Five Books Of The Lives, Heroic Deeds And Sayings Of Gargantua And His Son Pantagruel

by Неизвестный

  When they had well fed, quoth the horse to the ass; Well, poor ass, how is it with thee now? How dost thou like this fare? Thou wert so nice at first, a body had much ado to get thee hither. By the fig, answered the ass, which, one of our ancestors eating, Philemon died laughing, this is all sheer ambrosia, good Sir Grandpaw; but what would you have an ass say? Methinks all this is yet but half cheer. Don't your worships here now and then use to take a leap? What leaping dost thou mean? asked the horse; the devil leap thee! dost thou take me for an ass? In troth, Sir Grandpaw, quoth the ass, I am somewhat of a blockhead, you know, and cannot, for the heart's blood of me, learn so fast the court way of speaking of you gentlemen horses; I mean, don't you stallionize it sometimes here among your mettled fillies? Tush, whispered the horse, speak lower; for, by Bucephalus, if the grooms but hear thee they will maul and belam thee thrice and threefold, so that thou wilt have but little stomach to a leaping bout. Cod so, man, we dare not so much as grow stiff at the tip of the lowermost snout, though it were but to leak or so, for fear of being jerked and paid out of our lechery. As for anything else, we are as happy as our master, and perhaps more. By this packsaddle, my old acquaintance, quoth the ass, I have done with you; a fart for thy litter and hay, and a fart for thy oats; give me the thistles of our fields, since there we leap when we list. Eat less, and leap more, I say; it is meat, drink, and cloth to us. Ah! friend Grandpaw, it would do thy heart good to see us at a fair, when we hold our provincial chapter! Oh! how we leap it, while our mistresses are selling their goslings and other poultry! With this they parted. Dixi; I have done.

  Panurge then held his peace. Pantagruel would have had him to have gone on to the end of the chapter; but Aedituus said, A word to the wise is enough; I can pick out the meaning of that fable, and know who is that ass, and who the horse; but you are a bashful youth, I perceive. Well, know that there's nothing for you here; scatter no words. Yet, returned Panurge, I saw but even now a pretty kind of a cooing abbess-kite as white as a dove, and her I had rather ride than lead. May I never stir if she is not a dainty bit, and very well worth a sin or two. Heaven forgive me! I meant no more harm in it than you; may the harm I meant in it befall me presently.

  Chapter 5.VIII. How with much ado we got a sight of the pope-hawk.

  Our junketting and banqueting held on at the same rate the third day as the two former. Pantagruel then earnestly desired to see the pope-hawk; but Aedituus told him it was not such an easy matter to get a sight of him. How, asked Pantagruel, has he Plato's helmet on his crown, Gyges's ring on his pounces, or a chameleon on his breast, to make him invisible when he pleases? No, sir, returned Aedituus; but he is naturally of pretty difficult access. However, I'll see and take care that you may see him, if possible. With this he left us piddling; then within a quarter of an hour came back, and told us the pope-hawk is now to be seen. So he led us, without the least noise, directly to the cage wherein he sat drooping, with his feathers staring about him, attended by a brace of little cardin-hawks and six lusty fusty bish-hawks.

  Panurge stared at him like a dead pig, examining exactly his figure, size, and motions. Then with a loud voice he said, A curse light on the hatcher of the ill bird; o' my word, this is a filthy whoop-hooper. Tush, speak softly, said Aedituus; by G--, he has a pair of ears, as formerly Michael de Matiscones remarked. What then? returned Panurge; so hath a whoopcat. So, said Aedituus; if he but hear you speak such another blasphemous word, you had as good be damned. Do you see that basin yonder in his cage? Out of it shall sally thunderbolts and lightnings, storms, bulls, and the devil and all, that will sink you down to Peg Trantum's, an hundred fathom under ground. It were better to drink and be merry, quoth Friar John.

  Panurge was still feeding his eyes with the sight of the pope-hawk and his attendants, when somewhere under his cage he perceived a madge-howlet. With this he cried out, By the devil's maker, master, there's roguery in the case; they put tricks upon travellers here more than anywhere else, and would make us believe that a t--d's a sugarloaf. What damned cozening, gulling, and coney-catching have we here! Do you see this madge-howlet? By Minerva, we are all beshit. Odsoons, said Aedituus, speak softly, I tell you. It is no madge-howlet, no she-thing on my honest word; but a male, and a noble bird.

