Trouil. I hear you.

Pan. Is it possible for me to live without a wife, in the name of all the subterranean devils?

Trouil. Away with these filthy beasts.

Pan. Let it be, then, in the name of God; for my Salmigondinish people use to say, To lie alone, without a wife, is certainly a brutish life. And such a life also was it assevered to be by Dido in her lamentations.

Trouil. At your command.

Pan. By the pody cody, I have fished fair; where are we now? But will you tell me? Shall I marry?

Trouil. Perhaps.

Pan. Shall I thrive or speed well withal?

Trouil. According to the encounter.

Pan. But if in my adventure I encounter aright, as I hope I will, shall I be fortunate?

Trouil. Enough.

Pan. Let us turn the clean contrary way, and brush our former words against the wool: what if I encounter ill?

Trouil. Then blame not me.

Pan. But, of courtesy, be pleased to give me some advice. I heartily beseech you, what must I do?

Trouil. Even what thou wilt.

Pan. Wishy, washy; trolly, trolly.

Trouil. Do not invocate the name of anything, I pray you.

Pan. In the name of God, let it be so! My actions shall be regulated by the rule and square of your counsel. What is it that you advise and counsel me to do?

Trouil. Nothing.

Pan. Shall I marry?

Trouil. I have no hand in it.

Pan. Then shall I not marry?

Trouil. I cannot help it.

Pan. If I never marry, I shall never be a cuckold.

Trouil. I thought so.

Pan. But put the case that I be married.

Trouil. Where shall we put it?

Pan. Admit it be so, then, and take my meaning in that sense.

Trouil. I am otherwise employed.

Pan. By the death of a hog, and mother of a toad, O Lord! if I durst hazard upon a little fling at the swearing game, though privily and under thumb, it would lighten the burden of my heart and ease my lights and reins exceedingly. A little patience nevertheless is requisite. Well then, if I marry, I shall be a cuckold.

Trouil. One would say so.

Pan. Yet if my wife prove a virtuous, wise, discreet, and chaste woman, I shall never be cuckolded.

Trouil. I think you speak congruously.

Pan. Hearken.

Trouil. As much as you will.

Pan. Will she be discreet and chaste? This is the only point I would be resolved in.

Trouil. I question it.

Pan. You never saw her?

Trouil. Not that I know of.

Pan. Why do you then doubt of that which you know not?

Trouil. For a cause.

Pan. And if you should know her.

Trouil. Yet more.

Pan. Page, my pretty little darling, take here my cap,—I give it thee. Have a care you do not break the spectacles that are in it. Go down to the lower court. Swear there half an hour for me, and I shall in compensation of that favour swear hereafter for thee as much as thou wilt. But who shall cuckold me?

Trouil. Somebody.

Pan. By the belly of the wooden horse at Troy, Master Somebody, I shall bang, belam thee, and claw thee well for thy labour.

Trouil. You say so.

Pan. Nay, nay, that Nick in the dark cellar, who hath no white in his eye, carry me quite away with him if, in that case, whensoever I go abroad from the palace of my domestic residence, I do not, with as much circumspection as they use to ring mares in our country to keep them from being sallied by stoned horses, clap a Bergamasco lock upon my wife.

Trouil. Talk better.

Pan. It is bien chien, chie chante, well cacked and cackled, shitten, and sung in matter of talk. Let us resolve on somewhat.

Trouil. I do not gainsay it.

Pan. Have a little patience. Seeing I cannot on this side draw any blood of you, I will try if with the lancet of my judgment I be able to bleed you in another vein. Are you married, or are you not?

Trouil. Neither the one nor the other, and both together.

Pan. O the good God help us! By the death of a buffle-ox, I sweat with the toil and travail that I am put to, and find my digestion broke off, disturbed, and interrupted, for all my phrenes, metaphrenes, and diaphragms, back, belly, midriff, muscles, veins, and sinews are held in a suspense and for a while discharged from their proper offices to stretch forth their several powers and abilities for incornifistibulating and laying up into the hamper of my understanding your various sayings and answers.

Trouil. I shall be no hinderer thereof.

Pan. Tush, for shame! Our faithful friend, speak; are you married?

Trouil. I think so.

Pan. You were also married before you had this wife?

Trouil. It is possible.

Pan. Had you good luck in your first marriage?

Trouil. It is not impossible.

Pan. How thrive you with this second wife of yours?

Trouil. Even as it pleaseth my fatal destiny.

Pan. But what, in good earnest? Tell me—do you prosper well with her?

Trouil. It is likely.

Pan. Come on, in the name of God. I vow, by the burden of Saint Christopher, that I had rather undertake the fetching of a fart forth of the belly of a dead ass than to draw out of you a positive and determinate resolution. Yet shall I be sure at this time to have a snatch at you, and get my claws over you. Our trusty friend, let us shame the devil of hell, and confess the verity. Were you ever a cuckold? I say, you who are here, and not that other you who playeth below in the tennis-court?

Trouil. No, if it was not predestinated.

Pan. By the flesh, blood, and body, I swear, reswear, forswear, abjure, and renounce, he evades and avoids, shifts, and escapes me, and quite slips and winds himself out of my grips and clutches.

At these words Gargantua arose and said, Praised be the good God in all things, but especially for bringing the world into that height of refinedness beyond what it was when I first came to be acquainted therewith, that now the learnedst and most prudent philosophers are not ashamed to be seen entering in at the porches and frontispieces of the schools of the Pyrrhonian, Aporrhetic, Sceptic, and Ephectic sects. Blessed be the holy name of God! Veritably, it is like henceforth to be found an enterprise of much more easy undertaking to catch lions by the neck, horses by the main, oxen by the horns, bulls by the muzzle, wolves by the tail, goats by the beard, and flying birds by the feet, than to entrap such philosophers in their words. Farewell, my worthy, dear, and honest friends.

When he had done thus speaking, he withdrew himself from the company. Pantagruel and others with him would have followed and accompanied him, but he would not permit them so to do. No sooner was Gargantua departed out of the banqueting-hall than that Pantagruel said to the invited guests: Plato's Timaeus, at the beginning always of a solemn festival convention, was wont to count those that were called thereto. We, on the contrary, shall at the closure and end of this treatment reckon up our number. One, two, three; where is the fourth? I miss my friend Bridlegoose. Was not he sent for? Epistemon answered that he had been at his house to bid and invite him, but could not meet with him; for that a messenger from the parliament of Mirlingois, in Mirlingues, was come to him with a writ of summons to cite and warn him personally to appear before the reverend senators of the high court there, to vindicate and justify himself at the bar of the crime of prevarication laid to his charge, and to be peremptorily instanced against him in a certain decree, judgment, or sentence lately awarded, given, and pronounced by him; and that, therefore, he had taken horse and departed in great haste from his own house, to the end that without peril or danger of falling into a default or contumacy he might be the better able to keep the prefixed and appointed time.

I will, quoth Pantagruel, understand how that matter goeth. It is now above forty years that he hath been constantly the judge of Fonsbeton, during which space of time he hath given four thousand definitive sentences, of two thousand three hundred and nine whereof, although appeal was made by the parties whom he had judicially condemned from his inferior judicatory to the supreme court of the parliament of Mirlingois, in Mirlingues, they were all of them nevertheless confirmed, ratified, and approved of by an order, decree, and final sentence of the said sovereign court, to the casting of the appellants, and utter overthrow of the suits wherein they had been foiled at law, for ever and a day. That now in his old age he should be personally summoned, who in all the foregoing time of his life hath demeaned himself so unblamably in the discharge of the office and vocation he had been called unto, it cannot assuredly be that such a change hath happened without some notorious misfortune and disaster. I am resolved to help and assist him in equity and justice to the uttermost extent of my power and ability. I know the malice, despite, and wickedness of the world to be so much more nowadays exasperated, increased, and aggravated by what it was not long since, that the best cause that is, how just and equitable soever it be, standeth in great need to be succoured, aided, and supported. Therefore presently, from this very instant forth, do I purpose, till I see the event and closure thereof, most heedfully to attend and wait upon it, for fear of some underhand tricky surprisal, cavilling pettifoggery, or fallacious quirks in law, to his detriment, hurt, or disadvantage.

Then dinner being done, and the tables drawn and removed, when Pantagruel had very cordially and affectionately thanked his invited guests for the favour which he had enjoyed of their company, he presented them with several rich and costly gifts, such as jewels, rings set with precious stones, gold and silver vessels, with a great deal of other sort of plate besides, and lastly, taking of them all his leave, retired himself into an inner chamber.



Chapter 3.XXXVII.

How Pantagruel persuaded Panurge to take counsel of a fool.

When Pantagruel had withdrawn himself, he, by a little sloping window in one of the galleries, perceived Panurge in a lobby not far from thence, walking alone, with the gesture, carriage, and garb of a fond dotard, raving, wagging, and shaking his hands, dandling, lolling, and nodding with his head, like a cow bellowing for her calf; and, having then called him nearer, spoke unto him thus: You are at this present, as I think, not unlike to a mouse entangled in a snare, who the more that she goeth about to rid and unwind herself out of the gin wherein she is caught, by endeavouring to clear and deliver her feet from the pitch whereto they stick, the foulier she is bewrayed with it, and the more strongly pestered therein. Even so is it with you. For the more that you labour, strive, and enforce yourself to disencumber and extricate your thoughts out of the implicating involutions and fetterings of the grievous and lamentable gins and springs of anguish and perplexity, the greater difficulty there is in the relieving of you, and you remain faster bound than ever. Nor do I know for the removal of this inconveniency any remedy but one.

Take heed, I have often heard it said in a vulgar proverb, The wise may be instructed by a fool. Seeing the answers and responses of sage and judicious men have in no manner of way satisfied you, take advice of some fool, and possibly by so doing you may come to get that counsel which will be agreeable to your own heart's desire and contentment. You know how by the advice and counsel and prediction of fools, many kings, princes, states, and commonwealths have been preserved, several battles gained, and divers doubts of a most perplexed intricacy resolved. I am not so diffident of your memory as to hold it needful to refresh it with a quotation of examples, nor do I so far undervalue your judgment but that I think it will acquiesce in the reason of this my subsequent discourse. As he who narrowly takes heed to what concerns the dexterous management of his private affairs, domestic businesses, and those adoes which are confined within the strait-laced compass of one family, who is attentive, vigilant, and active in the economic rule of his own house, whose frugal spirit never strays from home, who loseth no occasion whereby he may purchase to himself more riches, and build up new heaps of treasure on his former wealth, and who knows warily how to prevent the inconveniences of poverty, is called a worldly wise man, though perhaps in the second judgment of the intelligences which are above he be esteemed a fool,—so, on the contrary, is he most like, even in the thoughts of all celestial spirits, to be not only sage, but to presage events to come by divine inspiration, who laying quite aside those cares which are conducible to his body or his fortunes, and, as it were, departing from himself, rids all his senses of terrene affections, and clears his fancies of those plodding studies which harbour in the minds of thriving men. All which neglects of sublunary things are vulgarily imputed folly. After this manner, the son of Picus, King of the Latins, the great soothsayer Faunus, was called Fatuus by the witless rabble of the common people. The like we daily see practised amongst the comic players, whose dramatic roles, in distribution of the personages, appoint the acting of the fool to him who is the wisest of the troop. In approbation also of this fashion the mathematicians allow the very same horoscope to princes and to sots. Whereof a right pregnant instance by them is given in the nativities of Aeneas and Choroebus; the latter of which two is by Euphorion said to have been a fool, and yet had with the former the same aspects and heavenly genethliac influences.

