Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  ‘Yes I do, most willingly’ replied Frère Jean, ‘out of affection for you, my little bollock, for I love you with all my liver!’

  They set out that hour and, arriving at the poetic abode, found the good old man in the throes of death, with a joyful demeanour, an open expression and a radiant look. Panurge greeted him and, simply as a gift, placed on his leech-finger a gold ring with an oriental sapphire set in it, large and beautiful. Then, in imitation of Socrates, he offered him a fair white cockerel, which, as soon as it was put down on the bed, raised its head, shook its feathers with great delight, and shrilly crowed. That done, Panurge courteously begged him to speak and expound his judgement on the problem of his projected marriage. The good old man ordered ink, pen and paper to be brought in. All was promptly provided. Whereupon he wrote as follows:

  Take a wife and take her not.

  Take her, there is good in view.

  Take her not and it is true

  You will find a measured lot.

  Gallop, and yet merely trot.

  Backwards go yet forwards too:

  Take her do: take her in…

  Fast, but eat a double lot;

  Undo what has been tied anew;

  Tie it again, retie it, do;

  Wish life and death to be her lot:

  Take her do: take her n…

  He then put it in their hands and said to them:

  ‘Go, my sons, under the protection of the great God in Heaven and bother me no more with this nor any other matter whatsoever. This day, the very last of May and of me, I have chased from my home, with great labour and difficulty, a rabble of wicked, filthy, pestilential creatures: black, parti-coloured, dun, white, ash-grey and motley, who would not let me die at my ease, and who, with their fraudulent goadings, harpyish grasping, hornet-like solicitations fashioned in the forge of some insatiable greed, call me away from the sweet thoughts in which I found repose, contemplating, seeing, and already touching and tasting that joy and felicity which God in his goodness has prepared for his faithful elect in the life to come, our immortal state.

  ‘Decline from their ways: be not like unto them; trouble me no more, and, I beseech you, leave me in silence.’

  How Panurge pleads for the Order of the Friars Mendicant

  CHAPTER 22

  [An amusing, challenging chapter, one which would have aroused the ire of many censors. The chapter is markedly Erasmian and Lutheran in its tone and implications. Panurge is now all superstition and haunted by devils.

  That the grasping larvae about the death-bed of Raminagrobis were indeed variously garbed members of religious Orders seems clear from what Erasmus wrote in his Colloquy Funus (The Funeral). Epistemon’s ‘innocent’ and charitable interpretation of the larvae is perhaps analogous to Frère Jean’s interpretation of the enigma in the last words of Gargantua.

  Epistemon cites Tiresias from Erasmus, Adages, III, III, XXXV ‘A good sign, or a bad’.

  There is an important echo of the colloquy of Erasmus entitled ‘Fish-eating’.

  Towards the end of the chapter Rabelais risked a mild enough jest – which he was certainly not the first or last to make – by which he first printed asne (ass) as a feigned lapsus for âme (soul). Since the play on asne and âme is not possible in English, I have transposed ass to mole (with mole forming the lapsus for soul,). Rabelais later eliminated the jest and printed âme. He maintains in the Preliminary Epistle to the Fourth Book that it was only a misprint, attributable to the error of a careless printer.]

  Once he was out of the bedchamber of Raminagrobis, Panurge, as one utterly terrified, said:

  ‘By the might of God, I believe he’s an heretic: or else may the devil take me. He’s bad-mouthing those good mendicant Friars and the Dominicans, who constitute the two hemispheres of Christendom, through whose sententiously gyrating circunt-umbilico-vaginations – as though by two counterweights producing movements in the heavens – the [antonomastic asthenia of the] whole Roman Church, whenever she feels herself driven frantic by any gibbering of error or heresy, homocentrically flutters!

  ‘By all the devils, what have all those poor devils of Capuchins and Minims done to him? Are they not woeful enough already, poor devils! Are they not smoky and smelly enough already from wretchedness and disaster, those poor sods drawn out of Ichthyophagia?

  ‘Frère Jean, by your faith: is he in a state of salvation! He’s damned, by God like a serpent, he’s on his way to thirty thousand hod-loads of devils. Speaking ill of those good and valiant pillars of the Church! Is that what you call poetic inspiration? I can’t stand it! He’s villainously sinning by blaspheming against the religious orders. I’m greatly scandalized.’

