Janotus’ remark ‘Limp not before the lame’ (in French, ‘Ne clochez pas devant les boiteux’) once more may link the lame, the cloches, to cloches meaning bells.
In ‘42 it is the ‘Masters’, not the ‘Sorbonicoles’, who ‘vowed never to wash’; similarly ‘the congregation of the Sorbonne’ becomes ‘the congregation held in the Church of the Mathurins’.
The later Rabelais is severely weakened in this episode by sensible, wise and doubtless necessary self censorship.
Democritus was the laughing philosopher, Heraclitus, the weeping one.]
The Theologian had no sooner finished than Ponocrates and Eudemon burst out guffawing so profoundly that while laughing they all but gave up the ghost to God, neither more nor less than did Crassus on seeing a well-hung ass eat thistles, or as Philemon did by dint of laughing on seeing an ass eat the figs prepared for his own dinner.
Magister Janotus began to laugh with them, each outdoing the other until tears came to their eyes from the mind-shaking concussion of the matter of their brains by which the lachrimatory fluids were expressed and sent flowing around the optic nerves. [By which, in them, Democritus was shown heraclitizing and Heraclitus democritizing.]
Once the laughing had entirely died down, Gargantua consulted his friends over what should be done. Ponocrates was of the opinion that they should get that fine orator drinking again. And, seeing that he had provided more amusement and laughter than even Songecreux could have done, they themselves should give him the ten links of sausages mentioned in his laughable address together with a pair of breeches, three hundred big, good-quality logs for the fire, five and twenty hogsheads of wine, a bed with three layers of goose-feathers and a very profound and capacious bowl – things which he said his old age required.
All was done as they had decided, except that Gargantua, doubting that they could find in time a pair of breeches suitable for his legs, [doubting also what style would best become that Orator, a martingale, say, which is a drawbridge for the bum, making it easier to crap, or sailor-style, to make it easier to relieve oneself, or Switzer-style, to keep his paunch warm, or in cod-tails, to avoid overheating of the kidneys,]16 ordered seven lengths of black cloth together with three lengths of white cloth for the lining.
The logs were carried by penny-porters: the Masters of Arts carried the sausages and the bowl. Magister Janotus carried the cloth as he himself wished, which one of the said Masters of Arts, Maître Jousse Bandouille by name, protested to be neither proper nor becoming to his Theological status, and that he should hand the cloth to one of them.
‘Ha! You jackass,’ said Janotus, ‘you jackass, you have failed to conclude in mode and figure. A fat lot of use you have made of the Suppositions and the Minor Logics.
‘Now then: To whom does the length of cloth refer?’
Bandouille replied,
‘Indeterminately; and distributively.’
‘I did not ask you, you jackass, in what mode it refers,’ said Janotus, ‘but to what end. And that, you jackass, is for my tibia. And that is why I, ego, me myself shall carry it, exactly as the subject carries the epithet.’
And so he crept away with it, as Pathelin did with his cloth.
But best of all was when that old cougher vaingloriously claimed his cloth and his sausages during a full congregation of the Sorbonne. They were peremptorily denied him on the grounds that, according to information received, he had already had them from Gargantua.
He protested that they had been given him gratis out of Gargantua’s generosity, by which they were in no wise absolved from their promises. That notwithstanding, he received the reply that he would get not a scrap more and should please see reason.
‘Reason!’ said Janotus. ‘We have no use for that here! You miserable traitors you! You good-for-nothings! This earth bears no folk more wicked than you are: that I do know! Limp not before the lame. I myself have practised wickedness together with you. God’s spleen! I shall advise the king of the enormous abuses forged in this place by your hands and intrigues. And may I be a leper if he does not have you all burnt alive as buggers, traitors, heretics and deceivers, enemies of God and of virtue.’
At those words they drew up articles of accusation against him: he on his part issued summonses against them. In brief, the lawsuit was reserved to the Court: and it lies there still. At this point the Sorbonicoles vowed never to wash – and Magister Janotus with his adherents, never to wipe their noses – until such time as there was pronounced a definitive judgement. They remain, to this present time, filthy and snotty, since the court has yet to finish scrabbling through all the documents. The judgement is due to be given at the next Greek Kalends, that is to say, never: for those judges, you know, can do more than Nature can, going even against their own Articles. For the Articles of Paris intone that God alone can make things infinite, whilst Nature produces nothing immortal but sees an end, a limit, to everything she brings forth; for All that rises, falls,17 and so on. But those pettifoggers render such cases as lie pendant before them both infinite and immortal. By so doing they both provoked and proved true that saying of Chilon the Spartan enshrined at Delphi: Misery accompanies lawsuits,18 since plaintiffs are wretched, their lives reaching their ends before their petitions for their rights.
The Study and Way of Life of Gargantua according to the teachings of the Sorbonagres, his preceptors
CHAPTER 20
[Becomes Chapter 21.
In ‘42, ‘Way of Life’ is dropped from the title and ‘Sophists’ again replaces ‘Sorbonagres’.
