Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  Once awake, he would shake his ears a bit, during which cool wine was brought in and there he would drink away better than ever. Ponocrates protested that it was a bad way of life to drink after sleeping. ‘It is,’ said Gargantua, ‘a true life of the Fathers! I naturally sleep salty: sleep has saved me all that ham!’

  Then he would begin to study, just a little, with his rosary-beads to the fore, and so as to despatch them more properly he would mount an ancient mule which had served nine kings. And so, doddering his head and mumbling with his lips, he would go and watch a rabbit caught in a snare.

  On his return he made his way to the kitchen to find out what roast was on the spit. And, by my conscience, he had a very good supper, readily inviting round a few tipplers amongst his neighbours, and, each one downing drink for drink, they told each other tales of things old and new. His intimates included the seigneurs Du Fou, de Gourville, [de Grignault] and de Marigny.

  Then, after dinner, out would come his lovely wooden Gospels – that is to say an abundance of gaming-boards – on which to play:

  flush,

  one-two-three,

  or (to cut things short) double or quits.

  Or else he would be off to see the local girlies to have little suppers amongst them, with collations and late-night snacks. After which he would enjoy unbridled sleep until eight in the morning.

  How Gargantua was given his basic education by Ponocrates with such discipline that he never lost an hour of his time

  CHAPTER 21

  [Becomes Chapter 23.

  Rabelais may well have in mind the concern of François I to find a princely way of educating his sons once they had served as hostages after the defeat of the French at Pavia.

  The name of the ‘learned physician… Seraphin Calobarsy’ is an anagram of Phrançois Rabelais, who thereby directly engages his authority in this chapter. In ‘42 he changed that name to ‘Maître Théodore’ since the name Seraphin Calobarsy had been pirated by an unknown compiler of shoddy almanacs.

  In Greek Theodore means ‘gift of God’; Anagnostes, ‘reader’; and Rhizotome, ‘root-cutter’. Since Gargantua had been literally driven mad, he is first purged by Dr Rabelais with hellebore, the Classical remedy for insanity.

  The medical adage in the first sentence is straight from the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, which Rabelais edited in 1533 and republished in 1543.

  The education of the Renaissance prince is here set in Rabelais’ home province of Touraine. In later editions he changes it to Paris. To do so he replaces ‘the Loire at Montsoreau’ by ‘the Seine’, omits completely the reference to the ‘lake at Savigny’ and turns ‘Bessé’ into ‘Saint-Victor’, and ‘Narsay’ into ‘Montmartre’.

  There were famous tennis-courts at Le Braque.

  The rare word ‘poppism’ is taken straight from the Latin. It means a clucking sound made to encourage a horse.]

  Once Ponocrates had taken cognizance of Gargantua’s vicious manner of living, he determined to introduce him to letters by a different method, but he let things go on for the first few days considering that Nature will not endure sudden changes without a strong reaction.

  To give his task a better start he begged a learned physician of those days called Seraphin Calobarsy to consider whether it was possible to set Gargantua back on to a better path; he, according to the canons of medicine, purged him with Anticyran hellebore, and by means of that medicament he also cleansed all squalor and corrupt tendencies from his mind. Ponocrates also made him forget by that method everything he had learnt under his old tutors, as Timotheus did for any of his pupils who had studied under other musicians.

  To do things better, Ponocrates introduced him to the company of the learned men who were present, out of emulation with whom there grew in Gargantua a mind and desire to study differently and improve himself.

  Ponocrates then set him such a course of study that he never wasted one hour in any day but devoted his entire time to letters and honourable learning.

  Gargantua therefore woke up at about four a.m.

  While he was being rubbed down, a passage of Holy Scripture was read out to him, loud and clear, with a delivery appropriate to the matter. A young page was appointed to do it: a native of Basché called Anagnostes. Following the theme and content of the lesson, Gargantua would often devote himself to revering, worshipping, supplicating and adoring God in his goodness, whose majesty and marvellous judgements were revealed by the reading.