  ‘I don’t care a jot,’ said Frère Jean. ‘They speak ill of all the world: if all the world speaks ill of them it in no ways bothers me! Let’s see what he wrote.’

  Panurge read attentively what the old man had written, then said to them:

  ‘He was rambling, the poor old soak. I forgive him, though. I think he’s approaching his end. Let’s go and write his epitaph.

  ‘After the answer he gave us I’m just about as wise as we bake ‘em! Listen to it, Epistemon, old chap. Is he decisive in his answers, do you think! By God, he’s a subtle sophist, born so, and full of ergos; I bet he’s a half-converted Jew!

  ‘Ox’s guts! How careful he is not to choose the wrong words. Whatever he says is bound to be right; his replies are all disjunctive propositions: it is enough for one part of them to be true. It’s worthy of Pathelin. By Santiago de Bressuire, is his race still thriving then?’

  ‘The great prophet Tiresias,’ replied Epistemon ‘made similar avowals at the beginning of all his divinations, stating clearly to all who came to consult him: “What I say will either happen, or not happen at all.” And such is the way of all wise prognosti-cators.’

  ‘Juno poked both his eyes out though,’ said Panurge.

  ‘True,’ replied Epistemon, ‘but that was out of malice because he’d given a better judgement than she did over the doubt proposed by Jupiter.’

  ‘But,’ said Panurge, ‘what the devil possessed Master Raminagrobis to make him – without any provocation, without any reason, without any cause – speak ill of these poor wretched and blessèd Fathers: Capuchins, Friars Minor and Minims? I’m deeply scandalized by it, I assure you, and cannot keep quiet about it. Grievously has he sinned. His mole has gone off to thirty thousand hamperfuls of devils.’

  ‘I do not follow you,’ replied Epistemon. ‘It’s you who greatly scandalize me, perversely applying to the Mendicant Friars what that good poet was saying about vermin, black, dun and so on. In my judgement he never intended so sophistical and fantastic an allegory. He was absolutely and literally alluding to fleas, bugs, flesh-worms, flies, mosquitoes and other such insects, some of which are black, others dun or ash-grey, others tanned or dusky, all of which are importunate, oppressive and bothersome, not only to the sick but also to the healthy and strong.

  ‘Perhaps he had some ascarids, stomach-worms or vermes in his body. Perhaps he suffered (as is common and usual in Egypt in the confines of the Sea of Erythraea) from a puncturing of the flesh of his arms or legs by the smaller speckled guinea-worm which the Arabs call meden.

  ‘You do evil to expound his words otherwise. You wrong that good poet by detraction, and the said Fathers by attributing such bad qualities to them. One should always interpret favourably whatever concerns one’s neighbour.’

  ‘Teach me to spot flies in milk!’ said Panurge. ‘He is, by God’s might, an heretic. I mean a formed heretic, a scabby heretic, an heretic as burnable as a pretty little clock.11 His mole is off to thirty thousand wagon-loads of devils. Know where? Golly, right under the close-stool of Proserpine, my friend, right inside that hellish basin where she discharges the faecal products of her clysters, to the left side of the Great Cauldron, six yards from the claws of Lucifer in the direction of Demo-gorgon.12 Ugh. Nasty specimen!’

  How Panurge ar
gues for a return to Raminagrobis

  CHAPTER 23

  [Panurge talks of the devil as never before. The propaganda against the formalities of contrition would have sounded Lutheran. The reference to the wife of the Provost of Orleans is to a real event: the local Franciscan friars hid a novice under the high altar who pretended to be the dead woman’s spirit. The trickery was discovered and became a public scandal. The feigned lapsus asne (ass) and âme (soul) is found in this chapter too, until it was ‘corrected’ by Rabelais. (Again it is transposed.)

  Flagellation was often ritually accompanied by the singing of Psalm 50 (51). The threatened flagellation here would be kept up from the first words of that Psalm, ‘Have mercy on me’, to the last words, ‘bullocks upon thine altar’.

  The ‘Doctor Subtilis’ was Duns Scotus.

  The reference to Aeneas and his descent to the underworld is to Aeneid, 6, 260 and context. Devils were said to fear the effects of sharp swords on the authority of Psellus, in his treatise On Daemons; ‘Such cuts hurt them, though they cannot wound them.’]

