Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  In that same season, Fayoles the Fourth, King of Numidia, sent Grandgousier a mare from the shores of Africa: she was the biggest and most enormous that had ever been seen, and the most marvellous – you know of course that Out of Africa ever comes something new – for she was as large as six elephants, had hoofs split into toes like the horse of Julius Caesar’s, and her ears hung down as far as those of the goats of Languegoth. On her rump she bore a tiny horn. For the rest, her coat was the colour of burnt chestnuts with a trellis-work of dapple-grey; her tail especially was quite horrifying, for – give or take a little – it was as wide and as square as the tower of Saint-Mars near Langès and had tufts of hair plaited like ears of corn.

  If that astounds you, be even more astounded by those Scythian rams whose tails weigh more than thirty pounds, or by those Syrian sheep which (if Thenaud is to be trusted) have tails of such length and weight that they need carts attached to their rumps to bear them along. Yours are never like that, you low-country bumpkins!

  The mare was transported by sea in three carracks and one brigantine as far as Les Sables d’Olonne-en-Talmondais.

  As soon as Grandgousier saw her, he said, ‘She’s just the thing to bear my son to Paris. Now then, by God, all will go well. In times to come he will be a great cleric. Were it not for Messieurs the Beasts we would all live like clerics.’

  So the next morning – after a drink you understand – Gargantua, his attendants and his tutor Ponocrates set out on their way together with their young page Eudemon. And because the weather was mild and moderate Gargantua’s father had a pair of tawny boots made for him. (Babin the cobbler calls them brodequins.)

  And so they journeyed merrily along the highway, always enjoying good cheer until just above Orleans. There they found an awesome forest,10 thirty-five leagues long and seventeen wide or thereabouts.

  It was so appallingly and copiously productive of gad-flies and hornets that it formed a veritable highwayman’s snare for wretched mares, asses and horses. But Gargantua’s mare honourably avenged all the outrages ever perpetrated therein against beasts of her kind, playing them a trick which they least expected. For as soon as the party had ridden into the said forest and the hornets begun their assault, the mare unsheathed her tail and drove them away, so fencing about that she felled the whole forest like a reaper scything grass, cutting this way and that way, hither and thither, lengthways and breadthways, upways and downways, so that no tree or hornet since then remains there: the whole of that land was reduced to a bare plain.

  Seeing which, Gargantua was delighted. He did not go on to boast, but to his men he said, ‘Beautiful, that! (Beau ce!). And Beauce has been its name ever since.

  [But for breakfast they had nothing but yawns, in memory of which the noblemen of La Beauce still breakfast on yawns: they find it very good for them and gob all the better.]

  Eventually they came to Paris, where Gargantua rested for two or three days, having a good time with his companions and finding out which learned men were then in town and what wine they were drinking.

  How Gargantua paid the Parisians for his welcome, and how he took the great bells from the church of Notre-Dame

  CHAPTER 16

  [Becomes Chapter 17.

  Serious and comic etymologies of the name of Paris were current. Ris is a word for laughter in Renaissance French. So per ris or par ris could mean ‘for a laugh’ or ‘by way of laughter’!

  The Order of Saint Anthony is suilline (‘of the pig’): Anthony is the patron of pig-rearing and his Order begged alms of pork. Its Commander mentioned as friend is Antoine du Saxe, of Bourg-en-Bresse. (He wrote a poem, The Wish of the Ham-man.)

  Then comes bold satire extending over four chapters. It had to be toned down (as shown in the footnotes).

  Evangelical preaching encouraged by Marguerite de Navarre was a feature of 1532, 1533 and of both Lent and summer in 1534. Such preaching aroused the wrath of the Parisian mob. The Sorbonne seems to have secretly arranged for hostile placards to be posted up by men disguised as masked revellers. (Cf. chapter 17; the longer end to Pantagruel and the Almanac for 1535.) The satire here of the events of 1532–4 became overshadou ed by the twin affaires des placards: that of the night 17–18 October 1534, when densely argued Zwinglian placards with little booklets attached preaching against the ‘idolatry’ of the Mass were stuck up by zealous Zwinglian reformers all over Paris, and the even graver affaire des placards of 13–14 January 1535, when the same placards were daringly exposed even in the royal apartments.

