Doing as they were told, they went to the funeral and the graveside, whilst our wretched Gargantua stayed behind in his Hall. During that time he composed the following epitaph to be engraved for her:
IN CHILDBIRTH SHE DIED: GOOD BADEBEC IS DEAD.
NOBLE SHE WAS: NOUGHT IN HER WAS AMISS:
HER FACE LIKE A VIOL, AS EVERYONE SAID,
SPANISH IN BODY, WITH GUTS LIKE A SWISS.
PRAY TO GOD FOR HER: HE LOVES HER I WISS,
FORGIVING HER ALL HER TRESPASSES SMALL.
SHE LIVED IN THIS CORPSE, THEN VICELESS, AS ‘TIS.
SHE DIED ON THE DAY DEATH CAME: THAT IS ALL.
The Infancy of Pantagruel
CHAPTER 4
[Infancy narratives are common in the tales of heroes and the tales of chivalry still much appreciated. Rabelais draws on them for parodies and mock-heroics.
As later (in Gargantua) he turns to Book 7 of Pliny’s Natural History for details of monstrous births. Pliny was taken very seriously on such matters by many, including students of the Law, but not here by Rabelais.]
I learn from the historiographers and poets of old that many have been born into this world in very wondrous ways, which it would take too long to tell you about, but if you have the leisure read Pliny, Book 7.
Yet you can never have heard of a manner more marvellous than Pantagruel’s: for it was hard to credit that he could grow so much in stature and strength in so short a space. Hercules was nothing with his killing of those two snakes in his cradle, for they were very tiny, flimsy ones: but when Pantagruel was still in his cradle he wrought the most terrible deeds.
I will skip over unsaid how, at each one of his feeds, he golloped down the milk of four hundred and six cows, and how all the pot-makers of Saumur in Anjou, of Villedieu in Normandy and of Bramont in Lorraine were employed in making a cauldron to boil up his broth, which was served in a huge stone trough (still to be found even now close by the palace at Bourges). However, his teeth had already grown so big and strong that he bit a great chunk from it (as is still most apparent).
On one particular day, towards morning, when they wanted to get him to suck the teats of one of his cows – for, as the story tells us, he had no other wet-nurses – he burst loose from the reins which strapped one of his arms to the cradle, seized that cow under the hocks and bit off and ate her udders and half her belly including her liver and kidneys. He would have gobbled her all up if only she hadn’t bellowed as dreadfully as if wolves had got her by the legs. Everybody ran up as she bellowed and pulled the said cow away from the said Pantagruel’s hands, but they couldn’t stop him from holding on fast to the hock-end, which he ate as we might a sausage. When they tried to take the bone away he gulped it down at once, as a cormorant might do with a little fish.
Then he started to say ‘Goo’, goo’, goo’’, for he couldn’t talk properly yet but wished them to know that he had found it very good and that all he wanted was more of the same.
Seeing which, his attendants tied him down with hawsers as thick as those they make at Tain for towing the salt up to Lyons, or as those of the Grande Françoyse, which lies in the docks of Le-Havre-de-Grâce in Normandy. But one day a great bear which was being trained by his father came up and licked his face (for his nurses had failed to wipe his chops properly), so he snapped those hawsers as easily as Samson snapped his amongst the Philistines, grabbed hold of My Lord Bear and ripped him apart like a pullet, making himself a good warm-meat cure-gorge before his dinner.
Whereupon Gargantua, fearing that Pantagruel might hurt himself, had ingenious flying buttresses made for his cradle as well as four huge iron chains to hold him in. (You now have one of those chains at La Rochelle, where they draw it up at night between the two great towers in the haven.) Another is at Lyons; another is at Angers, whilst the fourth was borne away by devils in order to hold down Lucifer, who was furiously breaking out into madness because of an extraordinarily infuriating belly-ache brought on from having eaten for breakfast a fricassee of law-serjeant’s soul.
So now you can readily believe what Nicholas of Lyra says about that passage of the Psalter in which it is written, ‘Og, King of Basan’: namely that when the said Og was still a babe he was so strong and lusty that he had to be bound to his cradle by chains.