  ‘Let’s go back,’ said Panurge, continuing, ‘to admonish him about his salvation. Let’s go in the name – go in the might – of God. That will be a work of charity on our part. At least, if he loses his body and his life, let him not damn his mole. We will induce him to feel contrition for his sins and to beg pardon from the said most blessèd Fathers, both absent and present, and we will have it legally documented so that he mayn’t be declared an heretic after his death and damned, something those cowled Hobgoblins did to the wife of the Provost of Orleans. He must atone for his outrage by establishing for all the good monastical Fathers in all the convents of this province plenty of collections, plenty of Masses, plenty of obits and anniversaries.

  ‘And on the anniversary of his death they must all have their rations quintupled for all eternity; and may the huge flagon filled with the choicest wine trot from bench to bench along their tables, for the drones, lay brothers and begging brothers as much as for the priests and clerics, both novices and professed.

  ‘Thus shall he obtain pardon from God.

  ‘Ah! Ah! I am wronging myself, getting carried away by my own words. If ever I go back there may the devil take me! Might of God! His bed-chamber is already full of devils. I can hear them squabbling and having a devil of a quarrel amongst themselves over which will slurp up that Raminagrobitical soul and which will be the first to bring it to Lucifer’s lips straight from the spit.

  ‘Avaunt, foul fiends! I am not going to go. The devil take me if I do. Who knows: they might take tother for which, making off with poor old debtless Panurge in lieu of Raminagrobis! They often failed to get me when I sported yellow as a debtor. Avaunt, foul fiends! I am not going to go. I’m dying from a mad fit of funk. Fancy being amidst hungry devils, battling devils, functioning devils.

  ‘Avaunt, foul fiends! I bet you that not one Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite [, Capuchin] or Minim will go to his funeral – for the same misgivings! That’s wise of them. Besides, he left them nothing in his will. If I go there, may the devil take me! If he’s damned, he’s self-condemned. Why did he bad-mouth those good monastical Fathers? Why did he hound them out of his bed-chamber just when he had greatest need of their aid, of their devout prayers and holy exhortations? Why did he never bequeath to those poor wretches, who have nothing in this world but their lives, some alms, a little fodder and something to line their guts with?

  ‘Go there who will! If I go there, may the devil take me! He would do so if I did. Holy Crab! Avaunt, foul fiends.

  ‘Frère Jean, do you want thirty thousand wagon-loads of devils to bear you off here and now? Then do these three things.

  ‘First: give me your purse: for crosses work against enchantments, and there could happen to you what happened at the ford of Vède to Jean Dodin, the toll-collector of Le Couldray, when soldiers smashed up the plank-way. On the bank that prick-proud fellow came across Frère Adam Couscoil of the Observantine Friars at Mirebeau, and promised him a new frock if he would carry him across the river, slung over his shoulder like a dead goat. The Friar was a hefty rogue, you know. It was agreed.

  ‘Frère Jean Couscoil pulled his skirts right up to his balls and, like a handsome little Saint Christopher, loaded Dodin, the said suppliant, on to his back. And so he merrily carried him (as Aeneas carried Father Anchises out of the conflagration of Troy), singing Hail Mary, Star of the Sea. When they had reached the deepest part of the ford above the mill-wheel, he asked him whether he had got: any coins at all on him. Dodin replied that he had a game-bag full of them and that he was not to worry about his promise to provide him with a new habit. “What!” said Frère Couscoil. “You know there’s a special section in our Rule which rigorously forbids us to carry any money on our persons. Cursed are you for making me sin in this matter! Why didn’t you leave your purse with the miller? You shall be punished for it here and now, without fail. And if ever I get my hands on you in our chapter at Mirebeau you will be flagellated from Have mercy upon me down to bullocks upon thine altar.”

  ‘Then he dumps his load and pitches Dodin head first into the deep. After such an example, give me your purse, Frère Jean, my gentle friend, so that the devils may carry you off more comfortably: do not keep any crosses on you: the danger is obvious. If you have any coins with crosses on them the devils will drop you on to some rocks just as eagles drop tortoises to shatter their shells: witness the bald head of the poet Aeschylus; and you would do yourself some harm, my friend (and that would make me sad); or else they’ll drop you into the sea like Icarus, I know not where, far away. And thereafter it will be called the Sea of Entommeures.

