Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  Some evoked Saint Barbara;

  others, Saint George;

  others, Saint Touch-me-not;

  others, Our Lady of Cunault, of Lorette-en-Bretagne, of Good Tidings, of La Lenou and of Rivière.

  Some made vows to Saint James;

  others, to the Holy Shroud at Chambéry, but it got so well burnt three months later that they could never save one thread of it;

  others to the one at Cadouin;

  others, to Saint-Jean-d’Angély, to Saint Mesmes of Chinon, to Saint Martin of Candes, to Saint Clouaud of Cinais, to the relics at Javrezay and to thousands of other good little saints.

  Some died without speaking: [others spoke without dying; some died speaking; others spoke dying.] Others loudly cried, ‘Confession! Confession! I confess! Have mercy upon us! Into thy hands I commend…’

  So great were the cries of the wounded that the Prior of the abbey came out with all his monks, who, when they perceived those poor wretches scattered mortally wounded amongst the vines, confessed a few of them. But while the priests were dallying over confessions, the little monklings ran up to where Frère Jean stood and asked how they could help. He told them to slit the throats of the ones lying on the ground. So, leaving their great capes on the nearest trellised vine, they began to slit the throats of the men he had already wounded, and finished them off. Do you know with what tools? Why, beautiful gouvets (which are those small short-bladed knives which little boys in our part of the world use to shuck walnuts).

  Then, wielding the shaft of his Cross, he captured the breach made by the enemy. Some of the Monklings carried off the ensigns and standards to their cells to turn into garters. But when the men who had made their confession tried to get out through that breach, the Monk knocked them down, saying, Those who confess, repent and receive absolution go straight to paradise – as straight as a sickle or the track to La Faye!

  And thus by his doughtiness were discomfited all those of that army who had entered into that close, to the number of thirteen thousand six hundred and twenty-two [, not counting the women and children, as is always understood]. Never did Maugis the hermit (of whom it is written in the Four Sons of Aymon), do such valiant deeds against the Saracens with his pilgrim’s staff as were done that day against the foe by the Monk with the shaft of the Cross.

  How Picrochole stormed La Roche-Clermault, and of the caution and reluctance of Grandgousier about going to war

  CHAPTER 26

  [Becomes Chapter 28.

  The Monk’s shaft of the Cross with its faded fleurs-de-lys is symbolic of the good old days when king and Church fought for the right.

  As an admirer of Erasmus, Rabelais makes his giants first try the ways of moderation and appeasement.]

  Now while the Monk, as we have related, skirmished with those who had broken into the close, Picrochole dashed precipitately with his men across the ford at Vède and assailed La Roche-Clermault, where he met with no resistance whatsoever, and since night had already fallen he decided to billet both himself and his men on the town and to cool his excitable choler.

  Come morning he took the bulwarks and the castle by storm, thoroughly strengthened the ramparts and provided the necessary munitions, intending to make the castle his redoubt if attacked from elsewhere since the place was strong both by art and by nature on account of its site and position.

  Now let us leave them there and return to our good fellow Gargantua (who is in Paris, keenly engaged in the pursuit of good literature and athletic exercises) and to that good old fellow Grandgousier, his father, who, after supper, is warming his balls by a lovely, big, bright fire, waiting for his chestnuts to roast, drawing on the hearth with a stick (burnt at one end and used to poke the fire) while telling to his wife and family fair tales of days gone by.

  At that very hour one of the shepherds, called Pillot, who had been guarding the vines made his way to him and told him in full of the pillaging and excesses being wrought within his lands and domains by Picrochole, the king of Lerné; how he had pillaged and sacked the whole country and laid it waste, except for the close at Seuilly which Frère Jean des Entommeures – greatly to his honour – had saved, and how the said king was at present in La Roche-Clermault where he and his men were diligently digging themselves in.