I shall not, I suppose, swerve much from the purpose in hand, if I relate unto you what John Andrew said upon the return of a papal writ, which was directed to the mayor and burgesses of Rochelle, and after him by Panorme, upon the same pontifical canon; Barbatias on the Pandects, and recently by Jason in his Councils, concerning Seyny John, the noted fool of Paris, and Caillet's fore great-grandfather. The case is this.

At Paris, in the roastmeat cookery of the Petit Chastelet, before the cookshop of one of the roastmeat sellers of that lane, a certain hungry porter was eating his bread, after he had by parcels kept it a while above the reek and steam of a fat goose on the spit, turning at a great fire, and found it, so besmoked with the vapour, to be savoury; which the cook observing, took no notice, till after having ravined his penny loaf, whereof no morsel had been unsmokified, he was about decamping and going away. But, by your leave, as the fellow thought to have departed thence shot-free, the master-cook laid hold upon him by the gorget, and demanded payment for the smoke of his roast meat. The porter answered, that he had sustained no loss at all; that by what he had done there was no diminution made of the flesh; that he had taken nothing of his, and that therefore he was not indebted to him in anything. As for the smoke in question, that, although he had not been there, it would howsoever have been evaporated; besides, that before that time it had never been seen nor heard that roastmeat smoke was sold upon the streets of Paris. The cook hereto replied, that he was not obliged nor any way bound to feed and nourish for nought a porter whom he had never seen before with the smoke of his roast meat, and thereupon swore that if he would not forthwith content and satisfy him with present payment for the repast which he had thereby got, that he would take his crooked staves from off his back; which, instead of having loads thereafter laid upon them, should serve for fuel to his kitchen fires. Whilst he was going about so to do, and to have pulled them to him by one of the bottom rungs which he had caught in his hand, the sturdy porter got out of his grip, drew forth the knotty cudgel, and stood to his own defence. The altercation waxed hot in words, which moved the gaping hoidens of the sottish Parisians to run from all parts thereabouts, to see what the issue would be of that babbling strife and contention. In the interim of this dispute, to very good purpose Seyny John, the fool and citizen of Paris, happened to be there, whom the cook perceiving, said to the porter, Wilt thou refer and submit unto the noble Seyny John the decision of the difference and controversy which is betwixt us? Yes, by the blood of a goose, answered the porter, I am content. Seyny John the fool, finding that the cook and porter had compromised the determination of their variance and debate to the discretion of his award and arbitrament, after that the reasons on either side whereupon was grounded the mutual fierceness of their brawling jar had been to the full displayed and laid open before him, commanded the porter to draw out of the fob of his belt a piece of money, if he had it. Whereupon the porter immediately without delay, in reverence to the authority of such a judicious umpire, put the tenth part of a silver Philip into his hand. This little Philip Seyny John took; then set it on his left shoulder, to try by feeling if it was of a sufficient weight. After that, laying it on the palm of his hand, he made it ring and tingle, to understand by the ear if it was of a good alloy in the metal whereof it was composed. Thereafter he put it to the ball or apple of his left eye, to explore by the sight if it was well stamped and marked; all which being done, in a profound silence of the whole doltish people who were there spectators of this pageantry, to the great hope of the cook's and despair of the porter's prevalency in the suit that was in agitation, he finally caused the porter to make it sound several times upon the stall of the cook's shop. Then with a presidential majesty holding his bauble sceptre-like in his hand, muffling his head with a hood of marten skins, each side whereof had the resemblance of an ape's face sprucified up with ears of pasted paper, and having about his neck a bucked ruff, raised, furrowed, and ridged with pointing sticks of the shape and fashion of small organ pipes, he first with all the force of his lungs coughed two or three times, and then with an audible voice pronounced this following sentence: The court declareth that the porter who ate his bread at the smoke of the roast, hath civilly paid the cook with the sound of his money. And the said court ordaineth that everyone return to his own home, and attend his proper business, without cost and charges, and for a cause. This verdict, award, and arbitrament of the Parisian fool did appear so equitable, yea, so admirable to the aforesaid doctors, that they very much doubted if the matter had been brought before the sessions for justice of the said place, or that the judges of the Rota at Rome had been umpires therein, or yet that the Areopagites themselves had been the deciders thereof, if by any one part, or all of them together, it had been so judicially sententiated and awarded. Therefore advise, if you will be counselled by a fool.



Chapter 3.XXXVIII.

How Triboulet is set forth and blazed by Pantagruel and Panurge.

By my soul, quoth Panurge, that overture pleaseth me exceedingly well. I will therefore lay hold thereon, and embrace it. At the very motioning thereof my very right entrail seemeth to be widened and enlarged, which was but just now hard-bound, contracted, and costive. But as we have hitherto made choice of the purest and most refined cream of wisdom and sapience for our counsel, so would I now have to preside and bear the prime sway in our consultation as very a fool in the supreme degree. Triboulet, quoth Pantagruel, is completely foolish, as I conceive. Yes, truly, answered Panurge, he is properly and totally a fool, a

Pantagruel. Panurge. Fatal f. Jovial f. Natural f. Mercurial f. Celestial f. Lunatic f. Erratic f. Ducal f. Eccentric f. Common f. Aethereal and Junonian f. Lordly f. Arctic f. Palatine f. Heroic f. Principal f. Genial f. Pretorian f. Inconstant f. Elected f. Earthly f. Courtly f. Salacious and sporting f. Primipilary f. Jocund and wanton f. Triumphant f. Pimpled f. Vulgar f. Freckled f. Domestic f. Bell-tinging f. Exemplary f. Laughing and lecherous f. Rare outlandish f. Nimming and filching f. Satrapal f. Unpressed f. Civil f. First broached f. Popular f. Augustal f. Familiar f. Caesarine f. Notable f. Imperial f. Favourized f. Royal f. Latinized f. Patriarchal f. Ordinary f. Original f. Transcendent f. Loyal f. Rising f. Episcopal f. Papal f. Doctoral f. Consistorian f. Monachal f. Conclavist f. Fiscal f. Bullist f. Extravagant f. Synodal f. Writhed f. Doting and raving f. Canonical f. Singular and surpassing f. Such another f. Special and excelling f. Graduated f. Metaphysical f. Commensal f. Scatical f. Primolicentiated f. Predicamental and categoric f. Train-bearing f. Predicable and enunciatory f. Supererogating f. Decumane and superlative f. Collateral f. Dutiful and officious f. Haunch and side f. Optical and perspective f. Nestling, ninny, and youngling f. Algoristic f. Flitting, giddy, and unsteady f. Algebraical f. Brancher, novice, and cockney f. Cabalistical and Massoretical f. Haggard, cross, and froward f. Talmudical f. Gentle, mild, and tractable f. Algamalized f. Mail-coated f. Compendious f. Pilfering and purloining f. Abbreviated f. Tail-grown f. Hyperbolical f. Grey peckled f. Anatomastical f. Pleonasmical f. Allegorical f. Capital f. Tropological f. Hair-brained f. Micher pincrust f. Cordial f. Heteroclit f. Intimate f. Summist f. Hepatic f. Abridging f. Cupshotten and swilling f. Morrish f. Splenetic f. Leaden-sealed f. Windy f. Mandatory f. Legitimate f. Compassionate f. Azymathal f. Titulary f. Almicantarized f. Crouching, showking, ducking f. Proportioned f. Grim, stern, harsh, and wayward f. Chinnified f. Well-hung and timbered f. Swollen and puffed up f. Ill-clawed, pounced, and pawed f. Overcockrifedlid and lified f. Well-stoned f. Corallory f. Crabbed and unpleasing f. Eastern f. Winded and untainted f. Sublime f. Kitchen haunting f. Crimson f. Lofty and stately f. Ingrained f. Spitrack f. City f. Architrave f. Basely accoutred f. Pedestal f. Mast-headed f. Tetragonal f. Modal f. Renowned f. Second notial f. Rheumatic f. Cheerful and buxom f. Flaunting and braggadocio f. Solemn f. Egregious f. Annual f. Humourous and capricious f. Festival f. Rude, gross, and absurd f. Recreative f. Large-measured f. Boorish and counterfeit f. Babble f. Pleasant f. Down-right f. Privileged f. Broad-listed f. Rustical f. Duncical-bearing f. Proper and peculiar f. Stale and over-worn f. Ever ready f. Saucy and swaggering f. Diapasonal f. Full-bulked f. Resolute f. Gallant and vainglorious f. Hieroglyphical f. Gorgeous and gaudy f. Authentic f. Continual and intermitting f. Worthy f. Rebasing and roundling f. Precious f. Prototypal and precedenting f. Fanatic f. Prating f. Fantastical f. Catechetic f. Symphatic f. Cacodoxical f. Panic f. Meridional f. Limbecked and distilled f. Nocturnal f. Comportable f. Occidental f. Wretched and heartless f. Trifling f. Fooded f. Astrological and figure-flinging f. Thick and threefold f. Genethliac and horoscopal f. Damasked f. Knavish f. Fearney f. Idiot f. Unleavened f. Blockish f. Baritonant f. Beetle-headed f. Pink and spot-powdered f. Grotesque f. Musket-proof f. Impertinent f. Pedantic f. Quarrelsome f. Strouting f. Unmannerly f. Wood f. Captious and sophistical f. Greedy f. Soritic f. Senseless f. Catholoproton f. Godderlich f. Hoti and Dioti f. Obstinate f. Alphos and Catati f. Contradictory f. Pedagogical f. Daft f. Drunken f. Peevish f. Prodigal f. Rash f. Plodding f.

Pantagruel. If there was any reason why at Rome the Quirinal holiday of old was called the Feast of Fools, I know not why we may not for the like cause institute in France the Tribouletic Festivals, to be celebrated and solemnized over all the land.

Panurge. If all fools carried cruppers.

Pantagruel. If he were the god Fatuus of whom we have already made mention, the husband of the goddess Fatua, his father would be Good Day, and his grandmother Good Even.