  May we not hear the pope-hawk sing? asked Pantagruel. I dare not promise that, returned Aedituus; for he only sings and eats at his own hours. So don't I, quoth Panurge; poor pilgarlic is fain to make everybody's time his own; if they have time, I find time. Come, then, let us go drink, if you will. Now this is something like a tansy, said Aedituus; you begin to talk somewhat like; still speak in that fashion, and I'll secure you from being thought a heretic. Come on, I am of your mind.

  As we went back to have t'other fuddling bout, we spied an old green-headed bish-hawk, who sat moping with his mate and three jolly bittern attendants, all snoring under an arbour. Near the old cuff stood a buxom abbess-kite that sung like any linnet; and we were so mightily tickled with her singing that I vow and swear we could have wished all our members but one turned into ears, to have had more of the melody. Quoth Panurge, This pretty cherubim of cherubims is here breaking her head with chanting to this huge, fat, ugly face, who lies grunting all the while like a hog as he is. I will make him change his note presently, in the devil's name. With this he rang a bell that hung over the bish-hawk's head; but though he rang and rang again, the devil a bit bish-hawk would hear; the louder the sound, the louder his snoring. There was no making him sing. By G--, quoth Panurge, you old buzzard, if you won't sing by fair means, you shall by foul. Having said this, he took up one of St. Stephen's loaves, alias a stone, and was going to hit him with it about the middle. But Aedituus cried to him, Hold, hold, honest friend! strike, wound, poison, kill, and murder all the kings and princes in the world, by treachery or how thou wilt, and as soon as thou wouldst unnestle the angels from their cockloft. Pope-hawk will pardon thee all this. But never be so mad as to meddle with these sacred birds, as much as thou lovest the profit, welfare, and life not only of thyself, and thy friends and relations alive or dead, but also of those that may be born hereafter to the thousandth generation; for so long thou wouldst entail misery upon them. Do but look upon that basin. Catso! let us rather drink, then, quoth Panurge. He that spoke last, spoke well, Mr. Antitus, quoth Friar John; while we are looking on these devilish birds we do nothing but blaspheme; and while we are taking a cup we do nothing but praise God. Come on, then, let's go drink; how well that word sounds!

  The third day (after we had drank, as you must understand) Aedituus dismissed us. We made him a present of a pretty little Perguois knife, which he took more kindly than Artaxerxes did the cup of cold water that was given him by a clown. He most courteously thanked us, and sent all sorts of provisions aboard our ships, wished us a prosperous voyage and success in our undertakings, and made us promise and swear by Jupiter of stone to come back by his territories. Finally he said to us, Friends, pray note that there are many more stones in the world than men; take care you don't forget it.

  Chapter 5.IX. How we arrived at the island of Tools.

  Having well ballasted the holds of our human vessels, we weighed anchor, hoised up sail, stowed the boats, set the land, and stood for the offing with a fair loom gale, and for more haste unpareled the mizen-yard, and launched it and the sail over the lee-quarter, and fitted gyves to keep it steady, and boomed it out; so in three days we made the island of Tools, that is altogether uninhabited. We saw there a great number of trees which bore mattocks, pickaxes, crows, weeding-hooks, scythes, sickles, spades, trowels, hatchets, hedging-bills, saws, adzes, bills, axes, shears, pincers, bolts, piercers, augers, and wimbles.

  Others bore dags, daggers, poniards, bayonets, square-bladed tucks, stilettoes, poniardoes, skeans, penknives, puncheons, bodkins, swords, rapiers, back-swords, cutlasses, scimitars, hangers, falchions, glaives, raillons, whittles, and whinyards.

  Whoever would have any of these needed but to shake the tree, and immediately
they dropped down as thick as hops, like so many ripe plums; nay, what's more, they fell on a kind of grass called scabbard, and sheathed themselves in it cleverly. But when they came down, there was need of taking care lest they happened to touch the head, feet, or other parts of the body. For they fell with the point downwards, and in they stuck, or slit the continuum of some member, or lopped it off like a twig; either of which generally was enough to have killed a man, though he were a hundred years old, and worth as many thousand spankers, spur-royals, and rose-nobles.

