by Неизвестный
Chapter 4.XVI. How Friar John made trial of the nature of the catchpoles.
This story would seem pleasant enough, said Pantagruel, were we not to have always the fear of God before our eyes. It had been better, said Epistemon, if those gauntlets had fallen upon the fat prior. Since he took a pleasure in spending his money partly to vex Basche, partly to see those catchpoles banged, good lusty thumps would have done well on his shaved crown, considering the horrid concussions nowadays among those puny judges. What harm had done those poor devils the catchpoles? This puts me in mind, said Pantagruel, of an ancient Roman named L. Neratius. He was of noble blood, and for some time was rich; but had this tyrannical inclination, that whenever he went out of doors he caused his servants to fill their pockets with gold and silver, and meeting in the street your spruce gallants and better sort of beaux, without the least provocation, for his fancy, he used to strike them hard on the face with his fist; and immediately after that, to appease them and hinder them from complaining to the magistrates, he would give them as much money as satisfied them according to the law of the twelve tables. Thus he used to spend his revenue, beating people for the price of his money. By St. Bennet's sacred boot, quoth Friar John, I will know the truth of it presently.
This said, he went on shore, put his hand in his fob, and took out twenty ducats; then said with a loud voice, in the hearing of a shoal of the nation of catchpoles, Who will earn twenty ducats for being beaten like the devil? Io, Io, Io, said they all; you will cripple us for ever, sir, that is most certain; but the money is tempting. With this they were all thronging who should be first to be thus preciously beaten. Friar John singled him out of the whole knot of these rogues in grain, a red-snouted catchpole, who upon his right thumb wore a thick broad silver hoop, wherein was set a good large toadstone. He had no sooner picked him out from the rest, but I perceived that they all muttered and grumbled; and I heard a young thin-jawed catchpole, a notable scholar, a pretty fellow at his pen, and, according to public report, much cried up for his honesty at Doctors' Commons, making his complaint and muttering because this same crimson phiz carried away all the practice, and that if there were but a score and a half of bastinadoes to be got, he would certainly run away with eight and twenty of them. But all this was looked upon to be nothing but mere envy.
Friar John so unmercifully thrashed, thumped, and belaboured Red-snout, back and belly, sides, legs, and arms, head, feet, and so forth, with the home and farewell repeated application of one of the best members of a faggot, that I took him to be a dead man; then he gave him the twenty ducats, which made the dog get on his legs, pleased like a little king or two. The rest were saying to Friar John, Sir, sir, brother devil, if it please you to do us the favour to beat some of us for less money, we are all at your devilship's command, bags, papers, pens, and all. Red-snout cried out against them, saying, with a loud voice, Body of me, you little prigs, will you offer to take the bread out of my mouth? will you take my bargain over my head? would you draw and inveigle from me my clients and customers? Take notice, I summon you before the official this day sevennight; I will law and claw you like any old devil of Vauverd, that I will--Then turning himself towards Friar John, with a smiling and joyful look, he said to him, Reverend father in the devil, if you have found me a good hide, and have a mind to divert yourself once more by beating your humble servant, I will bate you half in half this time rather than lose your custom; do not spare me, I beseech you; I am all, and more than all, yours, good Mr. Devil; head, lungs, tripes, guts, and garbage; and that at a pennyworth, I'll assure you. Friar John never heeded his proffers, but even left them. The other catchpoles were making addresses to Panurge, Epistemon, Gymnast, and others, entreating them charitably to bestow upon their carcasses a small beating, for otherwise they were in danger of keeping a long fast; but none of them had a stomach to it. Some time after, seeking fresh water for the ship's company, we met a couple of old female catchpoles of the place, miserably howling and weeping in concert. Pantagruel had kept on board, and already had caused a retreat to be sounded. Thinking that they might be related to the catchpole that was bastinadoed, we asked them the occasion of their grief. They replied that they had too much cause to weep; for that very hour, from an exalted triple tree, two of the honestest gentlemen in Catchpole-land had been made to cut a caper on nothing. Cut a caper on nothing, said Gymnast; my pages use to cut capers on the ground; to cut a caper on nothing should be hanging and choking, or I am out. Ay, ay, said Friar John; you speak of it like St. John de la Palisse.
We asked them why they treated these worthy persons with such a choking hempen salad. They told us they had only borrowed, alias stolen, the tools of the mass and hid them under the handle of the parish. This is a very allegorical way of speaking, said Epistemon.
Chapter 4.XVII. How Pantagruel came to the islands of Tohu and Bohu; and of the strange death of Wide-nostrils, the swallower of windmills.