And thus did Pantagruel stay quiet and peaceful, since he could not easily snap those chains, especially since he did not have space enough in his cradle to swing his arms about.
But see what happened on the day of a great festival when his father was throwing a fine feast for every one of the princes of his Court. I think that all the flunkies were so taken up with their festive duties that they neglected poor Pantagruel, who remained stuck there in his corner-ium. This is what he did.13
He tried to snap the chains of his cradle with his arms, but those chains were too strong and he could not manage it. He therefore battered the cradle so hard with his heels that he snapped off the end of it even though it was a beam some four foot square. Once he had thrust his legs outside he slithered down as best he could so that his feet touched the ground. Then, with one mighty heave he stood up, bearing his cradle bound to his spine like a tortoise clambering against a wall. To look at, he resembled a big five-hundred-ton carrack stood up on end!
At that point he so confidently entered the hall, where everyone was feasting, that he greatly terrified all who were there. As his hands were tied, he could not pick up anything to eat but, with a great struggle, he bent over and licked up a tongueful. Seeing which, his father rightly concluded that he had been left with nothing to eat and so, on the advice of the princes and lords there present, he commanded him to be rid of his chains; moreover Gargantua’s physicians said that if he were kept in his cradle like that he would be subject to the stone all his life.
Once he had been freed from his chains, they sat him down; he ate his fill and shattered his cradle into four hundred thousand pieces with one blow from his fist [angrily] striking at the middle of it and vowing never again to be put back into it.
The deeds of noble Pantagruel in his youth
CHAPTER 5
[This chapter appealed to many liberal-minded university men, past or present, in the time of Rabelais, especially the devotees of humanist Law. The ‘Pierre levée’ – a raised menhir – still plays a large part in student life at Poitiers; other universities too had their legends and myths which are recalled here.
‘Barbarian Toulouse’ was renowned for its religious intolerance: in 1532 a liberal regent, Jean de Cahors, a professor of Law, was burnt at the stake. Saint Liguaire is omitted later.
Some see in this chapter a comic transposition of Rabelais’ own travels in the course of his studies. He certainly knew at first hand some of the places mentioned here, including Fontenay-le-Comte and Maillezais. There are also allusions to friends of his, including the abbé Ardillon and André Tiraqueau, the great legal scholar.
It was at Montpellier that Rabelais became a ‘doctor’ – as Bachelors of Medicine were already called – and, in the course of time, a full Doctor of Medicine.
The quotation about poets and painters refers to the famous judgement of Horace in his Ars poetica, lines 9 and 10.
Epistemon’s name means ‘wise’ in Greek.]
And so Pantagruel grew from day to day and visibly profited from it; out of natural affection his father was delighted and, since he was still but a little fellow, had a crossbow made for him to play at shooting birds.
It is now in the great tower of Bourges.14
He then sent him to the universities to study and spend the days of his youth. And he came to Poitiers to study, where he profited greatly. Noticing that the students there did have a little free time but never knew how to use it, he felt compassion for them. So one day, from the great ridge named Passelourdin, he took a big boulder, about two dozen yards square and fourteen span thick, and set it comfortably upon four pillars in the midst of a field in order that the said students, when at a loss
over what to do, could pass their time scrambling on to the aforesaid stone, there to feast with plenty of flagons, hams and pasties whilst carving their names on it with penknives.
It’s called the Pierre levée nowadays.
In memory of which nobody is now matriculated in the said University of Poitiers unless he has drunk from the Caballine fountain of Croustelles, scaled the Passelourdin and clambered on to the Pierre levée.
Afterwards, from reading in the fine chronicles of his forebears, he learnt that Geoffrey de Lusignan, called Geoffrey Long-Tooth – the grandfather of the cousin-in-law of the older sister [of the aunt of the son-in-law of the uncle of the daughter-in-law] of his mother-in-law – was buried at Maillezais, therefore, as a gentleman should, he rusticated himself for a while to visit the place.