  He would then go to the privy to excrete his natural digestions. There his tutor would go over what had been read, elucidating the more obscure and difficult points for him.

  On the way back they would consider the state of the heavens. Was it as they had noted the night before? Into which signs were the Sun and the Moon entering that day?

  Once that was done, he was dressed, combed, brushed, perfumed and made elegant, during which time yesterday’s lessons were gone over with him. He would recite them by heart and base on them some practical matters concerning our human condition; they might extend it to some two or three hours but normally stopped once he was fully dressed.

  Then he would be read to, for three solid hours.

  That done, they would go outdoors, still conferring together on the subjects of those readings, and enjoy sports in Le Grand Braque or in the meadows; there they played ball or royal-tennis, [or three-men quoits,] nobly exercising their bodies as they had previously exercised their minds.

  Their games were all played freely, for they stopped whenever they wanted to, normally when they were tired or all of a sweat. At which point they were thoroughly sponged and rubbed down; they would change their shirts and gently stroll over to see whether dinner was ready.

  While waiting, they would clearly and eloquently repeat some maxims remembered from their lessons. Meanwhile Sir Appetite would come, and they would opportunely sit down to table.

  At the beginning of the meal a pleasant tale of ancient deeds of chivalry would be read until he had taken his wine. Then (if thought fit) the reading would be resumed or else they would enter upon enjoyable discussions, talking (during the first few months) of the qualities, properties, efficacy and nature of all the things that had been served up at table: bread, wine, water, salt, flesh, fish, fruit, herbs and roots, as well as how to prepare them. In doing so they quickly learnt all the relevant passages in Pliny, Athenaeus, Dioscorides, [Julius Pollux,] Galen, Porphyry, Oppian, Polybius, Heliodorus, Aristotle, Aelian and others. When talking about such things, they would have the books of those authors brought to the table for greater certainty. And he so fully and totally kept in his memory what was said in them that at that time there was no physician who knew half as much as he did.

  Afterwards they would discuss the lessons read that morning, finishing off their meal with some quince jelly, picking their teeth with a sliver of mastic-wood, washing their hands and eyes in clear fresh water and rendering thanks to God with some beautiful canticles in praise of his bounty and loving kindness.

  That completed, the cards would be brought out – not for play but to learn from them hundreds of little delights and novelties all of which derived from arithmetic.

  By such means he developed a passion for the science of numbers, and every day after dinner and supper he would pass his time as pleasantly with it as he once had done with dice and playing-cards. Eventually he had mastered so much arithmetic (pure and applied) that Tunstal the Englishman, who had amply written on the subject, truly confessed that in comparison with him his own knowledge was but Double Dutch – and not only in that but also in other mathematical sciences such as geometry, astronomy and music; for while waiting for their meal to be concocted and digested they would make hundreds of amusing little geometrical shapes and figures or practise the laws of astronomy. After that they enjoyed singing music in four or five parts, or else on a set theme as it suited their voices.

  As regards musical instruments, he learnt to play the lute, the spinet, the harp, both t
he traverse and the nine-holed flutes, the viola and the sackbut. Having spent one hour and completed his digestion, he would purge himself of his natural excreta and apply himself again to his principal studies for three hours or more, as much going over again that morning’s readings as getting on with the book they had started or practising writing, forming and clearly making the letters of the ancient Roman script.

  That done, they went outdoors, taking with them a young nobleman from Touraine called Gymnaste, the equerry, who showed him the art of chivalry. So, changing his clothing, Gargantua would mount a charger, a war-horse, a Spanish jennet [, a barbary horse] and then a light horse, which he would put through a hundred paces, making it jump, leap over a ditch, take a fence and perform tight caracoles to right and left.

  There he did not ‘break a lance’, for it is the greatest lunacy in the world to say, ‘I have broken ten lances in tilt-yard or battle!’ – a carpenter could do as well! – but the glory is worthwhile when, with one single lance, you have broken ten of your enemies. So with his lance, sharp, fresh and strong, he would batter down a portal, pierce some armour, uproot a tree, spike a ring and spear an armed saddle, a hauberk or a steel gauntlet. All of which he did armed head to foot. As for riding in step to the trumpet and making little poppisms for his horse, none could do it better than he. (Why, that acrobat from Ferrara was but a chimp in comparison!)