That day Pantagruel came to the two islands of Tohu and Bohu, where the devil a bit we could find anything to fry with. For one Wide-nostrils, a huge giant, had swallowed every individual pan, skillet, kettle, frying- pan, dripping-pan, and brass and iron pot in the land, for want of windmills, which were his daily food. Whence it happened that somewhat before day, about the hour of his digestion, the greedy churl was taken very ill with a kind of a surfeit, or crudity of stomach, occasioned, as the physicians said, by the weakness of the concocting faculty of his stomach, naturally disposed to digest whole windmills at a gust, yet unable to consume perfectly the pans and skillets; though it had indeed pretty well digested the kettles and pots, as they said they knew by the hypostases and eneoremes of four tubs of second-hand drink which he had evacuated at two different times that morning. They made use of divers remedies, according to art, to give him ease; but all would not do; the distemper prevailed over the remedies; insomuch that the famous Wide- nostrils died that morning of so strange a death that I think you ought no longer to wonder at that of the poet Aeschylus. It had been foretold him by the soothsayers that he would die on a certain day by the ruin of something that should fall on him. The fatal day being come in its turn, he removed himself out of town, far from all houses, trees, (rocks,) or any other things that can fall and endanger by their ruin; and strayed in a large field, trusting himself to the open sky; there very secure, as he thought, unless indeed the sky should happen to fall, which he held to be impossible. Yet they say that the larks are much afraid of it; for if it should fall, they must all be taken.
The Celts that once lived near the Rhine--they are our noble valiant French--in ancient times were also afraid of the sky's falling; for being asked by Alexander the Great what they feared most in this world, hoping well they would say that they feared none but him, considering his great achievements, they made answer that they feared nothing but the sky's falling; however, not refusing to enter into a confederacy with so brave a king, if you believe Strabo, lib. 7, and Arrian, lib. I.
Plutarch also, in his book of the face that appears on the body of the moon, speaks of one Phenaces, who very much feared the moon should fall on the earth, and pitied those that live under that planet, as the Aethiopians and Taprobanians, if so heavy a mass ever happened to fall on them, and would have feared the like of heaven and earth had they not been duly propped up and borne by the Atlantic pillars, as the ancients believed, according to Aristotle's testimony, lib. 5, Metaphys. Notwithstanding all this, poor Aeschylus was killed by the fall of the shell of a tortoise, which falling from betwixt the claws of an eagle high in the air, just on his head, dashed out his brains.
Neither ought you to wonder at the death of another poet, I mean old jolly Anacreon, who was choked with a grape-stone. Nor at that of Fabius the Roman praetor, who was choked with a single goat's hair as he was supping up a porringer of milk. Nor at the death of that bashful fool, who by holding in his wind, and for want of letting out a bum-gunshot, died suddenly in the presence of the Emperor Claudius. Nor at that of the Itali
an buried on the Via Flaminia at Rome, who in his epitaph complains that the bite of a she-puss on his little finger was the cause of his death. Nor of that of Q. Lecanius Bassus, who died suddenly of so small a prick with a needle on his left thumb that it could hardly be discerned. Nor of Quenelault, a Norman physician, who died suddenly at Montpellier, merely for having sideways took a worm out of his hand with a penknife. Nor of Philomenes, whose servant having got him some new figs for the first course of his dinner, whilst he went to fetch wine, a straggling well-hung ass got into the house, and seeing the figs on the table, without further invitation soberly fell to. Philomenes coming into the room and nicely observing with what gravity the ass ate its dinner, said to the man, who was come back, Since thou hast set figs here for this reverend guest of ours to eat, methinks it is but reason thou also give him some of this wine to drink. He had no sooner said this, but he was so excessively pleased, and fell into so exorbitant a fit of laughter, that the use of his spleen took that of his breath utterly away, and he immediately died. Nor of Spurius Saufeius, who died supping up a soft-boiled egg as he came out of a bath. Nor of him who, as Boccaccio tells us, died suddenly by picking his grinders with a sage-stalk. Nor of Phillipot Placut, who being brisk and hale, fell dead as he was paying an old debt; which causes, perhaps, many not to pay theirs, for fear of the like accident. Nor of the painter Zeuxis, who killed himself with laughing at the sight of the antique jobbernowl of an old hag drawn by him. Nor, in short, of a thousand more of which authors write, as Varrius, Pliny, Valerius, J. Baptista Fulgosus, and Bacabery the elder. In short, Gaffer Wide-nostrils choked himself with eating a huge lump of fresh butter at the mouth of a hot oven by the advice of physicians.
They likewise told us there that the King of Cullan in Bohu had routed the grandees of King Mecloth, and made sad work with the fortresses of Belima.
After this, we sailed by the islands of Nargues and Zargues; also by the islands of Teleniabin and Geleniabin, very fine and fruitful in ingredients for clysters; and then by the islands of Enig and Evig, on whose account formerly the Landgrave of Hesse was swinged off with a vengeance.