  A public procession of expiation was led by the king: the original text of Gargantua simply had to be toned down in the second edition Rabelais published, since the very word placard soon became tainted and associated above all with the affaires des placards and the persecution which they sparked off.

  The stealing of the bells of Notre-Dame forms part of the tale in the pre-Rabelaisian Chronicles of Gargantua.]

  A few days after they were rested, Gargantua visited the town and was greeted by all with great amazement, for by nature the people of Paris are so daft, silly and stupid that a juggler, a pardon-monger, a mule with its tinklers or a fiddler at the crossroads will draw bigger crowds than a good evangelical preacher. They followed him about so relentlessly that he was constrained to rest upon the towers of Notre-Dame. Once seated there and seeing so many people around him he spoke with clarity:

  ‘I do believe these scoundrels expect me to pay for my own reception and supply my own welcome-gift. That’s only right! I shall tip them with some wine! But they shall only have it per ris.’

  Then, with a smile, he untied his flies, aired his mentula and then so brackishly peed over them that he drowned two hundred and eighty thousand and eighteen of them, without women and children.

  A number of them escaped from that deluge of piss by fleetness of foot, and when they reached the heights of the University quarter, sweating, choking, spluttering and short of breath, they began to curse and swear:

  – God’s wounds!

  – Damme!

  – Gollysblood! D’you see that!

  – By Saint Squit!

  – By the ‘ead of Gord!

  – God’s passion confound you!

  – Da heada di Christo!

  – By the guts of Saint Quimlet!

  – Virtue of Gosh!

  – By Saint Fiacre de Brie!

  – By Saint Trinian!

  – I make a vow to Saint Thibaut!

  – Easter of God!

  – God’s good-day!

  – The devil take me!

  – Nobleman’s honour!

  – By Saint Chidlings!

  – By Saint Godegrin, martyred with cooked apples!

  – By Saint Futin the apostle!

  – By Saint Vital Parts!

  By our Lady, woe is me:

  We’re all awash in pee, per ris.11

  And that is why that town is now called Paree.

  Before that it was called Leukecia, which, as Strabo says (in Book 4) means nice and white – on account of the white thighs of the ladies in the aforesaid place. When its new name was imposed on it, all the bystanders swore oaths by the saints of their parishes, Parisians – being composed of bits and bobs and ha’p’orths of all sorts – are by their nature good jurants, good jurists and just a trifle bumptious: (that is why Joaninus de Barranco (in his book On the Copiousness of Signs of Respect) reckons that they are called Parrhesians, that is, ‘fine talkers’, in Greek).

  Which done, Gargantua turned his gaze towards the great bells hanging from those towers and he tolled them most tunefully. It occurred to him whilst doing so that they would make good tinklers for his mule: he intended to send her back to his father fully laden with fresh herrings and with cheeses from Brie; he did indeed take them to his lodgings.

  Meanwhile round came a Commander of the Suilline Order of Saint Anthony begging for pork; he, wishing to be heard from afar and to set the hams a-tremble in their larders, sought to bear
some off furtively, but out of decency he left them alone, not as too hot to carry but as a trifle too heavy! (He was not the Commander from Bourg, who is far too good a friend of mine.)

  The whole of Paris was moved to sedition. The people of Paris are (as you know) so prone to such things that the foreign Nations are amazed by the patience – or, more accurately, the apathy12 – of the kings of France who, in view of the daily inconveniences which arise from them, do not do more to repress them by good justice. Would to God that I knew the stithy in which such plots and schisms are forged to see whether or not I could make some fine be-shitten placards there. Believe me, the place where that troubled, stupid throng assembled was the Sorbonne,13 where once dwelt, but dwells no longer, the Lutetian Oracle. There a motion was proposed and carried deploring the incongruity of campanological transportation.

  After much ergoteering pro et con it was concluded in the first indirect mode of the first figure of syllogisms that they would despatch the oldest and most sufficient member of the Faculty of Theology to remonstrate with Gargantua over the appalling inconvenience caused by the loss of those clochas, those bells. And despite an objection on the part of some members of the University who alleged that the charge was more suitable to an Orator than a Theologian, the man elected to deal with this matter was Magister Noster Janotus de Bragmardo.