The canting ‘theologians’ who drive a youth mad are then weakened into mere dons.
‘Animal spirits’ are the spirits of the anima, the soul, within the human body. They govern our higher actions.
The name of Professor Almain, a former logician at the Sorbonne, lends itself to a pun on main (hand) and manual.
The ‘Comic’ cited is Terence, probably not directly but from two adages of Erasmus, II, II, XVIII, ‘His mind is on the scourge’, and III, VII, XXX, ‘His mind is on the leather’, both of which cite Terence’s line, ‘His mind is on the wine-cups’.]
After the first days thus spent and the bells restored, the citizens of Paris, grateful for such generosity, offered to feed the mare and look after her for as long as Gargantua liked – which pleased him very much – and so they sent her away to the Forest of Bière. [She is no longer there, I think.]
Once that was done, Gargantua wished with all of his being to study at the discretion of Ponocrates. But Ponocrates told him to carry on for a while in his usual manner so as to establish how his old tutors, over such a long time, had made him so daft, stupid and ignorant. He therefore so arranged his time that he would normally wake up between eight and nine – daylight or not! – for so his theological tutors had bidden him,19 citing what David said: ‘It is vain for you to rise before the light.’20
He then would stir his stumps, toss about and wallow awhile in his bed, the better to arouse his animal spirits. He would then dress according to the season but preferably don a heavy, long gown of coarse frieze-cloth trimmed with fox-skin fur. He would then comb his hair manually like Almain: (that is, with four fingers and a thumb) since his tutors used to say that otherwise to comb, wash and clean himself was to waste time over the things of this world.
He would then shit, piss, hawk, fart, [break wind, yawn, gob, cough, snivel,] sneeze and dribble snot like an archdeacon, and then – to counteract the dew and the bad air – break his fast with lovely fried tripe, lovely grilled steaks, lovely ham, lovely goat-meat roasts and plenty of monastical bread-and-dripping. Ponocrates raised the objection that he really ought not to have a meal as soon as he got up without first taking a little exercise. Gargantua replied:
‘What! I’ve taken enough good exercise already, haven’t I? Before getting up I toss about in my bed six or seven times. Isn’t that enough? Pope Alexander used to do precisely that by order of his Jewish physician and, despite all those
who envied him, lived till he died. My original Masters accustomed me to it, saying Breakfast makes for a good memory: they were therefore the first to be drinking. I feel better for it and enjoy my dinner all the more. And Magister Tubal (who came top for his degree in Paris) used to tell me that the advantage lay not in running fast but in making an early start: so too the full health of us humans does not consist in drinking cup after cup after cup like ducks but rather in starting to drink early in the morning. Hence these lines:
Getting up early is never fun
Drinking early is better for one.’
So, having eaten a proper breakfast, Gargantua would go to church, and they would carry for him in a huge basket a fat breviary, snugly slippered in its sleeve, which (what with grease, clasps and parchment) weighed some eleven hundredweight [and six pounds]. There he would hear some twenty-six or thirty Masses.
Meanwhile his private chaplain would arrive, swaddled up like a hoopoe-bird and having already taken copiously for his breath plenty of medicinal syrup from the grape. With him Gargantua would mumble all his responses, shelling them so carefully that not one grain fell to the ground.
As he left church they would bring him, on an ox-drawn dray, a jumble of Saint-Claude rosaries, each bead of which was as big as your noddle; then, wandering through the cloisters, galleries and gardens, he would tell more beads than sixteen hermits.
Then he devoted a measly half-hour to his studies, his eyes resting on his book, but (as the Comic poet puts it) his mind was in the kitchen. Then, pissing a full chamber-pot, he would sit down to table. And – since he was naturally subject to the phlegm – he began his repast with a few dozen hams, smoked beef-tongues, salted mullet-caviar or chidlings, plus other such precursors of wine.
In the meantime four of his household, continuously, one after the other, cast shovelfuls of mustard into his mouth. Then – to comfort his kidneys – he drank an horrific draught of white wine.
After that, according to the season, he would eat any food he liked, ceasing only when his belly felt extended. But there were no rules to end his drinking, for he would say that the bounds and bourns of drinking were when the cork soles of the slippers of the person tippling had swollen up by a good six inches.
*
[In ‘42, a new chapter-break is inserted here: The Games of Gargantua. Chapter 22.
In the list of games those inserted in ‘42 are marked with a cross (+) either individually or after the square brackets. The others within square brackets were added in ‘35. Games such as these are seen as ways of wasting time. Brueghel has a picture devoted to the theme.
The third game was omitted here and inserted later in the list.
‘Banquet’ provides a pun with banc and to banquet is made to mean to stretch out on a bench.]