  ‘O dear! O dear!’ said Grandgousier, ‘What is all this, good people? Am I dreaming, or can what I am told be true? Picrochole, my old friend, bound to me by every bond of time, family and fellowship, comes and attacks me! Who is driving him? Who is goading him on? Who has given him such counsel? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! My God and Saviour, help me, inspire me and counsel me what to do! I declare, I swear before you – may your favour be ever upon me! – that I have never offended him, never harmed his people, never pillaged his lands. On the contrary, I have supported him with men, money, goodwill and advice whenever I knew it to be to his advantage.

  ‘That he should thus come and affront me can therefore only be through the Evil Spirit. God so Good, you know my heart, for from you can nothing be hid. Should he have gone raving mad and if you have sent him to me to rehabilitate his mind, vouchsafe me the power and knowledge to restore him to the yoke of your holy will by teaching him a good lesson.

  ‘Oh! Oh! Oh! My good people, my friends and faithful vassals, must I burden you with aiding me? Alas! From now on my old age sought nothing but rest, and all my life I have striven for nothing but peace. But I see that I must now load armour on to my weak, weary and wretched shoulders; must grasp lance and mace with my shaky hands in order to succour and protect my poor subjects. Reason so decrees: for by their labour I am maintained and by their sweat I am fed, I, my children and my household.

  ‘Yet I shall nevertheless never go to war before trying all the arts and ways of peace. Of that I am resolved.’

  And so he convoked his Council and explained how matters stood. It was concluded that a man of wisdom be despatched to Picrochole to find out why he had thus suddenly abandoned his repose and invaded lands over which he had no right whatsoever; in addition that Gargantua and his men be summoned to save and defend their country in its hour of need. Grandgousier was entirely pleased and ordered it to be done.

  Whereupon, within the hour, he despatched his manservant, the Basque, to summon Gargantua at all speed, having written him the following letter:

  The purport of the letter which Grandgousier wrote to Gargantua

  CHAPTER 27

  [Becomes Chapter 29.

  The letter, which starts off without any greeting, preaches the pacific virtues admired by Erasmus. That stratagems and ruses may be legitimately used in a just war was a moral tenet held by many, including Sir Thomas More in Utopia.

  That free-will needs to be ‘guided’ by grace is an Augustinian doctrine emphasized by evangelicals and moderate reformers.

  The adage on war in the first paragraph is taken from Cicero, Of Duties, 1, 22, 76.)]

  ‘Your keenness for your studies would have required me not to recall you from your philosophical leisure for some long time yet, had not the arrogance of our friends and long-term allies now shattered the security of my old age. But since it is my fated destiny to be disturbed by those on whom I had most relied, I am obliged to summon you home to defend the persons and property enfeoffed to you by natural law. For, as arms are weak without, if counsel dwells not within, so too, vain is study and counsel futile if they are not virtuously practised at the opportune moment and put into effect.

  ‘My intention is not to provoke but appease; not to attack but defend; not to make conquests but to protect my faithful subjects as well as my hereditary lands, which Picrochole has hostilely invaded without cause or occasion, daily furthering his mad enterprise with outrages unbearable to free-born persons.

  ‘I have set myself the duty of moderating his tyrannous choler by offering him everything which I believed might satisfy him; several times I have sent friendly envoys to him to learn why he felt himself to be outraged, by what and by whom; but I have h
ad no reply from him except wilful defiance and a claim to the right to do what he pleases in my domains. From which I learnt that God Eternal had abandoned him to the rudder of his own freewill and private judgement, which cannot be other than evil unless continually guided by divine grace, and that he has sent him here to me under such grievous auspices so that I may restrict him to his duties and bring him back to his senses.

  ‘Therefore, my most dear Son, come quickly home – as soon as you can after reading this letter – to succour not so much me (which you should do anyway out of natural piety) as your own people whom by reason you should save and protect. The feat will be accomplished with the least possible shedding of blood, and if at all possible we shall, by using the most expedient devices and the wiles and ruses of war, save all those souls and send them back happily to their homes.

  ‘Dearest son: may the peace of Christ our Redeemer be with you.