So he and some of his companions left Poitiers, passed through Ligugé, [calling on the noble abbé Ardillon,] then through Lusignan, Sansay, Celles, Saint Liguaire, Colonges and Fontenay-le-Comte, [where they greeted the learned Tiraqueau,] and from thence came to Maillezais, where Pantagruel visited the tomb of Geoffrey Long-Tooth, whose portrait rather disturbed him when he saw it: he is depicted there as a man in a frenzy, tugging his great malchus half out of its scabbard. Pantagruel asked the reason for it. The canons of the place said they knew no other reason save that Pictoribus atque poetis, and so on, that is, To painters and poets freedom is allowed to portray what they like, how they like. Pantagruel was not satisfied by that answer, and said, ‘He is not depicted like that without a reason. I suspect some wrong was done to him as he died, for which he is asking his kinsfolk for vengeance. I will inquire into it more fully and do what is right.’
He therefore turned back, not going through Poitiers, since he intended to do a tour of the other universities of France; and so, passing through La Rochelle, he took to the sea and sailed to Bordeaux, where he never found much sport except for a Spanish card-game played by the lighter-men on the strand.
From there he then went on to Toulouse, where he learnt how to dance very well and to play with the two-handed sword as is the custom amongst students at that university. But he did not stay there long once he saw how they burnt their regents alive like red herrings. ‘God forbid,’ he said, ‘that I should die like that: I’m thirsty enough by nature without being hotted up further.’
He then came to Montpellier, where he found joyful company and some very good Mirevaux wines. He considered starting to read Medicine there but considered that calling to be far too tedious and melancholy; and the physicians there stank of enemas like aged devils.
And so he wanted to read Law but, discovering that the Legists there amounted to three scurvy-heads and one baldy, he went away, halting en route to build the Pont du Gard [and the amphitheatre at Nîmes] in less than three hours, yet it looks more divine than human.15
Then he entered Avignon, where he was barely three days before he fell in love, for [, it being a papal domain,] the women there enjoy playing at squeeze-crupper.
On seeing which, his moral-tutor, called Epistemon, drew him away and took him to Valence in Dauphiné, where he found there was little in the way of sport and that the toughs of the Town beat up the Gown. Which annoyed him.
One day, when all the folk were having a public dance, an undergraduate tried to join in, but the local toughs wouldn’t let him. On seeing which, Pantagruel gave chase to them as far as the banks of the Rhône and would have drowned them all, but they hid away like moles a good half a league under that river. Their bolt-hole is still there to be seen.
After which he left and [with a hop and three jumps] came to Angers, where he got on well and would have stayed for a while had the plague not driven them away.
And so he came to Bourges, where he studied for a long time, doing well in the Faculty of Laws. And he would sometimes say that his law-books seemed to him like a beautiful golden robe, triumphant and wondrously precious, which had been hemmed with shit. ‘For,’ he said, ‘no books in the world are as beautifully written, ornate and elegant as the texts of the Pandects, but their hems (that is to say the glosses of Accursius) are so squalid, shameful and putrid that they are nothing but ordure and filth.
Leaving Bourges, he came to Orleans, where he found plenty of roisterous students, who gave him a good welcome on his arrival; they soon taught him to play royal tennis so well that he became a past master at it, since it is a sport the students there excel in.
They sometimes took him off to the Islands, where they would play bowls with their balls. As for cudgelling his brains in study, he did none of that, fearing that it might weaken his sight, especially since one of the regents often stated in his lectures that nothing is worse for your sight than an eye-infection.
And one day, when one of the students he knew graduated in Law (even though he had scarcely more learning than he could lug, yet making up for it by being very good at dancing and tennis), Pantagruel composed the blazon and device of the Bachelors of that university, which reads:
In his codpiece, a tennis ball;
A racket in his hand withal;
A tiny bit of Law: that’s all;
A jolly jig, whene’er he would:
He’s got his academic hood!
How Pantagruel met a man from Limoges who distorted the French tongue
CHAPTER 6
[Laughter at excessively latinate French was well established. Rabelais is partly indebted here to the Champfleury of Geoffroy Tory. Then as now, some words in this chapter are opaque to anyone without Latin, though a few of even the most outrageously latinate words are to be found in the New English Dictionary.
