Rabelais has read Plutarch’s Why Oracles Have Ceased, which comes into its own on his next Book. For Panurge’s ‘Ogygian Isles’ he again turned to Plutarch, to his treatise On the Face to Be Seen in the Moon.
He remembers an adage of Erasmus: I, V, XXIX, ‘As mute as fishes’.
The wise Epistemon’s hesitation about consulting oracles parallels the hesitations expressed in the poem cited in Chapter 21.
A play on words (souris, mouse and soubris, smile) has been transposed to amusing/amousing.]
Once they had left La Ville-au-Maire and were on the way back to Pantagruel, Panurge addressed himself to Epistemon:
‘My old friend and companion,’ he said, ‘you can see my mental perplexity. You know so many good cures. Could you possibly help me?’
Epistemon took up the subject and firmly pointed out that the common talk was entirely devoted to mocking his strange attire: he advised him to take a dram of hellebore to purge his faulty humour, and to return to his normal clothes.
‘I,’ said Panurge, ‘am disposed, Epistemon, my dear companion, to get married, but I’m afraid of being cuckolded and unlucky in my marriage. That’s why I’ve sworn a vow to Saint Francis-the-Less (who is invoked with great devotion by the women of Plessis-les-Tours, since he was the original Founder of the Minims, those “Good Men” for whom they feel a natural desire) that I shall wear my spectacles in my cap and shall never wear trunk-hose until I find a clear resolution of my mental perplexity.’
‘A truly lovely and laughable vow, I must say,’ replied Epistemon. ‘I am astonished that you don’t come to yourself; don’t summon your senses back from their wild wanderings to their natural tranquillity.
‘As I listen to you I am reminded of the vow of the long-haired Argives, who, when they had lost the battle against the Spartans in the quarrel over Thyraea, swore never to let their hair grow long on their heads until they had regained their land and their honour. Also of the vow of that silly Spaniard Miguel d’Oris to sport only one part of the greave protecting his leg. I really do not know who is more worthy and deserving of wearing the green-and-yellow fool’s cap with its hare’s ears, that boastful champion or Enguerrand, who gives a long, intricate and boring account of him, forgetful of the Art and Manner of writing Histories given us by the philosopher from Samosata. For as you read his long narration, you think that it must be about the beginning of some fierce war or the occasion of some significant mutation of kingdoms; yet in the end you simply laugh at that boobyish champion, at the Englishman who challenged him and at Enguerrand their chronicler as he dribbles on worse than a mustard-pot.
‘We mock them as we mock that Mountain in Horace which was hugely crying and lamenting like a woman in labour; at her cries and lamentation all the neighbours ran up, expecting to witness some wondrous and portentous childbirth, yet in the end all that was born of her was a trifling mouse.’
‘No amousing trifle for me at this point,’ said Panurge. ‘The limper mocks the lame! I shall do as my vow requires. A long time has passed since you and I swore mutual faith and friendship by Jupiter Philios: now give me your advice. Should I marry or no?’
‘The matter,’ said Epistemon, ‘is certainly fraught with risk: I feel quite inadequate to resolve it. And if ever what Hippocrates of Lango said of old was true of the Art of medicine, JUDGEMENT IS DIFFICULT, in this matter it is true absolutely.
‘I do have in mind certain arguments which could lead us to a resolving of your perplexity, but they fail to satisfy me by their clarity. Some Platonists state that whoever can see his Genius can know his destiny, but I cannot fully understand their doctrine and do not advise you to give it your adherence: a great deal of it is misleading. I have witnessed the experience of an East-Anglian nobleman, both learned and scholarly.
‘That is point number one.
‘And now for another.
‘If the oracles – of [Jupiter in Amon], of Apollo in Lebadia, Delphi, Delos, Patara, Cyrrha, Tegyra, Praeneste, Lycia and Colophon [and in the fountain to be found amongst the Branchides of Castalia near Antioch in Syria]; or of Bacchus in Dodona; of Mercury in Pharae near Patras; of Apis in Egypt; of Serapis in Canopus; of Faunus in Maenalia and Albunaea near Tivoli; of Tyresias in Orchomene; of Mopsus in Cilicia; of Orpheus in Lesbos, and of Trophonius in Leucadia – still held sway, I would (though perhaps I wouldn’t) counsel you to go and hear what their judgement on your undertaking might be.
