTH BOOK OF THE HEROIC DEEDS AND SAYINGS OF THE NOBLE PANTAGRUEL.