  Under some other trees, whose names I cannot justly tell you, I saw some certain sorts of weeds that grew and sprouted like pikes, lances, javelins, javelots, darts, dartlets, halberds, boar-spears, eel-spears, partizans, tridents, prongs, trout-staves, spears, half-pikes, and hunting-staves. As they sprouted up and chanced to touch the tree, straight they met with their heads, points, and blades, each suitable to its kind, made ready for them by the trees over them, as soon as every individual wood was grown up, fit for its steel; even like the children's coats, that are made for them as soon as they can wear them and you wean them of their swaddling clothes. Nor do you mutter, I pray you, at what Plato, Anaxagoras, and Democritus have said. Ods-fish! they were none of your lower-form gimcracks, were they?

  Those trees seemed to us terrestrial animals, in no wise so different from brute beasts as not to have skin, fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages, kernels, bones, marrow, humours, matrices, brains, and articulations; for they certainly have some, since Theophrastus will have it so. But in this point they differed from other animals, that their heads, that is, the part of their trunks next to the root, are downwards; their hair, that is, their roots, in the earth; and their feet, that is, their branches, upside down; as if a man should stand on his head with outstretched legs. And as you, battered sinners, on whom Venus has bestowed something to remember her, feel the approach of rains, winds, cold, and every change of weather, at your ischiatic legs and your omoplates, by means of the perpetual almanack which she has fixed there; so these trees have notice given them, by certain sensations which they have at their roots, stocks, gums, paps, or marrow, of the growth of the staves under them, and accordingly they prepare suitable points and blades for them beforehand. Yet as all things, except God, are sometimes subject to error, nature itself not free from it when it produceth monstrous things, likewise I observed something amiss in these trees. For a half-pike that grow up high enough to reach the branches of one of these instrumentiferous trees, happened no sooner to touch them but, instead of being joined to an iron head, it impaled a stubbed broom at the fundament. Well, no matter, 'twill serve to sweep the chimney. Thus a partizan met with a pair of garden shears. Come, all's good for something; 'twill serve to nip off little twigs and destroy caterpillars. The staff of a halberd got the blade of a scythe, which made it look like a hermaphrodite. Happy-be- lucky, 'tis all a case; 'twill serve for some mower. Oh, 'tis a great blessing to put our trust in the Lord! As we went back to our ships I spied behind I don't know what bush, I don't know what folks, doing I don't know what business, in I don't know what posture, scouring I don't know what tools, in I don't know what manner, and I don't know what place.

  Chapter 5.X. How Pantagruel arrived at the island of Sharping.

  We left the island of Tools to pursue our voyage, and the next day stood in for the island of Sharping, the true image of Fontainebleau, for the land is so very lean that the bones, that is, the rocks, shoot through its skin. Besides, 'tis sandy, barren, unhealthy, and unpleasant. Our pilot showed us there two little square rocks which had eight equal points in the shape of a cube. They were so white that I might have mistaken them for alabaster or snow, had he not assured us they were made of bone.

  He told us that twenty chance devils very much feared in our country dwelt there in six different storeys, and that the biggest twins or braces of them were called sixes, and the smallest ambs-ace; the rest cinques, quatres, treys, and deuces. When they were conjured up, otherwise coupled, they were called either sice cinque, sice quatre, sice trey, sice deuce, and sice ace; or cinque quatre, cinque trey, and so forth. I made there a shrewd observation. Would you know what 'tis, gamesters? 'Tis that there are very few of you in the world but what call upon and invoke the devils. For the dice are no sooner thrown on the board, and the greedy gazing sparks have hardly said, Two sixes, Frank; but Six devils damn it! cry as many of them. If ambs-ace; then, A brace of devils broil me! will they say. Quatre-deuce, Tom; The deuce take it! cries another. And so on to the end of the chapter. Nay, they don't forget sometimes to call the black cloven-footed gentlemen by their Christian names and surnames; and what is stranger yet, they use them as their greatest cronies, and make them so often the executors of their wills, not only giving themselves, but everybody and everything, to the devil, that there's no doubt but he takes care to seize, soon or late, what's so zealously bequeathed him. Indeed, 'tis true Lucifer does not always immediately appear by his lawful attorneys; but, alas! 'tis not for want of goodwill; he is really to be excused for his delay; for what the devil would you have a devil do? He and his black guards are then at some other places, according to the priority of the persons that call on them; therefore, pray let none be so venturesome as to think that the devils are deaf and blind.

  He then told us that more wrecks had happened about those square rocks, and a greater loss of body and goods, than about all the Syrtes, Scyllas and Charybdes, Sirens, Strophades, and gulfs in the universe. I had not much ado to believe it, remembering that formerly, among the wise Egyptians, Neptune was described in hieroglyphics for the first cube, Apollo by an ace, Diana by a deuce, Minerva by seven, and so forth.