  He was singularly accomplished in leaping smartly from horse to horse without touching the ground – on what were called ‘vaulting horses’ – jumping into the saddle from either side, without a stirrup but lance in hand, and directing his horse at will without using the bridle. Such accomplishments are of service in the arts of war.

  Another time he would practise with the battle-axe, which he would so supplely brandish and crash down that he was by any standard an acknowledged knight-at-arms in the field or before any ordeal.

  Then he flourished the pike, made thrusts with a two-handed sword, a bastard sword, a Spanish rapier, a dagger or a poniard, with armour, without armour, or with a buckler, cape or small targe.

  He hunted the stag, the roebuck, the bear, the deer, the wild-boar, the hare, the partridge, the pheasant, the bustard. He played with the weighted ball, sending it high in the air with fist or foot. He wrestled, ran and leapt, not doing any hop-skip-and-jumps, one-footed springs or German leaps (for, as Gymnaste said, such feats are of no use in war) but leaping over a ditch at a single bound, sailing over a hedge and springing six paces up the side of a wall, thus breaking a window at the height of a lance.

  He would swim in deep water, on belly, back or side, using his whole body or his feet alone, or else (keeping one hand in the air while holding a book aloft without letting it get wet) swim across the Loire at Montsoreau, dragging his cloak behind him with his teeth like Julius Caesar.

  Then, by main force, he would haul himself up into a boat by one hand, immediately dive head-first back into the water, sound the depths and plunge deep through the rocky hollows and chasms of Lake Savigny. He would turn the boat about, guide it, manoeuvre it quickly then slowly downstream and upstream, keeping it steady in a flash-lock and steering it with one hand while fencing with a long oar; he would spread the sail, clamber up the mast by the shrouds, scramble over the yard-arms, set the compass, pull tight the bowlines and hold fast to the rudder.

  Coming straight out of the water, he would dash up a steep mountain and as readily come down again, climb up into trees like a cat, leap from tree to tree like a squirrel and hack down great branches like a second Milo.

  By means of two keen-pointed daggers and two reliable marlinspikes he would clamber up on to the roof of a house like a rat and then leap off it, so composing his limbs that he was in no wise hurt by the fall.

  He would hurl the spear, the weight, the stone, the javelin, the stake, and the halbert, bend tight the bow and put his back into readying the great rack-bent cross-bows by the strength of his thighs; he would aim the harquebus, set up the cannon and shoot at the butts and the target-parrots upwards from below, downwards from above, straight ahead, from the side, and finally behind him like the Parthians.

  They would tie him a rope, hanging down from some high tower: he would climb up hand over hand and then slide down so quick and sure that you could never have outdone him on a flat meadow. They would set up a great pole fixed between the two trees: he would hang down from it by his arms and move back and forth, hand over hand, touching nothing with his feet, so quickly that you could not have caught up with him by running full pelt.

  To exercise his thorax and his lungs he would yell like the devil. On one occasion I heard him, from the gates of Bessé calling Eudemon at the fountain of Narsay. Stentor never had such voice at the battle for Troy.

  And to tone up his muscles there were made for him two great leaden weights which he called halteres; each of them weighed some eight thousand seven hundred hundredweights. He lifted them off the ground, one in each hand, and raised them high above his head, holding them there without moving for three-quarters of an hour and more at a stretch, which shows inimitable strength. He would play martial-barriers against the strongest, and when the tussle came he would so sturdily stand his ground that (like Milo of old) he would expose himself to the strongest to see whether they could make him budge.21

  He would also imitate Milo in holding a pomegranate, which he gave up to anyone who could take it from him.