  ‘Greet Ponocrates, Gymnaste and Eudemon for me.

  ‘This twentieth day of September:

  ‘Your father,

  ‘Grandgousier.’

  How Ulrich Gallet was despatched to Picrochole

  CHAPTER 28

  [Becomes Chapter 30.

  Appeasement is rightly tried, but we know that it will fail.]

  Having dictated that letter and signed it, Grandgousier ordered Ulrich Gallet (his Master of Petitions, a man discreet and wise, whose virtue and good counsel he had already tried in diverse contentious affairs) to appear before Picrochole to warn him of what they had resolved.

  This good man Gallet left that very hour, and having crossed the ford asked the miller how things were going for Picrochole. He received the reply that Picrochole’s men had left him neither cock nor hen and that they had shut themselves up in La Roche-Clermault; he advised him strongly against proceeding any further for fear of their look-outs: their madness was beyond bounds.

  Gallet readily believed it and lodged overnight with the miller.

  Next morning he proceeded with his herald to the castle gate and requested the guards to arrange for him to speak to the king in his own interest. When the message was reported to the king he would in no wise consent to open the gates for him but betook himself to the ramparts and said to the ambassador, ‘What news do you bring? What have you got to say?’

  At which the ambassador spoke as follows:

  The harangue delivered by Gallet before Picrochole

  CHAPTER 29

  [Becomes Chapter 31.

  Ciceronian rhetoric on subjects dear of humanists. Renaissance strategists and statesmen had to grapple with the possibility that their enemies were deceived not only by ambition or greed but also by the devil, that lying spirit who works through deceptive apparitions and misleading illusions, against which the wise and prayerful Christian must be ever on his guard.]

  ‘No more rightful cause of grief can ever be engendered amongst human beings than when, from the place from which they justly expected graciousness and kindness, they receive pain and injury. So not without cause (yet without right-reason) several people, having met such an event, have found the indignity of it harder to bear than life itself, and when they were unable to put things right by force or ingenuity have cut themselves off from the light of life.

  ‘It is no wonder then if my master, King Grandgousier, has been overcome by great displeasure and is perturbed in his mind by your insane and hostile incursion. The wonder would have been if he had not been disturbed by the unparalleled atrocities committed by you and your men against his lands and subjects, in which not one example of inhumanity was omitted.

  ‘That was grievous enough to him in itself because of the heart-felt affection – which no man could exceed – with which he has [always] cherished his subjects but more grievous still by human judgement, in that those heinous wrongs were done by your men and by you who, with your forefathers, had conceived for him and all his ancestors, as far back into ancient days as any can remember, a friendship held until now, by all together, to be sacred and which you have so well guarded, maintained and kept inviolate that not only he and his subjects but the barbarous nations of Poitou, Brittany and Le Mans, and those dwelling beyond the Isles of Canarre and Isabella, have reckoned it as easy to bring down the heavens or to raise the deeps above the clouds as to unshackle that alliance; and in their own warlike projects they so greatly feared it that never did they dare to exasperate, provoke or harm the one for fear of the other.

  ‘And there is more to it. That sacred amity has so filled our heavens that few of those who dwell nowadays anywhere on the mainland and the isles of the ocean have not ambitiously aspired to join in it, through pacts with conditions drawn up by you yourself, valuing a confederation with you as much as their own lands and dominions. With the result that, in living memory, not one prince or league has been so presumptuous or overweening as to dare to move – I do not say against your lands but against those of your confederates.

  ‘And if through rash counsel they have attempted to introduce some novelty, the name and terms of your alliance, once heard, led them quickly to abandon their enterprises.

  ‘So what frenzy moves you now, having broken the whole alliance, trampled all amity underfoot, transgressed every law, hostilely to invade his lands without having been harmed, exasperated or provoked by him or his people? Where is faith? Where is law? Where is rationality? Where is humanity? Where is fear of God? Do you really think those atrocities are hidden from the immortal Spirits and from our sovereign God who is the just requiter of our enterprises? If you do so think, then you are deceiving yourself: for all things shall come to his judgement.