Chapter 4.XVIII. How Pantagruel met with a great storm at sea.
The next day we espied nine sail that came spooning before the wind; they were full of Dominicans, Jesuits, Capuchins, Hermits, Austins, Bernardins, Egnatins, Celestins, Theatins, Amadeans, Cordeliers, Carmelites, Minims, and the devil and all of other holy monks and friars, who were going to the Council of Chesil, to sift and garble some new articles of faith against the new heretics. Panurge was overjoyed to see them, being most certain of good luck for that day and a long train of others. So having courteously saluted the blessed fathers, and recommended the salvation of his precious soul to their devout prayers and private ejaculations, he caused seventy- eight dozen of Westphalia hams, units of pots of caviare, tens of Bolonia sausages, hundreds of botargoes, and thousands of fine angels, for the souls of the dead, to be thrown on board their ships. Pantagruel seemed metagrabolized, dozing, out of sorts, and as melancholic as a cat. Friar John, who soon perceived it, was inquiring of him whence should come this unusual sadness; when the master, whose watch it was, observing the fluttering of the ancient above the poop, and seeing that it began to overcast, judged that we should have wind; therefore he bid the boatswain call all hands upon deck, officers, sailors, foremast-men, swabbers, and cabin-boys, and even the passengers; made them first settle their topsails, take in their spritsail; then he cried, In with your topsails, lower the foresail, tallow under parrels, braid up close all them sails, strike your topmasts to the cap, make all sure with your sheeps-feet, lash your guns fast. All this was nimbly done. Immediately it blowed a storm; the sea began to roar and swell mountain-high; the rut of the sea was great, the waves breaking upon our ship's quarter; the north-west wind blustered and overblowed; boisterous gusts, dreadful clashing, and deadly scuds of wind whistled through our yards and made our shrouds rattle again. The thunder grumbled so horridly that you would have thought heaven had been tumbling about our ears; at the same time it lightened, rained, hailed; the sky lost its transparent hue, grew dusky, thick, and gloomy, so that we had no other light than that of the flashes of lightning and rending of the clouds. The hurricanes, flaws, and sudden whirlwinds began to make a flame about us by the lightnings, fiery vapours, and other aerial ejaculations. Oh, how our looks were full of amazement and trouble, while the saucy winds did rudely lift up above us the mountainous waves of the main! Believe me, it seemed to us a lively image of the chaos, where fire, air, sea, land, and all the elements were in a refractory confusion. Poor Panurge having with the full contents of the inside of his doublet plentifully fed the fish, greedy enough of such odious fare, sat on the deck all in a heap, with his nose and arse together, most sadly cast down, moping and half dead; invoked and called to his assistance all the blessed he- and she-saints he could muster up; swore and vowed to confess in time and place convenient, and then bawled out frightfully, Steward, maitre d'hotel, see ho! my friend, my father, my uncle, prithee let us have a piece of powdered beef or pork; we shall drink but too much anon, for aught I see. Eat little and drink the more will hereafter be my motto, I fear. Would to our dear Lord, and to our blessed, worthy, and sacred Lady, I were now, I say, this very minute of an hour, well on shore, on terra firma, hale and easy. O twice and thrice happy those that plant cabbages! O destinies, why did you not spin me for a cabbage-planter? O how few are there to whom Jupiter hath been so favourable as to predestinate them to plant cabbages! They have always one foot on the ground, and the other not far from it. Dispute who will of felicity and summum bonum, for my part whosoever plants cabbages is now, by my decree, proclaimed most happy; for as good a reason as the philosopher Pyrrho, being in the same danger, and seeing a hog near the shore eating some scattered oats, declared it happy in two respects; first, because it had plenty of oats, and besides that, was on shore. Ha, for a divine and princely habitation, commend me to the cows' floor.
Murder! This wave will sweep us away, blessed Saviour! O my friends! a little vinegar. I sweat again with mere agony. Alas! the mizen-sail's split, the gallery's washed away, the masts are sprung, the maintop- masthead dives into the sea; the keel is up to the sun; our shrouds are almost all broke, and blown away. Alas! alas! where is our main course? Al is verlooren, by Godt! our topmast is run adrift. Alas! who shall have this wreck? Friend, lend me here behind you one of these whales. Your lantern is fallen, my lads. Alas! do not let go the main-tack nor the bowline. I hear the block crack; is it broke? For the Lord's sake, let us have the hull, and let all the rigging be damned. Be, be, be, bous, bous, bous. Look to the needle of your compass, I beseech you, good Sir Astrophil, and tell us, if you can, whence comes this storm. My heart's sunk down below my midriff. By my troth, I am in a sad fright, bou, bou, bou, bous, bous, I am lost for ever. I conskite myself for mere madness and fear. Bou, bou, bou, bou, Otto to to to to ti. Bou, bou, bou, ou, ou, ou, bou, bou, bous. I sink, I'm drowned, I'm gone, good people, I'm drowned.