Panurge. If all fools paced, albeit he be somewhat wry-legged, he would overlay at least a fathom at every rake. Let us go toward him without any further lingering or delay; we shall have, no doubt, some fine resolution of him. I am ready to go, and long for the issue of our progress impatiently. I must needs, quoth Pantagruel, according to my former resolution therein, be present at Bridlegoose's trial. Nevertheless, whilst I shall be upon my journey towards Mirelingues, which is on the other side of the river of Loire, I will despatch Carpalin to bring along with him from Blois the fool Triboulet. Then was Carpalin instantly sent away, and Pantagruel, at the same time attended by his domestics, Panurge, Epistemon, Ponocrates, Friar John, Gymnast, Ryzotomus, and others, marched forward on the high road to Mirelingues.



Chapter 3.XXXIX.

How Pantagruel was present at the trial of Judge Bridlegoose, who decided causes and controversies in law by the chance and fortune of the dice.

On the day following, precisely at the hour appointed, Pantagruel came to Mirelingues. At his arrival the presidents, senators, and counsellors prayed him to do them the honour to enter in with them, to hear the decision of all the causes, arguments, and reasons which Bridlegoose in his own defence would produce, why he had pronounced a certain sentence against the subsidy-assessor, Toucheronde, which did not seem very equitable to that centumviral court. Pantagruel very willingly condescended to their desire, and accordingly entering in, found Bridlegoose sitting within the middle of the enclosure of the said court of justice; who immediately upon the coming of Pantagruel, accompanied with the senatorian members of that worshipful judicatory, arose, went to the bar, had his indictment read, and for all his reasons, defences, and excuses, answered nothing else but that he was become old, and that his sight of late was very much failed, and become dimmer than it was wont to be; instancing therewithal many miseries and calamities which old age bringeth along with it, and are concomitant to wrinkled elders; which not. per Archid. d. lxxxvi. c. tanta. By reason of which infirmity he was not able so distinctly and clearly to discern the points and blots of the dice as formerly he had been accustomed to do; whence it might very well have happened, said he, as old dim-sighted Isaac took Jacob for Esau, that I after the same manner, at the decision of causes and controversies in law, should have been mistaken in taking a quatre for a cinque, or a trey for a deuce. This I beseech your worships, quoth he, to take into your serious consideration, and to have the more favourable opinion of my uprightness, notwithstanding the prevarication whereof I am accused in the matter of Toucheronde's sentence, that at the time of that decree's pronouncing I only had made use of my small dice; and your worships, said he, know very well how by the most authentic rules of the law it is provided that the imperfections of nature should never be imputed unto any for crimes and transgressions; as appeareth, ff. de re milit. l. qui cum uno. ff. de reg. Jur. l. fere. ff. de aedil. edict. per totum. ff. de term. mod. l. Divus Adrianus, resolved by Lud. Rom. in l. si vero. ff. Sol. Matr. And who would offer to do otherwise, should not thereby accuse the man, but nature, and the all-seeing providence of God, as is evident in l. Maximum Vitium, c. de lib. praeter.

What kind of dice, quoth Trinquamelle, grand-president of the said court, do you mean, my friend Bridlegoose? The dice, quoth Bridlegoose, of sentences at law, decrees, and peremptory judgments, Alea Judiciorum, whereof is written, Per Doct. 26. qu. 2. cap. sort. l. nec emptio ff. de contrahend. empt. l. quod debetur. ff. de pecul. et ibi Bartol., and which your worships do, as well as I, use, in this glorious sovereign court of yours. So do all other righteous judges in their decision of processes and final determination of legal differences, observing that which hath been said thereof by D. Henri. Ferrandat, et not. gl. in c. fin. de sortil. et l. sed cum ambo. ff. de jud. Ubi Docto. Mark, that chance and fortune are good, honest, profitable, and necessary for ending of and putting a final closure to dissensions and debates in suits at law. The same hath more clearly been declared by Bald. Bartol. et Alex. c. communia de leg. l. Si duo. But how is it that you do these things? asked Trinquamelle. I very briefly, quoth Bridlegoose, shall answer you, according to the doctrine and instructions of Leg. ampliorem para. in refutatoriis. c. de appel.; which is conform to what is said in Gloss l. 1. ff. quod met. causa. Gaudent brevitate moderni. My practice is therein the same with that of your other worships, and as the custom of the judicatory requires, unto which our law commandeth us to have regard, and by the rule thereof still to direct and regulate our actions and procedures; ut not. extra. de consuet. in c. ex literis et ibi innoc. For having well and exactly seen, surveyed, overlooked, reviewed, recognized, read, and read over again, turned and tossed over, seriously perused and examined the bills of complaint, accusations, impeachments, indictments, warnings, citations, summonings, comparitions, appearances, mandates, commissions, delegations, instructions, informations, inquests, preparatories, productions, evidences, proofs, allegations, depositions, cross speeches, contradictions, supplications, requests, petitions, inquiries, instruments of the deposition of witnesses, rejoinders, replies, confirmations of former assertions, duplies, triplies, answers to rejoinders, writings, deeds, reproaches, disabling of exceptions taken, grievances, salvation bills, re-examination of witnesses, confronting of them together, declarations, denunciations, libels, certificates, royal missives, letters of appeal, letters of attorney, instruments of compulsion, delineatories, anticipatories, evocations, messages, dimissions, issues, exceptions, dilatory pleas, demurs, compositions, injunctions, reliefs, reports, returns, confessions, acknowledgments, exploits, executions, and other such-like confects and spiceries, both at the one and the other side, as a good judge ought to do, conform to what hath been noted thereupon. Spec. de ordination. Paragr. 3. et Tit. de Offi. omn. jud. paragr. fin. et de rescriptis praesentat. parag. 1.—I posit on the end of a table in my closet all the pokes and bags of the defendant, and then allow unto him the first hazard of the dice, according to the usual manner of your other worships. And it is mentioned, l. favorabiliores. ff. de reg. jur. et in cap. cum sunt eod. tit. lib. 6, which saith, Quum sunt partium jura obscura, reo potius favendum est quam actori. That being done, I thereafter lay down upon the other end of the same table the bags and satchels of the plaintiff, as your other worships are accustomed to do, visum visu, just over against one another; for Opposita juxta se posita clarius elucescunt: ut not. in lib. 1. parag. Videamus. ff. de his qui sunt sui vel alieni juris, et in l. munerum. para. mixta ff. de mun. et hon. Then do I likewise and semblably throw the dice for him, and forthwith livre him his chance. But, quoth Trinquamelle, my friend, how come you to know, understand, and resolve the obscurity of these various and seeming contrary passages in law, which are laid claim to by the suitors and pleading parties? Even just, quoth Bridlegoose, after the fashion of your other worships; to wit, when there are many bags on the one side and on the other, I then use my little small dice, after the customary manner of your other worships, in obedience to the law, Semper in stipulationibus ff. de reg. jur. And the law ver(s)ified versifieth that, Eod. tit. Semper in obscuris quod minimum est sequimur; canonized in c. in obscuris. eod. tit. lib. 6. I have other large great dice, fair and goodly ones, which I employ in the fashion that your other worships use to do, when the matter is more plain, clear, and liquid, that is to say, when there are fewer bags. But when you have done all these fine things, quoth Trinquamelle, how do you, my friend, award your decrees, and pronounce judgment? Even as your other worships, answered Bridlegoose; for I give out sentence in his favour unto whom hath befallen the best chance by dice, judiciary, tribunian, pretorial, what comes first. So our laws command, ff. qui pot. in pign. l. creditor, c. de consul. 1. Et de regul. jur. in 6. Qui prior est tempore potior est jure.



Chapter 3.XL.

How Bridlegoose giveth reasons why he looked upon those law-actions which he decided by the chance of the dice.

Yea but, quoth Trinquamelle, my friend, seeing it is by the lot, chance, and throw of the dice that you award your judgments and sentences, why do not you livre up these fair throws and chances the very same day and hour, without any further procrastination or delay, that the controverting party-pleaders appear before you? To what use can those writings serve you, those papers and other procedures contained in the bags and pokes of the law-suitors? To the very same use, quoth Bridlegoose, that they serve your other worships. They are behooveful unto me, and serve my turn in three things very exquisite, requisite, and authentical. First, for formality sake, the omission whereof, that it maketh all, whatever is done, to be of no force nor value, is excellently well proved, by Spec. 1. tit. de instr. edit. et tit. de rescript. praesent. Besides that, it is not unknown to you, who have had many more experiments thereof than I, how oftentimes, in judicial proceedings, the formalities utterly destroy the materialities and substances of the causes and matters agitated; for Forma mutata, mutatur substantia. ff. ad exhib. l. Julianus. ff. ad leg. Fal. l. si is qui quadraginta. Et extra de decim. c. ad audientiam, et de celebrat. miss. c. in quadam.

Secondly, they are useful and steadable to me, even as unto your other worships, in lieu of some other honest and healthful exercise. The late Master Othoman Vadet (Vadere), a prime physician, as you would say, Cod. de Comit. et Archi. lib. 12, hath frequently told me that the lack and default of bodily exercise is the chief, if not the sole and only cause of the little health and short lives of all officers of justice, such as your worships and I am. Which observation was singularly well before him noted and remarked by Bartholus in lib. 1. c. de sent. quae pro eo quod. Therefore it is that the practice of such-like exercitations is appointed to be laid hold on by your other worships, and consequently not to be denied unto me, who am of the same profession; Quia accessorium naturam sequitur principalis. de reg. jur. l. 6. et l. cum principalis. et l. nihil dolo. ff. eod. tit. ff. de fide-juss. l. fide-juss. et extra de officio deleg. cap. 1. Let certain honest and recreative sports and plays of corporeal exercises be allowed and approved of; and so far, (ff. de allus. et aleat. l. solent. et authent.) ut omnes obed. in princ. coll. 7. et ff. de praescript. verb. l. si gratuitam et l. 1. cod. de spect. l. 11. Such also is the opinion of D. Thom, in secunda, secundae Q. I. 168. Quoted in very good purpose by D. Albert de Rosa, who fuit magnus practicus, and a solemn doctor, as Barbatias attesteth in principiis consil. Wherefore the reason is evidently and clearly deduced and set down before us in gloss. in prooemio. ff. par. ne autem tertii.

Interpone tuis interdum gaudia curis.