  How Janotus de Bragmardo was sent to recover the great bells from Gargantua

  CHAPTER 17

  [From ‘42 becomes Chapter 18.

  In ‘42 all hint of theology is dropped: Janotus’ theological hood was changed into an ‘ancient-style’ hood. Twice the word ‘theologian’ is replaced by ‘sophist’, and likewise ‘made to drink theologically’ is replaced by ‘made to drink rustically’. The changes are not further recorded in the footnotes. That the theologian and the delegation from the Sorbonne are mistaken for masked revellers again repeats the suggestion that, disguised as such, men acting for the Sorbonne had been up to no good in 1533.

  There are plays on words, including ‘veadles’, a portmanteau word – beadle + veau (calf, veal) – and ‘Masters Inerts’ for Masters of Arts.

  As Rabelais retells the tale, the bells are delivered back in the presence of real people: the Provost of Paris was probably Jean de la Barre (who died in 1534), who was also bailiff of the University with wide disciplinary powers.]

  Magister Noster Janotus, his hair cropped Caesar-style and sporting his theological hood, having settled his stomach with quince pies from the oven and holy water from the wine-cellar, processed towards the lodgings of Gargantua, prodding before him three veadles with red conks and dragging behind him five or six really filthy – Waste not: want not! – Masters Inerts.

  When they made their entrance, Ponocrates felt terror within him at seeing them thus disguised and thought they were some witless masked revellers. He then inquired of one of those Masters Inerts what was the purpose of their mummers’ farce. It was said in reply that they were asking that their bells be returned. As soon as he heard that, Ponocrates went straight to Gargantua with the news so that he could be ready with an answer and could instantly discuss with them what should be done. Gargantua, duly warned, took aside Ponocrates, his tutor, Philotime, his major-domo, Gymnaste, his equerry, and Eudemon; he had a quick discussion with them about what to do and what answer to return. It was unanimously agreed that the delegation should be taken off to the buttery and made to drink theologically, but (in order that the old cougher should not fall into vainglory through having the bells returned at his request) they should, while he was downing his drinks, summon the Provost of Paris and the Rector of the Faculty together with the Vicar of the Church, to whom they would hand over the bells before the theologian had propounded his commission. After which, in their presence, they would hear his beautiful address.

  And so it was done.

  And once the aforesaid dignitaries had arrived, the theologian was conducted into the packed Hall and began as follows, coughing:

  The Harangue of Magister Janotus de Bragmardo delivered before Gargantua for the return of the bells

  CHAPTER 18

  [Becomes Chapter 19.

  This chapter is partly in dog-Latin as satirized by Rabelais, a humanist for whom good Latin mattered and who mocked the scholastic terminology he had mastered in youth. The confused grammar of Janotus leads him to apply to the Virgin Mary words which apply to the Father. Janotus innocently applies to the Sorbonne words from Psalm 49 (48):21, ‘A Man that is in honour and understandeth not is like unto the beasts that perish’.

  Throughout this whole episode there is perhaps a sustained pun between clocher, to limp, and cloche, a then obsolescent word for a lame man, and also the French word for bells, cloches, for which the theologian uses a low Latin word, clochas. Noël Béda, the syndic of the Sorbonne, was certainly a hunchback and doubtless lame. Did he have lame colleagues too?

  The praise of physicians and medicine in Ecclesiasticus 38:4, ‘And a wise man will not abhor them’, is applied by Janotus to his promised pair of warm breeches.

  In this chapter words which are in Latin in Rabelais are printed in italics, including clocha and its derivatives. The word of address Domine (Sir, Lord, etc.) is kept in Latin. Throughout there is a savour of Maître Pathelin and of the Letters of Obscure Men.

  Londres-en-Cahors and Bordeaux-en-Brie are hamlets, having nothing to do with the great towns their names evoke, London and Bordeaux.

  When David says in the Psalms ‘Per diem’ (By day!) he is amusingly taken to be using an attenuated oath, avoiding Per deum (by God!).]