There are brief explanations at the end of the chapter.]
One day, [I’m not sure when,] Pantagruel was going for a stroll after supper with his companions through the gate which leads into Paris. There he met a dapper student coming along the road. After they had greeted each other, Pantagruel asked him,
‘Where are you coming from at this hour, my friend?’
The student replied:
‘From that alma, illustrissime and celebrated Academe vocate Luctece.’
‘What does that mean?’ Pantagruel asked one of his men.
‘From Paris,’ he replied.
‘So you come from Paris? And how,’ he asked, ‘do you young gentlemen spend your time as students in the said Paris?’
The student replied:
‘We transfrete the Sequana at times dilucidatory and crepusculine, deambulating via the urbic carfaxes and quadrivia; we despumate the latinate verbocination, and, like verisimilitudinous amorevolous, we captivate the omnijudicious, omniform and omnigenous feminine sex. On certain dies we invitate ourselves to the lupanars of Champgaillard, Matcon, Cul-de-sac, Bourbon and Huslieu.16 There, in venereal ecstasy, we inculcate our veretra into the most absconce recesses of the pudenda of those more amicitial meretrices; then, in those meritful taberns, the Pomme-de-Pin, [the Castellum,] the Madeleine and the Mule, we consume spatulas of sheep perforaminated with the herb called petrosil. And if we should chance by forte fortune to have a pecuniary paucity or penury in our marsupiums, exhausted of ferruginous metal, to pay our scot we demit our codexes and oppignerate our vestments, expecting the tabellarles to come from our paternal lares and penates.’
To which Pantagruel replied,
‘What diabolical language is this! You, by God, are a heretic!’
To which the student replied:
‘Signior, no. For most libentiously, as soon as the minutest matutinal section is elucidated, I demigrate towards one of those so-well architectured monasterial fanes; there I asperge myself with lustral aqueous fluid, mumble a slice of some missatical precative from our missaries, with a sub-murmuration of precatories from my Horary, I lave and absterge my animated part of its nocturnal inquinations. I revere the Olympicoles; I latreutically venerate the supernal Astripotent; I have in delectation and mutual amity my proximates; I observe the prescriptions of the Decalogue, and, according to the minuscule ca
pacity of my vim and vigour, I do not discede one laterality of a tiny unguis from them. To be veriloquous, since Mammon never super-ingurgitates one ob into my pecuniary receptacle, I am somewhat rare and lentando in supererogationally eleemosinating to egenes who from ostiary to ostiary are quesititious of a small stipendium.’
‘Oh. Pooh, pooh,’ said Pantagruel. ‘What does this idiot mean! I think he is forging us some diabolical language and casting a charm on us like a sorcerer.’
To which one of his men replied:
‘My Lord, without any doubt, he is trying to ape the language of the Parisians; yet all he can do is to flay Latin alive. He thinks he is pindarizing; he believes he is a great orator in French because he despises the common spoken usage.’
‘Is that true?’ asked Pantagruel.
The student replied:
‘Seigneur, [Sire]. My genius is not innately apt – as this flagitious nebulon opines – for excoriating the cuticle of our Gallic vernacular. But, vice-versally, I am assiduous at striving, by oars and by sail, at locupleting it with latinate superfluity.’
‘By God,’ said Pantagruel, ‘I’ll teach you how to speak. But first tell me where you come from?’
To which the student said:
‘The primeval origin of my atavics and avics was indigenous to the Lemovic regions, where requiesce the corpus of that hagiarch, Saint Martial.’
‘I get you,’ said Pantagruel: ‘You come from Limoges. That’s what it all boils down to. Yet you want to ape Parisian speech. Come here, then, and let me curry you down.’
He then seized him by the throat, saying,
‘You flay Latin! By Saint John, I’ll make you flay up the fox: I shall flay you alive.’
Whereupon that wretched denizen of Limoges began to say:
Gargantua and Pantagruel Page 7