In very deed, once, in the year a thousand four hundred fourscore and ninth, having a business concerning the portion and inheritance of a younger brother depending in the court and chamber of the four high treasurers of France, whereinto as soon as ever I got leave to enter by a pecuniary permission of the usher thereof,—as your other worships know very well, that Pecuniae obediunt omnia, and there says Baldus, in l. singularia. ff. si cert. pet. et Salic. in l. receptitia. Cod. de constit. pecuni. et Card. in Clem. 1. de baptism.—I found them all recreating and diverting themselves at the play called muss, either before or after dinner; to me, truly, it is a thing altogether indifferent whether of the two it was, provided that hic not., that the game of the muss is honest, healthful, ancient, and lawful, a Muscho inventore, de quo cod. de petit. haered. l. si post mortem. et Muscarii. Such as play and sport it at the muss are excusable in and by law, lib. 1. c. de excus. artific. lib. 10. And at the very same time was Master Tielman Picquet one of the players of that game of muss. There is nothing that I do better remember, for he laughed heartily when his fellow-members of the aforesaid judicial chamber spoiled their caps in swingeing of his shoulders. He, nevertheless, did even then say unto them, that the banging and flapping of him, to the waste and havoc of their caps, should not, at their return from the palace to their own houses, excuse them from their wives, Per. c. extra. de praesumpt. et ibi gloss. Now, resolutorie loquendo, I should say, according to the style and phrase of your other worships, that there is no exercise, sport, game, play, nor recreation in all this palatine, palatial, or parliamentary world, more aromatizing and fragrant than to empty and void bags and purses, turn over papers and writings, quote margins and backs of scrolls and rolls, fill panniers, and take inspection of causes, Ex. Bart. et Joan. de Pra. in l. falsa. de condit. et demonst. ff.

Thirdly, I consider, as your own worships use to do, that time ripeneth and bringeth all things to maturity, that by time everything cometh to be made manifest and patent, and that time is the father of truth and virtue. Gloss. in l. 1. cod. de servit. authent. de restit. et ea quae pa. et spec. tit. de requisit. cons. Therefore is it that, after the manner and fashion of your other worships, I defer, protract, delay, prolong, intermit, surcease, pause, linger, suspend, prorogate, drive out, wire-draw, and shift off the time of giving a definitive sentence, to the end that the suit or process, being well fanned and winnowed, tossed and canvassed to and fro, narrowly, precisely, and nearly garbled, sifted, searched, and examined, and on all hands exactly argued, disputed, and debated, may, by succession of time, come at last to its full ripeness and maturity. By means whereof, when the fatal hazard of the dice ensueth thereupon, the parties cast or condemned by the said aleatory chance will with much greater patience, and more mildly and gently, endure and bear up the disastrous load of their misfortune, than if they had been sentenced at their first arrival unto the court, as not. gl. ff. de excus. tut. l. tria. onera.

Portatur leviter quod portat quisque libenter.

On the other part, to pass a decree or sentence when the action is raw, crude, green, unripe, unprepared, as at the beginning, a danger would ensue of a no less inconveniency than that which the physicians have been wont to say befalleth to him in whom an imposthume is pierced before it be ripe, or unto any other whose body is purged of a strong predominating humour before its digestion. For as it is written, in authent. haec constit. in Innoc. de constit. princip., so is the same repeated in gloss. in c. caeterum. extra. de juram. calumn. Quod medicamenta morbis exhibent, hoc jura negotiis. Nature furthermore admonisheth and teacheth us to gather and reap, eat and feed on fruits when they are ripe, and not before. Instit. de rer. div. paragr. is ad quem et ff. de action. empt. l. Julianus. To marry likewise our daughters when they are ripe, and no sooner, ff. de donation. inter vir. et uxor. l. cum hic status. paragr. si quis sponsam. et 27 qu. 1. c. sicut dicit. gl.

Jam matura thoro plenis adoleverat annis Virginitas.

And, in a word, she instructeth us to do nothing of any considerable importance, but in a full maturity and ripeness, 23. q. para ult. et 23. de c. ultimo.



Chapter 3.XLI.

How Bridlegoose relateth the history of the reconcilers of parties at variance in matters of law.

I remember to the same purpose, quoth Bridlegoose, in continuing his discourse, that in the time when at Poictiers I was a student of law under Brocadium Juris, there was at Semerve one Peter Dandin, a very honest man, careful labourer of the ground, fine singer in a church-desk, of good repute and credit, and older than the most aged of all your worships; who was wont to say that he had seen the great and goodly good man, the Council of Lateran, with his wide and broad-brimmed red hat. As also, that he had beheld and looked upon the fair and beautiful Pragmatical Sanction his wife, with her huge rosary or patenotrian chaplet of jet-beads hanging at a large sky-coloured ribbon. This honest man compounded, atoned, and agreed more differences, controversies, and variances at law than had been determined, voided, and finished during his time in the whole palace of Poictiers, in the auditory of Montmorillon, and in the town-house of the old Partenay. This amicable disposition of his rendered him venerable and of great estimation, sway, power, and authority throughout all the neighbouring places of Chauvigny, Nouaille, Leguge, Vivonne, Mezeaux, Estables, and other bordering and circumjacent towns, villages, and hamlets. All their debates were pacified by him; he put an end to their brabbling suits at law and wrangling differences. By his advice and counsels were accords and reconcilements no less firmly made than if the verdict of a sovereign judge had been interposed therein, although, in very deed, he was no judge at all, but a right honest man, as you may well conceive,—arg. in l. sed si unius. ff. de jure-jur. et de verbis obligatoriis l.continuus. There was not a hog killed within three parishes of him whereof he had not some part of the haslet and puddings. He was almost every day invited either to a marriage banquet, christening feast, an uprising or women-churching treatment, a birthday's anniversary solemnity, a merry frolic gossiping, or otherwise to some delicious entertainment in a tavern, to make some accord and agreement between persons at odds and in debate with one another. Remark what I say; for he never yet settled and compounded a difference betwixt any two at variance, but he straight made the parties agreed and pacified to drink together as a sure and infallible token and symbol of a perfect and completely well-cemented reconciliation, sign of a sound and sincere amity and proper mark of a new joy and gladness to follow thereupon,—Ut not. per (Doct.) ff. de peric. et com. rei vend. l. 1. He had a son, whose name was Tenot Dandin, a lusty, young, sturdy, frisking roister, so help me God! who likewise, in imitation of his peace-making father, would have undertaken and meddled with the making up of variances and deciding of controversies betwixt disagreeing and contentious party-pleaders; as you know,

Saepe solet similis esse patri. Et sequitur leviter filia matris iter.

Ut ait gloss. 6, quaest. 1. c. Si quis. gloss. de cons. dist. 5. c. 2. fin. et est. not. per Doct. cod. de impub. et aliis substit. l. ult. et l. legitime. ff. de stat. hom. gloss. in l. quod si nolit. ff. de aedil. edict. l. quisquis c. ad leg. Jul. Majest. Excipio filios a Moniali susceptos ex Monacho. per glos. in c. impudicas. 27. quaestione. 1. And such was his confidence to have no worse success than his father, he assumed unto himself the title of Law-strife-settler. He was likewise in these pacificatory negotiations so active and vigilant—for, Vigilantibus jura subveniunt. ex l. pupillus. ff. quae in fraud. cred. et ibid. l. non enim. et instit. in prooem.—that when he had smelt, heard, and fully understood—ut ff.si quando paup. fec. l. Agaso. gloss. in verb. olfecit, id est, nasum ad culum posuit—and found that there was anywhere in the country a debatable matter at law, he would incontinently thrust in his advice, and so forwardly intrude his opinion in the business, that he made no bones of making offer, and taking upon him to decide it, how difficult soever it might happen to be, to the full contentment and satisfaction of both parties. It is written, Qui non laborat non manducat; and the said gl. ff. de damn. infect. l. quamvis, and Currere plus que le pas vetulam compellit egestas. gloss. ff. de lib. agnosc. l. si quis. pro qua facit. l. si plures. c. de cond. incert. But so hugely great was his misfortune in this his undertaking, that he never composed any difference, how little soever you may imagine it might have been, but that, instead of reconciling the parties at odds, he did incense, irritate, and exasperate them to a higher point of dissension and enmity than ever they were at before. Your worships know, I doubt not, that,

Sermo datur cunctis, animi sapientia paucis.

Gl. ff. de alien. jud. mut. caus. fa. lib.2. This administered unto the tavern-keepers, wine-drawers, and vintners of Semerve an occasion to say, that under him they had not in the space of a whole year so much reconciliation-wine, for so were they pleased to call the good wine of Leguge, as under his father they had done in one half-hour's time. It happened a little while thereafter that he made a most heavy regret thereof to his father, attributing the causes of his bad success in pacificatory enterprises to the perversity, stubbornness, froward, cross, and backward inclinations of the people of his time; roundly, boldly, and irreverently upbraiding, that if but a score of years before the world had been so wayward, obstinate, pervicacious, implacable, and out of all square, frame, and order as it was then, his father had never attained to and acquired the honour and title of Strife-appeaser so irrefragably, inviolably, and irrevocably as he had done. In doing whereof Tenot did heinously transgress against the law which prohibiteth children to reproach the actions of their parents; per gl. et Bart. l. 3. paragr. si quis. ff. de cond. ob caus. et authent. de nupt. par. sed quod sancitum. col. 4. To this the honest old father answered thus: My son Dandin, when Don Oportet taketh place, this is the course which we must trace, gl. c. de appell. l. eos etiam. For the road that you went upon was not the way to the fuller's mill, nor in any part thereof was the form to be found wherein the hare did sit. Thou hast not the skill and dexterity of settling and composing differences. Why? Because thou takest them at the beginning, in the very infancy and bud as it were, when they are green, raw, and indigestible. Yet I know handsomely and featly how to compose and settle them all. Why? Because I take them at their decadence, in their weaning, and when they are pretty well digested. So saith Gloss:

Dulcior est fructus post multa pericula ductus.

L. non moriturus. c. de contrahend. et committ. stip. Didst thou ever hear the vulgar proverb, Happy is the physician whose coming is desired at the declension of a disease? For the sickness being come to a crisis is then upon the decreasing hand, and drawing towards an end, although the physician should not repair thither for the cure thereof; whereby, though nature wholly do the work, he bears away the palm and praise thereof. My pleaders, after the same manner, before I did interpose my judgment in the reconciling of them, were waxing faint in their contestations. Their altercation heat was much abated, and, in declining from their former strife, they of themselves inclined to a firm accommodation of their differences; because there wanted fuel to that fire of burning rancour and despiteful wrangling whereof the lower sort of lawyers were the kindlers. That is to say, their purses were emptied of coin, they had not a win in their fob, nor penny in their bag, wherewith to solicit and present their actions.

Deficiente pecu, deficit omne, nia.