‘But as you know, they have all become as mute as fishes since the advent of our great Servator King, in whom all oracles and all prophecies found an end: as with the advent of the bright light of the sun there vanish all hobgoblins, lamias, lemurs, werewolves, bogies and spirits of darkness.
‘Even if those oracles did still hold sway, I would not readily advise you to trust in their replies. Too many people have been deceived in them.
‘I recall, moreover, that Agrippina rebuked the fair Lollia for asking the oracle of Apollo Clarius whether she would be married to the Emperor Claudius; for which Lollia was first banished and subsequently put ignominiously to death.’
‘But let us do something better,’ said Panurge. ‘The Ogygian Isles are not far from Saint Malo. Let us sail to them, having first spoken of it to our King. In one of those four isles (the one most facing the setting sun) they say – and I have read it in good and ancient authors – that many soothsayers, vaticinators and prophets dwell, and that Saturn lies bound there in beautiful chains of gold upon a golden rock, where he is fed on ambrosia and celestial nectar brought daily to him in abundance from the heavens by birds whose species I do not know (perhaps the very same crows which fed Saint Paul, the first anchorite in the wilderness): there he clearly prophesies to anyone who wants to learn of his lot, his destiny and what is to befall him. For the Fates spin nothing and Jupiter plans nothing, contemplates nothing which chat good Father Saturn does not know while he lies sleeping.
‘It would greatly abbreviate our labour if we were to hear him a while over this perplexity of mine.’
‘That,’ said Epistemon, ‘is too evident an abuse and a fable too fabulous. I will not go.’
How Panurge took counsel from Herr Trippa
CHAPTER 25
[The caricature-figure of Herr Trippa is doubtless a laugh at the expense of Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the German author of a treatise On Occult Philosophy and of a very widely read book On the Vanity of All Sciences and of the Excellence of the Word of God. The erudition in this chapter belongs to the common domain, much of it to be found in Cardano amongst others and (later) in Pictorius. For the definitive edition of the Third Book Rabelais also borrowed extra details from Celio Calcagnini, an author who was to revolutionize his art in the Fourth Book. The ‘Mons Jovis’ (Jove’s mountain) is the small swelling at the base of the index-finger.
Astrologers established a ‘Celestial Mansion’ as part of the art of divination. The seventh ‘house’ was that of marriage.
A comic song sung about Court begins ‘When all the cuckolds congregate, My husband will lead them, carrying the banner’.
We have the joy of witnessing a maniacal expert in the occult arts being accused by Panurge of precisely the faults of philautia which are so manifest in himself and which he ought first to be condemning ‘at home’. A vital part is played by a clutch of authoritative axioms against self-love, drawn from the same two or three pages of the Adages of Erasmus. They include, but are not limited to: the Socratic saying (I, VI, LXXXV), ‘Things are done right or wrong at home’ – where Rabelais came across polypragmôn, Plutarch’s name for a prying busybody; (I, VI, LXXXVI), ‘To go down into oneself; the scriptural saying (I, VI, XCI), ‘To cast the beam from another’s eye’; and, not least, (I, VI, XCV), ‘Know Thyself’.
Several other adages to be found on those pages of Erasmus are, have been or will be pressed into service.
From I, VI, LXXXVIII, ‘Live within your own harvest’ (wisdom which Panurge had so blatantly flouted in his praise of debts
and debtors) Rabelais took the word ptôchalazôn, a braggart-beggar. He had already taken from them the adage ‘We do not see what is in the pouch behind us’. Cf. Chapter 15.]
‘All the same,’ said Epistemon, continuing, ‘if you trust me, this is what you will do before we return to our king. Here, near I’lle-Bouchard, there dwells Herr Trippa. You know how he foretells the future by the arts of astrology, geomancy, chiromancy [, metopomancy] and others of the same kidney. Let us discuss your matter with him.’
‘I know nothing about that,’ Panurge replied, ‘but this I do know, that while he was talking to the great king about matters celestial and transcendental, the menservants of the Court were swiving his wife at will, on the stairs and in the doorways, she being not unattractive. He, who could see all things empyreal and terrestrial without goggles, who was holding forth about all things past and present, and predicting all that is to come, failed in one thing: to see her jiggedy-jigging. And he never got news of it either.
‘All right. Since you want to, let us go to him. One can never learn too much.’
They arrived next day at the house of Herr Trippa. Panurge gave him a wolf-skin robe, an ornately gilt short-sword in a velvet scabbard and fifty fine golden angelots. He then began to discuss with him privily about his affair.