  ‘Huh! Hem! Ahem! G’day, m’Lord; G’day. You too, Gentlemen. Nothing but good would come from your giving us back our bells. We badly need ‘em. Huh! Hem! Hasch!

  ‘We have in the past turned down good money for them from the people of Londres-en-Cahors and those of Bordeaux-en-Brie, who wished to purchase them on account of the substantificial quality of the elementative complexion which is enthronicized in the terrestreity of their quiddity, in order to extrude the mists and whirlwinds from our vines (not, in truth, from ours but from those hereabouts). For lose we our tipple, then lose we our all: both rates and rationality.

  ‘Now, if you do give us them back at my request I shall win six links of sausages and a pair of breeches (which will be very good for my legs, or else they will fail to keep their promise to me). [Mm! By God, Domine! Mn! Mn! Not everyone who wants a pair of breeches always gets one. I know that myself.]

  ‘Bear in mind, Domine, that I have now spent eighteen days dreaming and polishing up this beautiful address: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God, the things that are God’s. [There lies the nub.] By my faith, Domine, if you would dine with me (by God’s Body!) in our charity room we will make much good cheerubim! – Me, one pig has I killed; and also has I goodly wine. But from good wine you can’t make bad Latin.

  ‘Now, with God as ex parte, please give us back our clochas. Here, on behalf of the Faculty I offer you these Sermons of Utino, with our utinam – our earnest wish – that you allow us our bells. Do you want any pardons? By Day! You shall have ‘em, and fork-out-um nothing-um. O Lord, Domine, Let us be clochi-donated. Those bells are truly municipal property. Everybody uses them. They may become your mule but they also become our Faculty, which is ‘compared to senseless mules, and made like unto them’. (That’s in Psalm number…, um, I forget which, yet I did have it down somewhere on a scrap of paper, [and it’s an Achilles of an argument].).

  ‘Huh! Hem! Ahem! Hasch!

  ‘Now then. I shall prove to you that you must hand them back.

  ‘Thus do I argue:

  ‘Every clochable clocha by cloching in a belfry – cloching in the clochative – makes the clochas clochably to cloche.

  ‘There are clochas at Paris.

  ‘Ergo… QED, but I’m stuck!

  ‘Ha! ha! ha! There’s talking for you! It was in the third of the first, or in Darii,14 or somewhere!

 
; ‘Gosh! I can remember when I was a very devil at arguing; now I can only ramble: from henceforth all I need is a good wine, a good bed, my back to the fire, my guts to the table, and a deep, deep bowl.

  ‘And so you, Domine, I pray in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen, that you render back our bells. And may God keep you free of evil, and Our Lady of Health who liveth and reigneth world without end. Amen.

  ‘Huh! hasch! gren-hem, hasch!

  ‘Verily; whereas; far be it that; most true it is; given that; indeed, indeed; by Faith, god of Jove: a town without bells is like a blind man without a stick, an ass without a crupper and a cow without cow-bells. Unless and until you have given them back, never shall we cease yelling after you like a blind man who has lost his stick, braying like an ass without a crupper and bellowing like a cow without cow-bells.

  ‘A certain scribbler of Latin dwelling near the Hôtel-Dieu said on one occasion, citing as his authority a certain Taponus – no, I am wrong there, it was Pontanus, a layman poet – that he could wish that bells were made of feathers and clappers of foxes’ tails because they engendered a chronic in the innards of his brain: but, one, two, buckle my shoe, bing, bang, bong, he was declared a heretic: heretics are like wax in our hands!

  ‘The case rests. Farewell, and applaud. Calepinus’ play is done.’15

  How the Theologian bore away his cloth and how he brought an action against the Sorbonnists

  CHAPTER 19

  [Becomes Chapter 20.

  In ‘42 the ‘Sorbonnists’ of the chapter-heading are replaced by ‘other Masters’. Similarly ‘theologian’ is still replaced by ‘sophist’ in both the chapter-heading and the first line of text. All traces of theology and the Sorbonne are removed. The changes are not listed in the footnotes.

  Again the savour of Maître Pathelin (which the actor-manager Songecreux had recently acted before the Court) lends piquancy to the satire. The laughter of Janotus was then called ‘sympathetic’: the laughter of others made him laugh just as the yawning of others can make us yawn.