There wanted then nothing but some brother to supply the place of a paranymph, brawl-broker, proxenete, or mediator, who, acting his part dexterously, should be the first broacher of the motion of an agreement, for saving both the one and the other party from that hurtful and pernicious shame whereof he could not have avoided the imputation when it should have been said that he was the first who yielded and spoke of a reconcilement, and that therefore, his cause not being good, and being sensible where his shoe did pinch him, he was willing to break the ice, and make the greater haste to prepare the way for a condescendment to an amicable and friendly treaty. Then was it that I came in pudding time, Dandin, my son, nor is the fat of bacon more relishing to boiled peas than was my verdict then agreeable to them. This was my luck, my profit, and good fortune. I tell thee, my jolly son Dandin, that by this rule and method I could settle a firm peace, or at least clap up a cessation of arms and truce for many years to come, betwixt the Great King and the Venetian State, the Emperor and the Cantons of Switzerland, the English and the Scots, and betwixt the Pope and the Ferrarians. Shall I go yet further? Yea, as I would have God to help me, betwixt the Turk and the Sophy, the Tartars and the Muscoviters. Remark well what I am to say unto thee. I would take them at that very instant nick of time when both those of the one and the other side should be weary and tired of making war, when they had voided and emptied their own cashes and coffers of all treasure and coin, drained and exhausted the purses and bags of their subjects, sold and mortgaged their domains and proper inheritances, and totally wasted, spent, and consumed the munition, furniture, provision, and victuals that were necessary for the continuance of a military expedition. There I am sure, by God, or by his Mother, that, would they, would they not, in spite of all their teeths, they should be forced to have a little respite and breathing time to moderate the fury and cruel rage of their ambitious aims. This is the doctrine in Gl. 37. d. c. si quando.

Odero, si potero; si non, invitus amabo.



Chapter 3.XLII.

How suits at law are bred at first, and how they come afterwards to their perfect growth.

For this cause, quoth Bridlegoose, going on in his discourse, I temporize and apply myself to the times, as your other worships use to do, waiting patiently for the maturity of the process, full growth and perfection thereof in all its members, to wit, the writings and the bags. Arg. in l. si major. c. commun. divid. et de cons. di. 1. c. solemnitates, et ibi gl. A suit in law at its production, birth, and first beginning, seemeth to me, as unto your other worships, shapeless, without form or fashion, incomplete, ugly and imperfect, even as a bear at his first coming into the world hath neither hands, skin, hair, nor head, but is merely an inform, rude, and ill-favoured piece and lump of flesh, and would remain still so, if his dam, out of the abundance of her affection to her hopeful cub, did not with much licking put his members into that figure and shape which nature had provided for those of an arctic and ursinal kind; ut not. Doct. ff. ad l. Aquil. l. 3. in fin. Just so do I see, as your other worships do, processes and suits in law, at their first bringing forth, to be numberless, without shape, deformed, and disfigured, for that then they consist only of one or two writings, or copies of instruments, through which defect they appear unto me, as to your other worships, foul, loathsome, filthy, and misshapen beasts. But when there are heaps of these legiformal papers packed, piled, laid up together, impoked, insatchelled, and put up in bags, then is it that with a good reason we may term that suit, to which, as pieces, parcels, parts, portions, and members thereof, they do pertain and belong, well-formed and fashioned, big-limbed, strong-set, and in all and each of its dimensions most completely membered. Because forma dat esse. rei. l. si is qui. ff. ad leg. Falcid. in c. cum dilecta. de rescript. Barbat. consil. 12. lib. 2, and before him, Baldus, in c. ult. extra. de consuet. et l. Julianus ad exhib. ff. et l. quaesitum. ff. de leg. 3. The manner is such as is set down in gl. p. quaest. 1. c. Paulus.

Debile principium melior fortuna sequetur.

Like your other worships, also the sergeants, catchpoles, pursuivants, messengers, summoners, apparitors, ushers, door-keepers, pettifoggers, attorneys, proctors, commissioners, justices of the peace, judge delegates, arbitrators, overseers, sequestrators, advocates, inquisitors, jurors, searchers, examiners, notaries, tabellions, scribes, scriveners, clerks, pregnotaries, secondaries, and expedanean judges, de quibus tit. est. l. 3. c., by sucking very much, and that exceeding forcibly, and licking at the purses of the pleading parties, they, to the suits already begot and engendered, form, fashion, and frame head, feet, claws, talons, beaks, bills, teeth, hands, veins, sinews, arteries, muscles, humours, and so forth, through all the similary and dissimilary parts of the whole; which parts, particles, pendicles, and appurtenances are the law pokes and bags, gl. de cons. d. 4. c. accepisti. Qualis vestis erit, talia corda gerit. Hic notandum est, that in this respect the pleaders, litigants, and law-suitors are happier than the officers, ministers, and administrators of justice. For beatius est dare quam accipere. ff. commun. l. 3. extra. de celebr. Miss. c. cum Marthae. et 24. quaest. 1. cap. Od. gl.

Affectum dantis pensat censura tonantis.

Thus becometh the action or process by their care and industry to be of a complete and goodly bulk, well shaped, framed, formed, and fashioned according to the canonical gloss.

Accipe, sume, cape, sunt verba placentia Papae.

Which speech hath been more clearly explained by Albert de Ros, in verbo Roma.

Roma manus rodit, quas rodere non valet, odit. Dantes custodit, non dantes spernit, et odit.

The reason whereof is thought to be this:

Ad praesens ova cras pullis sunt meliora.

ut est gl. in l. quum hi. ff. de transact. Nor is this all; for the inconvenience of the contrary is set down in gloss. c. de allu. l. fin.

Quum labor in damno est, crescit mortalis egestas.

In confirmation whereof we find that the true etymology and exposition of the word process is purchase, viz. of good store of money to the lawyers, and of many pokes—id est, prou-sacks—to the pleaders, upon which subject we have most celestial quips, gibes, and girds.

Ligitando jura crescunt; litigando jus acquiritur.

Item gl. in cap. illud extrem. de praesumpt. et c. de prob. l. instrum. l. non epistolis. l. non nudis.

Et si non prosunt singula, multa juvant.

Yea but, asked Trinquamelle, how do you proceed, my friend, in criminal causes, the culpable and guilty party being taken and seized upon flagrante crimine? Even as your other worships use to do, answered Bridlegoose. First, I permit the plaintiff to depart from the court, enjoining him not to presume to return thither till he preallably should have taken a good sound and profound sleep, which is to serve for the prime entry and introduction to the legal carrying on of the business. In the next place, a formal report is to be made to me of his having slept. Thirdly, I issue forth a warrant to convene him before me. Fourthly, he is to produce a sufficient and authentic attestation of his having thoroughly and entirely slept, conform to the Gloss. 37. Quest. 7. c. Si quis cum.

Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.

Being thus far advanced in the formality of the process, I find that this consopiating act engendereth another act, whence ariseth the articulating of a member. That again produceth a third act, fashionative of another member; which third bringing forth a fourth, procreative of another act. New members in a no fewer number are shapen and framed, one still breeding and begetting another—as, link after link, the coat of mail at length is made—till thus, piece after piece, by little and little, by information upon information, the process be completely well formed and perfect in all his members. Finally, having proceeded this length, I have recourse to my dice, nor is it to be thought that this interruption, respite, or interpellation is by me occasioned without very good reason inducing me thereunto, and a notable experience of a most convincing and irrefragable force.

I remember, on a time, that in the camp at Stockholm there was a certain Gascon named Gratianauld, native of the town of Saint Sever, who having lost all his money at play, and consecutively being very angry thereat—as you know, Pecunia est alter sanguis, ut ait Anto. de Burtio, in c. accedens. 2. extra ut lit. non contest. et Bald. in l. si tuis. c. de opt. leg. per tot.in l. advocati. c. de advoc. div. jud. Pecunia est vita hominis et optimus fide-jussor in necessitatibus—did, at his coming forth of the gaming-house, in the presence of the whole company that was there, with a very loud voice speak in his own language these following words: Pao cap de bious hillots, que maux de pipes bous tresbire: ares que de pergudes sont les mires bingt, et quouatre bagnelles, ta pla donnerien pics, trucs, et patacts, Sey degun de bous aulx, qui boille truquar ambe iou a bels embis. Finding that none would make him any answer, he passed from thence to that part of the leaguer where the huff-snuff, honder sponder, swashbuckling High Germans were, to whom he renewed these very terms, provoking them to fight with him; but all the return he had from them to his stout challenge was only, Der Gasconner thut sich ausz mit ein iedem zu schlagen, aber er ist geneigter zu stehlen, darum, liebe frawen, habt sorg zu euerm hauszrath. Finding also that none of that band of Teutonic soldiers offered himself to the combat, he passed to that quarter of the leaguer where the French freebooting adventurers were encamped, and reiterating unto them what he had before repeated to the Dutch warriors, challenged them likewise to fight with him, and therewithal made some pretty little Gasconado frisking gambols to oblige them the more cheerfully and gallantly to cope with him in the lists of a duellizing engagement; but no answer at all was made unto him. Whereupon the Gascon, despairing of meeting with any antagonists, departed from thence, and laying himself down not far from the pavilions of the grand Christian cavalier Crissie, fell fast asleep. When he had thoroughly slept an hour or two, another adventurous and all-hazarding blade of the forlorn hope of the lavishingly wasting gamesters, having also lost all his moneys, sallied forth with sword in his hand, of a firm resolution to fight with the aforesaid Gascon, seeing he had lost as well as he.

Ploratur lachrymis amissa pecunia veris,

saith the Gl. de poenitent. distinct. 3. c. sunt plures. To this effect having made inquiry and search for him throughout the whole camp, and in sequel thereof found him asleep, he said unto him, Up, ho, good fellow, in the name of all the devils of hell, rise up, rise up, get up! I have lost my money as well as thou hast done; let us therefore go fight lustily together, grapple and scuffle it to some purpose. Thou mayest look and see that my tuck is no longer than thy rapier. The Gascon, altogether astonished at his unexpected provocation, without altering his former dialect spoke thus: Cap de Saint Arnault, quau seys to you, qui me rebeillez? Que mau de taberne te gire. Ho Saint Siobe, cap de Gascoigne, ta pla dormy jou, quand aquoest taquain me bingut estee. The venturous roister inviteth him again to the duel, but the Gascon, without condescending to his desire, said only this: He paovret jou tesquinerie ares, que son pla reposat. Vayne un pauque te pausar com jou, peusse truqueren. Thus, in forgetting his loss, he forgot the eagerness which he had to fight. In conclusion, after that the other had likewise slept a little, they, instead of fighting, and possibly killing one another, went jointly to a sutler's tent, where they drank together very amicably, each upon the pawn of his sword. Thus by a little sleep was pacified the ardent fury of two warlike champions. There, gossip, comes the golden word of John Andr. in cap. ult. de sent. et re. judic. l. sexto.

Sedendo, et dormiendo fit anima prudens.

Chapter 3.XLIII.

How Pantagruel excuseth Bridlegoose in the matter of sentencing actions at law by the chance of the dice.