As soon as Herr Trippa set eyes on him he looked him straight in the face and said: ‘You have the physiognomy and the metoposcopy of a cuckold: I mean a disgraced and notorious cuckold.’
Then, studying Panurge’s right palm at every point, he said: ‘This broken line on your Mons Jovis is never found except in the palm of a cuckold.’
He then rapidly pricked at a certain number of points with a probe, linked them together by geomancy and said: ‘No truth more true: it is quite certain that you will be cuckolded soon after your marriage.’
Which done, he asked Panurge for his natal horoscope. As soon as he gave it to him, Herr Trippa established Panurge’s Celestial House in all its particulars and, musing over its disposition and the aspects in their triplicities, he heaved a mighty sigh and said: ‘I had already frankly predicted that you will be a cuckold. In that you cannot fail. And here I find a new additional certainty: I confirm that you will be cuckolded, and moreover that you will also be battered and robbed by your wife. For I find the Seventh Mansion to be malign in all its aspects and subject to assaults by all the signs of the Zodiac bearing horns, such as Aries, Taurus, Capricorn and so on. In the Fourth Mansion I find Jupiter in decline as well as with Saturn in a tetragonal aspect with Mercury.
‘My good fellow, you are in for a good peppering!’
‘I’ll visit you with a quartan ague first,’ Panurge replied, ‘[you idiot,] you disgusting old fool! When all the cuckolds congregate, you’ll be carrying the banner!
But whence comes this flesh-worm here twixt my two fingers?’ So saying he pointed his first two fingers straight at Herr Trippa, spreading them wide to form two horns while bending his thumb and the other fingers into his palm.13
Then he said to Epistemon:
‘Behold the original Ollus in Martial, who devoted all his study to observing the maladies and misfortunes of others; meanwhile his wife was on a debauch. He, on the other hand, poorer than Irus ever was, remained as boastful, as overweening and as unbearable as seventeen devils: in a word, a ptôchalazôn, as the Ancients most properly termed such scurrilous rabble.
‘Let’s leave this loony idiot with his familiar spirits – he ought to be chained up – raving away to his heart’s content. Convince me some day that evil-spirits would serve such a wretch! He is ignorant of the first line of philosophy, which is KNOW THYSELF, and while boasting that he can see a mote in the eye of another he fails to see a great beam poking out of both of his. He is just the kind of polypragmon whom Plutarch describes; he is a second Lamia, she whose eyes were sharper than a lynx’s in the houses of others, in public and amongst the common folk, yet in her own house she was as blind as a mole: at home she saw nothing, since as soon as she came back into her own place she took out her eyes from her head – they were removable like spectacles – and hid them away in a wooden clog hanging behind the door of her cottage.’
[At those words Herr Trippa took a branch of tamarisk.
‘Well taken!’ said Epistemon. ‘Nicander calls it divinatory.’]
‘Would you like,’ said Herr Trippa, ‘to know the truth more fully by Pyromancy, Aëromancy [made famous by Aristophanes in his Clouds], by Hydromancy or by Lecanomancy, which was so honoured amongst the Assyrians [and tried out by Ermolao Bárbaro]? Within a basin [full of water] I’ll show you your future wife having it off with a brace of yokels…’
‘Next time you stick your nose up my bum,’ said Panurge, ‘remember to take off your glasses!’