  Having thus spent his time, he would be rubbed down, cleaned up and given a change of clothing. Then he would leisurely walk back, passing through meadows or other verdant places where they would examine the trees and plants, comparing them with the books of Ancients who had written about them, such as Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Marinus, Pliny, Nicander, Macer and Galen, and carrying home great handfuls of specimens which were the responsibility of a young page called Rhizotome, as were the mattocks, diggers, hoes, spades, pruning-shears and other tools required for gardening and serious botanizing. Once they were back in their lodgings, while dinner was being prepared, they would go over some of the passages which had been read and then sit down to table.

  It should be noted that, whilst his dinners were sober and frugal, since he ate no more than was necessary to stop his stomach from barking, his suppers were copious and generous, for he took as much as was needed to nourish and sustain him. That is the true diet, prescribed by the Art of good and reliable medicine, despite piles of silly physicians who advise the opposite, having been broken in in the workshop of the Arabs.22

  During that meal they would go on as long as they wanted to with the same reading as at dinner; the rest of the time would be taken up with good conversation, entirely learned and useful.

  Once grace was said, they would devote themselves to choral singing, to playing musical instruments or else to those lighter pastimes which use cards, dice or tumblers. And there they would remain, making good cheer and enjoying themselves, sometimes until bedtime; on other occasions they would drop in on gatherings of learned men or on folk who had visited foreign lands. Before retiring, once it was completely dark, they would go to the most open place in their lodgings to study the face of the sky, noting the comets (if there were any), the constellations and the locations, aspects, oppositions and conjunctions of the heavenly bodies. Then, in the manner of the Pythagoreans, he briefly recapitulated with his tutor every thing he had read, seen, learnt, done or heard throughout the livelong day.

  Then they would pray to God the Creator, worshipping him and again confirming their trust in him, magnifying him for his immense goodness, rendering him thanks for all that is past and committing themselves to his divine goodness23 for all that is to come.

  That done, they would go to bed.

  How Gargantua spent his time when it was rainy

  CHAPTER 22

  [Becomes Chapter 24.

  ‘Apotherapy’ is a term which goes back to Galen and means the restoration of an athlete after exercises; Rabelais uses it to mean indoor exerc
ises to make up for those which cannot be done outdoors. ‘Tali’, as a Classical game newly rediscovered, was greatly esteemed by many humanists, not however as a means of divination. The short work of Leonicenus on the tali appeared in his Opuscula (Paris, 1530). The game is played with four dice made from knucklebones. That Rabelais can claim friendship with Janus Lascaris is revealing. Lascaris, a refugee from Constantinople, taught Budé Greek and helped Erasmus with his Adages. He had contacts at the highest level in France and Italy. He died in 1534. The alleged experiment of separating wine from water with an ivy-wood goblet is recommended by Cato in De re rustica, 3, 52, and Pliny, Natural History, 115.]

  Should the air happen to be intemperate and full of rain, the whole period up to dinner would be spent as usual, except that a good bright fire was lit to correct the humidity of the air; but after dinner instead of their exercises they would stay indoors [and by way of apotherapy enjoy bundling up hay, chopping and sawing up wood, and threshing sheaves in the barn; then] studying the arts of painting and sculpture or reviving the ancient game of tali according to what Leonicus wrote about it and as our good friend Lascaris plays it: while they were playing they would recall passages in Ancient authors in which mention was made of their game or metaphors drawn from it.24

  Or else they would go and see how metals are extruded or artillery-pieces cast; or else they would go and visit the jewellers, goldsmiths, gem-cutters or alchemists and minters of coins, or the weavers of fair tapestries, cloth-workers, velvet-makers, clock-makers, looking-glass-makers, printers, organ-builders, dyers and other similar craftsmen; they gave pourboires to everyone, noting the skills and weighing the originality of those trades.

  They went to hear public lectures, formal legal proceedings, the interrogations, declamations and pleas of noble barristers, and the sermons of evangelical preachers.

  He would make his way through rooms and halls prepared for fencing and try out every kind of weapon, proving to all that he knew as much or indeed more about fencing as they did.