With this Bridlegoose held his peace. Whereupon Trinquamelle bid him withdraw from the court—which accordingly was done—and then directed his discourse to Pantagruel after this manner: It is fitting, most illustrious prince, not only by reason of the deep obligations wherein this present parliament, together with the whole marquisate of Mirelingues, stand bound to your royal highness for the innumerable benefits which, as effects of mere grace, they have received from your incomparable bounty, but for that excellent wit also, prime judgment, and admirable learning wherewith Almighty God, the giver of all good things, hath most richly qualified and endowed you, we tender and present unto you the decision of this new, strange, and paradoxical case of Bridlegoose; who, in your presence, to your both hearing and seeing, hath plainly confessed his final judging and determinating of suits of law by the mere chance and fortune of the dice. Therefore do we beseech you that you may be pleased to give sentence therein as unto you shall seem most just and equitable. To this Pantagruel answered: Gentlemen, it is not unknown to you how my condition is somewhat remote from the profession of deciding law controversies; yet, seeing you are pleased to do me the honour to put that task upon me, instead of undergoing the office of a judge I will become your humble supplicant. I observe, gentlemen, in this Bridlegoose several things which induce me to represent before you that it is my opinion he should be pardoned. In the first place, his old age; secondly, his simplicity; to both which qualities our statute and common laws, civil and municipal together, allow many excuses for any slips or escapes which, through the invincible imperfection of either, have been inconsiderately stumbled upon by a person so qualified. Thirdly, gentlemen, I must needs display before you another case, which in equity and justice maketh much for the advantage of Bridlegoose, to wit, that this one, sole, and single fault of his ought to be quite forgotten, abolished, and swallowed up by that immense and vast ocean of just dooms and sentences which heretofore he hath given and pronounced; his demeanours, for these forty years and upwards that he hath been a judge, having been so evenly balanced in the scales of uprightness, that envy itself till now could not have been so impudent as to accuse and twit him with any act worthy of a check or reprehension; as, if a drop of the sea were thrown into the Loire, none could perceive or say that by this single drop the whole river should be salt and brackish.

Truly, it seemeth unto me, that in the whole series of Bridlegoose's juridical decrees there hath been I know not what of extraordinary savouring of the unspeakable benignity of God, that all those his preceding sentences, awards, and judgments, have been confirmed and approved of by yourselves in this your own venerable and sovereign court. For it is usual, as you know well, with him whose ways are inscrutable, to manifest his own ineffable glory in blunting the perspicacy of the eyes of the wise, in weakening the strength of potent oppressors, in depressing the pride of rich extortioners, and in erecting, comforting, protecting, supporting, upholding, and shoring up the poor, feeble, humble, silly, and foolish ones of the earth. But, waiving all these matters, I shall only beseech you, not by the obligations which you pretend to owe to my family, for which I thank you, but for that constant and unfeigned love and affection which you have always found in me, both on this and on the other side of Loire, for the maintenance and establishment of your places, offices, and dignities, that for this one time you would pardon and forgive him upon these two conditions. First, that he satisfy, or put a sufficient surety for the satisfaction of the party wronged by the injustice of the sentence in question. For the fulfilment of this article I will provide sufficiently. And, secondly, that for his subsidiary aid in the weighty charge of administrating justice you would be pleased to appoint and assign unto him some pretty little virtuous counsellor, younger, learneder, and wiser than he, by the square and rule of whose advice he may regulate, guide, temper, and moderate in times coming all his judiciary procedures; or otherwise, if you intend totally to depose him from his office, and to deprive him altogether of the state and dignity of a judge, I shall cordially entreat you to make a present and free gift of him to me, who shall find in my kingdoms charges and employments enough wherewith to embusy him, for the bettering of his own fortunes and furtherance of my service. In the meantime, I implore the Creator, Saviour, and Sanctifier of all good things, in his grace, mercy, and kindness, to preserve you all now and evermore, world without end.

These words thus spoken, Pantagruel, vailing his cap and making a leg with such a majestic garb as became a person of his paramount degree and eminency, farewelled Trinquamelle, the president and master-speaker of that Mirelinguesian parliament, took his leave of the whole court, and went out of the chamber; at the door whereof finding Panurge, Epistemon, Friar John, and others, he forthwith, attended by them, walked to the outer gate, where all of them immediately took horse to return towards Gargantua. Pantagruel by the way related to them from point to point the manner of Bridlegoose's sententiating differences at law. Friar John said that he had seen Peter Dandin, and was acquainted with him at that time when he sojourned in the monastery of Fontaine le Comte, under the noble Abbot Ardillon. Gymnast likewise affirmed that he was in the tent of the grand Christian cavalier De Crissie, when the Gascon, after his sleep, made answer to the adventurer. Panurge was somewhat incredulous in the matter of believing that it was morally possible Bridlegoose should have been for such a long space of time so continually fortunate in that aleatory way of deciding law debates. Epistemon said to Pantagruel, Such another story, not much unlike to that in all the circumstances thereof, is vulgarly reported of the provost of Montlehery. In good sooth, such a perpetuity of good luck is to be wondered at. To have hit right twice or thrice in a judgment so given by haphazard might have fallen out well enough, especially in controversies that were ambiguous, intricate, abstruse, perplexed, and obscure.



Chapter 3.XLIV.

How Pantagruel relateth a strange history of the perplexity of human judgment.

Seeing you talk, quoth Pantagruel, of dark, difficult, hard, and knotty debates, I will tell you of one controverted before Cneius Dolabella, proconsul in Asia. The case was this.

A wife in Smyrna had of her first husband a child named Abece. He dying, she, after the expiring of a year and day, married again, and to her second husband bore a boy called Effege. A pretty long time thereafter it happened, as you know the affection of stepfathers and stepdams is very rare towards the children of the first fathers and mothers deceased, that this husband, with the help of his son Effege, secretly, wittingly, willingly, and treacherously murdered Abece. The woman came no sooner to get information of the fact, but, that it might not go unpunished, she caused kill them both, to revenge the death of her first son. She was apprehended and carried before Cneius Dolabella, in whose presence she, without dissembling anything, confessed all that was laid to her charge; yet alleged that she had both right and reason on her side for the killing of them. Thus was the state of the question. He found the business so dubious and intricate, that he knew not what to determine therein, nor which of the parties to incline to. On the one hand, it was an execrable crime to cut off at once both her second husband and her son. On the other hand, the cause of the murder seemed to be so natural, as to be grounded upon the law of nations and the rational instinct of all the people of the world, seeing they two together had feloniously and murderously destroyed her first son; not that they had been in any manner of way wronged, outraged, or injured by him, but out of an avaricious intent to possess his inheritance. In this doubtful quandary and uncertainty what to pitch upon, he sent to the Areopagites then sitting at Athens to learn and obtain their advice and judgment. That judicious senate, very sagely perpending the reasons of his perplexity, sent him word to summon her personally to compear before him a precise hundred years thereafter, to answer to some interrogatories touching certain points which were not contained in the verbal defence. Which resolution of theirs did import that it was in their opinion a so difficult and inextricable matter that they knew not what to say or judge therein. Who had decided that plea by the chance and fortune of the dice, could not have erred nor awarded amiss on which side soever he had passed his casting and condemnatory sentence. If against the woman, she deserved punishment for usurping sovereign authority by taking that vengeance at her own hand, the inflicting whereof was only competent to the supreme power to administer justice in criminal cases. If for her, the just resentment of a so atrocious injury done unto her, in murdering her innocent son, did fully excuse and vindicate her of any trespass or offence about that particular committed by her. But this continuation of Bridlegoose for so many years still hitting the nail on the head, never missing the mark, and always judging aright, by the mere throwing of the dice and chance thereof, is that which most astonisheth and amazeth me.

To answer, quoth Pantagruel (Epistemon, says the English edition of 1694, following the reading of the modern French editions. Le Duchat has pointed out the mistake.—M.), categorically to that which you wonder at, I must ingeniously confess and avow that I cannot; yet, conjecturally to guess at the reason of it, I would refer the cause of that marvellously long-continued happy success in the judiciary results of his definitive sentences to the favourable aspect of the heavens and benignity of the intelligences; who, out of their love to goodness, after having contemplated the pure simplicity and sincere unfeignedness of Judge Bridlegoose in the acknowledgment of his inabilities, did regulate that for him by chance which by the profoundest act of his maturest deliberation he was not able to reach unto. That, likewise, which possibly made him to diffide in his own skill and capacity, notwithstanding his being an expert and understanding lawyer, for anything that I know to the contrary, was the knowledge and experience which he had of the antinomies, contrarieties, antilogies, contradictions, traversings, and thwartings of laws, customs, edicts, statutes, orders, and ordinances, in which dangerous opposition, equity and justice being structured and founded on either of the opposite terms, and a gap being thereby opened for the ushering in of injustice and iniquity through the various interpretations of self-ended lawyers, being assuredly persuaded that the infernal calumniator, who frequently transformeth himself into the likeness of a messenger or angel of light, maketh use of these cross glosses and expositions in the mouths and pens of his ministers and servants, the perverse advocates, bribing judges, law-monging attorneys, prevaricating counsellors, and other such-like law-wresting members of a court of justice, to turn by those means black to white, green to grey, and what is straight to a crooked ply. For the more expedient doing whereof, these diabolical ministers make both the pleading parties believe that their cause is just and righteous; for it is well known that there is no cause, how bad soever, which doth not find an advocate to patrocinate and defend it,—else would there be no process in the world, no suits at law, nor pleadings at the bar. He did in these extremities, as I conceive, most humbly recommend the direction of his judicial proceedings to the upright judge of judges, God Almighty; did submit himself to the conduct and guideship of the blessed Spirit in the hazard and perplexity of the definitive sentence, and, by this aleatory lot, did as it were implore and explore the divine decree of his goodwill and pleasure, instead of that which we call the final judgment of a court. To this effect, to the better attaining to his purpose, which was to judge righteously, he did, in my opinion, throw and turn the dice, to the end that by the providence aforesaid the best chance might fall to him whose action was uprightest, and backed with greatest reason. In doing whereof he did not stray from the sense of Talmudists, who say that there is so little harm in that manner of searching the truth, that in the anxiety and perplexedness of human wits God oftentimes manifesteth the secret pleasure of his divine will.