Then while heavily gnawing through a few scraps of a grace, he would wash his hands in an overspill of cool wine, pick his teeth with a pig’s trotter, and chat merrily with his people. Then the baize was spread out and on it were deployed masses of cards and dice and game-boards. And then he would play at:
flush,
discard,
primero,
trumps,
heads-or-tails,
triumphs,
Picardy spades,
[poor little girl,
sneak,
first-to-get-ten,]+
spinets,
one-and-thirty,
[post and pair,
three hundred points wins,
wretches,]
la condemnata,
guess-the-card,
the malcontent,
[lansquenets’ gamble,]+
the cuckold,
‘let him speak that hath it’,
one, two, buckle my shoe,
matrimony,
I’ve got it,
opinions,
‘who doth one does t’other’,
sequences,
mimic-the-card,
Spanish tarot,
the winner loses,
be diddled,
[tortures,]
snore,
click,
honours,
the morra,
chess,
the fox,
ludo,
cows,
whites,
chance,
triple-dice,
knuckle-bones,
nick-knack,
lurch,
little queen,
sbaraglino,
tric-trac,
tables all,
dice-and-domino tables,
‘I deny gosh’,
huff,
draughts,
pouting,
‘Come first, come second’,
toss-the-coin-near-the-knife,
keys,
shove-a-ha’penny,
odds or evens,
heads or tails,
[Normandy knucklebones,]+
dibs,
croquet,
[Hunt the slipper,
owl-bird’s cry,
cuddle the hare,
snakes,
cast the jack to the fore,
hopping magpies,
horns, horn upon my head,
the cow and the fiddle,
screech-owls,
I tease but don’t you laugh,
tickles,
tickly, tickly your ass’s foot,
ca’ the sheep,
Gee up little donkey,
I sit me down,
gold-dust, gold-dust on your beard,
wild apples,
pull out the spit,
shitty yew-twigs,
friend, lend me your sack,
toss me the ram’s ball,
king of the castle,
best figs from Marseilles,
chase the fly round the rick,
stop thief,
flay the fox,+
sledges,
trip her up,
sell your oats,
all in a ring,
blow the coal,
hide and seek,
judge alive, judge dead,
pull the irons from the fire,
fake villein,
quail beads,
the hunchbacked Doctor,
at Saint Found-it,
pinch-me-tight,
head-stands,
rumble bum,
skip in the ring,
put piggy into its sty,
the world upside down,
building-tricks,]
short staves,
cast-the-disk,
chuck the ball,
snuff-the-candle,
nine-pins,
skittles,
[feather-sticks,
cast spikes towards Rome,
shitty-face,
angel-nard,]+
biassed skittles,
quoits,
bowl-on-a-green,
cast at the stump,
shuttlecock,
hide-and-seek,
pass-round-the-pot,
as-I-will,
tops and whips,
tiddlywinks,
short-straw,
rackets,
hide-away,
piquet,
pétanque,
[open up, some pages are blank,
ferret it out,]
cock-shy,
knock-down-in-a-ring,
marbles,
whirligigs,
humming-tops,
monk-tops,
tenebri,
dismay-me,
hard-ball,
to-and-fro,
arse-over-tip,
ride a cock-horse,
smudge the face of Saint Cosme,
[brown snails,
catch him with no green in May,
fair and fine speed Lent away,]+
hand-stands,
leap frog,
all-in-a-line,
top and tail and fart-in-the-throat,
‘I’m a piggy-back knight
, give me my lance’,
see-saws,
catch as catch can, the thirteenth man,
[birch-trees,]+
swat that fly,
Dainty, dainty to the cow:
Madame’s near the fire by now,
whisper it round,
nine hands in a pile,
nut case,
broken bridges,
bridled booby,
hopscotch,
battledore and shuttlecock,
blind man’s bluff,
‘Where do you come from, my good chap?’
play the spy,
toads,
lacrosse,
pounding-sticks,
billy-goat, jump the ball,
queens,
‘what’s my track?’
odds or evens?
[cherry-stones,
shake, shake, thy little dead hand,
punch up the conk,]+
‘Lady, lady, I’ll wash your hair’,
sieve us all, to and fro,
here comes the farmer to sow his oats,
greedy-guts,
windmills,
eeny, meeny, mainy, mo,
head over heels,
give-him-a-bumping,
ploughman, ploughman, plough the field,
go it alone,
scrub him like mad,
‘Carry me, carry me, like a dead beast’,
up, up the ladder, hand upon hand,
piggy is dead,
salty bums,
fly away, pigeon,
pass the parcel, group to group,
jump, jump, over the bush,
cross tag,
hide and seek,
farthing, farthing, up your bum,
‘Hidden in the buzzard’s nest. Where? Where? Where?’
run the gauntlet,
cock-a-snook,
blowing raspberries,
pestle the mustard,
[mind your legs,
trip me over,
darts,
leap-frog,
crows,
off the ground,
here comes the chopper,
tweaking noses,]
peck his nose,
pinch his conk.
And so, playing hard and passing [and sifting] time, it was right to have a little drink – eleven quarts apiece – and, immediately after, a banquet – that is, a stretch-out for a good two-or-three-hours’ nap, on a good banc or a lovely deep bed, thinking no evil and speaking no evil.
Gargantua and Pantagruel Page 29