  ‘Secondly: be out of debt, for devils love those who repay their debts. I know that from my own case: those riff-raff never stop making eyes at me and courting me now: something they never did when I was sporting debtor’s yellow. I was owing money: and the soul of a man in debt is all emaciated and dried up. It is not fit meat for devils.

  ‘Thirdly: go back to Raminagrobis with your frock and your fat-cat cowl. I’ll pay for drink and tinder if thirty thousand boatloads of devils don’t bear you away thus elegantly bedizened. And if you want to have someone go with you for your safety, don’t come looking for me. No. I warn you. Avaunt foul fiends! I am not going there. If I do, the devil take me.’

  ‘With this sharp brackmard in my grip, replied Frère Jean, ‘I would worry less than you might perhaps suppose.’

  ‘You have got hold of the right end of the stick,’ said Panurge, ‘and spout like a Doctor Subtilis in the ’eart of magic. When I was studying in the University of Toledo, Picatrix, the Reverend Father-in-the-Devil, the Rector of the Faculty of Diabolology, told us that devils naturally fear the glint of swords as well as the light of the sun. And indeed, when Hercules went to all the devils in Hell, he never terrified them as much with his lion’s skin and his club as Aeneas later did clad in shining armour and furnished with his brackmard, duly de-rusted and brightly furbished with the aid and counsel of the Cumaean Sybil.

  ‘That – perhaps – is why, Field-Marshal Jean-Jacques de Trivulzi, on his death-bed in Chartres, called for his naked sword and died with it in his hand, laying about him right and left all round his bed, and, like a valiant and chivalrous knight, put to flight with that sword-play all the devils lying in wait for him on his passing to death.

  ‘When one asks the Massoretes and Cabbalists why devils can never get into the earthly Paradise, they give no reason apart from the fact that a Cherubim stands by the gate holding a flaming torch. For I admit chat, according to the true diabo-lology of Toledo, devils cannot actually die from sword-cuts, but I maintain, following the aforesaid diabolology, that they can suffer a dissolution of continuity, as when you slash with your brackmard through a burning flame or a thick veil of smoke. And when they feel that dissolution they make a devil of a shriek since it is devilishly painful.

  ‘When you see the shock of two armies, do you think, do you belie
ve, gross bollock, that the great and horrifying din that you hear comes only from the voices of men, the ring of armour, the clatter of the bards of the war-horses, the thud of maces, the clash of pikes, the shattering of lances, the cries of the wounded, the sound of the tabor and trumpet, the whinnying of horses and the thunder of blunderbuss and cannon? That counts for something, I admit. But the most terrifying din and the principal uproar arises from the anguished howls of the devils, who, lying in wait in that confused garboil, receive chance blows from swords and suffer ruptures in the continuity of their substances, which are both aerial and invisible. It is as when the chef, Master Grubby, gives a rap over the knuckles to scullery-boys munching rashers from the spit. Then they howl and ululate like devils, as did Mars when he was wounded by Diomedes before Troy: Homer says that he yelled at a higher pitch and with more terrifying shrieks than ten thousand men put together.

  ‘But what is all this! Here we are talking of furbished armour and shining swords: that doesn’t apply to your brackmard. From disuse and lack of service it is, by my faith, rustier than the clasp of an old pork-barrel. Therefore do one of two things: either truly and smartly de-rust it or, if you keep it as it is, all rusted up, take care not to return to Raminagrobis.

  ‘For my part, I am not going to go. If I do, may the devil take me.’

  How Panurge takes counsel from Epistemon

  CHAPTER 24

  [Like Gargantua after his foul education at the hands of Sorbonagres, Panurge needs to be treated with hellebore, the Classical cure for madness. (Cf. Erasmus, Adages, I, VIII, LI, ‘To drink hellebore’.)

  Epistemon criticizes the narrative style of Enguerrand de Monstrelet in the light of Lucian’s How to Write History.

  Rabelais edited and translated the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. The first aphorism, dealing with ‘the Art’ (that is, the Art of Medicine) states that ‘Art is long: life is short, and judgement is difficult’.