Furthermore, I will neither think nor say, nor can I believe, that the unstraightness is so irregular, or the corruption so evident, of those of the parliament of Mirelingois in Mirelingues, before whom Bridlegoose was arraigned for prevarication, that they will maintain it to be a worse practice to have the decision of a suit at law referred to the chance and hazard of a throw of the dice, hab nab, or luck as it will, than to have it remitted to and passed by the determination of those whose hands are full of blood and hearts of wry affections. Besides that, their principal direction in all law matters comes to their hands from one Tribonian, a wicked, miscreant, barbarous, faithless and perfidious knave, so pernicious, unjust, avaricious, and perverse in his ways, that it was his ordinary custom to sell laws, edicts, declarations, constitutions, and ordinances, as at an outroop or putsale, to him who offered most for them. Thus did he shape measures for the pleaders, and cut their morsels to them by and out of these little parcels, fragments, bits, scantlings, and shreds of the law now in use, altogether concealing, suppressing, disannulling, and abolishing the remainder, which did make for the total law; fearing that, if the whole law were made manifest and laid open to the knowledge of such as are interested in it, and the learned books of the ancient doctors of the law upon the exposition of the Twelve Tables and Praetorian Edicts, his villainous pranks, naughtiness, and vile impiety should come to the public notice of the world. Therefore were it better, in my conceit, that is to say, less inconvenient, that parties at variance in any juridical case should in the dark march upon caltrops than submit the determination of what is their right to such unhallowed sentences and horrible decrees; as Cato in his time wished and advised that every judiciary court should be paved with caltrops.



Chapter 3.XLV.

How Panurge taketh advice of Triboulet.

On the sixth day thereafter Pantagruel was returned home at the very same hour that Triboulet was by water come from Blois. Panurge, at his arrival, gave him a hog's bladder puffed up with wind, and resounding because of the hard peas that were within it. Moreover he did present him with a gilt wooden sword, a hollow budget made of a tortoise shell, an osier-wattled wicker-bottle full of Breton wine, and five-and-twenty apples of the orchard of Blandureau.

If he be such a fool, quoth Carpalin, as to be won with apples, there is no more wit in his pate than in the head of an ordinary cabbage. Triboulet girded the sword and scrip to his side, took the bladder in his hand, ate some few of the apples, and drunk up all the wine. Panurge very wistly and heedfully looking upon him said, I never yet saw a fool, and I have seen ten thousand francs worth of that kind of cattle, who did not love to drink heartily, and by good long draughts. When Triboulet had done with his drinking, Panurge laid out before him and exposed the sum of the business wherein he was to require his advice, in eloquent and choicely-sorted terms, adorned with flourishes of rhetoric. But, before he had altogether done, Triboulet with his fist gave him a bouncing whirret between the shoulders, rendered back into his hand again the empty bottle, fillipped and flirted him in the nose with the hog's bladder, and lastly, for a final resolution, shaking and wagging his head strongly and disorderly, he answered nothing else but this, By God, God, mad fool, beware the monk, Buzansay hornpipe! These words thus finished, he slipped himself out of the company, went aside, and, rattling the bladder, took a huge delight in the melody of the rickling crackling noise of the peas. After which time it lay not in the power of them all to draw out of his chaps the articulate sound of one syllable, insomuch that, when Panurge went about to interrogate him further, Triboulet drew his wooden sword, and would have stuck him therewith. I have fished fair now, quoth Panurge, and brought my pigs to a fine market. Have I not got a brave determination of all my doubts, and a response in all things agreeable to the oracle that gave it? He is a great fool, that is not to be denied, yet is he a greater fool who brought him hither to me,—That bolt, quoth Carpalin, levels point-blank at me,—but of the three I am the greatest fool, who did impart the secret of my thoughts to such an idiot ass and native ninny.

Without putting ourselves to any stir or trouble in the least, quoth Pantagruel, let us maturely and seriously consider and perpend the gestures and speech which he hath made and uttered. In them, veritably, quoth he, have I remarked and observed some excellent and notable mysteries; yea, of such important worth and weight, that I shall never henceforth be astonished, nor think strange, why the Turks with a great deal of worship and reverence honour and respect natural fools equally with their primest doctors, muftis, divines, and prophets. Did not you take heed, quoth he, a little before he opened his mouth to speak, what a shogging, shaking, and wagging his head did keep? By the approved doctrine of the ancient philosophers, the customary ceremonies of the most expert magicians, and the received opinions of the learnedest lawyers, such a brangling agitation and moving should by us all be judged to proceed from, and be quickened and suscitated by the coming and inspiration of the prophetizing and fatidical spirit, which, entering briskly and on a sudden into a shallow receptacle of a debile substance (for, as you know, and as the proverb shows it, a little head containeth not much brains), was the cause of that commotion. This is conform to what is avouched by the most skilful physicians, when they affirm that shakings and tremblings fall upon the members of a human body, partly because of the heaviness and violent impetuosity of the burden and load that is carried, and, other part, by reason of the weakness and imbecility that is in the virtue of the bearing organ. A manifest example whereof appeareth in those who, fasting, are not able to carry to their head a great goblet full of wine without a trembling and a shaking in the hand that holds it. This of old was accounted a prefiguration and mystical pointing out of the Pythian divineress, who used always, before the uttering of a response from the oracle, to shake a branch of her domestic laurel. Lampridius also testifieth that the Emperor Heliogabalus, to acquire unto himself the reputation of a soothsayer, did, on several holy days of prime solemnnity, in the presence of the fanatic rabble, make the head of his idol by some slight within the body thereof publicly to shake. Plautus, in his Asinaria, declareth likewise, that Saurias, whithersoever he walked, like one quite distracted of his wits kept such a furious lolling and mad-like shaking of his head, that he commonly affrighted those who casually met with him in his way. The said author in another place, showing a reason why Charmides shook and brangled his head, assevered that he was transported and in an ecstasy. Catullus after the same manner maketh mention, in his Berecynthia and Atys, of the place wherein the Menades, Bacchical women, she-priests of the Lyaean god, and demented prophetesses, carrying ivy boughs in their hands, did shake their heads. As in the like case, amongst the Galli, the gelded priests of Cybele were wont to do in the celebrating of their festivals. Whence, too, according to the sense of the ancient theologues, she herself has her denomination, for kubistan signifieth to turn round, whirl about, shake the head, and play the part of one that is wry-necked.

Semblably Titus Livius writeth that, in the solemnization time of the Bacchanalian holidays at Rome, both men and women seemed to prophetize and vaticinate, because of an affected kind of wagging of the head, shrugging of the shoulders, and jectigation of the whole body, which they used then most punctually. For the common voice of the philosophers, together with the opinion of the people, asserteth for an irrefragable truth that vaticination is seldom by the heavens bestowed on any without the concomitancy of a little frenzy and a head-shaking, not only when the said presaging virtue is infused, but when the person also therewith inspired declareth and manifesteth it unto others. The learned lawyer Julian, being asked on a time if that slave might be truly esteemed to be healthful and in a good plight who had not only conversed with some furious, maniac, and enraged people, but in their company had also prophesied, yet without a noddle-shaking concussion, answered that, seeing there was no head-wagging at the time of his predictions, he might be held for sound and compotent enough. Is it not daily seen how schoolmasters, teachers, tutors, and instructors of children shake the heads of their disciples, as one would do a pot in holding it by the lugs, that by this erection, vellication, stretching, and pulling their ears, which, according to the doctrine of the sage Egyptians, is a member consecrated to the memory, they may stir them up to recollect their scattered thoughts, bring home those fancies of theirs which perhaps have been extravagantly roaming abroad upon strange and uncouth objects, and totally range their judgments, which possibly by disordinate affections have been made wild, to the rule and pattern of a wise, discreet, virtuous, and philosophical discipline. All which Virgil acknowledgeth to be true, in the branglement of Apollo Cynthius.



Chapter 3.XLVI.

How Pantagruel and Panurge diversely interpret the words of Triboulet.

He says you are a fool. And what kind of fool? A mad fool, who in your old age would enslave yourself to the bondage of matrimony, and shut your pleasures up within a wedlock whose key some ruffian carries in his codpiece. He says furthermore, Beware of the monk. Upon mine honour, it gives me in my mind that you will be cuckolded by a monk. Nay, I will engage mine honour, which is the most precious pawn I could have in my possession although I were sole and peaceable dominator over all Europe, Asia, and Africa, that, if you marry, you will surely be one of the horned brotherhood of Vulcan. Hereby may you perceive how much I do attribute to the wise foolery of our morosoph Triboulet. The other oracles and responses did in the general prognosticate you a cuckold, without descending so near to the point of a particular determination as to pitch upon what vocation amongst the several sorts of men he should profess who is to be the copesmate of your wife and hornifier of your proper self. Thus noble Triboulet tells it us plainly, from whose words we may gather with all ease imaginable that your cuckoldry is to be infamous, and so much the more scandalous that your conjugal bed will be incestuously contaminated with the filthiness of a monkery lecher. Moreover, he says that you will be the hornpipe of Buzansay, that is to say, well-horned, hornified, and cornuted. And, as Triboulet's uncle asked from Louis the Twelfth, for a younger brother of his own who lived at Blois, the hornpipes of Buzansay, for the organ pipes, through the mistake of one word for another, even so, whilst you think to marry a wise, humble, calm, discreet, and honest wife, you shall unhappily stumble upon one witless, proud, loud, obstreperous, bawling, clamorous, and more unpleasant than any Buzansay hornpipe. Consider withal how he flirted you on the nose with the bladder, and gave you a sound thumping blow with his fist upon the ridge of the back. This denotates and presageth that you shall be banged, beaten, and fillipped by her, and that also she will steal of your goods from you, as you stole the hog's bladder from the little boys of Vaubreton.

Flat contrary, quoth Panurge;—not that I would impudently exempt myself from being a vassal in the territory of folly. I hold of that jurisdiction, and am subject thereto, I confess it. And why should I not? For the whole world is foolish. In the old Lorraine language, fou for tou, all and fool, were the same thing. Besides, it is avouched by Solomon that infinite is the number of fools. From an infinity nothing can be deducted or abated, nor yet, by the testimony of Aristotle, can anything thereto be added or subjoined. Therefore were I a mad fool if, being a fool, I should not hold myself a fool. After the same manner of speaking, we may aver the number of the mad and enraged folks to be infinite. Avicenna maketh no bones to assert that the several kinds of madness are infinite. Though this much of Triboulet's words tend little to my advantage, howbeit the prejudice which I sustain thereby be common with me to all other men, yet the rest of his talk and gesture maketh altogether for me. He said to my wife, Be wary of the monkey; that is as much as if she should be cheery, and take as much delight in a monkey as ever did the Lesbia of Catullus in her sparrow; who will for his recreation pass his time no less joyfully at the exercise of snatching flies than heretofore did the merciless fly-catcher Domitian. Withal he meant, by another part of his discourse, that she should be of a jovial country-like humour, as gay and pleasing as a harmonious hornpipe of Saulieau or Buzansay. The veridical Triboulet did therein hint at what I liked well, as perfectly knowing the inclinations and propensions of my mind, my natural disposition, and the bias of my interior passions and affections. For you may be assured that my humour is much better satisfied and contented with the pretty, frolic, rural, dishevelled shepherdesses, whose bums through their coarse canvas smocks smell of the clover grass of the field, than with those great ladies in magnific courts, with their flandan top-knots and sultanas, their polvil, pastillos, and cosmetics. The homely sound, likewise, of a rustical hornpipe is more agreeable to my ears than the curious warbling and musical quavering of lutes, theorbos, viols, rebecs, and violins. He gave me a lusty rapping thwack on my back,—what then? Let it pass, in the name and for the love of God, as an abatement of and deduction from so much of my future pains in purgatory. He did it not out of any evil intent. He thought, belike, to have hit some of the pages. He is an honest fool, and an innocent changeling. It is a sin to harbour in the heart any bad conceit of him. As for myself, I heartily pardon him. He flirted me on the nose. In that there is no harm; for it importeth nothing else but that betwixt my wife and me there will occur some toyish wanton tricks which usually happen to all new-married folks.