Chapter 4.XIX. What countenances Panurge and Friar John kept during the storm.
Pantagruel, having first implored the help of the great and Almighty Deliverer, and prayed publicly with fervent devotion, by the pilot's advice held tightly the mast of the ship. Friar John had stripped himself to his waistcoat, to help the seamen. Epistemon, Ponocrates, and the rest did as much. Panurge alone sat on his breech upon deck, weeping and howling. Friar John espied him going on the quarter-deck, and said to him, Odzoons! Panurge the calf, Panurge the whiner, Panurge the brayer, would it not become thee much better to lend us here a helping hand than to lie lowing like a cow, as thou dost, sitting on thy stones like a bald-breeched baboon? Be, be, be, bous, bous, bous, returned Panurge; Friar John, my friend, my good father, I am drowning, my dear friend! I drown! I am a dead man, my dear father in God; I am a dead man, my friend; your cutting hanger cannot save me from this; alas! alas! we are above ela. Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinge
s. Be, be, be, bou, bous. Alas! we are now above g sol re ut. I sink, I sink, ha, my father, my uncle, my all. The water is got into my shoes by the collar; bous, bous, bous, paish, hu, hu, hu, he, he, he, ha, ha, I drown. Alas! alas! Hu, hu, hu, hu, hu, hu, hu, be, be, bous, bous, bobous, bobous, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, alas! alas! Now I am like your tumblers, my feet stand higher than my head. Would to heaven I were now with those good holy fathers bound for the council whom we met this morning, so godly, so fat, so merry, so plump and comely. Holos, bolos, holas, holas, alas! This devilish wave (mea culpa Deus), I mean this wave of God, will sink our vessel. Alas! Friar John, my father, my friend, confession. Here I am down on my knees; confiteor; your holy blessing. Come hither and be damned, thou pitiful devil, and help us, said Friar John (who fell a-swearing and cursing like a tinker), in the name of thirty legions of black devils, come; will you come? Do not let us swear at this time, said Panurge; holy father, my friend, do not swear, I beseech you; to-morrow as much as you please. Holos, holos, alas! our ship leaks. I drown, alas, alas! I will give eighteen hundred thousand crowns to anyone that will set me on shore, all berayed and bedaubed as I am now. If ever there was a man in my country in the like pickle. Confiteor, alas! a word or two of testament or codicil at least. A thousand devils seize the cuckoldy cow-hearted mongrel, cried Friar John. Ods-belly, art thou talking here of making thy will now we are in danger, and it behoveth us to bestir our stumps lustily, or never? Wilt thou come, ho devil? Midshipman, my friend; O the rare lieutenant; here Gymnast, here on the poop. We are, by the mass, all beshit now; our light is out. This is hastening to the devil as fast as it can. Alas, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, alas, alas, alas, alas! said Panurge; was it here we were born to perish? Oh! ho! good people, I drown, I die. Consummatum est. I am sped--Magna, gna, gna, said Friar John. Fie upon him, how ugly the shitten howler looks. Boy, younker, see hoyh. Mind the pumps or the devil choke thee. Hast thou hurt thyself? Zoons, here fasten it to one of these blocks. On this side, in the devil's name, hay--so, my boy. Ah, Friar John, said Panurge, good ghostly father, dear friend, don't let us swear, you sin. Oh, ho, oh, ho, be be be bous, bous, bhous, I sink, I die, my friends. I die in charity with all the world. Farewell, in manus. Bohus bohous, bhousowauswaus. St. Michael of Aure! St. Nicholas! now, now or never, I here make you a solemn vow, and to our Saviour, that if you stand by me this time, I mean if you set me ashore out of this danger, I will build you a fine large little chapel or two, between Quande and Montsoreau, where neither cow nor calf shall feed. Oh ho, oh ho. Above eighteen pailfuls or two of it are got down my gullet; bous, bhous, bhous, bhous, how damned bitter and salt it is! By the virtue, said Friar John, of the blood, the flesh, the belly, the head, if I hear thee again howling, thou cuckoldy cur, I'll maul thee worse than any sea-wolf. Ods-fish, why don't we take him up by the lugs and throw him overboard to the bottom of the sea? Hear, sailor; ho, honest fellow. Thus, thus, my friend, hold fast above. In truth, here is a sad lightning and thundering; I think that all the devils are got loose; it is holiday with them; or else Madame Proserpine is in child's labour: all the devils dance a morrice.