‘… or,’ continued Herr Trippa, ‘by Catoptromancy [, by means of which Didius Julianus, an Emperor of Rome, foresaw all that was to come]. You won’t need your glasses! – [In a mirror] you’ll see her being screwed as clearly as if I had showed you her in the fountain of the temple of Minerva near Patras. By Coscinomancy [once so religiously observed within the rituals of the Romans]? Let’s have tongs and a sieve and you will witness some devilry! [By Alphitomancy, as was indicated by Theocritus in his book Pharmaceutria, and by Aleuromancy (mixing together some wheat and some flour)? By Astro-galomancy? I already have some knuckle-bones to throw with. By Tyromancy? I’ve just what we need: a bit of cheese from Bréhémont. By Gyromancy? I shall spin a few hoops and, I assure you, they will all fall to the left! By Sternomancy? I say! Your chest is in poor shape!] By Libanomancy? All you need is a little incense. By Gastromancy, long employed in Ferrara by Dame Jacoba Rhodogina the engastrimyth? By Cephaleomancy [which used to be employed by the Germans who would roast an ass’s head over red-hot charcoal]? By Ceromancy? In this case, from wax melted in water you will see the shapes of your wife and the men giving her a good pounding. By Capnomancy? We shall sprinkle poppy-seeds and sesame-seeds together over some glowing embers. How delightful! By Axinomancy? All you need to provide is a chopper [and a piece of agate which we will place in the brazier. How well Homer exploits it apropos of the Suitors of Penelope]. By Onymancy? We shall need oil and a little wax. By Tephramancy? Ashes exposed to the weather will show you your wife in a fine old state. By Botanomancy? I have some sage-leaves here just for the purpose. By Sycomancy? O! An art divine, using leaves from a fig-tree. By Ichthyomancy [once honoured and practised by Tiresias and Polydamas]: still as reliable as it was long ago in the ditch called Dina within the wood sacred to Apollo in the land of the Lycians? By Choiromancy? We shall need quite a few pigs: you can have the bladders! [By Cleromancy? It’s like our looking for the bean in the festal cake on the Eve of the Epiphany.] By Anthropo-mancy, which was used by the Emperor Heliogabalus of Rome? A bit messy, but since you’re destined to be cuckolded you can put up with that. By Sibylline Stichomancy? By Onomato-mancy? What did you say your name was?…’
‘Chew-shit,’ said Panurge;
‘… or else by Alectryomancy? I will trace here a nice little circle, which, in your sight, as you watch me, I shall divide into four-and-twenty equal sections in each of which I will draw one letter of the alphabet. Upon each letter I will place one grain of corn. Then I will loose among it a virgin cockerel. You will see it, I promise you, eating the grains placed upon the letters, C. U. C. K. O. L. D. S. H. A. L. T. B. E. just as fatefully as when, under the Emperor Valens (who was perplexed over the name of his successor), the prophetic and alectryomantic cock ate the grains over the letters T.H.E.O.D. Would you be willing to learn from the Art haruspicine? Extispicine? By auguries from flights of birds and the songs of the oscines? From the ducks’ tripudiation solistime…’14
‘By Turd-ispicine,’ replied Panurge.
‘… or else by Necromancy? For you, Sir, I’ll quickly resurrect someone recently dead (as Apollonius of Tyana did for Achilles and as the witch did in the presence of Saul), who will tell us everything, doing no more and no
less than that dead man did who, when evoked by Erichto, foretold to Pompey the entire course and outcome of the battle of Pharsalia.
‘Or if you are afraid of the dead – as cuckolds naturally are – we shall merely use Sciomancy.’
‘Go to the devil you raving idiot,’ Panurge replied, ‘and get yourself buggered by an Albanian: he’ll give you a conical hat all right! Why the devil don’t you also advise me to place an emerald or a hyena-gem firmly under my tongue, or to provide myself with the tongue of a hoepoe-bird and the hearts of green frogs, or to eat the heart and liver of some dragon or other so that (like the Arabs of old in the lands of Mesopotamia) I can hear my destinies in swan-song and bird-song.
‘May thirty devils take this horn-bearing cuckold, this Marrano, this devil’s own sorcerer, this caster of spells for Antichrist! Let’s get back to our king. I’m certain he will not be pleased with us if ever he learns that we ventured into the haunt of this be-cassocked devil. I’m sorry I ever came. I would gladly give a hundred golden nobles – and fourteen commoners – if only the thing which used to break wind in the bottom of my trunk-hose would at this very moment shine up his moustaches with its squitterings! True God! He’s made me stink of loathing and devilry, of spells and witchcraft. The devil take him! Say amen to that, and then we can go for a drink. I shan’t enjoy myself for a couple of days: nay, not for four!’
How Panurge takes counsel from Frère Jean des Entommeures
CHAPTER 26
[It is normal to link this chapter with the contemporary cult of poetic blasons (poems copiously praising, say, a beautiful young bosom and then having it answered by another poem piling up terms for an ugly old withered one). There are plenty of occasions for unexpected smiles in this list, where the terms applied to Frère Jean’s bollocks are mainly those of vigour and power. In Chapter 28 we will find Panurge treated to epithets of weakness, scabbiness and debility. These blasons are later disposed in two columns only. Three epithets are later cut out of Chapter 28 (on Panurge’s bollocks) and attributed to Frère Jean’s: ‘aborted b., – chalotted b.,– censored b.’
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