Chapter 3.XLVII.

How Pantagruel and Panurge resolved to make a visit to the oracle of the holy bottle.

There is as yet another point, quoth Panurge, which you have not at all considered on, although it be the chief and principal head of the matter. He put the bottle in my hand and restored it me again. How interpret you that passage? What is the meaning of that? He possibly, quoth Pantagruel, signifieth thereby that your wife will be such a drunkard as shall daily take in her liquor kindly, and ply the pots and bottles apace. Quite otherwise, quoth Panurge; for the bottle was empty. I swear to you, by the prickling brambly thorn of St. Fiacre in Brie, that our unique morosoph, whom I formerly termed the lunatic Triboulet, referreth me, for attaining to the final resolution of my scruple, to the response-giving bottle. Therefore do I renew afresh the first vow which I made, and here in your presence protest and make oath, by Styx and Acheron, to carry still spectacles in my cap, and never to wear a codpiece in my breeches, until upon the enterprise in hand of my nuptial undertaking I shall have obtained an answer from the holy bottle. I am acquainted with a prudent, understanding, and discreet gentleman, and besides a very good friend of mine, who knoweth the land, country, and place where its temple and oracle is built and posited. He will guide and conduct us thither sure and safely. Let us go thither, I beseech you. Deny me not, and say not nay; reject not the suit I make unto you, I entreat you. I will be to you an Achates, a Damis, and heartily accompany you all along in the whole voyage, both in your going forth and coming back. I have of a long time known you to be a great lover of peregrination, desirous still to learn new things, and still to see what you had never seen before.

Very willingly, quoth Pantagruel, I condescend to your request. But before we enter in upon our progress towards the accomplishment of so far a journey, replenished and fraught with eminent perils, full of innumerable hazards, and every way stored with evident and manifest dangers,—What dangers? quoth Panurge, interrupting him. Dangers fly back, run from, and shun me whithersoever I go, seven leagues around, as in the presence of the sovereign a subordinate magistracy is eclipsed; or as clouds and darkness quite evanish at the bright coming of a radiant sun; or as all sores and sicknesses did suddenly depart at the approach of the body of St. Martin a Quande. Nevertheless, quoth Pantagruel, before we adventure to set forwards on the road of our projected and intended voyage, some few points are to be discussed, expedited, and despatched. First, let us send back Triboulet to Blois. Which was instantly done, after that Pantagruel had given him a frieze coat. Secondly, our design must be backed with the advice and counsel of the king my father. And, lastly, it is most needful and expedient for us that we search for and find out some sibyl to serve us for a guide, truchman, and interpreter. To this Panurge made answer, that his friend Xenomanes would abundantly suffice for the plenary discharge and performance of the sibyl's office; and that, furthermore, in passing through the Lanternatory revelling country, they should take along with them a learned and profitable Lanternesse, which would be no less useful to them in their voyage than was the sibyl to Aeneas in his descent to the Elysian fields. Carpalin, in the interim, as he was upon the conducting away of Triboulet, in his passing by hearkened a little to the discourse they were upon; then spoke out, saying, Ho, Panurge, master freeman, take my Lord Debitis at Calais alongst with you, for he is goud-fallot, a good fellow. He will not forget those who have been debitors; these are Lanternes. Thus shall you not lack for both fallot and lanterne. I may safely with the little skill I have, quoth Pantagruel, prognosticate that by the way we shall engender no melancholy. I clearly perceive it already. The only thing that vexeth me is, that I cannot speak the Lanternatory language. I shall, answered Panurge, speak for you all. I understand it every whit as well as I do mine own maternal tongue; I have been no less used to it than to the vulgar French.

Briszmarg dalgotbrick nubstzne zos. Isquebsz prusq: albok crinqs zacbac. Mizbe dilbarskz morp nipp stancz bos, Strombtz, Panurge, walmap quost gruszbac.

Now guess, friend Epistemon, what this is. They are, quoth Epistemon, names of errant devils, passant devils, and rampant devils. These words of thine, dear friend of mine, are true, quoth Panurge; yet are they terms used in the language of the court of the Lanternish people. By the way, as we go upon our journey, I will make to thee a pretty little dictionary, which, notwithstanding, shall not last you much longer than a pair of new shoes. Thou shalt have learned it sooner than thou canst perceive the dawning of the next subsequent morning. What I have said in the foregoing tetrastich is thus translated out of the Lanternish tongue into our vulgar dialect:

All miseries attended me, whilst I A lover was, and had no good thereby. Of better luck the married people tell; Panurge is one of those, and knows it well.

There is little more, then, quoth Pantagruel, to be done, but that we understand what the will of the king my father will be therein, and purchase his consent.



Chapter 3.XLVIII.

How Gargantua showeth that the children ought not to marry without the special knowledge and advice of their fathers and mothers.

No sooner had Pantagruel entered in at the door of the great hall of the castle, than that he encountered full butt with the good honest Gargantua coming forth from the council board, unto whom he made a succinct and summary narrative of what had passed and occurred, worthy of his observation, in his travels abroad, since their last interview; then, acquainting him with the design he had in hand, besought him that it might stand with his goodwill and pleasure to grant him leave to prosecute and go through-stitch with the enterprise which he had undertaken. The good man Gargantua, having in one hand two great bundles of petitions endorsed and answered, and in the other some remembrancing notes and bills, to put him in mind of such other requests of supplicants, which, albeit presented, had nevertheless been neither read nor heard, he gave both to Ulric Gallet, his ancient and faithful Master of Requests; then drew aside Pantagruel, and, with a countenance more serene and jovial than customary, spoke to him thus: I praise God, and have great reason so to do, my most dear son, that he hath been pleased to entertain in you a constant inclination to virtuous actions. I am well content that the voyage which you have motioned to me be by you accomplished, but withal I could wish you would have a mind and desire to marry, for that I see you are of competent years. Panurge in the meanwhile was in a readiness of preparing and providing for remedies, salves, and cures against all such lets, obstacles, and impediments as he could in the height of his fancy conceive might by Gargantua be cast in the way of their itinerary design. Is it your pleasure, most dear father, that you speak? answered Pantagruel. For my part, I have not yet thought upon it. In all this affair I wholly submit and rest in your good liking and paternal authority. For I shall rather pray unto God that he would throw me down stark dead at your feet, in your pleasure, than that against your pleasure I should be found married alive. I never yet heard that by any law, whether sacred or profane, yea, amongst the rudest and most barbarous nations in the world, it was allowed and approved of that children may be suffered and tolerated to marry at their own goodwill and pleasure, without the knowledge, advice, or consent asked and had thereto of their fathers, mothers, and nearest kindred. All legislators, everywhere upon the face of the whole earth, have taken away and removed this licentious liberty from children, and totally reserved it to the discretion of the parents.

My dearly beloved son, quoth Gargantua, I believe you, and from my heart thank God for having endowed you with the grace of having both a perfect notice of and entire liking to laudable and praiseworthy things; and that through the windows of your exterior senses he hath vouchsafed to transmit unto the interior faculties of your mind nothing but what is good and virtuous. For in my time there hath been found on the continent a certain country, wherein are I know not what kind of Pastophorian mole-catching priests, who, albeit averse from engaging their proper persons into a matrimonial duty, like the pontifical flamens of Cybele in Phrygia, as if they were capons, and not cocks full of lasciviousness, salacity, and wantonness, who yet have, nevertheless, in the matter of conjugal affairs, taken upon them to prescribe laws and ordinances to married folks. I cannot goodly determine what I should most abhor, detest, loathe, and abominate,—whether the tyrannical presumption of those dreaded sacerdotal mole-catchers, who, not being willing to contain and coop up themselves within the grates and trellises of their own mysterious temples, do deal in, meddle with, obtrude upon, and thrust their sickles into harvests of secular businesses quite contrary and diametrically opposite to the quality, state, and condition of their callings, professions, and vocations; or the superstitious stupidity and senseless scrupulousness of married folks, who have yielded obedience, and submitted their bodies, fortunes, and estates to the discretion and authority of such odious, perverse, barbarous, and unreasonable laws. Nor do they see that which is clearer than the light and splendour of the morning star,—how all these nuptial and connubial sanctions, statutes, and ordinances have been decreed, made, and instituted for the sole benefit, profit, and advantage of the flaminal mysts and mysterious flamens, and nothing at all for the good, utility, or emolument of the silly hoodwinked married people. Which administereth unto others a sufficient cause for rendering these churchmen suspicious of iniquity, and of an unjust and fraudulent manner of dealing, no more to be connived at nor countenanced, after that it be well weighed in the scales of reason, than if with a reciprocal temerity the laics, by way of compensation, would impose laws to be followed and observed by those mysts and flamens, how they should behave themselves in the making and performance of their rites and ceremonies, and after what manner they ought to proceed in the offering up and immolating of their various oblations, victims, and sacrifices; seeing that, besides the decimation and tithe-haling of their goods, they cut off and take parings, shreddings, and clippings of the gain proceeding from the labour of their hands and sweat of their brows, therewith to entertain themselves the better. Upon which consideration, in my opinion, their injunctions and commands would not prove so pernicious and impertinent as those of the ecclesiastic power unto which they had tendered their blind obedience. For, as you have very well said, there is no place in the world where, legally, a licence is granted to the children to marry without the advice and consent of their parents and kindred. Nevertheless, by those wicked laws and mole-catching customs, whereat there is a little hinted in what I have already spoken to you, there is no scurvy, measly, leprous, or pocky ruffian, pander, knave, rogue, skellum, robber, or thief, pilloried, whipped, and burn-marked in his own country for his crimes and felonies, who may not violently snatch away and ravish what maid soever he had a mind to pitch upon, how noble, how fair, how rich, honest, and chaste soever she be, and that out of the house of her own father, in his own presence, from the bosom of her mother, and in the sight and despite of her friends and kindred looking on a so woeful spectacle, provided that the rascal villain be so cunning as to associate unto himself some mystical flamen, who, according to the covenant made betwixt them two, shall be in hope some day to participate of the prey.