  ‘Can fated destinies or astral influences be seeking to put an end to your peace and quiet? Thus all things have their ends and periods, and when they have reached their highest point they are sent tumbling down, for in that state they cannot long endure. Such is the end of those who cannot temper their fortune and prosperity by reason and moderation.

  ‘But if you were so fated, and if your happiness and quietness must end, had it to be by disturbing my king by whom you were established in your power? If the house of Picrochole had to collapse, must it collapse on to the forecourts of him who had enhanced it?

  ‘The matter so exceeds the bounds of reason and is so abhorrent to common sense that it can scarcely be grasped by human understanding and will remain unbelievable to foreigners until the deed, duly certified and attested, brings them to realize that nothing is holy or sacred to those who have broken free from God and reason in order to follow their own perverted passions.

  ‘If some wrong had perhaps been done by us against your subjects and domains; if favour had perhaps been shown by us to such as wish you ill; if we had perhaps not aided you in your affairs; if your name or honour had perhaps been injured by us; or, to put it better, if the lying Spirit, striving to draw you towards evil, had perhaps, by deceiving apparitions or misleading illusions, put it into your mind that we had done anything unworthy of our ancient amity, you ought first to have enquired after the truth of it, and next rebuked us for it; then we would have so satisfied you that you would have had cause for contentment.

  ‘But (O God Eternal!) what sort of enterprise is yours! Do you want to pillage and ravage my master’s kingdom like a perfidious tyrant? Have you found him so craven and insensible that he would not – or so lacking in men, money, counsel and military skill that he could not – resist your iniquitous assaults?

  ‘Be off at once. Spend all day tomorrow withdrawing to your lands without any riot or violence on the way. Pay one thousand golden bezants for the damage inflicted upon these lands, one half of which you shall hand over tomorrow, the other half on the coming Ides of May, leaving meanwhile as hostages le Duc Treadmill, le Duc Shortarse and le Duc de Little-trash, together with the Prince of Weals and Viscount Flea-pit.’

  How Grandgousier, to purchase peace, made good the fouaces

  CHAPTER 30

  [Becomes Chapter 32.

  A
ppeasement is to be tried even when the concessions are extreme. If appeasement fails, skilled battle is to be joined under God.

  The insanely choleric Picrochole lives up to his name.

  The tone and the ideas owe much to Lucian.]

  With those words that good man Gallet fell silent, but Picrochole returned no answer to his address save, ‘Come and get ‘em! Come and get ‘em! My lads have got fine balls and pestles! They’ll pound you up a few fouaces all right!’ So Gallet made his way back to Grandgousier, whom he found on his knees, bareheaded, bent over in a little corner of his closet, praying God to vouchsafe to mollify the choler of Picrochole and bring him to his senses without resorting to force. When he saw that his good man had come back, he asked:

  ‘Ah, my friend, my friend; what news do you bring me?’

  ‘Nothing but disorder,’ said Gallet. ‘That man is quite out of his mind and forsaken by God.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Grandgousier, ‘but my friend, what cause does he proffer for his excesses?’

  ‘He expounded no cause to me whatsoever,’ said Gallet, ‘except that he said in his choler something about fouaces. I wonder whether anyone has done some outrage to his fouace-bakers?’

  ‘Before deciding what to do,’ said Grandgousier, ‘I intend to get to the bottom of it.’

  So he sent to find out about the matter and discovered that it was indeed true that a few fouaces had been forcibly taken from Picrochole’s subjects; that Marquet had suffered a blow on the head from a cudgel; that all had nevertheless been properly paid for, and that the said Marquet had injured Forgier first by whipping him about the legs.

  It seemed to Grandgousier’s entire Council that he should defend himself by main force. Despite which, he said, ‘Since it is but a matter of a few fouaces, I shall try to satisfy him, as I am extremely reluctant to go to war.’