  He also told us that there was a phial of sanc-greal, a most divine thing, and known to a few. Panurge did so sweeten up the syndics of the place that they blessed us with the sight of 't; but it was with three times more pother and ado, with more formalities and antic tricks, than they show the pandects of Justinian at Florence, or the holy Veronica at Rome. I never saw such a sight of flambeaux, torches, and hagios, sanctified tapers, rush-lights, and farthing candles in my whole life. After all, that which was shown us was only the ill-faced countenance of a roasted coney.

  All that we saw there worth speaking of was a good face set upon an ill game, and the shells of the two eggs formerly laid up and hatched by Leda, out of which came Castor and Pollux, fair Helen's brothers. These same syndics sold us a piece of 'em for a song, I mean, for a morsel of bread. Before we went we bought a parcel of hats and caps of the manufacture of the place, which, I fear, will turn to no very good account; nor are those who shall take 'em off our hands more likely to commend their wearing.

  Chapter 5.XI. How we passed through the wicket inhabited by Gripe-men-all, Archduke of the Furred Law-cats.

  From thence Condemnation was passed by us. 'Tis another damned barren island, whereat none for the world cared to touch. Then we went through the wicket; but Pantagruel had no mind to bear us company, and 'twas well he did not, for we were nabbed there, and clapped into lob's-pound by order of Gripe-men-all, Archduke of the Furred Law-cats, because one of our company would ha' put upon a sergeant some hats of the Sharping Island.

  The Furred Law-cats are most terrible and dreadful monsters, they devour little children, and trample over marble stones. Pray tell me, noble topers, do they not deserve to have their snouts slit? The hair of their hides doesn't lie outward, but inwards, and every mother's son of 'em for his device wears a gaping pouch, but not all in the same manner; for some wear it tied to their neck scarfwise, others upon the breech, some on the paunch, others on the side, and all for a cause, with reason and mystery. They have claws so very strong, long, and sharp that nothing can get from 'em that is once fast between their clutches. Sometimes they cover their heads with mortar-like caps, at other times with mortified caparisons.

  As we entered their den, said a common mumper, to whom we had given half a teston, Worshipful culprits, God send you a good
deliverance! Examine well, said he, the countenance of these stout props and pillars of this catch-coin law and iniquity; and pray observe, that if you still live but six olympiads, and the age of two dogs more, you'll see these Furred Law- cats lords of all Europe, and in peaceful possession of all the estates and dominions belonging to it; unless, by divine providence, what's got over the devil's back is spent under his belly, or the goods which they unjustly get perish with their prodigal heirs. Take this from an honest beggar.

  Among 'em reigns the sixth essence; by the means of which they gripe all, devour all, conskite all, burn all, draw all, hang all, quarter all, behead all, murder all, imprison all, waste all, and ruin all, without the least notice of right or wrong; for among them vice is called virtue; wickedness, piety; treason, loyalty; robbery, justice. Plunder is their motto, and when acted by them is approved by all men, except the heretics; and all this they do because they dare; their authority is sovereign and irrefragable. For a sign of the truth of what I tell you, you'll find that there the mangers are above the racks. Remember hereafter that a fool told you this; and if ever plague, famine, war, fire, earthquakes, inundations, or other judgments befall the world, do not attribute 'em to the aspects and conjunctions of the malevolent planets; to the abuses of the court of Romania, or the tyranny of secular kings and princes; to the impostures of the false zealots of the cowl, heretical bigots, false prophets, and broachers of sects; to the villainy of griping usurers, clippers, and coiners; or to the ignorance, impudence, and imprudence of physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries; nor to the lewdness of adulteresses and destroyers of by-blows; but charge them all, wholly and solely, to the inexpressible, incredible, and inestimable wickedness and ruin which is continually hatched, brewed, and practised in the den or shop of those Furred Law-cats. Yet 'tis no more known in the world than the cabala of the Jews, the more's the pity; and therefore 'tis not detested, chastised, and punished as 'tis fit it should be. But should all their villainy be once displayed in its true colours and exposed to the people, there never was, is, nor will be any spokesman so sweet-mouthed, whose fine colloguing tongue could save 'em; nor any law so rigorous and draconic that could punish 'em as they deserve; nor yet any magistrate so powerful as to hinder their being burnt alive in their coneyburrows without mercy. Even their own furred kittlings, friends, and relations would abominate 'em.